I have now finished my Short Film, Ripple. You can watch it in the video below.
Evaluation:
I think I did very well on my project overall.
Ideas/story:
I had a slow start generating ideas and starting the story but the workshops and lectures helped me a lot in processing my ideas. Steve Coombes visiting and teaching us made a big difference too. The screenwriting part was fairly easy as I had a good understanding of how to layout the script. The software was simple and user friendly meaning I had no problems with this aspect of the project. In future projects I just need to prepare myself and gather more ideas to play with.
Planning and pre-production:
This was straight forward for me as I have done this previously, I made sure I did as much planning as possible and checked my location. This was the first time I had to ask for permission to film (Kent film office) but I had permission granted so again, no problems. I asked Josh J to be my 1st AD having seen his enthusiasm and skills. I asked Jack to help with sound and Josh B to transport, having booked a lot of kit). This being my first uni project and having enough stuff to do I decided to use people on the course as actors. I planned to have Matt and Cheyenne. Unfortunately a week before the shoot I had to replace Matt as he did not respond. Sam was able to help. This made me realise that people can drop out at any time and I need to make sure on future shoots that this does not happen.
Production:
Having planned beforehand with shot lists and storyboard I had a good image of how I wanted the film to look like. The camera workshops helped as I never used one of the Sony cameras before. I found them fairly simple to use and had the controls desired for my shoot. I booked my equipment out early (3week before the shoot) as I knew these would be in demand. I also booked the dolly and track as I had planned to have a couple of tracking shots.
The shoot went well with the shots perfect. On the day I did plenty of takes as I wanted everything to look great. At times it became windy so for sound I made sure we had the blimp on the boom protected for wind. I used the radio mic in a few shots as this would be more convenient and safer with no need for cables. Being in a public place I wanted the shoot to be as safe as possible to everyone.
Post-production:
Being familiar with Final cut and with easy access as it was on my Macbook I decided to edit on that. Fergus has been introducing us to Premier Pro which I have used a few times in the past but as my edit would be simple I stuck with Final Cut. Since I was using the Sony XD camera it would mean that when it came to importing the footage the codec would be still Sony. I have the latest version of the software but as I updated my Mac to El Capitan for some reason it would not import correctly. I had a talk with Fergus to find a solution. He suggested downloading the Sony transfer but this came with a warning message, so I did not continue. After further talk Fergus had a go on my macbook and installed different transfer software and soon the problem was solved.
It didn't take me long to put an edit together of the clips. I structured the story with the footage and added the soundtrack and titles. I then went into colour correction, audio mixing and trimming clips to get it to the correct time of 2 minutes. After editing I exported the file ready for submission.
Apart from the problem to begin with the edit went well with no other problems, I have a good technical understanding with the software and feel this was the strongest part of the project. For future projects I will be able to edit much easier as I now have the codec transfer, I will also edit with Premier pro too.
Summary:
Looking back at my project I believe it went according to plan.
What went well:
- Planning - I planned my shoot thoroughly
- filming- The shots looked great
- Editing- All cut together nicely
What didn't, improvements needed:
- Sound- Wind made some noise
- Codec- Could not edit with the files to begin with
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