Evaluation

• Effectiveness of research. What could have been better?

I felt like my Research section was too similar to my Proposal section, and I ended up repeating the same information. But with my actual research I was able to find many possibilities in effects but not enough I could repeat them successfully. I didn't manage to do the effects that I had previously practiced, which I thought were unique. Despite this, there was a benefit to be gained, such as a better understanding of After Effects and knowledge of what this particular process is capable of achieving. If I could do it again, I would combine using my skills that I had developed from using my effect, with a prop, such as a ball or a stone. This would create the effect of an aura around an object, which is something that I had sought to achieve. Thanks to my Google Forms surveys, I have specific opinions on superhero films to know how to satisfy some of the audience members to guide my script writing, for example somebody mentioned that they preferred action over dialogue, especially politics themed speeches. I used this to make my script quick and simple, something to not think about.

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Although the Influences/Inspiration section helped me have a clearer idea of what effects I should do and how to execute them in a certain style. But overall, it doesn't really contribute to the finished project. I think what I said is honest that I understand superhero movies very well. In the end, however, I've found that I did not have the ability to completely achieve what I imagined for the project. I think the narrative is successful but visually as I needed more time to reach the level I wanted.

 

The Idea/Concepts section was interesting, but I couldn't fully develop it since it was supposed to act as background idea of my project for an actual film, like an unused script that could be developed once having a role in Hollywood. As for next time, I could do a test reel to show its potential. It makes the plot seem more unique than it actually is. But it does accentuate the power of the scene.

 

​With the Target Audience, I wish I could write a whole script to fully share what I think about superhero movies, because I do not have the time or patience to film an entire movie that is an hour long, and full of dialogue. But I could only do an action scene, as that was all I could achieve in the time available to showcase my skills. If I improved next time on doing this again, specifically my audio problem, then I would have expected the scrapped scenes to be still too short, passing by too quickly to watch. I am proud of my research, as I think that's what factors superhero films should cover. However, the results of the survey I conducted were extremely unreliable. In my opinion, I asked the wrong demographic of people as they did not provide proper answers. Or I did not ask the right questions. Either way, for example, I did not like that there was not enough variation in their answers, or not specific enough for me to consider possible directions to take. The results were limited and obvious, and I had hoped that a sentence or something very controversial/opinionated, would give me an original concept. It's only good to know what they were wanting, as it seems to be that obvious what they expected. However, people expect something new, not predictable.

 

​The existing product analysis gave me hope and showed me it is capable, but I have little proof of how it actually worked in production. Again that would be plagiarism and goes against my creativity and originality; it wouldn't show my development and skills. So I'm happy to see that it can happen, as I have a clue how it works based on the general visuals from the effect. This section was just me guessing how it works and compare that to if I was the one doing it instead. But the only one I know how the specific effect works was the Human Torch, and the problem with that is I don't know what program it worked on. I think it couldn't possibly be Adobe, it seems to be focused more on body movement than fire, as it tracked the motion and get a sense of the outline, then putting fire on the so-called outline of the body shape and having an aura as effect to show properties of fire. Interesting but don't think it is in my skill level or knowledge to be capable of doing that.

 

​The workflow section clearly shows my problem within my production, as it basically says that I almost acted when it came to the time, I didn't care what I was using and wanted to get it all done with. I didn't foresee this being an actual problem in my mindset, as I was too focused on my major problem from my last FMP.

 

​My Theories section shows how I think about each theory, as it's ineffective to compare my actual work. Even if I did devote myself to one of them, based on what theory says, I don't really think it's a suitable template, as media changes, these story ideas won't interest the audience like that. The ones that aren't about the story itself, seem to be more about psychological expectations, as you can't predict or accurately analyse a random person and guess that's how everyone would be.

 

​I think my action research was perfect, as it reflects and represents my skills and potential. But it truly was a real shame that it couldn't be in the final production, as there was no chance of putting it in there without a prop, as I say later on in this evaluation.

 

​I think my primary and secondary data was the best reference I could have and I tried my best to analyse and review what I could do with it and improve. However, I don't know how well I did reflecting on those views.

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• ​Methods used, missed opportunities? 

