Evaluation

For this task we were asked to create a short film using single camera technique. Single camera is when you film from one camera and it stays stationary when shooting, as the camera represents the audience's viewpoint. This creates an effect on the audience making it seem like they're there. When filming single camera, the camera doesn't follow the actors in this case for the short story breaking the single camera technique by following or moving ruins this effect. As the audience is watching from an observational view in the short film. When using single camera technique there's more control in how you want to shoot the film and where the camera can be placed to make the video look better. Using this technique meant there were easier ways to film as shooting from a single camera runs more smoothly.

For our short film narrative, we chose to shoot in a graveyard as this would create an ominous and eerie mood in the storyline. The story is about two girls who enter the graveyard after school that end up being followed and encounter the other girl following them. The mood from the grave helps build the mist-en-scene of a suspense as it dramatises the we are portraying through the style in the short film. As a result, this location helped in portraying the atmosphere combining with the weather of a neutral setting on the graveyard. This created a good effect in the shots we took dramatising the story to appeal to the audience. 

The resources and production schedule were organised last minute, but we were able to film as much as we needed to on the day. We chose not to use a mic for this short story as we didn't enough people to help out and without the mic, this allowed us to make audience focus on the narrative through the shots and acting, generally used in suspense and dramatic genres. As, for our roles I wanted to reflect the ideas based on my PowerPoint on the film Julia's eyes. Using, similar techniques to dramatise shots to build a sense of danger and suspense. Leading the encounter of the two girls and the girl following the scene was to follow comedic scene, but we thought adding a fight scene would've made the scene intense.

Furthermore, during the day of shoot the road opposite the graveyard was noisy as passing cars were very close to location we chose to shot. The sound was muted and replaced with the instrumental soundtrack to not distract the story in which we were trying to create. We shot everything in one day as everyone had busy schedules on that day. The amount of time we had on that day was insufficient as people couldn't film at night. The help of the weather that day still made the scene and atmosphere dark enough. We had to find actors last minute to shoot at the time we were filming and with change of the script the storyline and chosen location was altered too suit what was available to us on the day of the shoot.  

Whereas, for the post-production was simpler than expected as the story line was made shorter and the script was cut out made into a silent film. However, this brought great turnouts as this helped portray the single camera technique better through conveying our shots. 

Overall, to improve the quality of our short film I think planning more would've made a difference. This would've outlined a backing location if the weather was to change or we were unable to shoot that day. There would be another option for our location, whether it being local or less travel. To give us enough time in which we lacked in this task, which lead to the unplanned shooting and chosen location on that day. The editing could've been made better, if we had set a dater shooting managing our time better so everyone can participate in their role that day, for example having someone to hold the mic whilst filming would have made the video easier to understand, than to let the shots in the video explain what it going on in the video. For instance, non-diegetic sound effects to use in the editing. This would've been effective to create tension in the short film.

short film:https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz8fKzOGIZxRVHhuM1EwSDJaSnc