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Evaluation

FMP

2

I knew that Year 2 FMP's were bigger than the first, but I didn't expect how big this one was going to get. I took on roles I didn't anticipate, and learnt skills I wouldn't have thought to rehearse. The past 4 months have challenged both my strengths and weaknesses to the extreme teaching me new skills, from producing, to cinematography, to leadership. I've even seen development in my editing skills, colouring skills, and even directing/writing skills, which I've always considered to see a strength of mine. I used last year's FMP to give myself new skills in research and reflective thinking; I wanted to use this year's FMP as a chance to excel those skills further. I wanted to push myself to do more than I've ever done before. Coming away from a successful, self-produced short film over the summer, I was determined to use this opportunity as the next step in my film making career. One of the hardest challenges I faced, was how independent this project needed to be. Where every other student had feedback deadlines and a plan written out for them, I had to start the project early and almost work it from inside out. This problem came from the original idea I had: to create a short film with a client company, CADS, where I work with a professional team of people to plan, produce and create a short film that I not only use for my FMP, but also use to take to film festivals and other industry avenues. I did this through continuous reflection on my blog, and critically evaluating every mistake and success.

The Recovery Strategy

In my last FMP, I had to start my project from scratch 3 weeks into the starting date, this put so much pressure on my work that I fell behind and had to cram a lot of work into the final weeks of the project. It caused me so much stress that I knew for this year's project, I had to be far from the possibility of it happening again. Learning from this mistake, and knowing that the idea for this production was big - I chose to start early. As soon as I returned to college in the new year, I brought the idea to my teachers. They were understandably cautious of the idea - me taking this FMP to a client company - but they allowed me to continue working as long as consistent progress was made. However, this highlighted an early issue, I didn't know what the following months would look like, I hadn't even approached CADS before with this idea - because that's all it was. This is why I started early, it meant that I could work on this big idea before the FMP even begins, that way, if I encountered a similar restart problem to last year's, then I wouldn't have missed any FMP time.

CADS's Interest

My first steps of this project was to get CADS interested. Still in early January, I had few ideas of what the film could be but I hadn't explored anything at this point. I arranged to have a meeting with the Chair of the company, Michael Young, where I'd talk to him about the possibility of them offering there resources and members to help put on a film production. My first concern before approaching the company, was that they are primarily a theater organisation; in the past, they had only made one film and that as over the pandemic (being unable to produce stage plays at the time). So I would be proposing a new realm of media, which they weren't familiar with. However, I chose to see this as a positive. My teacher's main concern, was that this company would take control of the creative lead, stripping away the required director role (for me to be graded, I needed a firm creative influence over the project). But as CADS were unfamiliar with the processes of film making, I felt that I would instinctively act as a guide to the company, as they stepped into film for the first time. My teacher's understood this reasoning and allowed me to continue because of it.

I approached Michael Young with the idea of making a short film with CADS, and he said it sounded interesting and wanted to see a pitch for the project on February 13th at their AGM (three weeks into the FMP). Whilst I was happy that they were interested, I felt that that date was too far into the project to wait for a 'Yes' or a 'No'. I had to make a choice here: do I continue with the hopes that CADS will like the idea and we get started right away, or do I abandon the idea to go for a simple, more achievable FMP short film. But as I had already arranged the meeting with CADS, I went ahead with planning for the idea and was prepared to have to have to go down another route three weeks into the FMP. This choice could've backfired and I was lucky that it didn't, I should've created a backup idea sooner in case Michael turned around and denied the proposal. This would've been good to do in hindsight as I technically had no idea what I was getting into at the time. It was a nice idea to work with a production team, but at the time, I didn't know what that would look like on my end, so I didn't know what to prepare for.

Tommy's Interest

I knew that this project was going to be too big to work by myself. With so many variables I'd have to think of, and the potential of managing an entire production team, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to stay on top of that and simultaneously keep my FMP at a very high standard. With this concern, I approached Tommy, a classmate, and good friend, if he'd be interested in partnering up for this project where he would focus on cinematography and I would focus on directing. Tommy liked the idea of working at a more professional standard, so agreed that he would use this idea for his FMP as well. In the past, I haven't worked well with others in a team before, in fact, when I reflected on my Year 2 skill development, 'group work' was ranked the lowest. So I saw this as opportunity to develop that skill - as this industry is also naturally reliant on team work as well. Over the summer, I did a short film project with Tommy, where he was the cinematographer; we worked closely in that project and it was completed successfully, so I was confident we'd work well together again. Upon reflecting, I also recall Tommy helping me with my FMP last year. As I'd fallen behind, he worked the camera and increased the production value. Overall, despite my struggle with team work in the past, I believed Tommy couldn't have been a better choice as a teammate; this is why I thought it was wise to approach him as a partner.

The Mascot Idea

I'd had ideas of what the film could be for a while at this point. Arguably the most important part of my chosen role, the writer/director, is to have a good story to tell on film with inspired themes and clever narrative choices. With Tommy recently joining; and the possibility of being able to work with professional actors, production team and a potential budget, some of the limitations I had before this project had been lifted. Thinking back to last year's FMP; despite a variety of ideas, I could only do one, due to being limited by my access to actors. Now that this wasn't a problem, I felt more free, as a director, to be more ambitious with my ideas. My first idea, was one that I had before Christmas without the FMP in mind; my cousin's true story of how he became the Welsh mascot for the rugby world cup despite the odds being against him. On it's own, the story was sweet and strangely cinematic; but what intrigued me the most, was how my uncle recounted the story. That's when the idea came to me: an already inspired story, but told from the eyes of a father. It naturally had good themes that I was interested in exploring as a director: Fatherhood, Depression, and Faith. These themes were striking to me and got me thinking about an intense sports/drama following a rugby family who overcame the odds; similar to films such as The Blind Side or Invictus. As a rugby fan myself, I felt that I hadn't seen enough rugby films in the spotlight of the industry today, so was curious to develop the idea and see where it went.

Two months later, I revisited the idea. With existing limitations potentially gone, I looked into how it could be done and quickly drafted a running screenplay to understand the scope. One of my strengths is screenwriting, so this came naturally to me, and without the pressure of time (thanks to my early start), I got through it with relative ease. I decided not to follow a narrative theory directly (removing the need to have prior theoretical research) and instead stuck to writing a story that closely followed the events recounted by my Aunt, Uncle and cousin. I thought that writing the screenplay before any other research wouldn't be a problem, as I already had the necessary research completed. However, I found that when I later revised the script with my research, some of the scenes felt conflicted (in the wrong way), and I had to rework some of the script. Whilst I did have to write the script early for the benefit of CADS, it stalled the development of the script in later production stages (more on that later) all because I settled on the initial draft thinking it was complete, even though it was far from it. Going forward, I now know that a rough draft can be put together quickly, but it should be done with the correct research done before hand, otherwise the script will be unfocused due to the lack of preliminary research. I also shouldn't settle on a first draft even if I think it's already at a good enough standard. If I had more time before this project was due, I would've been able to research and write a proper draft of the script before giving it to CADS. But in future, I also shouldn't put off redrafting the script multiple times, especially after I've completed more research.

The Early Proposal

In previous projects I've struggled with writing proposals, I'm always told that they are a crucial part of the FMP and should be at a very high standard. I felt for this project, that this proposal was even more necessary as it was actually going to be a part of my pitch to an authentic. It was at this moment where I realized that everything we'd been practicing in our previous projects and FMP, was crucial to this project's success not only for the FMP but also for the company. This suddenly divided my project into two types: my college project, and CADS's project. I couldn't let one interfere with the other; I had to stick to the guidelines of the media curriculum, and also work collaboratively with my client company. With this realization, I started working on two different proposals; one that CADS needed to see, and one that FMP required. What felt like double the work load, drained a lot from me, and I was only one week into the project. I found that a lot of the smaller tasks were pushing back all of the bigger ones; the college had deadlines for feedback and CADS had meetings (the equivalent), and couldn't keep up with both of them at the same time. I was having sleepless nights working on the proposal, which in turn, led to it losing quality causing me to rewrite it the following week. To summarize, I'd gotten into an unhealthy work regime and I had to find a fix before it continued to disrupt the actual production. To combat the problem, I decided to focus on one side of the project at a time, rather than dealing with them at the same time. I worked on the CADS proposal on days I went into college (4 days of the week), and then the college proposal on the days I wasn't in college (3 days of the week). This worked really well in splitting my time equally, and I managed to get both proposals finished (ready for the hand in) within two weeks. In future, I'll apply this new strategy to my work mentality; if multiple tasks are quickly piling up, I now know to divide the work across the week, allowing me to think about each task individually, rather than, all at the same time. I discovered this fix when writing in reflective log, another useful part of this project (more on it later).