Some of the major missed opportunities within my production would be: that I had to abandon my chosen effect that I practiced with because I had no opportunity in the footage available to apply it. The second reshoot caused me issues with lip-syncing that I hadn't realised during production. The actors in my film didn't speak, meaning that the audio track that I added in post-production was more awkward than it was supposed to be. I could've added props to add another element to my filmmaking, as it would not have wasted the potential possible with my unused effects. Overall this experience has been rewarding, it has helped me multitask with multiple different effects, as I had experience with lightning effects before, and slightly with Particle effects. When I used it first, I had no idea how after-effects worked and now I can prove how much I have progressed. I have built upon my existing knowledge of these effects and have developed my skills even further through the production of this film. I might have not ended up with what I wanted to do, but the usual methods I did before was successful enough to improve my project.

• Final concept?

With my final concept recently completed, I would say I am disappointed with the new mistakes that I found later on. Unfortunately at this stage, it was too late to deal with these, as I had to focus on my visual effects. Amongst the problems I faced included lip syncing, which made the scenes look strange and out of context. Unfortunately, as a result of this, some scenes had to be scrapped, so it was limited in terms of plot. I am happy however with the audio that remains in the film. I couldn't be happier with the finished effects, with people reacting to it by saying it was wonderful, as they especially like the way I used my lens flare alongside my lightning effects to give off a flash like effect. I chose good sound effects to go along with the visuals, but I couldn't find the space or the time to apply echo-boom-like sounds, as it was hard to find appropriate sounds that matched the overall tone. The music fits the scenes in the film, although I was hesitant about putting an entire song in it without cutting anything because it seemed inappropriate and unprofessional. Long music can be distracting, or sound awkward, due to not reflecting what is going on in the footage. This is something that I feel if I had spent more time on, I could improve on it and make it much better, but music wasn't my speciality at all. Overall, I think the combination of music, visual effects, and colour gradient makes the film look great, distracting you from the minor problems within the film.

• Planning, what went well…what did not?

I wanted to start the editing for my film as soon as possible, as I wanted strongly to work on the effects that I would use. This meant that when I came to editing after shooting the film, the effects looked out of place with my footage, meaning I had to do reshoots. This showed that I was blind at first and needed to be aware of what I was doing. It was not the best course of action but early editing allowed me time to address the problem. This was further complicated by busy time schedules of my actors, before taking multiple weeks to organise again. This meant lots of wasted time, where I couldn't work. This is one of the reasons that complicated my time management, and meant the last few weeks before my due date, I was desperately trying to rush with finishing the editing. This meant little time to finish off the video, although I managed to finish in time. I would say, other than having to reshoot my film again, I would say overall the production worked well. The sound quality of the camera wasn't very good when it came to filming, meaning my actors and I agreed to do a dub over the footage. But I had not foreseen that they had forgotten to actually speak in the shoot, not making it very easy for me to edit. I had to improvise where to put the audio in what I thought it was appropriate enough. But that's not to say their acting was bad, I was happy with their fight choreography, and they did accurately recreate everything that was said in the script, I felt we achieved the necessary parts at least. 

• Production, what went well…what did not?

The results of my cinematography can vary, with some shots being good and sometimes needing work. Throughout the film, I had problems with ratio and zooming, meaning it sometimes started to get blurry when zoomed. We tried to fix it midway through the scene, which would lead to it showing our hands, disrupting everything. And due to the nature of ratio, which I didn't know at first, it cut some of the footage because of the visual style. Our first attempt to film was ineffective because the camera couldn't fit on the tripod, meaning that we had to do it handheld. This led to it being shaky and low quality, leading to it being unwatchable at times. The second attempt we tried to adapt and fix the last mistakes, by solving our tripod problem. I wish I had allowed myself time to get used to it, since the surface was uneven, making changing positions difficult. Our filming was also threatened by weather, with rain making it impossible to film for weeks. When we did eventually get back to reshooting, we were able to create great fight scenes, whilst applying creative decisions and suggestions. I developed new scene ideas over the downtime and finished every shot from my storyboard as best I could. Another problem with production was that one actor was wearing different clothes in some scenes due to the time difference between shoots, making it very noticeable. On the scale of problems that we faced, this wasn't as big a deal, but it was annoying for the final product. I felt including props in my film would help my use of effects but the shot with the stick, that I was using as my prop, unfortunately, wasn't very visible. I was limited in terms of further props due to the dangers presented with risk hazards.

• Post-production, what went well…what did not?

