Report on my Narrative Project

Hello all, this is my report that i have written on my narrative project. Its fairly long and boring, but if any of you are interested i hope you enjoy.........

This is my report on my narrative film project; I think it is important to establish what I have learned during this project, how ive learned it and how I can implement it into my future experiences to enhance future projects. Throughout my report I will be referring to my group members which were William Woodgate, Hannah Turner- Uaanja and Paul Wimpenny. One final point before I begin, as a general overview of the experience it should be known that I have no prior experience in any of the techniques used in this project so consequently I have learned a great deal but also probably made more mistakes than that of someone with experience, and it is with this perspective that I will be evaluating my narrative.

Starting with the phase of pre production, it is this phase that I feel I paid least attention to. In hindsight this was a costly error and was it not for plenty of hard work during the latter stage of post production it could have been a fatal. Despite my best efforts our group was slow to meet and decide on an idea, once we met we did very little research into the project. Apart from two films that myself and Hannah found (see Appendices 5a and 5b) that influenced us no real research was done until the last minute before our presentation. I have definitely learnt from this experience, at the time I thought everything would be fine and that we’d just decide as we went along with filming. However I see now that the more effort you put into pre production the more smoothly run production and post production will be. We would have had more time to concentrate on filming and editing rather than constantly having to re-jig our schedule around due to poor planning. A key example of this would be the problems with studio lighting during our filming, if we had researched into lighting and perhaps read the books from the reading list or even consulted a member of staff then we would have had a significantly better understanding of what we needed to do. With the use of correct 3 point lighting some of the shots we had to abandon due to excessive shadows would have been saved. Another aspect of preparation and planning is set we used for the bulk of our filming, I was very happy with the set we produced but it was designed and constructed very quickly, due to us not having a proper back up plan in place after our first option wasn’t possible to use. Again if we had researched this more and looked into the conditions of the studio we could have made our set even better and been fully prepared. I take responsibility for this as In our proposal we made it clear that I would be responsible for arranging locations for filming and I realize I let myself down on this occasion, due to naivety and inexperience but rest assured it wont happen again.
That’s not to say our research was all bad, I must give credit to Hannah who showed initiative by posting this on the group forum “I will contact the tram company for nottingham this morning to see if its gonna be alright to film on it”(please see Appendix 1), it was quite a drawn out process and has made me realize that things like this need to be handled as soon as possible as if they are left too late potentially your shoot could be in jeopardy and time and money would be wasted. So I cannot say I have learnt many research skills in this project but I can say that I have learned that it is a very important stage and one that extreme care and attention must be paid to if you are to achieve the best possible end product that you can.

Now let’s move on to the process of teamwork, this was a major factor during this project and the group dynamic had a direct result on all aspects of our work. I have learned a massive amount from this process, some good things some bad things, both will be invaluable experiences for me in the future. As mentioned before our group was slow to meet and took a while to get going, also two of the original line up have not attended this year so straight away we were down to 4 people. The approach we chose to go for was to involve everyone in everything, all decisions were made as a group and by and large carried out as a group, and at the time I believed this to be the fairest and best way to do things. In retrospect I would do things very differently. I have learned that having too many people involved in one process can lead to confusion and can slow down productivity a great deal. For example the editing process, Paul and Will carried out the lion’s share of this whilst Hannah and I sat behind them giving our opinions on everything that was being done and constantly suggesting changes, this lead to frustration from Paul and Will at times as it was difficult for them to get on with the work. Of course it was important for Myself and Hannah to have input into this process as we both had our ideas for how the film should turn out but I believe this would be better implemented by a system of having meetings were edited footage is shown to the group then having detailed feedback that the editors can go away and work with again until a final cut is produced and agreed upon. The reason I feel that this would be so effective is that myself and Hannah did make some notes after seeing one of the first edits and posted them on the group forum (please see Appendix 2) “the sex bit needs to be cut out looks to messy and when she dies the reaction shot needs to be reversed for a better effect” was an observation made by Hannah which proved helpful for Paul to understand what he needed to do, this scene was taken out as suggested and it greatly aided the film. This would have saved a lot of time and still every group member would have felt involved. Communication is a vital issue for any team if they are to be successful then communication must be good. To help us with this we had the use of the online forum, this proved particularly useful as we were able to check on notes from meetings and were able to arrange times to meet and lay out future plans and schedules. For example “We need the office scenes storyboarded by Thursday as that’s when we are filming them.So we need to get together by Tuesday really to get a decent shot at storyboarding together for Thurs.” (Please see Appendice 3) This was helpful for the other group members to view and think about before we met next, it was a helpful organizational tool and one that I would definitely try and make use of in the future. Another aspect of communication we could have used was our online journals, as a group we chose to concentrate on the forum and other more convenient forms of communication. The thing I found the blog useful for was just as a medium to express my thoughts, not for anyone but myself. When talking about the upcoming editing process” I aim to learn a great deal from my group colleagues who have more experience in this than me.”(see Appendice 4) simply by writing down what I felt and how I wanted things to go from here was a useful tool and one that I think enabled me to gain a clearer understanding of how the project was going.

