evaluation

Bellow is the evaluation of my A2 media film assignment:

Our final a level media assignment was to produce a short movie that has been researched written filmed and finally edited by our group. Just like for AS level the progress we made has been written on a blog in a sort of journal site fashion. This is good because it allows us to upload sketches photographs and even films for the general public to see. It is also good to receive feedback on this online tool.

The film that our group created is called “what friends are for” which follows the genre pattern of crime drama set in a small village and local town. The plot consists of a teenage boy buying his first car and has it stolen. It starts with the two boys meeting at a bus stop in a small village and through a series of flashback editing tells the story of his car being stolen and unknown to the kid who has his car stolen, it is his friend who is the car thief. The target audience for this film we decided as a group would be 16-24 year olds mainly due to the car theft and getaway scenes. Also the twist in the plot could be hard to grasp for younger audiences.

The filming of the scenes took a few weeks and due to technical difficulties with the sound leaving us having to re-film a whole 2 scenes meant that it took a lot longer than expected. This also meant that we had to be very organised with what clothes to wear on different days. The idea of wearing jackets instead of recognisable clothes was a good one and made it a lot easier than having bad wardrobe solutions. One small issue we had when filming was we were only using one camera which meant that when we needed a different shot we had to act again. This made it difficult to edit so that the film looked continuous. However in the editing stage I think that we did a good job. It also helped that we had the help of Rob who is very handy with editing software due to his prior experience in the media. This also meant that I and Benj were able to learn a lot more about the software that we were using. One controversial shot in our group was the CCTV shot in the car park which was very tricky to film and it took us a long time to find the effect but after much perseverance and searching the net we found one that worked and I personally am very pleased with the end result.

Another task we had to complete for this project was a poster for our film. This was again like the film done in team so we could put our heads together to really make a good result. The main picture we used for the poster was taken from the shooting shots because of the large amount of background space which could be used to put information on and also the central position of the car. We managed to complete this in a one hour lesson thanks to our experience of Photoshop and publishing software that we gained on the magazine assignment for AS level.

One of the individual tasks we were set was to create a review page for our film like would be seen in empire film review magazine. This was familiar territory for me personally because of the experience we got with music magazines last year. Using publishing software I think I was able to create an authentic looking magazine double page spread.

In all honesty I think that our group worked well together as a team and I would be happy to do another assignment similar to this in future. However one criticism I would have is that being new to filming and the result of this was the face during filming at one point a microphone was not turned on resulting in the re-film of a lot of our film. I think the work commitment of each member of the team was unfaulted. The one team member that I must give credit to is Rob Matthews because of his prior experience with editing software was a saviour when it came to the editing stage and had to put up with a lot of mess ups from me and Benj.

If I were to change anything about the film it would be at the start when we meet the two main characters in the film I do not believe that it is obviously clear they are both friends. I think we could have possibly added in a small montage before to make this clearer. However this is nitpicking really I am very pleased with the end result.
I would be happy to work with Rob and Benj again on another project if the offer were there and I am very proud of the film that we put together.