Monday 26 May 2014

Final Major Project Evaluation

I started my project by conducting some secondary contextual research into other films that focus on betrayal such as ‘Paid in full’ by doing so it helped me to think of several ways I could portray my own work and helped me too think of my first few ideas. After watching a bunch of films I decided it was time to do some research into real life betrays that have taken place in history this was what really kicked start my thought process. From looking into a man called John Walker an individual who is famous for betraying his country (USA) to the Soviet Union; I gained a structure which was the starting point of my story. Following this I conducted some primary research by interviewing people, conducting and online survey and handing out surveys into what people really thought about betrayal, this gave me a real insight into what people expect and don’t expect.
After conducting our research me and my partner combined our findings to come up with our first story line which was focused around a male character who committed a crime and alongside that wronged his girlfriend who betrayed him without him knowing, it was to appear to the audience that another character was the one who committed the betrayal throughout the film, only revealing the true traitor at the end. The structure of this story was inspired by the story of John Walker.
Once we come up with our first story we began to look into locations and actors and really the reality of creating this idea. This is where we ran into our first problem which was a lack of actors. Although we searched hard we could find any female actors that were willing to play the part of the girlfriend who was a major role in the film. In order to solve this problem it would mean making vast changes to the story in order for it to work with just our few male friends that were willing to take part in the filming.
To solve the problem we had to replace the girlfriend character with someone that would be of equal importance to the main character so that we wouldn't lose the impact or shock the betrayal would have on the audience but be able to use a male character. After much thought we decided the best way to do this would be to make the character a family member; we decided a close cousin would be the best option mainly because it would be the most believable due to our actor’s appearances; a brother or father wouldn't be realistic.
Not long after we came up with a full achievable story and the last things to do was to find appropriate locations and plan shooting times which was the next problem as all our actors were peers and the majority of them were having exams so availability was an issue. We went out looking for locations and found some local parks and quiet streets for the outside shots, we also used a local corner shop for the shop scene and two of our friends housed for the inside shots.
Before I knew it I found myself in the fourth week with no footage due and only 3 weeks to go. Time was getting slim so me and my partner contacted all our actors and came up with a timetable so that we could have the required characters at the required times. In order for us make this achievable we had to change some of the actor’s roles to the less important ones; but in the end we had a plan of our shooting times which would mean us starting shooting immediately and  finishing shooting in the 6th week of the FMP.
Once shooting began, we then faced our next problem, Mother Nature.  A lot of the shots we need required dry weather preferably quiet sunny but we was unfortunate and the weather was not on our side a lot of the time which just made planning and doing shots that a bit harder. But it wasn't just the rain that caused us problems due to our lack of equipment we didn't get a wind resistant microphone and there was a high winds a lot of the time this was a major issue when shooting outside especially out in the open. However after many takes we managed to get the shots and audio that we needed.
By the end of the 6th week we had all the shots we needed and the last thing left was editing it all together.
During the editing stage we got feedback from one of our tutors and were advised to shorten our film as much of the film was build up and wasn't needed. So that’s what we did.  My partner and I decided together which parts of the film were vital and which parts where not really necessary. Following this we came up with a much short version of our film which stilled summed up the story as a whole.  
The majority of the work in the FMP was completed together as we needed to make decisions that would affect both our work. My individual input to the FMP was mainly in the production side as it’s my stronger point. I done the majority of the editing and in the film production we operated one camera each.




Final Major Project

Saturday 10 May 2014

Change in Characters

Due to actor availability we have made the decision to change the actor of the victim (Scott) to Character D (Ashlee).