Emma's Evaluation :)

Through this task I have learnt a lot about the cameras and editing software. Before starting this course I had never used either ‘I movie’ or ‘Garage Band’ before. I discovered that I really enjoyed the editing process as well as the filming, which was kind of unexpected. I have learnt that for our next piece, we will definitely need to spend more time planning and refining what we are going to do, as well as sticking to it. We needed to have done a lot more research and should have looked at other films for inspiration for our piece. We found that although we had a good twenty minutes of footage, it wasn’t really what we needed. Some of the shots weren’t thought out enough and could have been a lot better.
In one part the camera jumped and cut out part of the take, so we tried to match it to another take but the cut was obvious. In the scene when our male actor Craig was dialling the phone (*1), the camera did something funny to him, so our initial reaction was to shoot that scene again. We then realised that we wouldn’t have enough time to do all of that again, so were going to get an extreme close up of just his hand, dialling the phone and add that in. Unfortunately, we’d left it a bit too late and had to leave our film as it was and continue on with other things.
In another shot (*2) we’d lost the printed copy of the ransom message, and were running out of time to finish our filming, so had to use one of our story board pages. Next time, we need to be more careful and make sure we know where all our props are at all times. Another obvious mistake was when we moved location, condensing space and forgot to make Craig take the paper (*3 & 4). I really like the framing of one shot in particular (*5) and think it gives an interesting take on what’s happening.
During filming, I was filming and directing. The actors we chose, although coming through for us in the end, wasted a lot of valuable time by laughing, joking around and not paying attention. They also didn’t know their lines as they hadn’t had a copy of the script before hand, the whole casting process was rushed and needed more thinking through. Next time, we will think about our options and maybe advertise in the drama department and hold auditions so that the people we end up using are fully aware of the importance and are completely dedicated.
There was an issue with the sound at one point, as I was away for a lesson and Lorna and Amelia put on a soundtrack that I didn’t think really suited the piece. I felt that that would spoil the mood of the piece, making it somewhat laughable, so during one of my free periods and one lunch break I decided to re-do it. I used the knowledge that I’d gathered from my film studies classes and used ‘Garage Band’ to remove most of the original sound and add in ambient noise, footsteps, clicking, doors and an eerie soundtrack. I was really pleased with what I’d done so submitted it for the group.