EVALUATION BY CHILAPI

EVALUATION Throughout the whole experience of managing and organising a film production I learnt that keeping up to date with time and maintaining a good relationship within trust with all crew member is the key to achieving our goals set for the production. Without being organised, consistent and reliable things could go wrong in many different stages; from pre-production, production and these things may affect your post production leaving you with bad results. We had many strengths and weaknesses between me and Hannah and this was due to many different issues. For example, when it came to the day of shooting we experienced some technical difficulties with the camera which then lead on to us shooting on a different day leaving us way behind our schedule. However, this was then solved as we just got another camera from our college and then checked to make sure it worked before taking it to our shooting location. From this we learnt to check ALL equipment before taking them to film, preventing time being wasted. Another weakness would be the lack of communication between me and Hannah, this affected us as we ended up being two days behind schedule and this was due to the fact that I ended up in a meeting at the time were meant to shoot and I didn’t contact Hannah to confirm rescheduling the time of shooting. To prevent this from happening I could have easily just contacted her explain the situation instead of wasting hers and the whole production crews time that were at the shooting location already. 1. I strongly believe that our shooting schedule was very detailed, I say this because we had many shots to cover and the shooting schedule made things much easier for the group to follow. Because we had many shots in our film the shooting schedule had to be very specific in terms of who was being shot, what angle the shot should be taken in and what order to shoot them in. I was in charge of creating the shooting schedule and I do believe I did my best to make it as clear as possible for the whole crew including the cameraman to understand what happens in each shoot. The shooting schedule helps the whole crew know where and when they would be shooting, I made sure it was very specific with the locations in order to keep our crew organised. I do believe it was effective as we had enough shots (40 plus), it was realistic and simplified for everyone in our crew to understand what was going on. The shooting schedule, however, I strongly believe that if I created the shooting schedule, the whole production process would have been much more successful. Due to this being said, next time I have to produce a film and have to create the shooting schedule I or anyone else taking on this role would have to make sure that they up to date with making the shooting schedule on time as this prevents the crew from wasting time; it would also make the shooting process more realistic. Because the shooting schedule was well detailed we ended up having a positive outcome as the cameraman knew exactly what to shoot with what angle and this prevented confusion for the whole production crew. 2. I was in charge of developing our storyboard for our film. This meant that I was in control of the graphic organisation, I basically I had to illustrate our storyline using images that would translate to the cameraman and the rest of the production crew what was going to happen in each scene, I illustrated what shot would have been taken and I made clear what angle was meant to be used with the images used. I generally believe that I created a detailed storyboard as it contain 40+ shots which was efficient for our five minute film, I knew that if I made minimum shot on our storyboard it would’ve been a disadvantage to our group as no one (especially the cameraman) would’ve known what to shoot or what angle they should take in consideration. However, I do believe that I made the storyboard quite late and this was a disadvantage to our group as we wasn’t too sure on when to start the production stage of our film so next time I would have to take that into consideration and be more organised with it by creating the storyboard much more sooner to create more editing time or to even figure out if we needed any pick up shots much more sooner that to do it in a rush. 3. In our group I was in control of creating the shooting list, the shooting list is a list that contains all the shots needed in our film in the order that they would’ve been shot in. I purposely chose to order them out in terms of location, this decision was made to prevent our crew from wasting time by travelling to each location so the way I did it ensured that all the scenes that needed to be shot at Slade Green station were done all at once and the shots that were done in my house were done all on the same day at once. However, my team didn’t follow the shooting list when filming I strongly feel that if we did follow it we would have been much more organised and we would have used our time much more efficiently and we wouldn’t have ended up with pointless random shots that were taken and not used during post production. 