Crew's Interest

A factor which surprisingly worked against this project, came up when I was writing both proposals. With Michael's acceptance of the idea, he asked me to write something for the CADS weekly newsletter, plugging the potentiality of a filming project. I sent him a draft describing all of the roles (both cast and crew) we'd need for the film and to contact me if anyone was interested. Another part of this project's early development that caused me stress, was the amount of technical roles which needed filling. We needed: (in order of priority) Producer, Audio Producer, Lighting and Costume/Props. I preferably wanted multiple people in each role to create small teams thereby dividing the workload. The newsletter also included a list of the acting roles, explaining every part and possible involvement in good detail. Unfortunately, barely anybody responded to the newsletter's plug. I had two responses, in total, one inquiring about filming dates and a small acting part (an extra effectively) and the other asking to schedule a meeting with her and her husband to talk about technical roles they might be able to do. This massively concerned me, with only 3 potential people putting themselves up for help, this project didn't look like it was happening based off of this newsletter alone.

Getting people interested was clearly not as easy as one small mention in a newsletter, I needed to advertise this project myself: I designed a poster to post on Facebook to advertise casting calls, I talked to people I knew from CADS and asked if they could be interested. From this direct form of invitation, I found that people were more likely to want to get involved if I offered them a role, rather than waiting for them to pick something they want to do. Thanks to these methods, I managed to put together a small team of people who could fill the technical roles, bar one: Producing. The main role that takes up the most time underneath directing. Thanks to the proposal crisis, I could see that the producer role wouldn't be as simple as the FMP would usually have it be, like everything else in this project, it'd double the work. I said to Tommy and Michael that the producer role would need to be filled by someone else, as neither of us would be able to do it considering all the other work we'd be doing. But nobody was stepping up. This is where I got really worried about this project's future, somebody needed to step up to this role or else the project wouldn't take off the ground. I continued to approach people and ask them if they wanted to produce, I even started offering that I would take on half of their work load as well to see if that would generate more interest. I didn't find any success here, but kept at it. Meanwhile, I reflected on what I'd learnt from the experience: How to approach people. Thanks to this part of the process, I had developed a more effective strategy in getting people interested in the project. Whilst it wasn't working for the producer role, I decided to apply this new strategy to the casting process, which worked as well as I'd hoped.

Cast's Interest

I asked actors, from CADS, who I knew had TV experience, if they'd be interested in a certain acting role for the film. I sent them a copy of the script and waited for responses. I asked 7 adult actors and 4 of them responded positively, which was one short of the number of parts I needed filling. From this, I had potential actors for my Uncle Nick, Aunty Emma, Dr. Woodlet and rugby Coach, but nobody for the Teacher and more importantly: Noah (the main part [child actor]). Only one female actress was interested, so she naturally got the part of Emma. The others, all had the chance to play each role, which led me to need an audition process. I scheduled a group audition with all of the interested actors. This part of the project helped me realize a key factor which I hadn't considered before now: I need a Child Actor.

I had no idea where to start. In the past, CADS have had child actors perform in their larger productions, but they had no other form of acting experience. Considering this, it led me to looking into local agencies. When I was younger I attended a film school, Limitless Academy, where they train younger people in Television and Film Production. I thought this school would be a good place to start looking for child actors, and as I had gone there previously, I also had a connection. I messaged the teacher of the school if I could audition some of their younger actors in their agency. He responded, and expressed concerns on how young the part was (eight years old); he said he'd look into organizing something and told me to wait for another response. Unfortunately, he never got back to me. The lack of response from my only lead, stressed me out - even more than I was while looking for a child actor. I didn't know where to look. I considered aging the character, Noah, up by 5 years, to broaden the range of actors we could select from, but I was worried that that would stray too far away from the source material. Despite this concern, I kept it in my mind as it may have been my only option.

From this experience, I came to regret the decision of having an eight year old be the star of the film. When writing the script before starting the FMP, I hadn't begun to consider that the film would require a talented, eight year old, child actor - who aren't that easy to come by. It caused me a lot of frustration and nearly threw this project into turmoil. I should've considered this factor as I approached CADS in the opening weeks of the FMP; as it was just as a decisive factor as CADS's involvement was. I should've thought: 'Without CADS, there is no project. And with a child actor, there is no project.' If I had found the child actor before even choosing this idea for the FMP, there would've been more certainty in my decision making, and more time to think about other elements of the project e.g. auditioning adult actors, or my research.

Early Research

My favourite part of last year's FMP was the research phase, and hearing that the second FMP needed to be even bigger and more in depth, I was quiet excited to return this phase again. In the early stages of my idea hunting, I laid out all the skills I had previously developed and focused on during my time at college; I identified from this task, that I wanted to develop my colour editing skills, as I was quite new to it. So I took the summer project, I made before year 2, and tasked myself with learning the appropriate techniques to then be able to complete a full colour grade on the short film. I hoped I'd able to develop my skills enough so that I felt confident in my ability to apply them to a larger production. I studied Pat Kay's guide to visual patterns and applied his colour harmony theory to Adobe Colour, a website that finds harmonies in colour. This guide was very clear in knowing what to look for in colour harmony and how it linked to genre. For example, as my summer project was a drama, I knew to use contrasting green/blue hues against low level red hues, this utilized the drama genre convention of dark tone. When applying this to my summer film, it worked really well. The only problem I encountered, was how orange the film looked on it's own, so I couldn't change the warm of the scene too much. To get around this, I brought the intensity of the red's down and then cooled the temperature of the frame; this got the 'dark, gloomier' look I was going for and was happy to move on from this research segment. I did notice, during the colouring research, that my eyes were losing their focus on the computer screen as I was editing; it impaired my creative judgement so much that I needed to take break for few hours. I decided to keep this in mind going ahead, so that I wouldn't end up worsening my product by spending too many hours staring at it at once. This was a good start for me, however, because my first piece of research felt necessary and was documented well. I felt that this research, not only, gave me the confidence to apply newer and improved colouring skills, but also gave me the confidence in my ability to research at a very high standard, preparing my the future researching segments.

Once I had decided on my idea, I laid out different research avenues I could take in this project. The main ones that sprung to my mind were: adapting true stories to screen, how to film a rugby game, and directing emotion through camera placement and editing choices. I started with Adaptation, as I felt this was the most important for this project. I'd never done an adaptation before so it was completely new to me. I also felt it was the most unique part of this project, one of its USP's was that it was legitimately a true story that no one's ever seen before. With this in mind, I wanted to be as faithful to the source material as I could get. I started by interviewing my Aunt and Uncle directly, and got a fresh account of story from their perspective. I chose not to interview Noah for this project - as I wanted the story to be told from his dad's perspective, I didn't want both accounts to cross over each other. Upon reflection, I think this was an unwise decision, my reasoning may have been acceptable at the time but it actually led to the story being inaccurate. As I didn't have a direct account from Noah, I had to inadvertently fabricate Noah's responses to scenes and events. And as a director, I ended up being misguided because I didn't have that recount from Noah's perspective. If I had recorded Noah's account, the film would've been much more accurate to the events of the story, even if I wasn't telling it from his perspective. In future projects, when I'm making another adaptation, even if the film isn't trying to be as accurate as possible, getting the most research from the story your retelling is the best way to ensure fidelity and accuracy.

I then moved onto studying The Story Department's masterclass on Adaptation; an in depth analysis on adapting any form of existing media (or life event) to the screen. I found this part of my research to be quite hard to digest, it was complex to try and align it's theories with the script I'd already partly written in my mind, having already been familiar with the story. But I soon discovered that this research segment was crucial to the development of my story. It gave four critical rules to follow when adapting an existing story to the screen. The main one, which surprised me the most, was how the filmmaker is recreating the story - not retelling it. Film is stylized, dramatized for the benefit of the audience, and you should treat the project as story inspired by real events, not the real events. This theory helped me visualize the story in a much more creative way; I felt free to make my own choices in the development of the story, without feeling obligated to stick strictly to source material. I learnt from this: Film is like Life - Life is not like Film. To apply this research, I looked into an actual adaptation of somebody's life, but done in two different ways. Princess Diana of Wales's life has been recreated for film many times in many different people's stories, as it is a critical part of history. I compared the 2013 film adaptation, of the name Diana, and then Netflix's adaptation from The Crown. The first was executed and received poorly whilst the other was recreated with overwhelming success. Through this analysis I found that the applied theory from the masterclass was technically true, but the film (the failure) still shouldn't have dramatized. I learnt here that when adapting Noah's story to screen, applying narrative theories and formulas aren't the best way to staying faithful to the original source material. This is where I realized how tricky marrying characters' actual story's with character arc's was going to be. The thank to the Adaptation Masterclass, I felt prepared for it and was able to move on quite quickly.

CADS's Approval and Deciding My Role

At this point of the project, I'd already made significant progress on both proposals and my analytical research. February 13th came around, and thanks to my prepared, secondary proposal, CADS accepted the project and agreed to cover insurance costs (public liability and any safeguarding concerns with child actors). This was a massive relief at this time. However, I asked at the meeting if anyone would be interested in taking on the producer role, as this still needed doing. Nobody accepted the offer, and it was decided then that I would have to produce the project myself. Tommy wasn't confident enough to share the roll after an incident with early location scouting (more later), which left me to take on the roll in its entirety. This became a problem quickly, whilst insurance and budgeting wasn't something I needed to worry about, I still needed to put together a team of people and schedule times, but not on an FMP scale - on a short film production scale. I was frustrated that nobody wanted to help with this role as that meant I would have to deal with it as well as directing the short film and staying on top of my FMP. It all felt like too much and I wasn't sure if I could do it.