My lightning effect worked well, thanks in part to my having experience with it before, unfortunately, my particle effect was something I wish I had more time to master. These problems included the particles remaining on the footage, even though they were supposed to disappear. They seemed to defy settings, frames, and visuals, meaning that I had to use opacity to deal with this issue since it seemed there was no solution specific to this kind of problem, as there were surprising reactions upon finding out about my situation. My challenge was learning how to adapt particle effects with lightning effects, which caused issues with how long some scenes were taking me to fix. This was a very time-consuming process, with me having to figure out and fix each problem with the particle effects, as well as changing and adapting each frame with lightning effects to correct their position and appearance, making it look like real lightning. Furthermore, I included lens flare effects to help create an additional design choice, for energy attacks to have a certain brightness to them. I also included sound effects to match the visual effects, with fire being added for the villain's fire attacks, as well as electricity for the hero's lightning attacks. I would have further added a booming sound to go with these visual effects, but couldn't find the most suitable one. At the start of my FMP, I experimented with colour gradient, meaning that I had lots of time to make what I believe to be the right choice on my film. This was done to match the style of my inspiration for this film, which was the Snyder Cut, as it is very dark but mine is much more blueish.

• How you dealt with TECHNICAL problems?

As mentioned above, I had to deal with a ratio problem that resulted in me cutting some of the footage, the particle effect glitching, which stuck around when it wasn't supposed to, as well as dealing with recording issues. I used a recorder that I had problems with, as I either couldn't understand how to record or save the recording; when I downloaded the audio, I couldn't find it. I wasn't familiar with how the recorder worked, so we eventually switched to a different recorder, and also receiving an explanation on how to use this software. With one of my actors, we didn't remember to apply a muffler, making their audio less clear. This was a simple mistake with a simple fix for next time. When it came to learning how to change the settings within Adobe, I looked at tutorial videos for how to deal with problems like ratio. I also had another pair of eyes for some oversight to make sure I was understanding the videos. The main problems that we found were to do with some footage having different scales. In order to solve this, we had two different footage ratios, I picked the one that I preferred because the scaling fitted much better, with the other ratio ruining the quality of the video. With the Particle Effects, I had a problem sacrificing my footage, as I needed the effect to be there during the frozen phase, so I had to turn it on and off when needed while changing it hoping that the later frames would fix it all.

• How you dealt with MANAGEMENT problems?

I would say managing the editing seemed to be perfect, because I knew what I was doing, but  the other roles like a cameraman, which I don't think I was suited to be and failed to prove I can be. With being a director, I don't think I could be one to my full potential and capability with my best efforts, however, the actors did behave themselves and they weren't fully in control of the situation, but I still was able to guide them and direct which scene is next, to remind them what to do. But that was the best of my actions to do so. I wouldn't say I was stressed and overwhelmed, it was more balanced and restricted to my standards to stay calm and no reason to freak out about it, as everyone was well behaved and I could use that to my advantage.

• How you dealt with EMOTIONAL problems?

It was very standard and appropriate to be stressed and frustrated at times, as my reasons are very common. When it came to filming and performing I tried to act calm as possible, while I was freaking out and trying to remind my actors that we needed to film, attempting to find the possible time able to do so. So when I wasn't working, I was getting more impatient each session, not being able to work and being reminded that time is precious and you have to do work 24/7, so it had some psychological impact keeping me attentive. It was the only way to be satisfied by actually working at the end, otherwise. I would be worried so much earlier that I would fail, even though it took weeks and all my work was sort of wasted at the time. Because my first attempt at filming was viewed as terrible, I did act disappointed because it really ruined my plans of working. I wanted to edit early, but because of that I had to suffer the delays, not able to fix my mistakes and having to wait for my main part of the filming plan at the last minute.

• Do you think you met the brief?

I think I was able to make something that was better compared to what I had last time for my FMP, although I don't think I was as committed to my writing as before. But my production has been improved, as that was my biggest mistake from my first attempt, resulting in my mark being a pass, which dragged down the rest from merit to pass. That was my focus to improve on the making of my short film. My experience between has developed, and I assume my skill level with editing has been expressed better. But I hope that because I found my short film to be more important than the other sections, this time it doesn't end up a reversal of last time, and my short film achieves a higher grade than the rest. But I think I have given equal attention to all parts of my work.

 

​The provided evidence I have demonstrated consideration and professionalism in working with others. My crew has given feedback to me and addressed areas such as: