Evaluation

Year 12 into 13 'A day in the life...' Evaluation

The project of producing a one minute long video was something new and to a certain extent quite challenging. I worked with another student to accomplish this task. Our first thoughts for the video was to tell the story of a hopeless romantic, but as we were short on time and thought it too complicated we changed it to a day in the life of a school girl. Our new idea worked at our advantage so we were quick in the process of filming as we had the school building at our finger tips. I have learnt a considerable amount during this task. I learnt about keeping to a deadline, which we successfully managed to do. I have also learnt some new skills on the Mac. Final Cut Pro was used to produce the video which was new so had to learn how to use this new piece of software.

It took 1-2 lessons to do the filming so did not take long. It gave us the chance to spend the rest of the lessons after that editing and researching. The editing took considerably longer, certainly longer than what we had originally thought. What probably caused it to take so long was the timing with the clips and the music as we wanted it to flow, especially with the film being only one minute long. Another problem for us was the size of the clips. Although the clips seemed short when we filming the 'short' scenes the seconds soon added up. For next time I would consider trying to make the clips as short as possible so that we could fit in more and then the 'day' would seem longer and more full.

For planning we created a story board to give us a skeleton idea of the order that the scenes would go in. However, when we were editing we changed the scenes a bit to go with our surroundings and timings. Also as part of planning we looked at a number of other short films done by previous students and some small companies. There are also many adverts now that tell short stories so I looked some of those up to see what camera shots were used. We found that looking at existing materials really helped to give our short film a more professional image.

Camera work

Using the camera was important as we wanted to give different effects to the audience. In the opening scene a panning shot was used to follow the main character. The zoom out and zoom in effects were also used in this short film a number of times. We felt it kept the audience guessing about the surroundings but also if there was something we wanted the audience specifically to see, it was a good way to show it. A mid close up was used along with a mid long shot. These were the most commonly used camera shots.

Editing Techniques

For our short film we used short transitions as we didn't want a lot of time to be taken up. There were a few seconds for the opening title and even less time for the credits at the end of the film. We used a 'blur' effect in one of the scenes to help signify boredom and feeling sleepy. There was also a transition where we turned the screen to black when the school bell rang. This was done so that the audience took into account the bell more.

Sound

Apart from the natural diegetic sound happening within the scenes we also decided to add some music to go over the top and sound effects e.g. the school bell. Using the bell as one of our non-diegetic sounds helped to bring the school atmosphere into our work. We also included a song called Thrift Shop as it was quite mainstream and what our main character, along with many other students would have listened to at the time.

Mise en scene

A pen and paper were perhaps used as the main objects used as it was specifically used to show our main characters feelings. Doors were also used to help create humour within the short film as Rihanna was either having the door shut in her face or being knocked over by it.