PRODUCTION • Evaluation

When starting the second half of this unit, I was excited to see the planning and hard work we had put in as a group come to life and be able to see all our ideas turn into the final project. On the whole, I’m very happy with how the project turned out. There was lots of hard work put in by all members of the team and it paid off as I’m very happy with the project outcome. From our initial ideas to now, our story has developed a huge amount and even though the edit the story changed and for the better. Seeing the scenes we had written come to life on the screen has been a long journey but a very rewarding one. Despite some of the issues we had, we did work well as a team and I have learnt a lot about how important communication is between group members at all time. I have also majorly developed my skills through my roles as DOP and the editor. 

Being the DOP:

Throughout this project, I have really enjoyed being the director of photography and I feel as though I have learnt so much along the way. From the initial pre-production stage to the end of the project, this role has allowed me to really explore the role and take on different responsibilities that I might have not done before such as lighting and organising and communicating with our camera and sound assistants. 

WWW: 

• Communication with the technical crew helping such as camera assistants, sound operators and runners was key to the project flowing smoothly and for each aspect to be working and ready to go. The crew that we had were amazing and really easy to direct and ask for help. They were very self-driven and I think enjoyed working on the project with us. As soon as the day started they began setting up equipment which was so helpful as it meant that I could spend some time with the director discussing what we were doing for the day so we were both on the same page. 
• Taking direction from the director is an aspect that I thought I would struggle with, especially with a project of this size, however, I found that due to the fact that the director and I were friends, there was a lot more discussion about the way we were going to do things rather than just the director telling me what to do which is what I had expected. Between us, we had a good working relationship and were able to communicate professionally in front of actors and when behind the scenes, having discussions of what worked during the day and if there were things we could try differently on our next shoot day in order to make things work better. The producer was also involved in these discussions and together we came to decisions that everyone agreed on. 
• Being the DOP gave me the chance to take on a leadership role as I had people who reported directly to me if there was an issue or any questions. As I got more into my role, I found this easier to deal with as at first, it felt strange for people to be asking me for advice. Along the way, I realised that this is an important part of the role as it's up to me to convey the director's vision to the others working on the project as it’s important everyone knows what’s going on, where were are and what is happening next. 

EBI:

• In the future, I would like to feel more confident in my work and feel better about having people watch it. During the project, if someone were to watch something that I had made, for example, the title sequence or credits sequence, I would feel very uncomfortable about it and would think of all the worst scenarios for their feedback which caused me to end up disliking the things that I had made. I found it hard to be happy enough to leave these sequences alone and not constantly go back and change little bits because I thought they could be better. Now that this project is complete, I can see that all the constructive criticism that we received was not to put the project down but to make it better and all the suggestions that were made in feedback sessions and by other group members made the project what it is now which is something that we should all be very proud of. 

Organisation & Time Management:

WWW:

• The time management for shoot days went very well as each day we managed to finish on time or early. There were a few times where we went over the allocated filming time we had for a scene however this didn’t affect the rest of the day as all crew members worked quickly and efficiently to get the equipment reset for the next scene and put away at the end of the day. Each day I would take home the memory cards from the camera and sound equipment and take the footage and sound files off and organise them into folders on my hard drive. This made it much easier in the edit because the days were already organised into scenes with their matching sound files which made things much easier to match up and for me to start editing. 

EBI:

• I found that organising myself to write my blogs between being the DOP and then the editor quite hard as once one role had finished, the other began and I didn’t have much spare time in which to write them. This became challenging as it was getting to a point where I was very behind. Having Becca doing the sound edit was very helpful as this gave me the Easter break to catch up on all the previous blogs I had missed. Unlike some roles such as the producer role, who once the project had been filmed didn’t have much of a role during the post-production stage, I felt as though I was constantly busy, and had no free time to blog. If I were to complete this project again, I'm not sure how I would change this as I feel as though I spent the right amount of time on the edit and completing the other aspects of the project. 

Communication & Group work:

At the beginning of the project we regular had team meetings during the pre-production stage in order to establish what still needed to be done to prepare, this also gave group members a chance to update others about work they had completed and if there any messages or information that needed to be shared. 

These worked in terms of everyone being updated about what was happening and meant that if there were any issues that had come up, it was chance. If the rest of the crew hadn’t already been notified to tell everyone. These didn’t last very long and we ended up not doing after week 2 in the production stage, we planned a meeting if one was needed however we decided that our communication skills were good enough that we could remember to let everyone know about what was going on. Looking back on this now, I would have liked to have kept up having more regulars meetings as I felt as there were some things that weren’t shared with the group soon enough and it took a few weeks for us to update everyone of everything. 

Throughout the project, I would have liked to have been asked if filming dates/meeting dates were ok and I was available before the producer had told the cast that certain things were happening on certain days. This happening with our script read through where the producer had sent out all relevant documents to all cast members and their invitations to come in for a full group script read through. I didn’t have any issues with doing this and thought this was a very good idea as it gave the cast and crew a chance to meet and get to know each other before we begin filming. However the director and I were not notified of this meeting until the week before, by which point the cast had already confirmed their attendance, this was part of the reason I would have liked to have kept up with the weekly meetings as I think it should have been a group disunion as to what day this session would take place and made sure that it was available for everyone.