And as I predicted, work piled up quickly. I was scheduling the auditions as well as finding locations and completing my research at the same time. It caused me to leave tasks for the FMP unfinished while I focused on the production. This led to the work being crammed into the final weeks of the project. Overall, I didn't prepare to produce and I shouldn't have expected to find a producer so easily. If I had known I would be taking on this role as well, I wouldn't have gone ahead with such a big idea. It came at such a big risk: me being unable to finish the project in time. In future, I should ensure I understand the project's limits and requirements before jumping ahead with it. During my ideas brainstorm in the first week, I should've considered where this project could've gone wrong on a management level, not just a creative level. If I did this, I probably would've gone with a simpler idea that's more achievable for the FMP.

Auditioning

I'd never directed an audition before, so I didn't know what to expect or how to prepare. I was extremely anxious for the audition. I knew that there were several people attending, all who are highly experienced actors, which led me to feel nervous for leading a meeting and directing them. I couldn't let the nerves get to me though, I had to cast the film through this meeting which meant I had to be focused and clear minded. To prepare, I put together a small itinerary for the evening, and briefly prepared a short opening speech to welcome everyone and introduce the audition. I would've recorded the meeting, however, I hadn't gotten permission from people attending so all I managed to record was my notes. We only had two hours, and there wasn't a lot of script to go off of (as it was quite short), I found it difficult trying to make notes as well as watching people audition - it's a skill which wish I had developed before this project. I should anticipated not being able to record the audition for me to review later so should've prepared a note taking system. For example: a ready-made graph splitting different auditions into categories allowing me to see later where the actors the stood on the graph visually. Because of my sporadic note taking, I wasted valuable audition time. In future, I'll be more prepared with documentation for meetings such as this.

One of the actors at the audition, Jim, I'd never met before. He gave a good effort considering that he hadn't done any acting work for six years. I wasn't sure what to do with him during the audition, until he told me about his eight year old son (whom I'll call Noah for his protection). Jim explained how Noah was interested acting and attends a weekly acting club. From this news, I cast Jim as Nick directly and asked if his son would be interested in this project. I thought it would be the ideal pairing for Nick and Noah to be played by a father and son actor. Thankfully, Jim's son accepted a few days after the audition and I was incredibly excited - the project finally felt achievable. 

 

Previously to this audition, I had been communicating with the cast and crew via email. This wasn't very efficient, it took people days to respond to important messages which needed answering ASAP. As the producer, I felt it was my role to ensure everybody was receiving clear information as they needed it. So, as the audition came to a close, I got everybody's phone numbers and put us on a group chat so that we could easily stay in communication with each other. This form communication worked exactly as I'd hoped, everybody responded to messages as soon as they got them. Considering everybody involved volunteered to help this project, this easier form of communication helped everyone get settled into the project without putting too much pressure on them to know what's happening.

Action Research

I then needed to conduct some practical research. Similar to last year, my project was lacking practical representation at this stage, so I decided to focus the rest of my research on practical parts of the film. What I felt this film was held together by, was the Rugby theme. I wanted it to move like a rugby game; intense, quick, and pushing you to your limits. I felt the best way to achieve this feeling was to begin the film in the middle of an intense rugby game. I envisioned a 1 minute sequence following a rugby match where the camera was in the middle of the action. To get this right, Tommy and I needed to test every part of this sequence before filming it practically. I approached the Royston Rugby Club if they'd be willing to get involved with this sequence; they expressed interest and confirmed that they wanted arrange something. With this confirmation, Tommy and I started prepping for the rugby sequence.

We started by creating a shot lost for the sequence and contacting the college rugby team if they'd be willing to let us practice with them by getting some test footage to see what works. It was difficult to create the shot list as Tommy wasn't very familiar with the rules of rugby, and as were filming rugby, with Tommy on the camera, this sort of knowledge would prove very useful for both the film's benefit and his safety. As the Six Nations was on at the time of this research, I asked Tommy to watch every game so that he could get more familiar with the rules and know what to expect while on the pitch. Tommy took on this advice and he explained to me how it was insightful decision which helped him predict roughly where the players, or ball, could fly to next.

We also decided to shoot handheld because: the shakier the footage, the more energetic the scene feels. We also planned for lots of shots to allow us many options to cut between while in the edit, again, to make the scene feel more kinetic. These decisions came from me studying a rugby film, Invictus 2009, and the Land Rover commercial, sponsoring the rugby world cup in 2019.

Whilst we were filming with the college team, we found that Tommy and the camera were in an incredibly unsafe position while they were running drills. As the team weren't thinking of the camera's positioning, they knocked over Tommy a few times, potentially injuring the camera as well. Thanks to this test, we knew that Tommy could only get close to the players if the scenario is under complete control and being directed by me. We proved this fact to be true when we were filming the last 20 minutes - staging scenes, tackles, rucks etc. That way, we were in control of everyone's safety and could stop at any time. This prepared us for filming with the actual team, we knew to keep a distance from the players when they were training, and then, once in control, we could capture anything else we'd need. This also raised questions on how we'd capture audio for this scene. Since Tommy was so easily knocked around, I realized it probably wasn't he wisest idea to have cables and boom poles running behind us, somebody is bound to get hurt. I decided, from this test, that audio would needed to be recorded as an ambient sound on the day; and then we equip a shotgun mic to the camera to capture the closer scenes.

After filming with the college rugby team, and bringing everything together in the edit, I was very happy with the results. The final sequence carried the energy I was hoping for but wasn't quite the right length. I chose not to worry about this as we only had 40 minutes with the college team, whereas with the Royston club, we'd have an entire training session. I did find, at times, the footage was too shaky and made it hard to understand what was going on at times. At first, I thought this was a good thing, but after comparing it to the Land Rover advert, I realized it wasn't as watchable. This was because the camera was too unstable, and there was no other way around stabilizing the camera without having the appropriate equipment. So this led us to look into using the Ronin RS3 gimbal from the college technical cupboard. After testing with the gimbal, we saw that the footage was too smooth and looked too robotic; meaning we'd still be missing out on the vision I had in mind for the sequence. We decided to stick with the handheld look and Tommy agreed to practicing keeping as steady as possible with his motion, but I was worried this wouldn't have worked. I then suggested we use a combination of both the gimbal and handheld, then we could find a balance of different footage types hopefully capturing that energy. But before we could even test it, the college stopped us from the gimbal as they didn't want it to be caught in the middle of a rugby match - as they were worried it would brake. This was really frustrating, I felt like this sequence wasn't going to hold up because we couldn't apply the changes we wanted.

 

We went back to the edit to see if we could stabilize some of the footage in Premier Pro, but it only warped the film, making it worse. I didn't want to abandon my original idea so took to Facebook and asked if anyone would lending us their gimbal for this sort of sequence. To my surprise, somebody responded saying that we could have the gimbal for the whole month of April (the planned shooting month) as he didn't need it. This was a big relief for Tommy and myself, however, this meant that we couldn't do any testing with the gimbal before filming - there was nothing we could do to work around this scheduling conflict. But this was still a big victory for us. We could've explored other ways to stabilize the camera; even though we found a gimbal, there were probably other camera rigs that could pull off a similar effect. For example, we could've used a shoulder mount; whilst it's limited in vertical movement, it's a much more stable solution compared to the Z-Grip. We could've had a lot more options if we explored more; that way, we would've been able to test the sequence again before filming began. In future, I shouldn't me closed minded to my technical options. Upon reflection, I can now think of some many other rigs that we could've used e.g. steadicam, fly-cam, shoulder mount etc., For future projects, when rehearsing or testing a sequence, I'll make sure to explore every different camera technique/rig/possibility before moving on and settling for weaker engagement.

Research Evaluation

Overall, my research was very effective. Surprisingly, I enjoyed completing the practical research more than analytical. I found that my research positively kept leading me onto new topics that I wanted to explore to further develop my project. For example: The rugby sequence led me to the gimbal tests, I then wanted try a new shot type and explored the snorricam, a new shot type which I thought would look good for the rugby sequence and capturing the intensity of Nick on a personal level. I felt that all my research areas were significant to the development of my project, in helping me analyse my narrative and characters as well as simultaneously developing my visual story telling skills. I felt that the snorricam shot was a good example of me combining my storytelling and visual directing skills.  Tommy and I collaborated well on our research; we didn't get in each other's way and we both were independent in our findings, despite collaborating on the same project. Each of our roles felt defined in this way. I admittedly had a difficult time adjusting to the changes I had to make to my story. If the concept was purely original going into this project (without any previous expectations) this wouldn't have been an issue for me, I would've instinctively conducted the appropriate research without feeling tainted by work I'd done from previous months. In future, I think it would be best to start researching the project; scripting, drafting etc., in sequence. That way, I don't get caught up trying to rewrite my story when applying the correct theories later down the production line.

