Film Evaluation - Danielle Irwin

After the long process, our film has finally been completed, in time for the deadline. Overall, I think it has gone relatively smoothly, with problems being solved as soon as we came across them. By working as a team, we overcame lots of difficulties, be it technical troubles or weather problems.

I think filming went particularly well, as we got on it with it and worked well with our actors. The shot types we had predicted to use turned out as we thought they would, and the cuts we wanted to use also worked out well. The day we shot our production was quite sunny, but also windy at times. This meant the sound wasn't of high quality and some shots couldn't be used, therefore, the transactions weren't as smooth because of the missing shots. We had to improvise by putting in extra shots of the stalker pictures on the wall, so it ran a lot more smoothly and made sense.

The film was transferred to an Apple Mac using a Firewire, before the editing was to begin. It was difficult at first because we hadn't used the new version of iMovie, so it meant we had to figure out how to do different things ourselves. We used the help menus, our classmates and our teachers to work out how to use it, and after a week or so, we were able to use iMovie with ease.

At one point during editing, we realised the new iMovie we were using, didn't have the special effects we wanted to use, which the older version did have. These included the ghost effect, which we used in our preliminary, and the slowing and speeding up of clips. We really wanted to use these effects, so attempted to move our project to another iMac. It took three hours to transfer the clips to a memory stick, then another two hours to put it on the other computer. We were glad to have finally done it, but unfortunately it wouldn't work correctly on the older iMac. It was extremely frustrating, and we wasted a lot of time doing it. We had to get on with the editing quickly, and were unable to use the effects we wanted.

When we finished editing, and had to start putting on the sound effects and music, I had to go on an AS Geography trip for three days. This meant Charlotte and Sophie had to do this alone, which was unfortunate. When I got back, I could see what they had done and put my own inputs in.

Inserting the credits was the final thing we had to do. Our film was exactly two minutes (the length it should be) before the credits, which meant we had to make it an extra 15 or so seconds. We had to leave out the name of the director, producer, sound editor etc, because of our time limits, but we decided that they would have been at the end of the film anyway. This worked out well, as we chose to just have the names of the actors and the film. We were unable to put the credits on a plain black background on the new version of iMovie, and could only put them on to clips we had already filmed. We had to improvise by filming a black camera charger on the fitted iMac webcam, to create a completely black shot. We cut this and copied the shots, so we had enough for each credit. This worked out really good, and I think it looked quite professional.

Another issue, was the fact that other students were using the same computer as us. In the final few days before the deadline, we all wanted to use them at the same time to do the finishing touches and burn the productions to disc. We all managed to work around each other though, and got everything done.

If we were to do our production again, I think we would have made some improvements. We would have chosen a more appropriate day, so the wind didn't effect us. We also would have had make do with the iMac's we were using, rather than wasting time trying to transfer the project. If we hadn't done this, we would have had a lot more time to focus on the sound and other features. We wanted to alter the colour of the shots, to something less saturated, but not quite sepia or black and white. Overall, I think everything went well, and we all worked really well together. I thoroughly enjoyed the project, and hope it's at a good standard.