Evaluation

Year 10 Media Arts Short Film Production – Term 01 Mr. Andrews

Task 1: Self-reflection and evaluation:

Please answer each question using complete sentences, including as much detail as possible.

Discuss your feelings about the production task: Please explain your responses:

• Did you enjoy creating your short film?

I enjoyed the challenge of having to create a silent film, as I’ve never tried it before. The films with dialogues are often easier to understand as they deliver emotions and ideas in a more direct way, but silent films solely rely on their miss en scene and camera techniques to deliver the point. Therefore, Sarah and I had to think through why we were doing something in a detailed way, thinking whether the audience would understand it or not. 

This task surely involved more effort than all my previous media art works. In addition, we were kind of limited in our creativity, because we had to use real life. Last year, the works that I created were all made from inanimate objects, so this was my first time using people and the “outside world” for a film. 

What I did not enjoy, however, was the lack of time we had to finish the short film. We basically had 2 weeks to film, edit and produce our film. In addition, since we were both busy on a lot of days, we only had about 2 hours to film our whole film. We also couldn’t get a detailed feedback on what we can do to make it better, which is pretty upsetting. 

All in all, I did enjoy creating my short film as it was a challenge, but I wish we had a longer time to produce it.

• Are you satisfied with the final result?

Thinking about the time we had to produce it, yes I am satisfied with the result. However, thinking about the film just itself, I’m not really satisfied with it. When I thought of our idea, I was thinking of a more dark, stranded place, but we didn’t really have anywhere like that, so we had to film at school. Therefore, we couldn’t really control the natural lighting of nature, as we didn’t use a fancy camera with the exposure settings. The bright sky blue in the film really annoys me. I tried to fix it by adjusting the saturation of the film lower, but it just made the film seem black and white, so I had to abandon that idea. Now that I think about it, making the film a lot greyish wouldn’t have been such a bad idea since it’ll symbolise her loneliness. 

In addition, I’m not really satisfied with the editing. There are some issues with some of the shots as well, but if I had better editing skills, I bet I could’ve covered them up nicely. It would have been nice if we had a lesson where we practised editing. Judging from the first time use of editing, however, I reckon it came out better than average ( I hope ). 

My mum also told me that the storyline did not kind of make sense. I thought it did, but she told me it didn’t. I was pretty happy with the short film until she said that. 

It’s just that I had a different image in mind for the whole short film, but because of out limitation with where we could shoot and when we could meet up, we couldn’t really do it. I think that’s one of the biggest reasons why I am not satisfied with the final results. 

• Did your film turn out as well as you pictured?

No. I imagined for the girl to walk down secluded white hallways like a hospital, but instead, we had no choice but to film at school. It would have been so cool for her to walk down empty hallways where lights are blinking, and it’s just her. The leading lines of the hallways would have been great. It would have been like that train station scene from Harry Potter, where Harry is trapped in his mind, going over his life and really thinking through what to do. 

Sarah and I also imagined using shadows as the death eater instead of Satan to symbolise that it’s also following her and that it’s all just “her” in the end, but we couldn’t really do that. We didn’t have enough time and the ability to manipulate shadows in an open space where the sun is. 

The lighting was hard to fix as well, so the film is kind of brighter than what I pictured. I just had this whole greyish monochrome film in mind, but I couldn’t really bring it to life in the end, which is really disappointing. 

The water cup scene was kind of tacky as well. It would have been better if I used a better transparent cup, but we didn’t really have a lot of time to go and buy those props. 

So no, the film did not turn out as well as I pictured. 

• Would like to change or improve any aspects of your final film (storyline, shots, editing etc.)?

Definitely the Miss En Scene and the editing. 

For the Miss En Scene, I just want to change the setting, because I swear to god, nobody is going to imagine a school when they’re in coma. It would have been better to shoot inside a building where we could easily manipulate the light, but we couldn’t really meet over the weekends through personal circumstances. For the props, we didn’t really fully use the map and the key to the best of our abilities. It had a cameo for like 3 secs in the whole entire minute. 

I’m still really salty about the lighting because the lighting is what makes a film awesome, but we couldn’t use lighting, in the hot bright sun. We could have done so many things with lighting. Fill light, harsh light and soft light. It would have set the mood perfectly. 

In terms of the storyline, it would have been better if we had like this whole big event on her being forcefully pushed into the pool because I reckon it was too sudden. It would have been great if Satan was chasing after her, so she had no choice but to jump into the pool, and then a close-up shot of Satan smiling cause she’s drowning. We had this in our original storyline, but we had to take it out because we didn’t have enough time. 

