Final Critical Evaluation

I am going to review making my film and all that has gone with it.

My film started as a 25 word pitch back in September has has developed a lot since. I feel that my biggest problem throughout making my film was getting a really good reason for it all to happen. I have a good beginning and end but the middle of my story always struggled. It actually really took off only recently whilst talking to Mike Rymer I feel I now have a really good middle of the story to make it all make sense.

Screenwriting
I knew from the start that this was the part of the course that I would struggle with most, I know that my writing ability is not the best but part of the reason I wanted to do this course was to test myself and try things that I haven't wanted to do before. Actually I did end up enjoying writing my screenplay. I assume when it's going to be marked there will still be flaws with it and it could be improved vastly. However I would say that i have personally learned a lot through this part of the course and I am happy with how my knowledge has developed.

Filming 
I was disappointed with one day of filming my film because Andrew could not turn up for one of the days meaning myself, Connor and George had to shoot scenes needing 4 people with 3. This meant for me personally that a lot of the shots around the beach are nowhere near as good as I wanted. It was very frustrating at the time but we had to deal with it and we did end up with some very good shots. The fact there where only 3 of us meant a lot of the shots where on a tripod when I wanted them handheld but they still looked ok. We also had to change characters to what I originally planned, I had planned to place people in what I thought was their best role but the fact that Andrew didn't show up meant that I had to change around the roles. We also has to physically play 2 characters whilst at the beach which was annoying meaning that the continuity was not very good. I feel that this would confuse the viewer so they may think that it was badly done but it was really just improvised as best as possible.
Whilst filming in maidstone we only had one small problem, the path I planned to use wasn't that great so we switched to another, it wasted a little bit of time but in general it ended up better than planned as our path we used actually was great for the shots. The last thing I wanted to mention was that I did break the 180 degree rule twice whilst filming. It was easily corrected in editing, but it annoyed me that I have learnt this rule and it all up there but somehow in the heat of the moment I did forget to make sure it was right.

Editing
I enjoyed editing in Premiere pro. It did take time to learn the basics but Ferg was very helpful in his lessons as well as when I just knocked on his door he was always happy to show me the best way to edit. I had not used Premiere pro before but I have enjoyed this a lot. I think my film ended up looking ok, I would say with more time it could be a lot better but I guess that is the same for everyone.

General Conclusion
I know we have done more than the three subjects than I have mentioned but I feel that in all areas I have definitely improved in all areas from when I started and that is thanks to all the people that have helped throughout. In general I enjoyed everything we did, which honestly was surprising because I thought I'd only like the filming and editing. Overall I am happy to what I have learned and I hope to progress further in next unit. I know personally what I can improve on still so I push myself to improve in the next units.