Evaluation of Short Film

Evaluation of Short Film

What were the aims of your brief from your chosen charity/campaign and did you fulfil them?

The purpose of the brief was to create and produce a short film for a charity in order to bring awareness and educate people having problems to call the police or ambulance services to inform viewers about what the charity does. I think we were able to achieve a short film because my peers in my group and I managed to produce a 4 minutes long film. If we went over by a minute is because we had to add other shots to raise awareness of XLP campaign. The way we did our film was by telling a story about a boy and his girlfriend that were being peer pressured into gang violence, he was forced to do something that he is not meant to do and ended up getting beating up at the end of the video. We informed the audience about what XLP does and how they can help people who are forced to get involved in gang violence.

What were your original ideas about how did these develop throughout the project?

We came up with ideas separately then we gathered together as a group and talked through our ideas about which charity we wanted to highlight and how we were going to do this. And after discussion, we decided to use a boy who was being peer pressured about joining a gang even though that is not what he wanted for his life. Because of moral implications, we decided there were other ways to highpoint gang violence without it being so ruthless for the audience to watch. We were also going to use gang style way of speaking and lots of swearing words but we decided not to do  that as we felt it might be too much so we only saying a bit of swearing in the short film but you can’t hear it much. We were also planning to film one scene on top of a roof so we could show a good view of the area but we realised it would be too complicated because we realised it would be problematic to get the permission to film on top of the houses and felt it may be a problem to go there so that we decided to change the idea of the location that was near my house. Instead, we decided to film inside a car and in a building as this was a lot easier to do. Our teacher gave us feedback on the post production and said that when she first viewed the film our message wasn’t very clear. I thought about this and decided to add a voice over which was the boy talking and explaining what is going on. I felt this was a better and stronger way of getting our message across.
How well did you plan out your short film? Evaluate strengths and weaknesses.

The organisation and the way we lay it out, did go well. I think it is good that when we were facing problems, we tried to find solution. There is only one weakness that we had within our group which was one member of the group that had time off and didn’t want to come to the filming part and didn’t contribute much to the whole project so this didn’t show teamwork. When we brought our idea to the full class, it was useful to receive advices and feedback from others in terms of hearing about our strengths and weaknesses and see what was good and what we needed to change or improve.

What were the strengths and weaknesses during filming?

During filming our strengths were due to the fact that we managed to do all the recording within the time frame given and we asked for advice on how to use the camera from classmates and support of the teachers. I used different equipment in the process of building up my recording. Knowing we were a team of 3 but really ended up being 2 doing all the work, I see that as a strength because we had more work to share between 2 of us. In terms of our weaknesses, my peer needed help and support from me which I was very happy to share but I felt the pressure of it.

Which editing skills did you develop and how could you improve in this area?

I feel familiar with using a camera and editing but I feel the skills I have are still to a beginner level and reason why I need learning guidance to improve those skills. To be honest, the only thing I learnt personally this time was how to add a music in the background.

Other comments

I would like next time if possible to be in group that is engaging with the task and really willing to corporate and work together as a group. I would like to try different equipment in order to see what I can do differently in term of filming.