Location Scouting

As I had taken on the Producer role, it was now my job to find the appropriate locations for the film. Compared to last year, producing wasn't one of my roles, so I didn't apply as much focus or dedication to getting the best out of it as I could've. I wanted to get the best locations for this film so that production felt as professional as I was marketing it to my team. I believed the best locations were the actual locations listed in the script. That meant: Finding a Hospital for the Hospital, Primary School for the Primary School, Coach's Office for the... etc. This was my initial mentality, so began looking into potential locations - and then actually scouting them. I'm glad I had this mentality to begin with, it stuck me into a good confidence, which carried me through the beginning stages without tripping up over my mistakes.

School Scouting

Tommy offered to help me initially when I started the process. My decided method was: settle on the hardest location first, look for the easier ones later. That put the primary school and the hospital at the top of my list. Like I did with Limitless earlier in the project, I remembered that I was more likely to get a response from people I knew and talked to directly. I tasked Tommy with contacting his old school, and myself with contacting my old primary school. Unfortunately, Tommy wasn't prepared for producing, as he chose not to take on the role. When trying to get in contact with Melbourn Village College (Tommy's old school), he didn't offer the appropriate information to the admin offices, this caused the school to be more standoff-ish with us, and harder to negotiate with. I feel I was responsible for this situation, I didn't guide Tommy through this process and because of that we lost good terms with a more than viable location. I shouldn't have put my responsibility on Tommy, expecting him to do the right thing. After all, it was my position to contact Melbourn, not Tommy's. In future, I won't pass on to others what should be my responsibility, especially after they've politely declined the role beforehand. Luckily, we managed to salvage one filming day on the Melbourne site, however, we only had access to public areas and couldn't enter the school grounds.

Tannery Drift, my old primary school, had a different outcome. Initially contacting the admin offices didn't generate a response, so I went in personally. This worked, thanks to the head teacher remembering who I was and approaching them in person, rather than over email. We scheduled a filming a week, where we could book any evening which suited my team and I. These two circumstances have taught me different producing skills that role requires. Whilst it's okay to to pass responsibility on to others, never leave them misguided, make sure they know exactly what you need them to do. I could've briefed Tommy on the producer role before tasking him, or given him an email template, structuring what to say and what to avoid saying. If we'd gone further with Melbourne, I could've gone onto the site with Tommy to help him in the negotiating process.

Hospital Scouting

Joe and Emma Daintrey, were signed onto this project as audio engineers. They have 40 years of experience in the technical industry, Emma having studied Stage Management at university, and Joe jumping between jobs as an SFX and LFX supervisor for 30 years. I was grateful to have them on board, managing sound together.

When approaching possible hospital locations, I didn't know where to begin. However, Emma mentioned how she works as a community transport driver for Royston Physiotherapy Hospital (the exact type of hospital that was in the script). She explained how she wanted to get me in contact with them so that we might be able to apply. She chased them for weeks and eventually got a response that allowed for me to fill in an NHS Property Services Filming/Photography application. I signed it and sent it off. Four week later, (5 days before filming began) we got approval for our application allowing us to film on their site for an entire, without interruptions (as they'd closed it down for that day). I was beyond excited to film in an actual hospital and was grateful that I stuck to my mentality. If I hadn't pushed for the hospital location as early as I did, we wouldn't have had the location in time for filming. I'm glad I prioritized this location, understanding that it would be the hardest one to find.

We also used an office, separated from central hospital, on a different day to act as the Coach's Office. So thanks to hospital, we managed to find two primary locations.

Scouting Reflecting

I didn't expect this process to take up so much of my time in the pre-production stages. I'm glad I prepared myself by establishing a mindset that would keep me moving confidently during this process. I felt that this part of the production phase definitely tested and developed my producing skills more than any other part of this project did. I had to reinvigorate my admining skills for emails, applications, and other messages I didn't anticipate for. I've definitely grown in confidence when sending professional emails now; I no longer need to proof read them 3 times before sending them out. This process sincerely tested my patience; the amount of time it took for the hospital application to be approved really set my nerves off. I needed to keep calm so I could handle other parts of the project at the same time. What helped with my patience, was dealing with a mistake early on in the process. I managed to recover the situation slightly but it still came at a loss. I now know what it takes to manage the producer role while working in a team; if others want to help around me, I'll ensure that they are guided and know what they're doing.

Just as I'd planned, the smaller locations fit into the schedule seamlessly; we decided to use the Daintrey's house, and the local rugby pitch for the scenes that needed them. Overall, I'm happy with how location scouting went, I felt like I experienced what it may actually be like in the film industry, which got me excited for the next stages of production.

Equipment

My original plan, was to hire out equipment from Limitless Academy, as they have the top-of-line gear, and I had the connection to them. But as that relationship was clearly established in the early stages of the project, I knew we couldn't them. CADS are a theater organisation, known for producing stage plays/musical/pantomimes etc. with nothing to do with film; which meant that they didn't have the largest access to the filming equipment Tommy and I desired to use. We ruled out using the college equipment quite early on, as we believed the equipment wasn't at a good enough quality for a production such as this. I had a contact from the summer project Tommy and I did, where we borrowed an amazing film camera and selection lenses from a retired (maternity reasons) videographer. She allowed us to use this camera (SONY A6000) again, for free, for as long as we needed it, which was a massive help for us and our scheduling.

As I mentioned previously, the gimbal was lent to us by a photographer off of Facebook, who allowed us to use his rig for the month of April. This was a great blessing for this project, however, it restricted us from being able to test shots we wanted with the gimbal prior to filming, and also possible reshoots in the month of the May.

Finding sound equipment was quite simple, but getting it to work was a major problem. CADS own four directional RODE microphones, which was a perfect source for recording dialogue and general ambiance. We got our hands on two of them and a couple of XLR cables to plug into the recording box (which was lent to us by the retired videographer along with the camera.) So, in theory we had the equipment ready for sound. I decided to test the mics before filming as was told that one of the four mics may record 'static' and nothing else. So I tested each mic and found that all of them had this horrible static noise interfering with the recorded audio; you could barely make out what was being said. This worried me quite a lot, as all of the mics were seemingly acting up. I theorized, that if only one of the mics was supposedly broken, and if the 'static interference' was coming through each of them in a similar way, it probably didn't have anything to do with the mics; rather, something else. To test this, I replaced the XLR, which I was feeding into both mics, with a newer XLR cable that I owned. This was where I learnt that the XLR cable was interfering with the audio; it was quite old and must've had a faulty jack when connecting into the recorder box. Thankfully, I had a replacement and switched it before principle photography began.

I'm glad I did this test with the audio equipment, if I hadn't, the problem would've gone unfixed and we wouldn't have been able to adapt to the problem on the day as we probably wouldn't have brought a spare XLR. This experience proved to me the importance of testing all my equipment before principle photography. After this test, I then did the same for all my other equipment to ensure it was all in working condition. In future projects, I will facilitate these tests into my production schedule, that way, all the equipment would be proven to work before the first day of filming.

Previsualizing

When creating the shot list/storyboard with Tommy, I came at it with a different approach than I've used before. Typically, I would be quite direct with my shot choices, having an understanding of what I want before hand. In similar meetings I've had with Tommy in the past, we tended to work around my scope for the film. For this project however, I felt there were more pressing circumstances which required me to change my approach: as this was just as much Tommy's project as it was mine, I allowed Tommy to have more creative input, as his research may have influenced certain decisions he wanted to make for the film. I needed to compromise in quite a few areas of the project to allow for Tommy to make decisions himself. I understand that this isn't what generally happens in the film making industry, however, for the FMP, I felt Tommy needed more creative control over the shots so he had enough to show for his own project.

I did struggle to compromise in some situations. For example, in one of the final scenes of the film, Tommy wanted SC25 to be shot through a series of over-shoulder mid's - his reasoning: two characters having a conversation, and not enough space on the stairs to get much else. I didn't like the idea at all. The scene is the climax of the film so needed to feel powerful and personal to the characters. I actually wanted to film Nick from a single close-up, and then Noah from a low-angle, OSS mid - my reasoning: I wanted Nick to be eye-level with the camera, where Noah has the high ground from the stairs, creating an inequality in their relationship, then, once they get to the bottom of the stairs, they are at the same level, matching each other's eye-line. Tommy kept arguing how that would be really tricky to film as the stairs (the scenes setting) is such a confined space and the camera wouldn't have much room to make any errors. He also argued how the low angle would make Noah look intimidating; but I didn't think it would, as that trope is more of a stereotype for that type of angle. Eventually, I had to allow Tommy to take this idea as he was thinking spacial awareness and how difficult that would be for his role in this moment. I didn't want to complicate Tommy's role in the project, as it he had his FMP to do as well. If we had time, we could've filmed both Tommy's idea of the scene, and then mine. That way, we would've been able to use whichever one we preferred in the final edit. But I now know when to compromise for the sake of the team, and understand when other circumstances trump my needs. In this case, allowing Tommy to have the final say in this scene kept us from having further, more severe, disagreements later in the project. This experience actually managed to keep us in a positive collaboration throughout the remainder of the project.

