Daniel parslow media evaluation

evaluation

Daniel parslow media 2 evaluation

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final piece - Marked

final day shooting and editing

what we did in the ILP day

The ILP day was very important and gave us the opportunity to be as a group for a long time, it also gave us the chance to get constructive feedback from both teachers so we could take there advise and improve our filming. For the ilp we had previously gone out and filmed a large amount of a footage so that we could edit the clips and add some titles which would give us a clear indication on how our final piece will look like, the majority of the day was just editing, and brainstorming but it was an important process. now we have our improvements we can go away and develop our opening.
points we were given
- establish the location, so add an establishing shot of the house.
- have titles over back of the company such as Daniels presents a media production.
- add a shot where Leah stumbles in to add continuity
- change one shot so it is lighter
- create a point of view shot to add

all these adjustments are fairly simple and achievable to do.

change in idea and outline of new idea

Our idea has changed and developed through the past weeks, to finally having a fairly drastic change, one thing that has stayed constant is the original storyline, our original idea was to complex and was something that was to ambitious in that we were looking for a style that is seen in the “Sin City” where professional cameras would of been used to film and post production cgi added which was not an option to us, so we looked into making our idea simple but still keeping the codes and conventions of the thriller genre. M.Night.Shyamalan a influential director in film let alone in the thriller genre, he said “my special effects is his camera and his sound” which shows how a thriller opening will be simple and engaging, this is shown in the opening of “Seven” by M.Night.Shyamalan where we as the audience see a Morgan Freeman laying in bed while a series of jump cuts between him and a clock are used, this is a prime example of how the first two minutes should be very basic.

So by looking at by M.Night.Shyamalan and his views on film we developed our idea to a simple opening keeping the focus on one or two character and having , at the most , two locations. From attempting to film particular scenes from our original idea we realised the limitations of our recourses especially our actors and actresses, therefore instead of looking to film adults we adjusted the script so that we would film teenagers, otherwise we would be using poor adult actors or teenagers playing which is always going to look fake and will take away a large part of the verilisimilitude which is a key convention to any film. Finally we come down to the outline of our improved opening, it will show our main character played by Leah Eggleton coming home from a party that has gone very wrong, the audience is kept from the events of the party adding the mystery of the scene, as she stubbles in we cut to her doing mundane activities that do not link such as washing a single cup to sitting in a completely different room, showing her persona as distressed confused anxious and lost, while she mumbles and re lives the previous night, these mumbles and fragments of sentences will make up the voice over narration that will be used while the duel narrative is established where we see a Varity of shots showing the police finding evidence from the significant party. This opening is simple and has a more iconic opening it establishes location and character while also keeping the audience under control and only letting out parts of the narrative so that it gives the impression that our extract dose go on to unfold and become a full produced film. the last line of the dialog is “when will I see her again” which acts as a sound bridge to a shot of the police finding the last piece of evidence , a piece of clothing form the missing friend, this last shot will give the viewer the impression of the continuation of the film leaving the audience wondering and questioning what has happened therefore not having an end to our two minute extract .

second day filming

our second day filming was on the 21st of January, this was a much more successful shoot than the first shoot and we got some really good footage. This shoot was of the police searching scene to do this we used some iconic props such as a florescent jacket and police torches, as well as a police dog, this added to the verisimilitude of the scene and created a better overall shot. we filmed in Denham in a local field with our actor George Grant who again gave a good performance even though he had little acting to do.
when framing the shot we had the camera at a slightly slanted position which seemed to resemble the jostle and abduction of the son in the previous scene, this was then positioned so that the trainers were in the foreground and the police were walking from the background into the foreground to meet the camera. Overall the shoot went really well everyone was on time and the lighting was perfect which produced a better quality of footage compared to the previous shoot.

first day filming

problems when filming

our first day filming was on the 16th and 17th of January in Iver, the plan was to film the letter box scene and abduction scene however we had many problems but it was important to go through this process so we can then improve for our next shoot and plan ahead.
some of the problems we come up against was time, for shooting and getting the group in one place at one time, to overcome this we have set designated days and times and plan ahead with plenty of notice so we can all be there and all participate, one personal problem was balancing work and school work i had to cut down my hours of working from Thursdays,Fridays Saturdays and Sundays to just Saturdays and Sundays this will free up more time and enable us to produce better work, another problem we found was lighting, in our animatic and our brainstorms we always wanted a dark sinister shot however when filming at night with a low budget and reling on street light the shot becomes distorted and too dark to improve on this we started to shoot earlier around 3-4 o'clock , in this time frame it gives us time to set up and film but more importantly it is the optimum light intensity, another advantage of this type of shot is that being slightly brighter it brings out more detail and the possibility of editing the clip in after effects to bring the footage to a more styled and consistent darkness something that looks slightly artificial but is a unique and good way to edit the clip an example of post production editing on light is "Sin City" which creates a quality aspect to film.
good times
good points from our first day filming was the knowledge we gained that has improved our filming and preparation. another factor we gained from our first day is that we have found and tested one of our actors , the son of the family, a.k.a Adam Parslow, who did really well and gave a convincing performance and did not over act.
overall the shoot was a massive learning curve and highlighted problems we needed to improve , we need to go out and film the scenes again but this time we will have more of a plan and batter preparation.