So far, I believe my project is beginning to take shape. I have a main idea, and a plot line is starting to get made. I know how my film is going to start and where it will start, and I know the locations I want to record in. I have also researched different techniques of recording my ideas of split personality, which is the main focus point of my project. I have done a decent amount of research on characters with split personalities, however, I need to still do a little bit more research on the actually mental illness that cause split personalities and the side effect of this. I also need to work a little bit on the plot, including props and some costumes. I have already thought about one costume, but I still need to think of the other costumes. I also need to create my pitch, but I should have enough time in the coming week to complete this.
Thursday 31st March
After presenting my pitch, I realised that I am trying to include far too much into my film, and if I tried including everything, it would just become messy and not very good. I have decided that I will change my idea slightly, cutting down on some ideas, which makes timing a lot easier. This would also allow me to properly develop a scene without having to worry about including another scene/location.
Tuesday 5th April
Like stated in previous blog, I have changed the start of my film, as this makes the film slightly too long, however, after receiving the feedback on my pitch, I have also had to rethink the ending of it, to make the ending less complicated, as in the pitch, the storyline seemed a little complicated, so I need to see what parts of my story I can change, or slightly tweak. One thing I have researched is how to achieve the techniques I want to include in my film, so this will give me confidence with filming the techniques and I can look back on the videos, if I get stuck. I will try and do a test shoot, testing these skills and see if my filming location has suitable room to test the techniques.
Monday 25th April
In the past few weeks over the easter break, I have completed a storyboard so I know what shots I want to. I have also started my script, so I would say I am on target to complete this project on time. I will also be booking the camera for next week, to record at the weekend of 7th and 8th. In the mean time, I will be completing my script, and I will continue to look at videos of people acting as characters with split personalities to see the techniques they use to show two different characters. I will also look at possible foley I can use in my project, which will help me later on when I am editing, as I know the Foley I will be using before I even start editing
Tuesday 3rd May
At the end of this week, I will be recording my project. I will be collecting my equipment today, and check some camera angles around my film location, so I know what I will need to do and where I want the camera to go. In the mean time, I sent my script to one of my lectures for feedback, and I will look at their feedback and update my script accordingly to what I think will be an improvement. Like stated before, I will look at some Foley to help with my project. One idea I have thought of recently is to have a character look at a picture frame, and then you can hear the Foley from that image e.g. if its an image by the sea, you would be able to hear seagulls, the sea and children laughing. I will do some research with films using this technique and try and recreate it later this week. So far, I think most of my planning and research has been quite effective. I did a mood board to work out the tones and themes for my project, and the storyboard and script will help me with knowing what is happening each scene, so hopefully I will know the most effective way to record when I get to my shoot date which is Sunday 8th May. I haven't looked back on my questionnaire I did a few weeks back, which I released on my social media. Luckily with that, almost everyone that responded was in my target audience, so I will go back and look at it, in case I've missed anything that could help me and if there have been any additional responses. My research has also been quite effective, with all of it being relevant to my idea, and giving me a wide range of potentially ways to present my project. All the research has also contributed in their own ways to help create the characters and setting the plot, genre and themes for my project. In doing so, they have assisted me in thinking of what I want to create with the lighting, camera techniques and more.
Tuesday 10th May
Like I planned, I was able to record all of my project over the previous weekend, and I have been able to do a quick rough edit to make sure that I have every shot that I need/require to complete my project so I believe everything is on schedule to be completed by the project deadline. I will have to do some research on scores and Foley, but I will do this in the time I am not editing. When I was shooting, I believe it went well, as my experimentation with the mirrors and having two versions of myself in the same shot has worked well, and I have found very little issues with those clips and editing them together. Looking back at my whole project, I think I have a wide range of research and I have explained what I'm going to try and take from each piece of research, and I've even researched a bit for the costumes for each of my characters, it is clear where some of my ideas have come from with my project.
While I do have some context in my project, that could be one of my weaker sections of my website, and it has the potential of holding back my other all grade, so I will have to improve the context parts of my project.
Despite being in the early stages of development when it comes to the practical skills, I believe I have already shown a wide range of skills and knowledge that can only be improved as I improve my edits. I believe I have also shown that I have creative abilities with the use of the mirror reflections to show the alternate version of the character, as well has having that version appear in the same shot as the main character, but dressed differently, and acting differently.
Thursday 12th May
During the editing of my project, I have noticed some things that could be improved upon. For starters, in my project, my character has supposedly just been hit and beaten, however, he looks perfectly fine, and doesn't look like he has been hit. This is something I had forgotten about, which in hindsight, would have made it a little more realistic and show the physical effects of the beatings. This could have been easily solved with a little bit of makeup, however when recording, everyone in the house was put for the day, so I couldn't ask them, and I don't know how to do makeup for something like a black eye. I could have asked another one of my friends to come round and help me with the make up, like I asked another friend with the camera work, or I could have asked a student from hair and make up for their assistance too.
Another slight issue I had is the audio. The camera mic that I used isn't the greatest, so the audio isn't very clear and there is almost a hissing noise. This could have been avoided with booking out a zoom mic to record my audio with, however I was not aware at how poor the audio quality might have been, so I did not think of this potentially problem.