Rehearsals

Filming was approaching quickly and I was excited in the wait. I recall how nervous I was last year before filming; I'd never directed actors before so I was understandably quite uneasy, but once I had a rehearsal with my actors, the nerves settled and I felt confident to film. I assumed the same stance for this project, despite my current excitement, I decided to solidify my confidence through through a series of rehearsals with all of my actors. But this time, I planned them to be more in depth, thorough, and to have as many of them as we can so that the actors felt prepared and that we all knew what to expect going into filming.

The rehearsals went well. However, this was where Jim's life started turning upside down. His wife (Noah's mum) was sent into hospital urgently as she became seriously unwell. Jim and Noah had postpone a lot of rehearsals because of this and we were limited to the number of rehearsals we could do. We only managed three all together, in which we talked through the script and the characters, breaking down each scene and story beat. For the limited rehearsals we had, we still did a good job at covering everything. The rehearsals helped me figure out how the actors took direction, except for Noah, who was understandably quite standoff-ish in the rehearsals - being unfamiliar with the process, who I am etc. So I was worried about my progress with Noah, but the other actors felt cooperative. I struggled with Patrick (Coach) the most, he didn't really add any thought to his lines, it really felt he was just reading words off a page. I realized in this moment, that Patrick (whom I'd seen be a good actor in the past on both stage and screen), was an actor that needed time to figure out the character, and once he gets it, he's terrific. But until that time, he was useless to the role. This worried me, still, because we only had time for one rehearsal with Patrick, which meant, the first filming day was the only day he had to get comfortable with role. 

Another concern I had from this rehearsal period, was that Jim's wife, Becca, was getting increasingly unwell. Jim said that he and Noah were committed to the roles that they accepted but they couldn't promise complete availability, which we had arranged before. There was nothing I could to work around this, other than be supportive for their family and help in any way that I could. For example, rather than holding the remaining rehearsals at my house, I offered to hold the rest of the rehearsals at Jim's house. He agreed to this idea and he said it helped him take care of his children while Becca was away in hospital. In the last rehearsal, I talked with Jim and Alison about what a filming day would look like, and they commented on how calming this made them feel about the whole experience before going into it. They liked that I was supporting them in the rehearsals rather than just focusing on running lines or blocking etc. I went with this approach because of what I learnt from last year's FMP; working with younger actors who suffered from mental health conditions, helped me understand how to approach actors calmly, and that it's a proven strategy. The rehearsals, despite some people's circumstances, were a success for the team. I believe I successfully welcomed the actors into the production, helping them feel ready before filming began.

Early Filming

Our first day was scheduled to take place on Therfield Heath on one of their rugby pitches. I'd been in communication with Jamie Green, the Royston rugby coach, who offered us the keys to their equipment cupboard. This acted as our props cupboard and gave us complete access to rugby balls, bottles, cones, bibs, merchandise, and everything else we;d need to make the rugby club more authentic for the film.

I was excited going into today, and considerably nervous. Today had been greatly anticipated by Tommy and myself and we felt prepared to face any issues that may have come up. And quite a few did. My main concern going into today was the wind. In the past, namely last year's FMP, the audio quality has been ruined by the existence of wind. We picked this day for an outside shoot because we knew the winds would be low, and for extra precaution, I bought a hefty dead cat, which was reviewed to be effective in medium to low wind scenarios. Unfortunately, I couldn't find out if these precautions where necessary as there was a major problem in the opening minutes of the shoot. The audio box wouldn't turn on. Joe and Emma where posted on sound this day and when trying to turn the Zoom corder box on, it worked but then froze and shut itself off. We tried changing the batteries, SD's, but nothing could get the box to turn on again. I was shaken by this, but chose not to panic. We needed a way to record audio somehow because I didn't want everybody to have shown up to then be sent away. As we were filming a scene set on a bench, the scene was stationed and not mobile at all. This gave me the idea to put my phone on the bench where the actors we performing, I then record what they were saying through my phone. Then in post I could either use it as a reference for over dubbing (I really didn't want to resort to that), or possibly have a good enough track to use for the final cut. I did a short test for this on the day and found that the wind was massively overpowering on the track, so put a mini shotgun mic windscreen over my phone and laid it down. This was slightly better than without it, but not great, however, it was my only source of audio recording so had to settle there. When I reflected on the day, I remember feeling upset that this wasn't discovered in the test. I specifically did a test a few days before recording to ensure the kit was working properly - everything was fine. Despite my tests, something still went wrong. If I'd done another test, I would've found that the audio equipment wasn't working. But how was I to know to do another test? Which is why I don't think the tests where the problem. Instead, I should've had a backup audio box. In fact, backing up all of my equipment is a certified way of making sure we won't miss anything. In future, I'll bring extra sets of equipment so if it fails despite tests, and if proven to have worked before, I won't be thrown or lose valuable filming days. Upon review of the footage/audio that day, it was unusable and I had to plan a reshoot for later.

This was quite discouraging that the first day barely had any usable footage. I thought I might as well have not done the day at all. this wasn't true, however, I did get some valuable shots of Noah on the rugby pitch which we didn't necessarily need audio for, since we could implement Foley design in post. But I still understandably felt discouraged by the lack of productivity on this day. We did 6 hours of filming and only had 3 minutes of usable footage to show for it.

I planned to reshape my thinking with the second filming day, which followed quickly after the first. We were at the Daintrey's house for this shoot. We chose to film all of the scenes set at this location in the evening, as we could control the daylight with our own artificial lighting set up. However, there was a downside to this decision, as we were filming on weekday evenings, the actors could only get to the location after they'd finished work and then returned home. Noah also had to be home by 8:00 rather than the preferred 9pm. This shortened our filming hours substantially while we were at this location. It meant that we needed to schedule many more evenings here throughout April.

Nevertheless, the second filming day at the Daintrey's house got started, but sadly it wasn't any more productive than the first day. Jim's wife, Becca, had just been discharged from hospital, after being there for two weeks. Jim reported how it hadn't been a good day for them, and it was looking like she needed to return to A and E that evening. Jim still came to the shoot with Noah but he wasn't in the right place. We did the shoot, but Jim was clearly not with it, he wasn't engaged with the performance at all and I wasn't happy with how he treated the scene (scene 25 [the climax of the film]). I couldn't take this out on him thought, Noah's performance was brilliant, and I managed to make a connection with him as a director. I figured out from this shoot that by telling Noah exactly what I needed from him visually, he would fill the emotional beats in himself. For example, if I wanted a beat when he was climbing the stairs, I'd tell him to get to the seventh step and tap his hand on the banister lightly 5 times, then continue to go up the stairs. From this, I got an emotional beat from Noah and nobody would even know while watching it on camera. I did this for the rest of the film and Noah, from then on, began to understand the importance of beats in a film.

When reviewing the footage from this day, I found that all of Jim's take were unusable, and I felt the need to reshoot the scene on a later date. I was reluctant to call another reshoot. As well as my understandable discouragement from this production complication. We'd only done two filming days and both of them needed to be reshot. I felt I hadn't made any progress by the end of the first week of filming, because I couldn't even edit any of the scenes either. I did leave a week for a reshoots (having learnt to do that from last year), but at the rate at which the days were piling up, I didn't think we'd have enough days to reshoot everything. I should've given more time for reshoots. If I'd given an extra week for reshoots, I wouldn't have been so discouraged so early on; I would've felt that I would have time to recover. Last year, I learnt that I should've prepared a week for reshoots. But this year was a different project all together. I needed a week, because it was only a 7 minute film; this film was planned to be 20 minutes long, so in theory, I needed 3 weeks of reshooting. In future, I'll assume for every one minute of film, is a day of reshooting. If I set this time in advance, I know that I won't miss anything as I have recovery time.

The third day of filming was at the Royston Hospital. I'd been hugely excited for this day before, because it was an authentic location, in which we had 10 hours to film there. But because of how the previous filming days went, I was concerned that we'd need to have footage that we'd need to reshoot - but the only difference behind this day, was that we couldn't go back. I felt a lot of extra pressure from this one, so made sure I was extra safe when going into today. We'd bought a new sound box for the shoot; an extra set of boom mics, Tommy brought his photography camera as a back up, I brought an extra SD set, and I asked the actors to bring every piece of wardrobe scripted in the film, just to ensure they wouldn't forget to bring anything. This extra preparation led to this day's success. I was happy with everything we managed to get, and happy with the way most of scenes looked. We dressed the doctor's office with our own props and redesigned an empty office space. We made sure to take pictures of the set before changing the room, that way, we had a reference to change everything back to normal. There was a personal problem that I had on that day however. When filming a scene in the doctor's office, we were setting up a full, two shot for Nick and Emma. When setting the camera, I wanted more distance between the actors and the camera; there was space to move a desk from behind the chairs and move them back thereby creating more space, but Tommy insisted that the shot was supposed to flat and boring because they were in a doctor's office. I argued that I don't want the shot to dull, and that it would be best to add more depth in the office space to still make for a dynamic shot. Other's agreed with Tommy, saying that the scene is supposed to look dull and dreary, so eventually caved and went with the the agreed upon set up. This was a huge mistake. When looking back over the shot in the scene, it's really off putting to see such an awkwardly framed shot. It isn't in any way interesting, nor expertly lit, framed. It looked really out-of-place in the scene and caused me to despise it in the edit. I found that my instinct may have been correct but possibly for the wrong reasons. Whilst it was wrong to make the shot purposefully bad, to be 'boring', but you shouldn't have to worsen the filmmaking professionalism to make a dull shot as such. I believe, in film, a dull shot still needs to look interesting, but it should trick you into thinking it's stereotypically 'dull'. Regardless of this issue, however, my directing, or lack there of, allowed for this shot to appear in the film and be as it is. We couldn't reshoot it, so we were stuck with it. If I had been more firm with my directing and reasoning, then we would've avoided this issue; having spoken with Tommy about this issue, he also has learnt from the situation. As a director, it's good to accept ideas and welcome suggestions from others, but I shouldn't green-light a creative change if I don't feel confident in it. In future, I'll be much more clear in what I'm after as the director, that way, everything will work coherently in the creative vision of the production. As the director, it's my responsibility to make sure the vision for the project is set out and followed, if some areas waver or don't hold up, it brings the project down.

