INTRODUCTION

My project task was to create a short film of around 4 minutes long, displaying a series of different visual effects and challenging my skills with cinematography. I wanted to create a superhero like film where there is a good vs evil element and also a personal connection between two characters that gets broken in some respect. The intended audience for this film would be teens I feel, maybe those who have an interest in visual effects as I myself being interested in this tend to watch short films often and enjoy seeing what other independent artists have created. Eventually my theme turned out to be more fantasy than sci-fi. This is because this kind of event is impossible to take place in the actual world, and has the effects which I wouldn't deem as futuristic but more magic and sorcery. My plan was to include force lightning and messing around with the energy potential in movies, creating a drama yet emotional film that somewhat links to what we have been going through in the past year. Regarding the pandemic, I feel I have been limited on the potential of what I can achieve. I feel that I have had to be careful of where I can record and who I could have with me. Furthermore, I have not been able to be in college as much as I would have hoped, although I have the resources at home, I feel I would have been a lot more focused at college as there are minimal distractions. Due to this things have taken longer than I would have hoped or expected. The recent IT outage has just been an extended effect on this, the long Friday in college has always been a good opportunity to get ahead of things however I haven’t had this opportunity for longer. 

 

RESEARCH

I conducted Primary, secondary and experimental research. In primary, I looked into things such as surveys, discovering what people would watch and what they want and also finding tips and tricks for how to produce this. The biggest research I did for primary was talking to my mates about the pandemic as I found my general storyline in one of my friends stories, a sister relationship during the pandemic. In secondary I looked into films and books that built on my ideas and influences, these were giving me more visual ideas mainly and more about what to aim towards and how to execute. Through this I had pretty much my whole idea evolved. Experimental research was just messing around with effects that I thought I would need practice on before going to actually execute my effects, or just cinematic logistics that I needed to figure out. I feel my research has been the biggest development of my project, I found the more research I did the better my project linked together. In the beginning I had many random ideas, especially after doing the primary research but the secondary side tied my whole idea together. Experimental was a massive help in making sure I already knew how to do things. I feel to improve research I would do my experimental things as I feel I struggled massively, just with the effects I hadn’t practiced before doing it on the actual shot. I feel a lot of the effects including the stones in the arm may have been better and had some texturing in the arm. Furthermore, I think this would have sped up the production process a lot as I found when I was working independently, I worked a lot quicker.

 

PRODUCTION

With regards to visuals, the hardest part of production was failing to understand some of the problems that came with new techniques I had learnt. For example when learning Mocha, I had an issue with exporting tracking data which meant I spent a lot of time looking up for this one issue. It was the time consuming issues that caused problems for me. However I feel the independent study was the part to go best. I was able to layer and edit without worry about the next steps in the process. For example the final sequence is my most proud part here, and this is the part which I worked almost completely independently. With regards to audio the hardest part was finding the right audio and getting the volume good. I spent most of my time visioning what I wanted however being unable to find this therefore having to adapt. Some parts almost felt fake and I feel this was due to the volume therefore I had to go back and edit this as best as possible. The best part of audio for me was adding in the music track as this gave a different dimension I’ve never experimented with before. I feel with filming I got lots of different shots but was un happening with the beginning as the auto-focus on my phone meant I had several focus issues. The feedback I got back from peers suggested to add a music track for one and also that the energy ball seemed a little off in one shot with regards to scale. I do agree with this feedback as the audio now sounds a lot better and was easier to finish and now pointing out the scale of the energy ball I can see the problem. I added a music track as an improvement which worked really well. I think I would also change the energy ball if I had time as after looking back there's also some lighting I’m not too happy with.

 

FINISHED PRODUCT 

My final project doesn't perfectly match with the film I outlined on my pitch however I think my website clearly shows the progression and thought process to which my ideas developed through research and experimentation. I think the appeal to my film here is the story. It creates this unknown force and unknown thing about the world around us that has had an effect on humans. This raises many questions, why? How? who? . I feel things like this are appealing to that audience as the story can be picked back up and continued after people have made their own theories. I feel for the situation we had and were in, I managed my time as well as I could have. I had most problems with actually sitting and getting things done as I tend to struggle to keep focus on one thing for a while. I can get distracted quite easily and being at home this was made a lot harder. However I had a big ambition as  I was able to complete this despite the workload. I do feel I should have allowed myself more time for audio as this is something I struggle with and had to rush at the end as I spent too much time on the visuals which I tend to like more than the audio. I should have improved this by giving myself a stricter time on each effect as I spent a lot of time going back through effects, whilst this is good to make the effects look as good as they can be I need to consider all the time I need to mess around and perfect audio which I was unable to do as I had little time and needed it done.

 

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Throughout the project I have improved many skills. The biggest one for me was using the research to develop my ideas. In the past I have felt research can seem pointless when you have an idea, however in this project I did a lot of research that made this film what it is. I especially found this in secondary research, after I had done one piece and thought of new ideas, I wanted to find more and more which lead to a big feed of development. I feel in my research you can really see the development of my ideas and what I felt I needed to look into to get to the best idea for my film. The biggest programme improvement for me has to be After Effects. I went into this project with the aim of doing effects I don’t know how to do and feel like I have exceeded this. I have new knowledge of things in After Effects I already am using in most effects. The biggest of these being the Mocha tracking system and expressions which I already used a lot on other effects I had done in my FMP. I faced many challenges with regards to editing and post production however the biggest challenge I faced was when filming and having to think on the spot. I tend to like to have things planned however having adapt to when we get to places was quite challenging however after a few problems face dI was quickly making confident decisions. The skill I want to develop further is cinematography. As much as I was quite happy with the cinematography, I feel like there is a lot that is unexplored. And now that I have the basic knowledge of reflectors, lighting and moving camera shots I feel like I can dive deeper into this element. Doing this FMP has helped me practically and mentally for a career and future education in this industry. Not only was my After Effects knowledge and knowledge of softwares and filming getting more extensive everyday but it has taught me a lot about deadlines and unexpected problems. As per usual I was very ambitious here and coming across unexpected issues pushed me back a lot which is why I may feel behind now. This project has taught me about real-time time-management, something I didn’t think too much about before which I will consider when thinking about how professional I want a project to turn out.

 

 Overall, I am pleasantly surprised with the outcome of this project. There was a point I had felt I had aimed too high however I was able to get it done. I am mostly satisfied with the effects towards the end and the satisfaction of working independently. This gives me hope for future projects where I can combine all the skills I’ve learnt to create something that is completely self driven with minimal tutorials. I am also very happy with the storyline I was able to come up with, it feels relevant to the time and feels like it could extend to a bigger concept. If I were to do this project again, I would spend more time filming. Despite spending quite a bit of time recording for this project, I would have liked to be more in depth with each shot as on set everything felt very rushed. I should have got lots of shots of the characters at night and addressed the focus issues however I was in a  rush and therefore there are bad focus issues towards the beginning of the film which sets a bad tone for the rest of the film. I would also spend more time looking into Mocha and figuring out if there is a way to get the texture of the stone onto the arm because with no texture it did feel quite bland and less fantasy-like. In conclusion, I am most happy with the final scene but also with what I have learnt from doing this FMP.