Thursday 19th May
As I am reaching the end of my project deadline, I am still researching some small things to help improve my project in anyway I can. I briefly did some research regarding horror movie posters and the font they used. While researching the fonts, I was also looking at the posters themselves, to help design my own. Also, with my second rough version of my short film, I have created a quiz, and posted it to allow people the review the quiz and inform me with what they liked and what they thought could have been improved, which is something I will work on in the remaining time of the project. Now that I have completed shooting, I am limited to what features I can try and include, however, I will update and improve the techniques I have already included, L cuts and J cuts, and including two versions of myself in the same shot. I still need to research some scores to add to the final version, but after that, most of the work I have left is just touching up in certain areas, so I should be completed soon.
Evaluation
While my original plot for my project has changed a bit, the key themes and original idea has remained the same. The short film still has my character suffering with mental health issues caused by traumatic experiences. I also think I showed the mental issues well by having an alternate version of himself. I think having so much research done on characters in pop culture with split personalities, such as Gollum/Smeagol (Lord of the Rings) and Ed Nygma/The Riddler (Gotham). This research into these characters did help me with making it clear that the two characters were different characters despite looking the same. Looking at the split personalities displayed by Ed Nygma/Riddler also allowed me to try the technique of having both versions of myself in the same shot which is one of the stronger points of my project. Also, researching the film "Split" and the characters portrayed by James McAvoy allowed me to see how to portray characters differently well. The research on scores I would use, as well as researching the fonts for my title made it clear that parts were designed to be suspenseful, and have horror as a sub genre, with the title being fonts of common horror title fonts. All of this together furthered the genre I am trying to make it, with it being a psychological thriller with hints of horror, and the themes I am trying to show.
For the most part, the planning for the project helped quite a lot. The moodpboard helped me with pinning down things like colours, locations, and some camera shots. The script worked helped me with creating a plot I was satisfied and the shot list helped me when I was shooting, it allowed me to plan the order in which I shot, so it was time efficient, and the shot allowed me to see clearly if I had too much of one shot type (Long shot, close up ect) and it allowed me to visually plan to have a variety of camera shots. The storyboard also did help me with the rest of the planning and it allowed me to plan the shot types. However, I did the storyboard, and then changed the plot a little bit, so parts of the storyboard almost got scrapped and I didn't do another storyboard for updated story. This is something I will definitely have to focus on doing for future projects, so I understand what I can do better.
I think my project is impressive when it comes to techniques and the practical skills. I have used a wide range of skills, such as L cuts and J cuts, as well as jump-cuts, things we have been taught and become familiar with. However, I stretched my abilities and tried something that we had not been taught, with having two versions of myself in the same camera shot. This is something that we had not been taught before, so I had to do my own research, and there was a risk that if I did it wrong, it could look quite bad, and almost ruin my project. Possible challenges with trying this technique was not moving the camera at all during the filming of it, which I was able to do. Another issue with this was the things I couldn't control, such as the natural lighting levels. When it came to editing, and once I had layered the clips, you could see clearly where I had cut myself into the second shot, so this was something I had to fix, using the mask feather tool. Because I was able to work all this out, it actually looks like there are two of me in the same shot, and it doesn't look out of place. I also had some clips dissolve to black, and some audio clips change in volume and build back up again. Something else I experimented with was almost having a flashback, by looking at a picture. What I did was have the camera look at the picture, in the case of my project, someone near the coast, and as I want the memory to be a happy memory, I got audio of children laughing, and the sound of waves crashing. This almost makes a mini flashback, by having you hear the photo. I believe this worked well, especially with the sound of the coast and the laughter fading in and then fading out again instead of dramatically disappearing. I think it was a creative way of presenting a flashback, and giving some back story to these characters in a quick and simple way, which fits in well for a film that is around 5 minuets long. One more small feature I had, was the quick cut, near the end of the film. At this point, I have a knife to my dad's neck, and in this moment, my breathing is getting quicker, and the camera is quickly cutting between me and my dad, and the music is getting louder and faster, raising the tension, before cutting to a shot of outside my house. The music stops, and everything that was building the tension has stopped, however, the tension is still there, and the camera just lingers on the house for a moment, making the viewers wonder if I did kill my father or not.
Overall, I think my project works quite well. It keeps things tense, and the ending is not given away until the very end. I think the film also portrays the theme of abuse and mental health well, and it isn't completely spelled out for the viewers to it allows the audience to link the pieces together for themselves. The practical skills and techniques also keeps the film interesting and keeps the viewers attention to the film as the film goes on. I also believe the film fits in with my genre of a physiological thriller with hints of horror to it, and I believe it interests my target audience.
Some criticism I received for my project, I had a lot of similar issues. The audio was a common issue some people had with the film, having a hissing sound in the background. This wasn't something I was able to fix, due to this just being the quality of the camera mic I used. However I now know this for the future and can hopefully avoid similar issues in future projects. Another complaint someone had was a "minor" issue, and that was one of the times when I had two versions of myself in the same shot one of my versions were ever so slightly cut out. As I am now more familiar with this technique, I will hopefully be able to avoid any similar mistakes in the future.
Authentication
I confirm that the work on this website is entirely my own and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself, except where clearly stated otherwise, and that sources have been appropriately referenced.
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