First Edits

With the hospital shoot being an overall success, I decided to start editing everything from that shoot. Tommy and I agreed before production: since we had tasked ourselves with such a large film, we were going to edit during principle photography, we agreed that this would be the only way to keep up with all of our work for the FMP. As the hospital was the first real day of footage that we got, it enabled me to start an edit on the scenes. Thankfully, it went well, I managed to put together the majority of the scenes in two days. Technically, I did run into quite a few problems however. Firstly, I found that one of the shots from scene 7 was filmed the wrong way round. For the half, two shot, Emma was supposed to be on camera right and Noah camera left, but the camera was placed on the other side of the actors, showing Nick and Woodlet's conversation in the background. On the day, we thought this was okay. In fact, on the day, we had to change the storyboard slightly because I wasn't a fan of how we'd done it in the first draft. Whilst this decision was fine, it was a mistake to have left it down to the literal day of filming that scene. In actuality, we didn't change much in the scene, we decided to flip some of the shots around, so that it would reveal more of the characters in a less obvious way. We did accomplish this, but failed to completely consider the 180 degree rule when redrafting. Upon reflection, and looking back over the original draft of the shot list, we shouldn't have deterred from the 180 degree rule, which we had followed up to this point. Characters ended up jumping between themselves in the edit, and my teachers said it took them out of the scene. Whilst the changes we made were intentional, we didn't completely consider the effects it would have when implementing the 180 degree rule. In future, we should complete redrafts of the shot list before the actual day of the shoot, otherwise, go ahead with what you have originally planned, that way, you don't make an unseen mistake, which would've been found if planned in advance. Annoyingly, because we failed to do this, SC7 is one of the weaker scenes in the film, this frustrates me because of how pivotal it is for the film. For future projects, I'll revise the storyboard/shot list before filming begins so that it's at the standard I need it to be at, then will refuse to change it during filming - unless absolutely necessary - to avoid making the same mistakes here.

Secondly, in the same scene, the actors seemed to rush it when we were filming. This was mainly coached along by David (Doctor Woodlet), who is traditionally a stage actor and hadn't done any TV acting before. As this was new territory for him, he didn't quite understand the rhythm of acting on screen. Whilst, on the day of filming, I asked David to slow down and allow the scene to play out, he still struggled to avoid the instinct of filling the silence with movement or longer lines. I'm looking forward to showing him this scene, and helping him understand what he needs to do for the next time he takes part in a screen acting role. Personally, I think David is one of the best stage actors I've ever met, and with practice, I think he could be brilliant screen actor. As his director in this project, I'd like to help him learn to get closer to that ambition.

For the scene, however, I was still struggling to fit in emotional beats to let the lines sink in, and the important moments to have there time. Especially nearing the end of the scene, where Woodlet delivers the crushing line 'He'll never play rugby, Nick.' It's supposed slow, hard-hitting line that slows everything down. In the footage, practically every take, David barely leaves enough time for the beat, because of this, the scene felt rushed nearing the end, and the line didn't feel as impactful as I needed it to. And because David took his leave so quickly every time he finished the line, I struggled to find the right performance and delivery in one take. I came up with an idea to work around this, and duplicated the clip that included the short beat that David left, and then put it in reverse speed, doubling the length of the reaction in one seamless take - without needing any cuts. It was subtle enough to leave in and it made for a good finish in the scene.

Once Tommy and I had finished editing our own cuts of the scenes, we needed to share the footage between ourselves so that we could decide which one we liked best, and then use that cut in the final draft of the film. This was a good idea, as both of us technically had a secondary option fallback on, if one of us fell behind. To do this, however, we had some initial trouble. I suggested we shared a google drive, and then copied the footage off of the SD cards into the drive after the filming day. That way, we'd both have access to the footage at any one time, and then also submit edits to the drive that we can both view and use as well. Two problems came from this idea, however, which we didn't notice until we started the process. The google drive could only hold up to 15GB, and the footage on the SD's were quickly stacking up. Whilst we could've used this method, by constantly adding-downloading-replacing, but that would've forced us to take up much more time to facilitate that. But what caused us to stop using this method of video sharing, was when I tried uploading the hospital location footage from the SD card. The download froze my computer, and nearly wiped the footage from the SD. Luckily, I had already made an edit from the footage, and had backed up the footage to the cloud. Either way, this method of video sharing was clearly not optimal and we needed to find a new solution.

We decided to go for the less convenient: sharing the SD cards. Whenever we finished a filming day, I'd take the SD cards home and download the footage that evening - renaming and sorting everything as well. Then Tommy would come to collect them on another day and start his edits later than mine. This meant that we couldn't share what we'd made, or even edit the same scenes together, as we were constantly editing out of sync from each other. This wasn't too much of a problem, but it did slow Tommy down in some ways. While I had the footage for the first time, he'd be left with nothing and wouldn't be able to do much productive work. In future, we need to find a better method of video sharing than this, otherwise, we waste time and aren't as efficient. Maybe, after each day finishes, we copy the footage from the base SD onto a secondary one, that way we'd both go home with footage we could edit simultaneously. Then we could call each other while editing to keep us updated. In hindsight, this probably would've worked and I'm certain we'll implement this in our next project.

We returned to the heath, this time to get a different scene, and with a working audio recording box. But unfortunately, that didn't make too much difference. It was the windiest recorded day of the year, at 50kmh, also sitting at a peak of 5'C. The actors were cold, the crew were cold, nobody really wanted to be there, and the audio was barely being picked up. The windshield did a its best work, but even then, it wasn't designed to shield these types of winds. I was massively frustrated by the coincidence of the weather alignment with our filming schedule. There wasn't much I could do to change the dates, unfortunately, the actor's availability was very limited, so the days we booked were the days we'd have to get. Jim and Noah were slowly improving in their acting abilities but there dialogue really struggled on this day, it's really the only dialogue scene for Noah, and I could tell that he struggled. What probably didn't help, was that I wrote a newer draft of the script the week before filming. Whilst I didn't do it on the day of (after what I learnt from the hospital), this sudden change did throw Noah off slightly. He'd been rehearsing the scene with Jim at home, and even though the change wasn't too big for Jim, for an eight year old, it was like I'd written a completely new scene. I didn't consider Noah's lack of experience in acting when writing this newer draft. Yes, the scene was improved, but Noah struggled to deliver on it. He kept forgetting the newer lines and losing the blocking of the scene during a take. I take full responsibility for this problem, Noah is a very young actor, who isn't familiar with these sorts of changes and I shouldn't have put that pressure on him. I decided to against revisiting the script for the rest of production so to not confuse Noah or the rest of the actors again.

When I got to the editing suite with this scene the next day, I was so discouraged by the quality of the audio that I got no work done on that day. I put off the scene to be done at on a later day and focused on the presentation part of my FMP.

The Presentation

I was quite relieved to be taking a break from the filming process. I admittedly felt quite strange returning to college for the first time in weeks, and actually then getting on with FMP work. It was at this point where I felt like the two projects had been firmly divided but still worked in tandem; I was happy with that relationship and found it to be quite peaceful when returning to written work and calming my mind. Tommy and I decided to complete the presentation sooner than our peers, because of how much time the production was taking us. We didn't have an entire week available in the schedule to dedicate to making the presentation, so we agreed to get it done in only two days.

 

The presentation was quite unclear from the outset of this project, my supervisor, Rob, didn't even understand it completely once it had changed half way through the project. I didn't have any guidance from last year's FMP or any other project as it was a unique unit to this project, and I also didn't have any examples from other students to show what exactly they were supposed to look like. As this was technically a new unit for our FMP, and for our teachers, Tommy and I had to instinctively adapt to rough guidelines. Tommy and I decided to work together closely for the presentation as we had an identical target audience.

