Evaluation

The original idea of experimenting with ‘dreams’ was from a lesson where our group decided to suggest random ideas and concepts to see how we could develop them.  If an idea didn’t take-off, then we would move on to the next suggestion.  I came up with the idea of a dream and Perpe suggested possibly experimenting with a dream becoming a nightmare.  I immediately envisioned the look of our film to become similar to that of ‘Ink’ by Jamin Winans.  Winans has created a few short films and two feature length films.  ‘Ink’ is a feature length and uses editing techniques to portray dreams.  It too shows the golden glow of a good dream as well as dark greens, blacks and blues to represent a nightmare.  The effect used at the beginning of the film to show a good dream, is similar to the look we achieved with our dream sequence.

Our short film included a small cast of three which conforms to the conventions of short film as they don’t usually need a large cast.  Also, the use of a simple cast contrasts with the complexities of the story.  The use of handheld camera shots accompanied by static shots gives the film a realistic and gritty feeling.  In addition, in order to make the most of the short length of the film, we overlapped many shots so that we can be seen to be telling two stories at once – the dream and real-life.

Our film was aimed at teenagers and we tried to appeal to them by casting actors in their teens.  Also, by using bold and vivid colours we thought this would keep our target audience’s attention as they can have a tendency to be easily distracted.

The lack of speech and random shots can leave the audience unsure of the exact story.  This is purposely done to represent the complexities of the human mind and to give the audience their chance to interpret the film their own way.

In Jamin Winans’ films and shorts, he uses non-diegetic music to create emotion in his audience and, as our film didn’t include any dialogue, non-diegetic music was extremely important for helping the story to come across to the viewers.  We included few diegetic sounds but, where we did, they were often accompanied by non-diegetic music.  However, the use of the tap dripping at the end, against silence and escorting the dark images, slows the film down by building anticipation before the reveal of the ending.

I believe we did well to overcome our problems during filming, especially on our first day of filming when our film camera stopped working.  It showed that we could work well under pressure when Perpe and I came up with the solution to film the scene using photos and I think it worked just as well as if we’d used the proper film camera.

As I acted in the film, I tried to give as much creative input to the shots used as I could.  Also, any shots that I was not appearing in, I would either film or try to involve myself in some other way, such as directing.  Because the dream concept of our film was my idea, I had a strong idea of what the film should look like.  However, acting in the film made it difficult to achieve the final product I had imagined, because those filming the scenes that I was in had their own version of the scene in mind and, when it came to editing, we had to combine our visions.

At times, editing proved difficult, but we managed to achieve the look we wanted in the end.  Some effects we spent more lessons on than we maybe should have but, once we’d conquered them, it made other effects easier to work out how to achieve.  We spent a few lessons figuring out how to make it appear as if we were looking from the female protagonist – Raine’s – point of view, as she was blinking.  And, once we figured out how to use cross fades to achieve this, we were able to improve the look of the cross fades in the rest of our film.  Also, when we had established how to adjust the colour and add effective vignettes to the dream sequence, it improved the intensity of the pictures at the end by knowing how to achieve the ideal look.

During the editing process, we all gave our input and I was never afraid to edit a section to show my group how I had envisioned it.  If we disagreed, we always tried to compromise so that we were all satisfied with the final product.

When our MACs were stolen, it meant that we lost our flow of editing and, when we returned to finish our short film, we found that we took a while to familiarise ourselves with the film.  Also, we had to remind ourselves of how to use Final Cut Pro and the entire look we wanted to achieve for our short film.

In conclusion, I believe that our final short film successfully appealed to its target audience as well as achieved the ideal look of the dream sequences.  However, if we hadn’t have had the issue with the film camera or had the MACs stolen, our film could have been more successful as we could have achieved the film that we envisioned originally.