I have learned a vast range of technical skills during this project by taking the teaching given to me in my lectures and seminars and using them to produce the narrative, I feel this is the best way to learn, to actually put the teaching to practical use as if it were the real world. I had never operated a DV camera before attending this course and now I am confident in using one. I have learned how to set the white balance, and to change the settings of the iris to improve the lighting of the shot without changing the actual studio lighting. When it came to the actual filming with us having very limited experience of these conditions we were unsure as the best way to plan our shooting schedule, again some research would have been extremely helpful. Myself and Will took it upon ourselves to compose a list of shots we needed to tell our story (see Appendice 6) and it was helpful to us. However I think in future emphasis must be placed firmly on getting the shots required to tell the story, the story must be in thought at all times and what the audience is thinking. I think we forgot slightly and everyone was just trying to film the ‘coolest’ and best looking shots they could. As a result of that process though I have learned a lot about placement and positioning of the camera when filming and the composition of shots, I believe this is backed up by looking at some of the shots I personally filmed for the narrative and the effectiveness of them. However I do realize that it is only my first real attempt and I have a long way to go before I can consider myself a proficient cameraman. I was able to learn a great deal about video editing by observing Paul and Will using premiere. I had a go at editing a few shots and in particular am proud of the scene where our character ‘Post It’ (affectionately known to the crew as Nige) first lays eyes on his love interest and a short burst of music plays in tandem with the snap of the camera focusing on the object. This scene gained a positive reaction from the audience when we held a test screening so I believe it to be effective and was proud of it seeing as it was my first real go at editing. I now have a fairly good idea of how to use the Adobe Premiere interface and while there is a great more detail to learn I am confident in the basic techniques. A skill that would have been helpful to have known of during the filming would be that of studio lighting, as I mentioned earlier in my report we did not know what we were doing with regards to the lighting and as a consequence had to abandon some potentially good footage. A combination of seminars and independent research has since improved my knowledge of lighting and that allied with the experience of relative failure in this area during filming means I will definitely be prepared should I need to film in a studio and light it in the future.

Looking at the finished article, I have to say that the overall feeling is one of satisfaction and optimism. I’m confident that we produced the best film that our preparation allowed. In the end we managed to get all the shots we wanted and editing was generally a successful process. The music we used really works well with the visuals as was always ours intention. I feel the emotions that the audience will feel when viewing this will be the same as the ones we intended them to. Before we completed the absolute final cut of the film we asked some of Paul’s housemates to view the film and asked their opinions. They laughed when we wanted them to, were sad when we wanted them to be and smiled when we wanted them to. This brought me great satisfaction and was a brilliant feeling to know you’ve affected an audience in that way. However that’s not to say there are many things with the film that we could improve. The script we had for the story was far too ambitious and complicated and suited that of a much longer film than 2 minutes. But we didn’t realize this until we had gone too far to change it, part of the learning curve but still disappointing nonetheless. A point was raised after our proposal presentation that we were not challenging ourselves by saying we weren’t going to attempt to animate our characters. I stand by our reasoning for not doing this but at the same time understand the criticism. Without question the film would have been more impressive if it were to include animation however at this moment in time I feel that the challenge would have been one far too great for myself and my group mates also agreed with this notion. However it is something I kept in mind and will definitely be careful to consider in future the balance between challenging myself and being realistically aware of what I’m capable of. In reflection on the rhythm and pacing of the film I would take out the scene were a post it is killed early on and the camera pans to our main post it attempting to convey feelings of relief and fear. I feel this scene does not come across the way we intended and is slightly out of place with the rest of the film. By cutting that scene out I would extend the tram sequence to include some of the point of view footage that we shot on the tram while it was moving. Doing this would enhance this already effective sequence and would really intensify the feeling of panic and speed that the post it is feeling. Also if we were to go back to the beginning and make this film again I like to explore the possibility of giving our post it a voice as I believe this would really enhance his character and make the audience relate to him a lot more. I think some of the home office shots could be cleaned up a lot, removing objects that are in the background that shouldn’t be, again this comes down to planning and preparation and attention to detail that I feel was slightly lacking at times in our project. But I would like to make it clear that when you consider the inexperience of our whole group I believe we have produced a solid effort. We have achieved our main objective of getting our audience to feel the emotions of the post it and become attached to him, and hopefully this will only be strengthened when shown shortly at the cinema exhibition when it is shown to its largest audience yet. Throughout this project it has become progressively clearer to me that audience is one the most important aspects of multimedia. Not only relating to our film but in every aspect of media I have come across thus far the focus has been on what the audience will feel when watching or interacting with your work. If the audience does not feel the way you want to or does not understand the story you are telling then your efforts have been in vain. I feel at times we were so concerned with what we thought of our work and how we wanted it to look that we lost sight of the fact that we were telling a story to an audience. An audience who do not have prior knowledge of our story, we have a very short time to tell them this story and in future I would very much keep this in the forefront of my mind when making a film, which leads me nicely on to my next point, learning outcomes.

