Evaluation for video part 2

Video Part Two, “In a minute” Evaluation by Kelly Bruce.

 

I was excited about doing the 2^nd part of the video module as I wanted to get a better understanding of filming and using the camera, as for the first part of video early on in the year I felt my video could have been a lot stronger.

This time I would get to work in a group as last time I had been limited to working alone, as I had started the course later than the rest of the class.

I chose to work with Hoi Kam and Katharine as I was working with them on the second life brief and we all felt we worked well together and it would be worthwhile to continue as such, we had even given ourselves a group identity of 3K, and were going to have this in the credits of our film, but for some reason I think that part was forgotten! But nevermind!

At first I secretly wanted to work on my own as I had an idea and wanted it all to myself, for the fact that I just didn’t want anyone else to try and change it so maybe I was being a little selfish but as it happens I told Katharine and Hoi Kam and they both really liked it and along the way we did change things but as a team, my initial worries of having my idea completely altered were all for nothing! And I am very pleased with the result of the video and felt that we all again worked very well as a team.

To keep things organised I wrote a script, which we all read, but to be honest we had talked about the story so much that we all had a clear understanding of how it was going to work out in our heads! And because of this communication everything went to plan on the day of filming and we got everything done pretty quickly!

We did change things along the way slightly, for example the first scene was meant to be filmed twice so that we could use special effects and have the ghost on screen with the student at the same time and for her to replace her reflection in the mirror, however due to time and technical limitations we decided to not use special effects, but to just opt out of showing certain aspects of the film in the camera to give the effect we wanted in a different way.

In the 2^nd scene we were going to use special effects to have the ghost’s reflection follow the student through the reflective surfaces of pictures, glass etc. but instead we found a small square indoor window and decided that the student would stop here so that the ghost could make an appearance behind her though the window instead!

I had intended on playing a part in the movie having felt that if I wasn’t in it then it wouldn’t feel like my work, as my past videos have always had me in them, but playing the director was a good decision as I got to direct the actors who were very professional and much easier to work with than my mum! (Last video) and I also got to oversee what was going on and decide how I wanted the camera’s to operate etc.

But I made sure to take on board any ideas that Hoi Kam and Katharine had changing things here and there so that we were all happy.

I think the key to our project being successful was the cooperation and communication between us, which proved to be very effective, and helped us with time management.

We edited the video together, and Katherine did a great job on the title and credits, (she also helped me with the camera as I was unsure how to set up the tri-pod and silly things like that!)

I am a little disappointed that we were not shown any advanced video techniques in order to improve on the first attempt, besides a ten minute introduction or demonstration on how to set up the correct lighting for ‘green-screen’ use we didn’t get any further tutorage, something that I feel would have been useful, however I am sure if I had spoken to my tutors I would have gotten some extra help but as I was in a team did not need to worry so much as we all pulled together and helped each other so It’s not like there was no support, and we were assisted as much as possible with getting the footage off the tape although this was a tad frustrating as the AV suite was always too busy for us to get into, it’s a shame we didn’t have any dedicated time allocated to us as a year, but we managed without it ok once we got a tape player into the studio.

With regards to the sound, we used a soundtrack from an "Anime" however this was a mistake as we cannot enter the video into the one minute film festival because we would need copyright permission so I changed the sound by getting some "royalty free" sound effects from "sound-dogs.com".

The effects we used were “add noise” and “blink” to get the flickering, which I am not 100% happy with, it’s not the look we were after, we wanted a more static-like TV interference effect but were limited with time and unfortunately had no training in after effects which I have heard that we could have done all that and more in such as making the ghost scenes play backwards to give a creepy effect, I only wish we had had a full 2 weeks training induction for that but I’m sure we will next year so that is something to look forward to!

Overall I am very happy with the outcome and look forward to advancing my video skills in the next year working both alone and in a team.