4. Hannah was in control of creating the recce for the locations used, this was to prevent us from barriers like not being able to film in certain location for legal reasons, the weather not being up to our preferred standards (.e.g. rain) which could lead us on to not having enough shelter for our shooting equipment or affect our lighting or checking if the noise level was decent enough to shoot in. I personally believe she did this to her best ability because she went to all the locations, took pictures there and fully detailed out all possible hazards that would occur during the shooting process. This lead us on to having a positive outcome as there were all aware of all possible hazards that would occur and this resulted to us having no issues with shooting. However, she didn’t get permission from the southern eastern line service to shoot in Slade Green station, in result to this we got kicked out of it during shooting and missed out on shooting certain shots for the beginning of our film. In order to prevent this from occurring again she would have to consider getting permission from anyone responsible for each location so that this issue doesn’t happen again and we don’t miss out on shots that would need to be taken for out short film. 5. Unfortunately our actors were not well rehearsed or well organised. Our original actors that were set out to be are only characters were Esther and Lalluh. However Esther ended up being too busy to take part and this was tragic for out whole production as we couldn’t find a replacement actress, which led on to us wasting more time on finding one. In order to prevent this from happening again we would need to ensure that we have back up actors for each role and this would have made things run smoothly. In the end I ended up taking the character role of Alex, this was an advantage for us as I was very familiar with every scene and I have had experience of acting in the past so this role was quite easy for me. However, it was a little time consuming as I was the director and an actor which made it harder for me to take on my role as director as I was too focused on my acting skills. To prevent this from happen we would have to have back up actors and made sure they had enough time to rehearse each scene so they were confident with hat they were meant to do. 6. Everyone in our crew knew their roles, however I strongly believe that we could’ve taken more responsibly for them. For example, Hannah was the cameraman, she was responsible to taking the shots, turning up with all camera equipment and making sure they all worked; half of her role was done successfully as she took many great shots but at one point she made the mistake of turning up with a camera that was faulty, this again wasted time for our crew as we had to postpone dates of shooting until Hannah had a camera that was working and everyone in the production team was available to shoot. This could have been prevented if she made sure that all the equipment that she collected for our production was working before she took them and brought them with her to the production location. With that being said I do believe she did a great job of making all the right shots with all the right angle being used. The outcome of this was positive as we all had good shots for our post production to juxtapose how each character was feeling. I was the producer of the film so I had to make sure that everything was organised within the whole production. I believe that I could have done better with this role as there were many issues like working towards deadlines and making sure that everyone was working positively. On the other hand I made sure that everyone knew where to go for each location and made sure everyone was properly fed before shooting, and everyone was taking on their roles and the actor were wearing the right costumes. The call sheets were produced by me and I believe that they worked very effectively as it had everyone’s contact details on it so communication was not a problem and everyone turned up to all location without any difficulties. Next time I could improve on making it on time to all events, for example – I had a meeting on one of the days that we were meant to shoot and all the production crew members were all at the film location – due to this we had to postpone one of our shooting days to another, wasting our production time and limiting our post production time. To prevent this from happening next time I would need to ensure that I take my good communication skill to my most advantage so that our outcome of the film could be much better and so there’s no arguments within out crew. I sorted out this issue with planning another day to shoot, and treating our crew members for a nice meal out for pizza before shooting as an apology and to erase any tension. The outcome of this meant that all member got along more and we had positive vibes throughout the whole shooting process. 7. The call sheets were produced by me, I strongly do believe that it was made efficiently as everyone knew everyone’s contact details, people were confident with directions to all locations. Without this being done there would have been a lot of complications with how to get to the destinations; I tried to make sure that all equipment were working properly, the weather was good enough to shoot in, I made sure that all props were purchased and ready for us to use within all shots needed. In conclusion, our management of the production process was decent enough to produce a five minute film but we would have improve on our communication skills and improve on how organised we are as a team. With all of this taken into consideration we could have had an outcome of having more than enough editing time and nothing would have been rushed. Next time we would have to just ensure that we have back up actors so the case of one of our actors being too busy to shoot doesn't happen again; check on our equipment before taking it for shooting and just maintaining our time; always working before the deadline reaches and also maintaining positive vibes in the whole crew as we've learnt that this is key as everything would be done with a happy spirit and there wouldn't be as much stress.