In the past, I have struggled with the target audience focus in the FMP; I think most students do. But as I said about the proposal, because of our circumstances, this part of the project felt strangely important to get accurate as it applies to our actual production, not just for the sake of our FMP. I doubled down on the amount of target audience research compared to last year, to ensure I didn't fall back on the unit. The presentation actually helped me achieve this by forcing me to explore multiple avenues of promotion and advertisement, and what specific audiences are likely to see or view. I rather enjoyed the presentation and discovering a new part of the FMP. It felt refreshing and made those few days quite relaxing. I de-stressed from this experience, having been quite agitated from filming. Tommy cooperate with written work very well, however, so this was difficult for him; he said that he was grateful that we did this research together. I gained an extra level of confidence here, helping Tommy feel inspired and helping him in his FMP, it prepared me for the next phase of filming while we finished the presentation.

The Next Production Stages

We were rolling through production, everything was moving so quickly, the month of April was disappearing! After I'd finished the presentation, we got to film at the coach's office.

We managed to eventually find a location for the coach's office. I mentioned earlier that we were allowed to return to the hospital and film in a separate part of the site for this scene. But as we were new to the location, not having any chance to scout it beforehand, we didn't know what to expect from the layout. When we got there, we managed to pull together a dressed set filled with the appropriate props, however, the door to the room opened incorrectly to the way we'd planned. Part of the shot list. for this scene, included a shot that tracked Nick out of the room from the coach's desk. However, the camera needed to go in front of him. We couldn't get this shot the way we wanted to because the door opened outwardly, which meant Nick couldn't go through the door before the camera. We were prepared to scrap the shot, but instead, we improvised and tried a practical effect. We tracked Nick out of the room as planned, but then held on the shot as Tommy and I left the room to reset the shot outside of the door. Then I called action again to run the rest of the shot. In post, we cut the two parts of the shot together and it worked surprisingly well, but I decided to cut it because I felt it was too distracting to have a bizarre visual effect play out at the end of the intense scene. I felt it was too jarring. If we had scouted the location beforehand, we would've been able to prepare for this sort issue and reworked the shot list before the shoot. While our improvisation was a good idea, that actually worked, it didn't fit the style of the film so we left it out - it was the best we could've done from the circumstance. I should really have all of my locations planned and settled before filming begins, that way, I can prepare in advance and figure out solutions to problems, before they arrive on set.

We then filmed at Tannery Drift Primary School, for the school interior. We had plenty of time with the actors, and the school were very welcoming to us. The headteacher asked to see me before we filmed so that she could sign the documents to say that we wouldn't film or photograph any private information about the students or school branding. I did prepare for this in advance, but left the documents in Emma's care (I did this because she'd had experience with this logistical planning before, and she agreed to help here), however, she was stuck in Cambridge that evening so had to miss the shoot, thereby missing the documents as well. The headteacher nearly closed the shoot down and sent us away, but as she knew who I was (being an ex-pupil), she trusted me to go ahead with the shoot after we signed a make-shift document on post-it note, acting as a mini disclaimer. I agreed to come back at a later date to sign the official documents and she was happy with this agreement. After the day was over, I remember feeling like I'd got away with something I shouldn't have done. If the headteacher wasn't lenient, woe would've been sent away, in fact, that would be the exact case for any professional production. Which means, that this was the opposite of professionalism, I should've brought all of the appropriate logistical documentation with me as I was the producer of the film. It was my responsibility. If I was thinking this issue before the shoot, I would've printed off another copy before we got there. Clearly, the legal part of my producer role wasn't in my mind at all. I now know how important this part of the role is and will consider it every time I take on this role. It's arguably just important as finding the locations: respecting them, and their conditions. Otherwise, we would've been kicked out. I may not have the luxury to sign a post-it note and continue with the shoot in future; so I will always prepare the appropriate supplements to the location's/actor's/client's conditions, so that the shoot can safely continue without any external concerns.

We then had another filming evening at the Daintrey's house, it went much better than the last time we were there. At this point in the project, I felt like filming days were now finally making progress; I felt like each time we came away from another filming day, we came away with lots to work with. I wanted to fit in reshoots for this evening but I couldn't fit that in considering the amount we were still yet to get. And with Noah only having two hours every evening, we were very limited. Alison (actress playing Emma), was very busy throughout April, so her availability was scarce. We could only have her for a few days of the month, which was very low considering how many times her character appeared in the film. This complicated the construction of the filming schedule, it was mainly structured around what she could do. This was the only evening she could be a part of, so we had to use this time while we could. This meant, that we didn't have time for reshoots while Alison was with us, we needed to prioritize her shots and scenes more than anything else. We did run into a slight issue on this evening, when with Jim and Alison. In SC4, Nick and Emma are watching a rugby game on their TV with the lights completely off. The camera had trouble capturing the shot because of how dark it was in the room; because of this, there red blinking light appearing in the footage, which we couldn't get rid of. We couldn't simply turn the lights on, because visually in the film, the lights needed to be off for the scene to work. We figured out, to increase the light levels going into the lens, that we needed to install a secondary LED to act as the TV's luminosity. Thanks to my colour theory research, I knew which ISO setting to increase on the camera to adjust for the luminosity change. With the extra light, Jim and Alison's faces were more appropriately lit, and more light was coming through the lens - the red light disappeared and we could continue filming. My annoyance from this issue, was that it had appeared earlier in the project. The first time we were at the Daintrey's, this red flashing light appeared for the first time, and we couldn't figure out what the issue was. It interfered with some of the footage from that shoot, and there wasn't much we could do to save it, other than reduce the RED's intensity in post. That was weeks before this shoot. So I was frustrated by the fact that I didn't test, and figure out a solution to the problem before this shoot. Because I didn't find a fix to this problem when it arose, I had to deal with it on another filming day, which wasted time, on a day with Alison. If I had found this solution earlier, outside of filming, we wouldn't have wasted valuable time on this day. Going forward, if there's ever a problem that comes up during filming, I'll go away and find a fix asap, that way, I'll be ready for the next shoot without needing to worry about encountering the same problem twice.

On the next filming day, we were at Melbourn Village College capturing the external school scene. This was the last day Alison was available so we couldn't afford to miss anything. This day frustrated me the most out of all of the production phase, because so many things went wrong. Melbourn's sport site (the site we were using) went into liquidation the morning of our shoot, which meant there was no site team to welcome us or let us into the premise where we planned to shoot. This meant, that I needed to rework the shot list so that the blocking of the scene would still make sense, I only had a few minutes to do this because at actors needed to leave at 4:30pm (we started at 2:00). Even more infuriatingly, I had to rework the shot list without Tommy because he was late to the shoot. He thought we started at 2:30 so didn't get there for another half an hour. This caused us to wait for Tommy to arrive before we started shooting, delaying us by half an hour. Then, as soon as Tommy arrived, we started filming, but as soon as the first take started rolling, from the across the street, a gardener took his equipment and started making a loud racket. This interfered with the audio so we waited for him to finish. We ended up waiting nearly 15 minutes until Emma put her equipment down and ran to talk the gardener; she explained our situation and he decided to take a half hour break. This gave us a small window to film the dialogue shots. The gardener didn't actually return to his post, which gave us enough time to finish the day. But by this point, I was already so upset with how today went, I wasn't fully committed to my director/producer (effectively, I'd given up on the day). Upon reflection, this was poor behavior from my end, because I could've easily worked around these problems if I was more proactive-:-I reworked the shot list when we got there, which gave us enough to start filming right away. I shouldn't have waited for Tommy to arrive because that wasted half an hour, I was more than capable of using the camera myself since we had all of the equipment with us to do so; I should've picked up the camera and started without Tommy to not waste time. I shouldn't have waited for the gardener to finish, instead, I should've immediately went to talk to the gardener to explain our situation, rather than wait 15 minutes to then eventually do that anyway (or wait for Emma do that). Then, I absolutely shouldn't have been discouraged or put down by these incidents, I should've stayed positive because in the end, we had all the time we needed.

Proactive mindset is what I needed this day. I've learnt to be infinitely more proactive in my practical thinking, and on-set behavior. If I was more proactive, I wouldn't have been discouraged so easily, and I would've been so much more professional as I have expected myself to be in this project. In future, I will be actively trying to solve problems; not waiting for them to fix themselves, or others to do it for me. It was on this day where my outlook on directing and producing changed, and I learnt something truly valuable about these roles. I applied this new mindset to the rest of my work on this project and it proved very effective.

The Rugby Club

Then came the day that we'd been anticipating the longest. After much postponing, and tricky communication between Jamie Green and the rest of the club, we settled on a training session with the Royston Rugby Club. As Tommy and I didn't have much time to prepare, we had to use the storyboard/shooting script that we used for the college rugby team, in hopes that it would be at a good enough standard for the actual shoot. We considered my notes from the practice sequence and went from there. Now that I know that some filming days can spring up on me, especially when working with an external party, I will prepare for the filming day to come up at any time. As soon as a potential contender for a location, or team of people say that they're available, I should be ready to go for it to maximize their availability; that way, I don't waste any time.