• If you could start the project again, what would you do differently?

Working with Sarah was great, and I can not ask for anything more, but I think I’m used to working alone. I did it the whole of media last year, so it was a hit in the face when we were asked to partner up. I want to see what I would create if I were to work alone. I would have the ability to film without my partner being there because I would do everything by myself. 

Also, I keep on mentioning this but I would shoot the whole film in a building instead of outside to manipulate the lighting. We learnt this whole thing about lighting, but I don’t think we actually had the chance to apply it effectively to our film. I wanted to use harsh lighting on her face whenever something bad happened, but we didn’t have enough time nor ability to do so. Also filming in a white background would have been great because it shows her state of mind, her emptiness, her loneliness — just her. White usually symbolises the idea of nothing. The hallways and rooms would have been great to use for frame space, as I can corner her better to make her seem weak. 

I would also like to try and make the idea of her finding an exit more obvious, i.e showing the exit sign.  

As this task focused on mise-en-scene and cinematography, describe: 

• How you used specific elements of mise-en-scene to depict your film’s genre and enhance the narrative? 

Mise-en-scene is Setting/Location, Lighting, Props/Costumes, Sound and Style of acting. 

For the setting and location, we used the school to show her mind. We wanted to show that her mind is jumbled out, thus having complex backgrounds. We actually wanted a white background, but since we could not find a good building to film in, we had to change our idea. We also had to be careful to use a setting where no one was present because there would not be anyone in her mind except her. It’s her mind and she’s all alone with no one to help. 

For the lighting we edited it so that the saturation was low, to create a low gray undertone for the overall part where she is searching for the exit to show that she’s sad and lonely. We thought that gray tones are good to symbolise loneliness and sadness, as people refer to depressing things as, “feeling sad turns your world gray.” A gloomy mood lowers dopamine, which may impair neurotransmitters in the retina. And depression has been linked to a deficit in the ability to differentiate colours, meaning the world might be viewed as a fuzzier, less vivid place for some people feeling sad. We tried to use dark lighting for the scenes where she’s searching for something and bright lighting for when she finds the exit, cause she has hope. 

For the Props, our main was a key, a map, a cup and water. The key was used to symbolise there was a specific door to open, not just anything, but a key just for that door, which was the exit to life. The key is also a symbol of freedom and liberation. For the map, instead of drawing an actual legit map, we decided to draw a mind map to imply that she’s trapped in her mind. For the cup, we used it to symbolise a “sandwatch” kind of thing, a timer on how much she has time left to survive. It’s also being filled with water because water is how she fell into coma in the first place. Water was the main element in our film because it correlated with the whole idea of her falling into coma and then dying because of it. 

For the Costume, we made Sarah wear all white to symbolise purity, a state of 0 and to imply that she’s kind of half dead. In religion, white associates with purity and eloquence. In Psychology, white embodies the idea of having nothing. In culture, people often dress in white when they are placed in their tomb. Satan wore all black to symbolise evil and darkness. 

For the sound, we used creepy suspense sounds to set the mood of the film. We, however, lowered the volume for the sound whenever something dramatic was happening or when another sound effect was more important. For example, the creepy sound was deleted when Satan came closer to Sarah, because the sound effect of dun dun dun was more important, as it matched with the shot. 

For the style of acting, we tried the method acting technique. A method acting technique is where an actor/actress mystically ‘becomes’ the character or tries to somehow literally live the character in life. Since we had the background story and the reason she is in coma all planned out, Sarah and I successfully brought out the raw emotions of the character; Fright, Sadness and Loneliness. 

• How you used specific shot types to convey the storyline without dialogue?

We used lots of POV shots and Close up shots to show what the character was seeing and what the character was feeling. POV shots allow the audience to be the character for that moment, allowing them to further understand what the character is going through. If we just used long shots or medium shots to show both her and the scenery to show what she was doing, it would be boring and would not help the audience understand what’s going through her mind. We used close up shots to show her facial expressions. Sarah’s facial expressions are the ones that showed what she felt at that moment, which helped set the mood and atmosphere of that specific scene. If we used a long shot for when she looked down on the map, the audience would not really get if she’s concerned, sad or frightened during that scene. 

For the camera position and angles, we used lots of small frame space. This was used in order to show how cornered and pressured she felt about the situation. We also used high to low angle shots where she was being “attacked” by Satan to show that she is weak. In contrast, we used low to high angle shots on Satan to show that he is powerful. We used low camera position to show her feet whenever there was something important on the ground that “related” to her moving towards it. Other than that, most of them were eye level shots. 

