7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product

Audience Research

Below are Pie Charts I made from the audience research I took before making the film, unfortunately I lost the data and have only just found it all.

To collect the data I made 20 questionnaires for 20 people who were in the target audience of the film we made.

The above Pie Chart is incorrect, The top title should be, "Vast amounts of dialogue". We chose to use little to no dialogue as it was a complete walk over in the results.

Again, we went with the audiences vote here, a complete walkover. However, we were thinking about using black and white for some shots and not others but ultimately decided to keep the majority of the film in colour.

The above chart indicated that the audience wanted only 2 characters. We took this data as how many protagonists the audience would want in the film as we included 3 characters in our film, the third being the antagonist.

The above chart shows an almost dead-even result. However, we decided to against our audience on this one as night time filming is notoriously hard. Also, the location for our film had huge views which would not be visible at night. 

Filming Photos

A few snaps of locations and actors.

Previous students work

We have analysed work produced by students from last years media class. We used the grading system for media studies to mark the videos appropriate to what level we thought they deserved. After grading the work we then discussed why we gave the work the grades we did in groups. From grading other students work and discussing with others I was able to learn some do's and do not do's when making our film.

Do's I found from other films were:
-Use time constructively
-Use good actors who will take the work seriously
-Use a vast range of camera angles
-Add sound effects and music (But not too much music)

Do not do's I found were
-Do not let music takeover the main focus of the film
-Do not swear (It makes the film look tacky)
-Keep continuity in mind
-Actually finish the project!

Editing

Just began editing. The film is going very well and working out exactly how I wanted it.

Graham has found some extremely powerful music to go along with the film to add effect. We are about to take our survey for the film and asking participants what they think about music in films will be a priority within that survey. Once we have found out how people would like sound edited in the film we will begin adding non-diegetic music and diegetic sounds (eg crows, wind and characters talking)

First part of filming... DONE!

Graham and I (As well as star of the film, "Josh Alport") have just completed our first bit of filming and it could not have gone better. The atmosphere at Audley End was eerily perfect and the weather conditions were perfect for filming. We have been unable to film earlier in the week due to rain. We are now in the process of cutting and editing our sequence. All we need to film now is a swing in a playground.

I am extremely pleased with Josh Alport's performance in the film as he was able to act out perfectly what we wanted him to do. I have had much trouble in the past with actors not taking the project seriously or not being able to act and I am glad with our choice of actors.

The filming took off with a shaky start as dog walkers and children kept running into shot. However, after 5 we no longer had this problem and were the only ones in Audley End; it was spookily quiet which added great effect to our film

Locations we scouted