Evaluation – Module

This whole year, in general, has been a massive learning experience. We have worked on 4 unique projects so it’s given us access to explore all different types of projects.

Sound Piece: The sound piece was the first project we worked in on this module. We had to makesome sort of story by just using sound. We sound recorded at two locations, Heeley farm and Corporation (a nightclub), so using two different locations we were able to get quiet farm noises and loud club noises. We were able to edit them together to get an experimental sound piece which brings a farm and nightclub together in one audio piece. Although the project was experimental, I feel the sound piece highlighted how important sound is to a visual project. And that we should take just as much consideration to quality of sound as well as visuals.

Experimental: The experimental film was adapting what we’d already filmed on the sound piece, and making an experimental film out of it. Like the sound piece, I think the experimental gave us a chance to do something a lot different to your typical short film. It gave us a chance to explore other means of film and that we don’t always as film makers have to follow the same genre conventions. I also feel the experimental gave us a good safety net, as it gave us an opportunity to try something new with cinematography.

Documentary: The documentary was the first project of the new semester. While the sound piece and experimental were mostly to do with exploring new means of film, now we had a chance to take what we had learnt last semester and apply it to an actual documentary. For this documentary, our main task was getting an interviewer. I feel what we had learnt from the sound piece, gave us the skills to adapt this to a more, important interview. I feel the sound piece especially allowed us to make sure our audio was as good as it could be for the documentary. Not only that, I feel one thing we picked up on during the documentary was the effect of editing and what it could have on the viewer. Documentaries are challenging, as they have to be interesting to the viewer, so the edit had to be as interesting as possible.

Drama: The drama piece was probably our most challenging task yet. As now we had to take what we had learnt from the 3 previous projects and apply it to a thrilling and suspenseful drama. Although as I’ve mentioned the drama wasn’t as high standard as we’d originally hoped, I still feel we did learn and take value from previous projects and applied it to the drama. For example, the cinematography was great I thought in the drama, and I feel this is partly down to the fact we were able to experiment with cinematography in the experimental.

In conclusion, the whole module this year has been one massive learning experience. We explored many different types of film making and it has set us up very well for second year.

Evaluation - Drama Piece

Overall I feel I have learnt a lot about filmmaking during the production of this drama piece, and its been an experience as a group to work together.

My role in the group was sound recording, however, I think one of the main reasons we worked well as a group was because we came to a compromise and helped each other out in our own job roles. For example, in post-production, I worked a bit on sound design. In the sound design role I helped review all the sound from the shooting days and add it to the timeline, replacing the camera’s recorded sound. That’s why I feel we worked well as a team. Solo did directing as well as acting, Ross helped with the editing as well as cinematography. And Ami-Lee and Rebecca also helped with sound recording as well as editing. I feel we learnt how to work well as a team during this project.

I feel the finished piece personally, was average. Although we worked well as a team, I don’t feel we were personally up to a high enough standard, as some of the editing is rushed. This is down to a few factors, as I feel we did leave too much work to the last minute. Our last filming day was 3 days before the deadline and we hadn’t even had edited a rough cut at this point. For future reference I think it’s important to make sure we start post-production as early as possible instead of leaving it until we have got all the footage.

In all fairness, we did have our constraints during production. One factor that did cause a massive hindrance was the fact we could not get access to one of our locations on shooting day. We planned to film at Hallam Hotel to get the scene of the main character talking to himself in a derelict location. However, this was off limits as police were on sight and didn’t want anyone on sight which ruled us out from filming there. Because we were set back an entire shooting day, it would justify why we were still filming 3 days before the deadline. I feel what I have learnt from this experience is next time we need to have a backup location just in case we can’t get access to the main location, especially if it is not totally 100% legal to film there.

Another factor is my time-management. During the production of this drama piece I was involved in another project. However, filming days overlapped each other and while there was pressure on me to complete my job role in the other project, it put unnecessary pressure on the drama too. What I can take from this, is that in future I need to learn to get better at time management, so I can successfully work on two projects at the same time.

Overall this drama piece was a massive learning curve for me as a film maker. We can agree as a team we didn’t produce the best film we possibly could, but we learnt a lot about the filmmaking process in general.

Week 37

Recovery: https://vimeo.com/212924644

Week 36

We screened a draft copy of the edit to a focus group and got some feedback about how to go about making changes to the edit.

