Pre-Production
For our final media project, we came up with the idea of a character Old Man Jenkins (OMJ) being fought by the character Bonquisha Nish Dingaloo, as an act upon revenge. We came up with our ideas mostly from the key tasks in which we took part over the course of the semester. This leads us to a filming series within my group. We took inspiration from our prior sections of filming and continued our film to provide a final piece of the built-up story. We had other ideas in the sense of minor variations we could make to our film, however, we were set on having a general common storyline to finish up our series. An example of this is the final outcome, where we could decide on the good/bad part of the story wins. We chose the good side, and not the bad to overcome the previous storyline in the series, in which the bad commonly won. We discussed this idea with our peers within the Media class, providing us with feedback, allowing us to outline our system of production and more. Our final idea consisted of a conflict between good and evil, in which two boys fight a global criminal, and the boys end up winning the conflict, being a triumph and an act of revenge.
For our planning, we required documents such as a script, shot list and more. These were beneficial for our filming as we knew the specifics of how it was to be filmed, in which we could complete the tasks in a systematic manner. Additionally to this, we could have done more brainstorming, and made our shot list more specific, as areas we had to improvise along the way.
Our Script in Celtx.
Production
To create our products, we used common filming technology, with a camera, tripod and microphone for ADR and more. The microphone allowed us to provide a more clear sound in our film, and also emphasize the dialogue within certain areas of the production. The use of technology throughout production worked commonly well, however areas did not. An example of this is the lighting and shakiness of the shots coming from camera settings as well as the more often use of a tripod. Improving upon these misuses of equipment, we could have allowed our film to be more smooth in parts of the final piece. Throughout the production stage, I improved upon my use of the camera, and its settings at times, however something that needed to be done differently would be the use of the microphone more often in the film so that the worse audio does not stand out.
Post Production
For our post-production and editing stage, we would split into two groups, to edit two sections of the film. We used premiere pro to do this. The functions that we used within Premiere were ultra key, text, directional blur, posterise time and music and sound effects. We also used external programs, to find different sound effects, as well as audio programs, to define these as well. Throughout editing, our shots were all up to standard, and not having to re-film anything. The editing process in general however was smooth. Something we needed to do differently was organised all of our shots to allow the editing process to be much more efficient within our group. To improve this process, we need to be more organised from the beginning and decide on the splitting of work within our group.
Final Evaluation
The best aspects of our production predominantly revolve around our storyline, as well as our shot taking and our edited piece into our final product. Some areas that need to be improved are our general microphone quality and using a microphone throughout the whole film. Through making the production, I learned the benefit of planning ahead and completing sections of the task as scheduled. Next time, I would act upon the necessary improvements, and use this to next make a better quality film.