During the pre-production process of this project, we created an idea generation mind map, trying to come up with a basic plot line for the new short film we were creating. My group and I struggled for a while to come up with an idea initially as this time, for this project, we were not given a story-line to follow, we had to come up with everything without guidance.
However, after an hour or so of planning and putting ideas together, we came up with a solid story-line and started on the other pre-production. In this story, we wanted to experiment with a new type of story line that none of us had followed before, as this almost follows a psychological thriller based genre by basing our film around conspiracy theories.
When we started filming this project, we managed to get all of the scenes filmed in one day, it took us 3-4 hours to finish. During this, we did not experience any problems or interruptions like we did in the last project, in which we encountered issues with lighting and some of the shots being too grainy due to the ISO being raised to highest setting in areas in which it was slightly darker. However, after this, we discovered it was because we did not know how to use the aperture correctly hence the grainy look of our videos.
Therefore, during this project, we then had the knowledge on how to adjust the aperture to match the ISO; this made our scenes look a lot more professional and clear. In addition to this, we also ensured to use a Rhode microphone instead of the Zoom microphone we had before, which picked up too much wind audio. The Rhode mic was effective and easy to use as it just plugged in the camera and synced the all of the sound with the footage for us; when it came to editing, we did not have to listen to every single audio clip to find the right one, which sped up the editing process.
However, some problems that did occur was that in regards to the shot-list, we stuck to all of the shots, but we had some additional ones as we found that this would add more of a variety of shots to the short film, additionally it gave the group more footage to edit.
After asking my peers what they thought of this of this project, they too agreed that it was a lot better than the last due to it seeming more professionally done. They stated that the edit seemed very clean cut and the storyline was quite interesting as we left it on more of a cliffhanger. They thought that the “mysterious” aspect of this film appeared to be more intriguing and that our editing skills helped bring the film together. However they did also state the film could’ve been longer and could’ve included more content. So with all of that in mind, I will definitely consider these points in future projects.
In regards to the final edit, I can definitely say that I prefer the project a lot more to the previous one as our work looks a lot more professional and interesting. Additionally, the colour grading suits the theme of this short film, compared to the last project, in which the grading and correction looked tacky and unprofessional. Also, the flow of this film is swift, the cuts are not obviously seen.
Akira's Media Blog 