So far we have achieved a draft edit for the production, we have a basic visual timeline and a basic idea of how the audio plays out as well. However, we still need to add better audio to the edit, instead of using the generic camera recorded sound we currently have on the timeline. We also might need to refilm a few scenes to establish a stronger narrative. But using this feedback, we should be able to now go on and produce a high quality production.

Week 35

Green Screen Footage: We wanted to use some green screen in our film, so to get a feel for green screen filming as a whole, we booked out the studio for a day to test it.



On set filming





















We unfortunately did encounter a few problems especially with the location filming. We wanted to film in Hallam Towers, but unfortunately due to an accident on sight, police were at the scene making it off limits to the public.


This meant we had to look elsewhere for filming, so in future it is always good to have a backup location plan.

Week 34

Our film is going to be called 'Recovery' and is going to be related to mental health. The story will revolve around a schizophrenic person, and his therapist (who we soon learn are actual the same person). The narrative will be based around him at his meetings, with flashbacks relating to his everyday life. The two main locations we will need for this include the main characters room, and a quiet small room that could be set up to look like a therapists office. Their will be an additional filming location, a derelict area to show the main characters insanity that none of the therapy is real.

Editing effects that will be included in this film include hallucination effects in order to give a sense of unreliability in order to put the viewer in the mind of the protagonist. We would also like to use this opportunity to use green screens to also emphasise unreality.

In terms of audio editing, the therapist will be asking questions off camera, while the protagonist on camera answers them. I feel this is good in order to foreshadow the fact that the therapist does not exist. 

Week 33

Short Drama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV1_TXm0XHs

To begin our planning for a drama, it was important for us to analyse another drama that covers a similar theme.

'About a Girl' is in a way documentary styled. The story follows a girl talking about her goal to be a successful and famous singer, as well as her life situations. The editing is a tracking shot of the unnamed girl while the editing cuts away to show these life events take place as she describes them. Our drama will be very similar as ours is also character driven, so watching this drama has given us a guideline of how we could go about producing our own solo character driven film.

Overall I think this style of film works well as it is a different approach to your typical narrative. Instead it focuses on a characters perspective of the film. It is a good style of film if you want to focus more on the character which is what we would like to do for our own drama, as our own drama will be focusing on how a mentally ill person sees the story.

Week 32

Final Film: https://vimeo.com/206204360

Presentation: https://www.slideshare.net/RossWalker098/sheffield-steel-presentation

Week 30

Log Sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzRW0UCQdJpoYjFSZGdqTlJuWGc/view
Consent Form: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzRW0UCQdJpoTkNjV2w1Z0NLckk/view
Location Agreement: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzRW0UCQdJpoYW94SHRUeUdhS2M/view

Behind the Scenes:

Week 29

Sync Sound

Sync sound is when the audio for a film are recorded at the same time as the visuals. For example, if the cinematographer was getting a shot of a character in conversation, sync sound would be the sound production team using a boom pole to capture the audio of that scene as well. This would then result in the editor in post syncing them up in post-production. However, while it is common for camera's to capture audio as well, it is not usually recorded to a high standard, and is mostly recorded as a back up and to make it easier for the editor.

There are plenty of types of different microphones, such as Omnidirectional which record all sound equally in a 360 degree radius. Their is also cardoid microphones that focus on most sound from in front, and then theirs the directional, which is very sensitive to one direction only.

In terms of implementing the use of sync sound into the documentary, we will be getting an interview with someone from the industry. This means we will need to get sync sound as because it's not scripted and is actuality, it means we need to record audio at the same time as visuals.

Week 28

Pitch: https://www.slideshare.net/RossWalker098/sheffield-stories

Week 27

Documentary Analysis - The Archive
https://vimeo.com/1546186

To understand how to go about making a short documentary, we needed to analyse other documentaries first. 'The Archive', directed by Steve Dunne is about Paul Mawhinney who is thought to own the biggest music album collection in the world worth up to $50 million.

The documentaries main theme is based around the concept of time. IE it focuses more on the past and plays on the idea of nostalgia as well as modern times. Location is also fairly simple, it is all filmed in the warehouse in which Paul keeps his collection and the shots and tone that are used are aimed to emphasise Pauls emotional attachment to the collection. Because it is filmed in one location, a lot of the film explores Paul as a person, such as his childhood and what started his passion for music.

Unfortunately we learn in the documentary that Paul is being forced to sell his collection and the massive loss is portrayed in the editing. Lack of music in the documentary could be argued to represent that Paul's passion for music is sadly disappearing.

Overall I thought it was a good documentary that successfully did its job.