Evaluation

After spending 4 weeks on production after thoroughly planning the film through and creating a vision in my head I finally have my film. All in all I am happy with the result and I defiantly believe that I demonstrated a wide range of practical understanding and theoretical knowledge of story telling.

One thing this film defiantly lacks is: Consistency

The film has scenes that ended up being very good, with good acting, good lighting, editing, use of sfx and vfx.

However, there are a couple scenes, especially the first scene where I knock myself on the head and tell myself I definatly couldve done a much better job capturing the footage, sound and refining it in post.

I will now go over individual aspects of the project and discuss how I went about with them.

Research:

I spent a good time researching and finding pieces of media that inspired me to do this film. I made a survey and sent it out to colleagues, family and friends but didn't receive a lot of feedback which did limit the legitimacy of the final poll I had, as only a very small amount of people actually took their time to complete my survey.

I therefore thought that interviewing people will be my best bet as I receive more personal and detailed feedback from each person I sit down with. I carried out 2 interviews. Both of which had conflicting ideas and opinions which made me cherry pick each persons ideas that I thought would be best to include in my film.

The information I gained through research had a definite impact on how the film was made and helped me. Although I do think that I could've carried out more primary research and made sure that my survey would reach more people so next time I will use social media to draw in a larger poll.

Planning:

My planning was defiantly better for this project than in the past and it helped me on set for a smoother and more time effective shoot.

Due to certain factors interfering though, I had to re-schedule and come up with new ideas that weren't according to my planning in pre-production but I managed well other than the fact that I removed one scene and a half simply due to not being able to gather both actors on the same day and time which was outside of my control.

I could've avoided this by using someone with more time as an actor and this bad decision did come back and bite me later on during production when I needed to reshoot a scene and was unable to do so. This only happened because I was not satisfied enough with the scene that was eventually cut out.

I still have loads of room for improvement and will do so by following my project action timetable more strictly and setting myself strict deadlines that I have to meet.

Directing:

Directing has always been a bit of a weakness of mine because I'm a person who doesn't like exercising authority over others. For example: If I have to ask the actor to redo a shot I will find it difficult to ask the actor to do it after the 5th take just because I'm more concerned about the morale of the actor deteriorating. I could attribute this to the fact that my actors were just friends of mine and never really had interest in acting and didn't have the mental stamina required to partake in a project. If I were to have hired proper actors, I don't think this would've occurred since proper actors know that retaking scenes is part of the job.

Managing my actors over all was a task in itself because one of them would just not be bothered to move to the next location and I would really have to force him to come along.

Other than that I think my directing skills have shined in this film with several scenes being very well coordinated. I am especially chuffed with the transition I made from the Chinatown scene to the forest scene.

I will most certainly hire proper actors that will fully dedicate their time and effort form my next project. Having to look after your actors and motivate them to keep going was to much weight on my shoulders and certainly something I could not afford.

Camera work:

The camera work was good, especially during the china town and carpark scene. I utilized the correct ISO, Shutter speed and aperture settings according to the lighting conditions at the time. I made sure that the light was coming from the correct direction and that I had the camera mounted on a stabilizer, be it the tripod or fig rig. I did mostly use tracking shots throughout the film because that's been my preferred way of directing for about a year and I will use static shots for effect to support the narrative when needed.

I honestly will have to admit that the camera work during the intro sequence was very poor but that was down to the fact that I had little time and that the lighting was very poor at the shoot, resulting in grainy footage that I was unable to correct in post unless I wash out the footage which made it blurry.

Next time I will have to use artificial lighting sources because relying on the environment to provide it is very risky because like I mentioned, there was no light available at all and this could've been avoided had I brought lighting equipment.

Sound:

I was unable to get someone to help me with sound equipment, making me decide that I should use 100% foley sound which was a critical error because I simply lacked the experience in getting the foley sound and building up a realistic soundscape. My friend Jonah whom I interviewed suggested that I should distort all the sound and make it sound like everything is underwater. I adapted the idea and was able to make up for most of the bad sound.

This idea did end up saving me because not only did it mask the poor recordings, it actually really suits the narrative and I was given positive feedback in regards to the sound.

I used several sound effects that I downloaded copyright free from youtube that helped with the story telling.

I also used copyright free soundtracks throughout the film.

Next time I will defiantly make sure that I work in a team so I can have someone thats responsible for the sound because its impossible to manage sound and image on your own.

Editing:

Editing is where my strength and most experience lays and I did a good job with this film. I was able to make a lot of shots look really good by using colour correction and other tools.

Special effects are emphasized throughout the project and comply well with the story. At first I was worried that the audience might perceive the excessive use of effects as being a showreel/benchmark where I would just spam effects because they look good but to my relief I received very positive feedback regarding the effects. All of the feedback I received stated that the dream part of the film felt like it was in a dream.

Presentation:

I uploaded the shortfilm on my Youtube account which has 1.500 subscribers and has the potential to reach a fairly big audience as my subscribers are mostly young people that are into filmmaking and they are more likely to share my film on social media.

Youtube is a great platform that also gives you tools to further promote your film on the site such as tags.

Tags allow the content creator to reach a larger audience by setting tags that someone looking for the type of content might use as a search term when browsing the website. It's important to use as many tags as possible in order to increase the likelihood of someone discovering your content.

There are also several websites that are specifically made for students to submit their short film in order to reach a wider and more interested audience such as

https://www.studentfilms.com/showcase/

Filmmakers on this website can also review each others content creating a great space for amateur filmmakers such as myself to display my work and receive constructive and objective feedback from fellow media students across the world.

This website here offers a link to a wide range of film festivals that are student friendly and welcome short films.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/bfi-film-academy-scheme/film-festivals-young-filmmakers

I may potentially enter one of these competitions as they offer a huge opportunity for me to get myself out there and showcase my level of skill and potential.

The London short film festival is one of the highest profile showcasing events for short films in the UK. The festival is also BAFTA affiliated meaning that rewards can be handed out. This is an opportunity I would like to take and I can easily submit my short film online without any adjustments needed.

I also presented my film to my peers at South Thames College using the large monitor in the TV studio. I received a lot of helpful feedback from my colleagues.

Summary:

My best way to measure any improvements and progress would be comparing this final major project to the one of last year.

This year's outcome was by milestones better than what I accomplished last year in every aspect.

I used sound effects and music in a more coherent and appropriate manner. I carefully considered my locations that ultimately paid off massively because the scenes look much more compelling as a result. I barely used any colour correction last year whereas I did this year which also made a huge difference visually and in terms of story telling. I came a lot of steps closer to mastering the DSLR.

I have identified my strongpoints and shortcomings this year and will keep making small scale projects in my own time to gain more experience and improve.

Overall I'm happy with the progress I made within a year and I'm looking forward to further improving and honing my skills as a filmmaker.

Feedback

Feedback from class:

https://studentsouththamesac-my.sharepoint.com/personal/1369639_student_south-thames_ac_uk/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?docid=1fc55a43608f647c6bfed57e5cd013541&authkey=ATiqqM5Z9JV0SEDJ7cwsDnc

Feedback from my uncle John who is a hobby film critic that writes reviews online:

''Having been asked to give some feed back on Noah's film Inter Realm, I had no idea what to expect when I started watching it. At first I wasn't sure where the film was going to go or what type of film it would be. And then the dream sequence section of the film began, which I really enjoyed, and think is very well shot, edited and used effects to create a dream-like quality and a sense of disorientation. Throughout this section of the film I think the sound effects and music were excellent.

What particularly impressed me about Noah's film is how he managed to make the film interesting and compelling without any dialogue. To achieve this it showed a lot of editing and creative skill.''