In the brief given to us we were given a list of learning outcomes that we were expected to achieve; I feel ive succeeded in all of those areas. Firstly, my group mates and I successfully produced a presentation; it did not include sound but did include some nice visual elements, and was praised for being coherent and well presented. This was a useful learning experience as I will need to present many more things in this way as I progress through the course. I can confidently say I have shown an understanding of the basics aesthetics of elements of a multimedia object, in this case a film. It is visually pleasing and well structured, we have used a variety of different camera angles to create the perspective of everything being big and the post it being low down. This process has taught me however that quite often the more the simple the layout of the shot is the more effective it can be. I have clearly demonstrated the process of how we worked as a team at several points during this report. One thing that has left an impression one me is how powerful the use of audio and visual is, just looking at our un-edited footage was slightly disappointing and flat however as soon as we edited in the sound effects and music the images were transformed. This observation will stay in my mind and I will certainly look to use this technique in the future, by using sound to direct the emotions of our story we eliminated the potential tricky problem of dialogue and acting. The music impacts instantly as they are recognizable songs and our audience should all have a prior knowledge of them and associate an emotion with them, instantly making them feel how we want them to feel. As ive said before we worked very well together as a team and got along splendidly. Greater delegation should perhaps have been used in certain areas but we certainly cannot complain about how we worked together and we all helped each other along the way and have learned a lot from each other during this project. I have been involved in every single step of the production of this multimedia project. I have taken part in planning, filming, set design, research, presenting, visual editing, audio editing and I was also responsible for exporting the finished product into its final format of DVD. Each one of these has been a new experience for me and each one has been very rewarding. I will be able to use all of these experiences in the future as guide points and as a platform to improve my work.

Having now looked at all aspects of the film, I am of the opinion that this should primarily be viewed in terms of what ive learned rather than what ive produced. I am happy with the quality of the final piece but if I were to start the module again now using all the skills I now have I would be able to make it to a far superior standard. Overall this project has given me an excellent grounding in the basics of narrative story telling and film making; it has also inspired me to challenge myself and to explore the possibilities of making my own short films outside of the academic system. Above all the things I will be taking away from this are a solid foundation of technical skills, a clear understanding of narrative and just how difficult it can be to balance telling a story and being technically proficient whilst working to deadlines. After all the key is in the module’s title, Narratives, the story was priority and unfortunately I only started to realize that towards the end of the project but nevertheless I’m happy with our story and I’m happy that the audience will understand it, if not then I guess you can say ive failed. Success or failure, that’s not for me to decide, whatever the outcome maybe I have had great fun on this project and ive learned a tremendous amount and I now move on to the next challenge in a far stronger position than when I started.

Appendices

Appendice 1

http://webboard.lsz.ntu.ac.uk/wb/default.aspaction=9&boardid=482&read=6791&fid=1635

Appendice 2

http://webboard.lsz.ntu.ac.uk/wb/default.asp?action=9&boardid=482&read=6974&fid=1635

Appendice 3

http://webboard.lsz.ntu.ac.uk/wb/default.asp?action=9&boardid=482&read=6672&fid=1635

Appendice 4

http://walkerjournal.blogspot.com/2006/11/narratives-both-interactive-and.html

Appendice 5a

The Life and Death of a Pumpkin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuCJyth0Ufo

Appendice 5b


Blur – “Coffee and TV”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYJOF8drAkw

Appendice 6

Production Notes