Production Review
This review covers most of my efforts within the FilmFlock project. It also documents the production process and what was involved. This is a summary of events and should document enough to give you an idea of the how and why this short film was done.
Conception:
The idea was originally brought around from the theme we were given as a group; “Us vs them”. The first ideas that were toyed around with were largely political depicting some form of a resistance group and their struggle against a repressive government. As further research came about, it was realised that this idea was overused and would be very difficult to realise creatively. We expanded on this idea and moved to a more current problem which had potential but also difficulties in quality: Drugs. It could be seen from multiple perspectives (which was a major criteria for our end product) and also presented a challenge in making something that didn’t look like a student production and had more of a professional feel. In addition, given a appropriate storyline it would not require the same kind of locations that a resistance concept might and could be kept to within a single house. We further researched this and found it to be a feasible idea. With the concept created we then moved on to pre-production.
Pre-production:
Using the concept as a base we began to create a simple script. Sticking to the idea of multiple endings or pathways we designed the base of the script first where it would reach a point which could show in an obvious way that there were multiple pathways that the story could go down. We then worked on creating three different pathways the film could develop, all of which were significantly different. We also tried to input into the script the idea of morality, that it wasn’t just an action that changed the way the story was going it was the reasoning behind that choice. Actions such as a character stepping up for themselves, an unexpected and unfortunate ending and finally the arrival of a reluctant protagonist all helped to keep the film varied. This worked well with the “delivery system” we were using as it could work well in inciting people to talk and discuss the film as it was being shown. I tried to put large amounts of camera direction and scene detail so as to try and bypass the storyboard phase of pre production. This was done for two reasons: My inability to draw (or the time to take photo’s instead) and the fact that as I was in charge of script writing, camera work and editing there was less need for the storyboards to be done. I did however, create a shot list for production so as to keep that process as streamlined as possible. I next had to acquire actors to shoot with, unfortunately given the time restraints of this project I found people willing to play the parts I need. To prevent a poor production quality however I rewrote certain lines and parts of the script to better fit the actors playing them and thus allowing us to reduce the number of problems when it came to production. After this was location finding. I looked at a 3 separate houses to which I could use for this film and in the end I went with the closest one which also happened to have a big enough room to shoot in. It should be noted at this point that in the script it talks as though the film is set in the garden of a suburban house but certain scenes and actions could have caused problems with the council or even police and so I moved the setting to inside which did make lighting a much easier task to deal with as well as solving power issues, weather problems and sound equipment. Prop acquisition was the final thing I had to accomplish in pre-production. I started with the forensic scenes and began looking at what real scientists used. Ironically, they use much less that what is portrayed in thrillers and TV so to keep for the realism for the viewer I went for a more classic approach. I managed to obtain most of the props from B&Q which mainly came from the decorators section. For the night time scenes I used old props from a previous project to create the idea of two mob members so to speak. I choose to give them balaclava’s to wear as this reduced their worry about their own acting performances and also to increase the belief that they were who I was attempting to portray them as. This was all of the pre production done, I then moved on to setting a date for production and to begin shooting.
Production:
I divided the shooting into two days. One evening on one day would have the night time scenes and during the next morning I would shoot the crime scene. This was in reverse from the script to keep continuity errors to a minimum. I would note however, that creating a script with varying and multiple endings but only having one opening meant that I had to shoot it to generally cover all the three options and to make the opening crime scene look like it had come from all three rather than a specific one. The major issue was again timing (even with a reasonable and achievable timetable) and so I reluctantly had to miss out one of the pathways for the film. I choose the more “middle” ending in the sense that it was the more predictable which had the positive effect of making the first two options more polarised and seemingly “black and white”. Apart from this both the evening shoot and the morning crime scene shoot went very well and the quality of performance from those involved did not seem as too much of an issue. I changed one of the options visually to include a section where it was shot from the perspective of the captive. This gave the film a little more of an appeal to people as shooting a FPP (First Person Perspective) isn’t easy but can help the viewer associate with the character and the narrative. The hardest and most difficult then came with post production.
Post Production:
I will admit to having major issues with the post production. Firstly I had not anticipated the required time I may have needed for editing and visual effects. Luckily this was balanced by the fact I had not shot all three options and thus had reduced the amount of footage I had to deal with. I also learned a valuable lesson with DV tapes in that a specific brand cannot be used. This resulted for me in difficulties in capturing as well as the footage de-syncing from the audio in the second option. My choice of having the antagonists wear balaclava’s saved the option as I used the audio from failed takes and put it over the video of the successful one. Because of time, I kept the editing to a simple cut trying to make it look professional without experimenting with the software. I choose to do this because my experimentation and creativity lay with the narrative and multiple pathways and not visual experimentation. Whilst filming I had decided to take lots of smaller shots for use with a montage at the crime scene. This is to add a visual familiarity for viewers who had seen this sort of film before but I maintained the originality of the piece. After the editing was done I began work on the visual effects. Creating a fake flash for the forensic camera, blood spatters on the wall, blood spurts from a bullet wound and muzzle flash from a gun all had to be done to a good enough quality to be put into the film. On this point I decided to remove the camera flashes and the blood spats from the guns shots. The flashes were not coming up as believable, and they didn’t work within the scenes I was trying to use them in, so I took them out but made sure that the scenes still worked. To add a bit more realism to the piece I took away the blood spatter from the wall when one of the men gets shot as realistically a pistol of the calibre (even at that close range) would probably not create exit wounds. Once the effects were done I placed it back into editing and worked on the sound. I made the decision not to use ambient music for the piece bar during the montage as it retracted from the seriousness of what I was trying to do. Although many feature films include well designed OST’s something as short as mine would run the risk of looking more like a music video which I definitely wanted to avoid. I did however track down good effectual sounds such as a heartbeat during the FPP sequence where the captive realises he’s about to be killed as well as good quality gunshots and blood spurt effects. Once the sound was done I added titles, exported and passed the final “package” onto my partner for him to integrate the film into the website.
Conclusion:
The end result of this project was close to what I was expecting. It was not of an extremely high standard yet it could still reasonably be a standalone piece. I wanted to create a film with multiple pathways that also showed different moral choices. And ultimately this is what has been created. The story is relevant to today’s audience and the subject matter also provokes a lot of thought and discussion. It also has the added advantage that if it proved popular, follow up narratives could easily be written and created that built a tree of storylines that could be followed. This project was a great development for me, especially in time management as the 5 week deadline meant I had to keep on top of the schedule, which I am proud to say I have. Despite the slightly poor sound quality in small sections on this piece I am still happy with the end result as almost all of my production has been done singlehandedly. Overall I am pleased with what I’ve produced, its simple good quality and shows exactly what I wanted to do. If I were to redo this project I would perhaps try to spend a little more time filming so as to get that third option which would have made the piece better and also perhaps some more time so that I could create my own backing soundtrack. The integration into the “delivery system” should work well and our end piece should keep to our original learning agreement.
Leave a Comment
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
