The storyboarding process involved recording the shot lengths, types, angles and action, as well as making quick sketches to help visualize exactly what the shot looked like. Taking the position of director, I figured the original storyboard I made and that everyone else had done too was pretty mediocre, so I did a new one that involved actual shots from the music video we were mimicking, as well as camera positions and action diagrams (arrows, labels, etcetera.), plus all of the original information from the first storyboard.
Overall, it did a much better job than the original storyboard and allowed us to set up each of the shots much faster. Planning out the shots before even approaching the camera seemed to be a much more efficient process than just doing it on the go during shooting, and the final video was much more accurate as well.
The prop lists and locations list allowed us to list the needed props as well as what shots would be done at which location – this allowed us to appropriately prepare for the shoot by having the needed equipment at hand, as well as make the shooting faster due to the non-linear nature of the filming (we shot all inside shots first, then all outside shots, rather than alternating between the two by filming in the order the shots are in the timeline).
During this shoot, I've mainly learned that detailed planning can be beneficial to the final video a lot more than I thought it would be - both for time and quality.
Production Evaluation ( 402 words )
The actual process of filming went rather well. It took less than 10 minutes in order to set the place up (mainly just rearranging the tables and pre-loading the necessary videos), and then we decided on who would be sitting where and what shots to shoot first.
During the inside shots (which we did first), we did go over the time limit slightly due to problems mainly to do with the actors and finding appropriate compromises with the shots (the dimensions and layout of the room were, of course, different from the video, which meant we had to make adjustments to what the shots would be like). In order to quicken the process of the inside shots (after spending god knows how long on trying to get Harry to enunciate the phrase “oh yeah yeah” properly) I took control of the later shots away from the Jack and Jacob so that we could cut out the time it took to explain to the shots to them. Another problem we came across was the guitars – the music department, it turned out, would only lend out one at a time, so Harry and Pat had to go collect theirs over break. Jack resumed control once we started filming the outside shots nearby the library.
Outside we came across several problems with the filming which, again, involved the actors. The dancers used in the background seemed to stop at random points (here’s looking at you, Sanrita), damaging certain shots as well as disrupting the pace of the editing. The people in the band, mainly Tom, had problems with multi-tasking, apparently, as he didn’t seem to want to sing and play the guitar at the same time after jumping, as did the others multiple times – this created shots that were otherwise fine, but left the band not actually singing, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
In terms of continuity, I’d say we did fine, besides the shades being open and closed in certain shots inside, affecting the lighting. The problems we did come across can be addressed in other film projects by improving communication between the actors and the director (me), so I’m not getting mad at them for not doing things I simply forgot to tell them to do. I'd say that my skills of communicating what I want from the actors have improved due to the problems we've faced over the production.
Post-Production Evaluation ( 229 words )
From the beginning of the editing process, we came across the problem of having no-one show up to the class, which meant we had to use just a couple of people in each group. Due to problems we had with the program iMovies and the fact it won’t save blank projects for some reason, we had to spend a while loading in the footage, which was then disorganized. We spent the majority of the lesson organizing the footage before we could do anything about it, which I guess saved time in the long run but would have saved a lot more time if it hadn’t been a problem to begin with.
The editing itself went fairly okay – the final edit that our group did was as close to the original video that we could get considering the method we used to check it (running between two rooms and remembering the shot cuts and action), and we still managed to get it done by the end of the lesson anyway. I’d say that we’ve learnt how to properly use the program for editing videos during this, including the use of independent sound files and the modification of clip volume. Being familiar with other programs for editing due to not having a Mac, it was interesting to get to use it for a more extensive video than last year’s preliminary piece.
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