• Whether the intended genre is depicted clearly or if this could be improved?

Out intended genre at the start of the term was Drama, but we changed it into a horror suspense because of the sound, colour and tone of the film. Drama relates more towards the idea of having a big problem and then trying to solve it, but our film was more about her finding the exit to get out of her mind while she was being chased to death by someone. 

Therefore, since we changed our genre to horror suspense, I reckon that the film depicted it fairly clearly. There was no bright lighting unless intended (Finding exit = Happy). 

Reflecting upon your completed task, respond to the following points:

• How did other people respond to your rough-edit? Did you use their feedback to make changes to the film?

People told us to put a scene where she gets pushed into the water and starts drowning after the heartbeat to show that she drowned, but we did not do this because of the time limit. Instead, to make it more obvious that she drowned in the flashback, we added a gray light filter onto the flashback scene to create a huge difference between the present and the past. Someone also told us that the flashbacks did not really make sense, but we fixed it with the filter. 

Someone told us to make her wake up with a map and a key in her hand. We did this for the start of the film to show that she’s waking from coma inside her mind. 

Use a tripod and make Sarah stay still for the scene where Satan comes up behind her. We did this, but Sarah kind of moved, so it’s not really perfect. 

Use quicker editing as it goes on. We did this. We started the editing slow, but we started to pick up the pace as the film went on to show that she’s getting more panicked and panicked and also to create a tension on whether she’s going to find the exit or not. She slowed it down when she did find the exit. 

• Did your group use the planning and analysis tools effectively? (storyboards, shot lists, mise-en-scene evaluation).

Yes, we did use the storyboard and shot lists sheet effectively. Although we did not follow it completely, we still used it to get an overall idea of what needed to be done and how the story worked. It was easy to follow and made our filming so much easier. Since we also had the shot list in order, we knew exactly which parts had to go first and which later. The storyboard was similar to the shot list, so we did not use it as much. 

We, however, did not use the shot list after fixing the ending scene (Changed from living to dying), because we did not have it in our shot list. 

The mise-en-scene evaluation was not used because we only had little mies-en-scene that was easy to remember. 

• Did shooting require more or less time than you thought? Why?

Shooting required the less amount of time than I thought. This is because I worked on all my media projects alone last year, so I had to move or draw every single scene. However, for this film, we worked as partners, allowing us to film more easily as we could communicate and just move our body for actions. 

I also knew that I would have to go back and retake shots because I did that last year for my MV project. I had to refilm a whole scene because there was something in the background that shouldn’t have been there. Therefore, we worked wisely with our time management plan thinking how long it would probably take us to film, which was 3 days. 

We also had an overall concept of how much time a film would take to film because of the Media week that we did last year. 

• Were there any problems or difficulties during filming and how did this affect your project. (Difficulties may include; shooting, technical, time-management, teamwork, absences or editing etc.);

Like I keep mentioning, the editing was harder than we thought because we had to cut down time, fix our lighting and tone and make the scenes flow nicely. Since we had to cut down time, we had to go and watch the film over and over again to see which parts would not be needed and which parts we could speed up. This was hard because we felt as if all the parts were great, so it was sad to take those out. The speed edit also made the computer a bit glitchy, so we had to export the video every now and then to see what it really looks like without the glitch. 

The lighting was hard to fix as well because sometimes the lights were too bright. If I made the shadows too dark, the film was too under exposed. If I made the saturation low, the film was too gray. If I made the colour too blue, it just made it look weird and off. I also had to be careful on making the skin tone of each scene where it’s supposed to have the same atmosphere similar. The sky was also too blue in a lot of the shots, but I could not fix it without making another thing look bad. 

The shooting was alright, we had our time-management all set up nicely, so we didn’t stress about not getting our filming done before the due date. Both of us were not absent on any days. 

• Discuss whether you undertook adequate and detailed reflection to support your work? (Look at your blogs and consider if it looks like a terms worth of work);

I’m not really sure whether I undertook adequate and detailed reflection to support my work, as I’ve never really explained about editing before. Last year, I just put all the shots together and did some cutting and deleting and copy and pasting, but this year we did so much more. 

There had to be a deeper meaning behind every single shot and we had to explain why we used this technique. I didn’t really know how to explain how I edited things. I didn’t take a record of what I edited, I just did it. Therefore, it was kind of hard for me to write every single edit that I did. I also don’t think that I explained why I chose to do this in detail, which kind of puts me off. 

Overall, the short silent film was a challenging task for me.