Call Sheets:

There were no call sheets for any of the crew members which meant that no one had any idea of their call time. It wasn’t until we asked for the crew to be sent ones did the producer do this. I felt as though it was important that everyone had one so that there were no options for people to say that they didn’t know when to turn up or turn up late/to a different location. This also gave crew members some idea of the scenes we would be filming on each day so they could prepare and read through the scenes in the scripts they were given. 

Schedules:

Due to the director wanting to use natural lighting there were certain scenes that had to be filmed in the morning and some in the afternoon due to the position of the sun. The director and I went through the scenes we were filming on each day and ordered them in a way that would work best for the lighting and for the layout of each day. When I send this to the producer and asked for her to make sure this was included in her schedules for each day, she was not happy with me taking on this and she felt it was her role to decide what happened when. The producer had already sent out a schedule to the cast when contained the scenes in a completely different order. After exampling why it was important for me and the director to decide when we do each scene, the producer then had to remake the schedules and send them off to the cast again. 

Props:

There were some props that we needed for our project that we actually had to make rather than buy. This was fine for most of them other than the newspaper which didn’t go to plan. For the newspaper, we split up the responsibility which starts with Laura writing the article for the paper which I would then design on Photoshop to look like an actual newspaper and upload to our shared google drive where we keep all of our documents for this project. This was completed a month and a half before shoot week which gives us lots of time to have it printed. One of our cast members had notified the producer that he was friends with someone who worked for a newspaper printing company and would be able to print if for us at a discount price. It was then decided that the producer would go ahead and organise this so that the newspaper would look real. On the morning of this shoot day where we needed this prop, in our group chat the producer asked if anyone had printed off the newspaper yet. I was confused by this as I had thought it had been decided that the producer would do this. Clearly, that was not the case which resulted in me having to print off the poster on plain A3 paper and sticking it to the front of a real newspaper. This did not look realistic at all but was the only thing that I could have done on the morning go the shoot. If were were to do this again, I would have liked to have the newspaper printed properly as I think it would have looked more legitimate and added to the production value of the project. This is another reason why I believe that the group meetings would have been helpful as we would have known that the poster had not yet been printed sooner and we could have rectified this situation better. 

Overall, thought the project I felt as though there were some points where there was a huge lack of communication between the team which meant some aspects of our project were not as good as they could have been. I think that there were some really important pieces of information that should have been past on sooner, however, once we reached the post-production stage of the product, less communication was necessary and it became much better at this point. As the director and I worked together on the edit almost every day we were in constant communication and the producer had told us that she would come in once a week to view the project.

Feedback Sessions:

I felt that all our feedback sessions were really helpful and really helped the project to develop and improve. Being the editor, it was nice to have someone else’s opinion on the video who had not seen it every day as there were some editing mistakes that I had missed or suggestions that were given for scenes to help make them flow better and make ideas work/transition better. 

Tutorials with Simon: these tutorials were helpful and because they were constant it helped me and my workflow as it allowed me to set myself tasks of certain things to have done by the next tutorial. Having someone else look watch through the rough cuts was useful as it gave us the opportunity to ask questions about things that maybe weren’t working or that we weren’t sure of. They also gave us a chance to discuss scenes that weren’t working and how we could try and fix them, which lead to helpful suggestions and discussing a reshoot which definitely improved the production. 

As a group we also decided the that Laura would come in once a week, specifically to watch the project. This was so she could watch it with a fresh pair of eyes and she might have noticed things that I hadn’t whilst editing. These were also helpful as when you’re editing the same thing every day it’s easy to miss small things like empty frames and missing colour grades on shots.

Editing:

WWW: Overall my workflow worked well for me and the way I had sectioned the footage off into scenes made things much easier to put together than if they were all in one folder. I also think the way in which we switched between visuals and sound worked well for us. Once all the visuals had been editing, minus the few shots missing from our reshoot, the project was then handed over to Becca for her to edit the sound. This was done over the Easter break which allowed me some time to catch up on blog work and edit the title sequence/credits. After this one done, the project was then returned to me for me to complete the colour grade. This then gave us a project that was almost finished, quite early on and gave us a chance to book reshoots for scenes that weren’t quite working and allowed us to really see how everything had come together. 

EBI: One thing that I found challenging was having the director watch me edit the project. I find I am much more productive if I am left to complete a task rather than have constant input and disruptions which slowed down the process and made things take twice as long. There were points where lots of suggests were being thrown out and I was asked to try multiple different things when I had finished the first suggestion which became quite stressful at times. I did mention to the group that I found I worked much better alone and then for group members to watch it and then give comments and suggestions rather than whilst I’m trying to edit however nothing was done about this and it carried on the way we were. If I was to edit this project again, I would definitely edit in solidarity as I really find this to be much more productive for me rather than have people sit beside me and constant watch me edit every day. This also limited my creative freedom as the director would be asking for things to change before I even had a chance to try something that I would have liked to try and see if worked.