DIRECTIONS: Critical Evaluation

As I have said in previous blog posts I wasn't really into this idea from the start as I think it could have been better but at the time I couldn't find another scene appropriate which fitted the requirements. However, as I was getting further into the project, did my research and had it all planned out in my head I was a lot happier with the idea and my motivation came back to produce a good short film. I really wanted to do this project well as I don't think I did as well as I could have done in the last project, because of this it would been nice to have improved from the first project.

I think my method of making time pass went well with my skills and facilities I have at home, however, I do still think it could have been better. Using the snow machine was a massive help because it was good to show it actually snowing instead of attempting to imply it was snowing. I was also able to pull off the colour correcting and give the tone of the film a 'warm' look which I think finished it off well. I felt like I made this project quite relaxed for myself by having all my research done and the scenes thought out before shooting. This definitely did help but it didn't stop the inevitable happening and one of my actresses not being able to make the shoot on the last possible day.

I was happy with the editing once it was all put together but there are a couple of things I will improve on in the future. In the scene outside the cinema I did a take of them talking through the whole scene and then again with a close up of Bella and then with a close up of Jessica. However, there was more background noise of a car engine throughout Bella's lines but then when edited together, Jessica's lines had hardly any background noise at all. This was frustrating because it was quite a big jump in the background sound when we cut to the other person and it was really noticeable. To solve this I downloaded a sound effect of a quite street at night with light traffic and it worked really well to level out the background noise and luckily it all sounded roughly the same all the way through, it was definitely better than without that added background noise. I did the same for the background of the talking between Bella and Charlie just to keep a general tone the whole way through so the action seemed smoother.

The biggest flaw in my film is that you can see me with the camera in the side of the car. As it was sunny on the day of filming I didn't see this initially and only noticed it when I was editing. This is very annoying as it is such an easy problem to fix but I noticed it to late in to change it. The people who have seen my film haven't noticed it unless I told them but Simon spotted it straight away. He said it was funny and wasn't a big problem for this project, thankfully but I'm still unhappy with the fact I can be seen in the reflection. 

I definitely think I have learnt so much more in this project especially with sounds and audio. I have also learnt about the work a director has to go through and the decisions they need to make. From this project I cannot say I am jumping towards the path of being a director but it was very insightful incase I did want to direct in the future. I have done better already than the first project which is really important and hopefully I can keep up this improvement into our third project and into the next couple of years.