What Worked and
Went Well?
Firstly, I will say that after day 1 of filming I was so
worried because I thought that I had no content, however after day 2 and some reflection
time I felt like I had good coverage bar 1 or 2 areas which I will talk about
later.
I also feel like I did a good job with actors, whilst of
course I was worried at any second they’d drop out and say they couldn’t come
when we started filming they were very understanding that it was my first time
using actors with experience so I was learning off them about what they wanted
to know. Hopefully I can work with them again in the future as they did have a
true passion for the project which made it a lot easier on my end.
I also liked the majority of the shots I got, of course
somewhere ever so slightly out of focus and other just where not great but in
the actual edit I had enough choice to go through and filter out the no so good
stuff.
I recorded a buzz track and that was thanks to Steve Finn,
without him I think most wouldn’t have known it was a thing. It helped keep the
audio similar in the background even though sometimes the audio could be a
little jumpy.
I liked the editing process, I was mostly not around to get
feedback but thanks to Simon back and forth over email we selectively improved
it and I think the outcome is much better than at the start of the week when I
was a little worried how it was all going to be done in time! This included the
audio mixing which was a challenge but at the same time interesting as I’d
never done it to this extent before. I think the effects and music I used was very
effective and it’s one of my favourite parts about my project.
Finally, I think that the planning this time was a lot less
hectic for me, I knew slightly more about it so I was not as worried about it
and it went a lot smoother. I also thanked all my locations after we had filmed
because they really made it a pleasant experience and helped us if we needed
it.
What Didn’t go so
well?
I struggled with sound whilst filming in such a public
place. People shouting and in general being loud did sometimes mean if the
actor was not emphasising enough that you could not hear them. This is probably
see in my edit as there are some rough cuts from one audio clip to the next but
I tried my best to nullify the sharpness with transitions and audio mixing.
You can probably tell from my film I had to use the clip of
the train coming into the station 3 times. Whilst watching it a first time you
may not notice, you would do after seeing it a few times. It was annoying but
unfortunately, I could not go back and record because the trains only ran
weekends after I filmed, in which I was not available. This would have been the
biggest single shot I would have liked to gone and filmed again.
An annoying problem I realised whilst editing was I had a
smudge on the lens, this meant for one shot only it kind of ruins it.
Unfortunately, there is nothing I could do about it, at the time from the tiny
display everything looked ok but once I realised I just made sure it didn’t
frustrate me too much because I realised that there is nothing I could do about
it.
What I learned
I think what I learned most was how to deal with actors. I was
talking to Jessica and Jamie and asking them what they wanted from me to help
them understand what’s going on. They told me some of the “do’s and don’ts”
which really helped me out and hopefully will do for the future.
I also learned how to edit sound a lot better. I know still
I’m at the very beginning but in general I got the concept of why sound is so
important to making a show good or bad. I think if I compare this to my first
project, I’m already way advanced in comparison to what I knew at the start of
the course.
Planning was also a big part of what I learned, making sure
A and B are at a location at X time was tough to organise but also a nice
challenge at the same time and that was another part for my first project that
had time spent on it, but nowhere as much time as this project.
Apart from that I learned a lot in premier in terms of
editing, little things I didn’t know before but now I know which make the
editing process more enjoyable and a slicker experience.
What would I
develop and change?
The biggest thing I’d change or re shoot are the scene where
the camera is smudged and get more footage of the train coming towards the
station because that let it down a bit for me.
I would also probably choose a different scene, I loved
doing this project but clones and a train hitting someone was probably a little
too much for me right now to look good and properly realistic. However maybe knowing
what I know now I would be able to make this scene feel more realistic and
maybe it would come out a lot better. It’s good to get the negative experiences
as well so you can learn from them.
I would also like to have used some more interesting ways of
filming (drone and dolly) but I realise I should have booked the dolly earlier
and, I should have known that a drone in a public place and next to a train
line would not be accepted under the risk assessment. This means I should have
planned a little more NOT using the drone as I did have some shots specifically
for the drone.
Finally, I would probably change the location of the café to
somewhere quieter. I didn’t think about it until we filmed but we filmed during
a school half term so it was much busier than I really expected. In one way,
this was good as the trains where running daily but it also meant that the café
scene was very hard to film, including some people who wanted to shout stuff
into the camera whilst filming.
I really enjoyed this project, it was tough but rewarding at
the same time because I really liked some of the shots and the final project
came out better than expected after I looked through it after day 1!