Once my team had got to the pitch, we got set up and waited for the rugby team to begin their session. The sun was just starting to set so we got some shots with the sun in frame, to lose any long shadows that we might cast (this also benefited is in capturing the nice sunset while the sequenced played out). With the constantly lowering sun, however, we did have to keep changing the exposure settings. this wasn't a problem for us as the team were very stop and start. One issue we did have when filming the training session, was the gimbal's sudden inability to stabilize the footage. The gimbal, especially when still, couldn't stop jittering and track the subject; it was more noticeable on the longer shots. We soon discovered that it was because of the shotgun mic that we'd attached to the camera. We realized that we hadn't stabilized the camera with the shotgun mic on it, and we assumed that the settings wouldn't need to be changed. We then needed to make the decision to remove the shot mic or keep it on and settle for the jitter. Personally, I thought it'd be more beneficial to keep the shotgun mic on the camera; it was our only directional source of audio (we had Joe and Emma recording ambiance a few yards behind us), and the footage is arguably better if it's shaky, rather than smooth. I decided to leave it on and let the jitteriness persist. I'm glad I made this decision, whilst the footage does look a little jarring at times, it mainly adds to the kinetic feel of a rugby game that I wanted from the beginning. From this decision, we also kept our directional source of audio, which massively helped the scene come to life when in post.

We eventually moved onto the final part of the evening, where we could stage some shots. Weirdly, the Royston team were harder to direct than the college team, I didn't anticipate this. I thought, since they were more experienced, they'd understand and be able to do everything exactly as I directed. This was not the case. I had to explain everything at least twice and in two different ways, this took up more time than the college team did. The difference between the two sessions, I think, is that for the college team, their coaches where with us when we were filming, and if I asked them to do something, the coaches would ensure that that happened. For the RRC, Jamie disappeared before the staged shoot and I had to manage the whole team myself. We did get everything we wanted out of them; the test definitely helped, I don't know what we would've done without it. But I do find it interesting how different the two experiences were.

Tests will determine the quality of the final product, but the two certainly won't be identical - is my biggest takeaway from this experience. I'm glad that we prepared for today, but we still had to adapt to some unforeseen circumstances. I shouldn't be satisfied with the test, thinking that the actual production will go the same way, otherwise, I'd be thrown when I realize that that's not the case. For future projects, I will continue to test before initiating the actual product, but I will also expect changes and should prepare for those as well. Overall, I'm really happy with today, and I can't wait to properly sort through the footage and create a good sequence. We didn't manage to film everything with our actors as we lost the light from the evening, so we decided to come back another evening to pick those shots up (would only take ten minutes so I'm not worried). I'm glad that we managed to finally get in communication with Jamie, even if it was slightly last minute from his end. We were prepared, we got what we needed, and I was super happy coming away from this shoot, with it technically being the last official day of principle photography.

Editing The Rugby Sequence

brought my preferred clips into Premier Pro and used the practice sequence as a template to get started. I'd hoped we could use some of the shots from the test sequence, that I really liked, but because of the different times of day, they didn't match at all. I wanted the sequence to start at its peak intensity, then slowly work it's way down to the hospital corridor. That way, the tension is still simmering, and we immediately kick off with excitement. Whilst this did work, once I'd exported it, I noticed something that was quite jarring: the light levels were constantly changing. Even though the shots worked together, you could tell they weren't lining up because of the change in the time of day. This took me out of the scene. As we'd filmed the staged shots in the last few minutes of the evening, the sun had pretty much gone away - compared to the opening, when the sun was out and setting brightly. Because of this, I had to change the entire edit so that it felt like it was happening in sequence. This was even harder now. I had to find clips that worked together, kept the right pacing, and all under strict light levels. I spent an extra day trying to figure this out, eventually through, I got an edit which achieved this, but I lost an entire day to get there.

If I had considered this before editing then I would've known that this would've been quite a jarring decision. But I didn't lay anything out beforehand. If I had made a plan of the scene before sitting down to edit (rather than just going off of my instinct), I wouldn't have wasted a day to re-draft the sequence. In future, I'd like to write a plan of what I need from a scene before I start editing it. I'd like to lay out what I want from the scene, what will work and what won't before I even try. I understand that some of these problems will still go unseen in this phase, but at least I have an idea of what to avoid and what to try before I even start. I've noticed how I treat editing like directing; when I'm doing both roles on the same movie (this case), then I should make sure they are separated and not approached in the same way. My directing is based off of what feels right for me and what I'm seeing in my mind. Editing should be based off of a plan that I can lay out beforehand, that way I can avoid mistakes.

Reshoots

The reshoot week was practically full to the brim. Either evenings, or mornings, or even full days were booked for us to go back if we needed to. However, as we were editing the film throughout production, we could see that some scenes were passable enough to leave untouched for the FMP, but still to reshoot after the FMP was over. This meant that we had to settle for SC6 to have really bad wind levels interfering with the dialogue; whilst it did bring the quality down, we didn't have enough time to reshoot and edit as we'd just entered the final week of the project. I limited myself to only use three of the reshoot days, otherwise we would've failed to edit everything and complete the Evaluation, the final write up, and other finishing touches to the blog. this was a wise decision, but it meant that I needed to choose which scenes to reshoot now, which scenes to leave as they are, and which scenes to reshoot after everything is done. As I said, I left SC6 for later, SC31, SC3 and SC28. I then chose to reshoot the bench scene (9), as we didn't even have any audio from that day, and then the staircase scene (25), because it was the climax of the film and it needed to be powerful for me to deliver on my goal for this FMP and adapt the true story faithfully to the original source material.

We reshot SC25 first, at the Daintrey's house, it went so much better than I could've hoped. I saw immediate improvement from Jim and Noah's acting, the scene felt real because of them. I felt like with this sudden change in performance, I could direct more clearly and precisely. They were taking on my direction flawlessly and they were both terrific. We also didn't have a time restriction on this day, so we felt more free to do multiple takes to get it right. When editing this scene, it was so much easier than the other scenes before this, because of how genuine the performances felt. I felt like each take was a potential contender for the scene, and I actually had a hard time deciding which one to use. Tommy did forget to bring the SD cards to this shoot, but thanks to what I learnt from previous days, I chose to not to let it negatively effect my directing mindset. Instead, we had a good laugh about it, and while Tommy and Emma went to collect them from his house, I caught up with Jim and discussed how his wife was doing. Thankfully, she is doing much better now, and has reported how grateful she's been that Jim and Noah had done this project. She said, it was a good way to get Jim's mind off of stress and allowed him to stay calm, active, and doing something he enjoys with his son. Noah also reported to have really enjoyed this project. Jim said how every morning Noah was called, he'd get really excited and looked forward to filming. He now wants to be an actor when he's older! Overall, a really good day that helped me reflect on the project, and how far everybody had come.

Finally, we reshot the bench scene. It was a day that gave us everything and gave me a lot of stress. We picked this day to reshoot as the winds were low, but we didn't anticipate that because the winds were low, there would be planes. Throughout the entire day, planes were flying over the Heath, which meant we had to cut on perfectly good takes. Then, when there wasn't a plane, there was wind or rain, and then, if neither appeared, there would be people walking into frame and staring. It was quite unfortunate that these things kept happening causing us to keep cutting the shot and resetting. But when editing the scene, we found that it worked anyway because we did manage end up with the right takes.

For this shoot, however, Joe and I had been working on a custom windshield for the boom mic so that it would completely block all wind from hitting the mic. We molded a metal wire to act as a skeleton then wrapped a thick woolly jumper over the mesh. We then stuffed the empty space inside with bed sheets and used rope ties to fasten everything together around the mic. To our complete surprise, this worked on the day and we couldn't here any wind through the mic. The dialogue was slightly dampened by this, but when we increased the volume in post, it sounded clean. Overall, a good final day, which saw many successes and now that it's done, I feel like I can be happy with how filming went that day, despite the many interference's.

Production Evaluation

I feel I've learnt so much from this production experience. I'm very proud of my team and what we've managed to accomplish in such a short period of time. As a director, my skills in communication with actors (old and young) has been developed well, to allow me to create emotional beats within scenes. I feel I've helped every actor involved learn something new about the acting craft, especially in Jim, David and Noah, whom I've seen improve tremendously over the past few weeks. When watching the film in sequence, I can actually see how we've improved over each day - the film progressively gets better with each scene! As a producer, I've learnt the most, I've developed my skills in communication with clients, locations etc. and also learnt importance logistical documentation, ensuring that everything is done legally and appropriately. I've learnt how to prioritize these elements with the directing role as well. I've also learnt that the producer's responsibility should not be passed onto others without any support from the initial role. If I am to pass on responsibilities, I should make sure that it will be caarried out exactly as I need it to and not solely rely on others to get your own job done. Collaboratively, Tommy and I faced the most challenges as a duo; we did have a few disagreements that, in some cases, were settled incorrectly. I believe we've learnt more about each other's roles and how they are supposed to work together. For instance, Tommy knows now that the director should have the final say in creative decisions, but he shouldn't feel forced to keep his ideas to himself. I now know that, as the director, my specialty is not in cinematography, so if Tommy were to suggest something that would improve a certain aspect, I shouldn't write it off. I feel Tommy and I worked well on the presentation and that collaborative effort brought us closer together as functioning team. Overall, I feel I achieved my goal in managing and leading a technical team in a filming process at near-professional standard; at times, I did lose that professional mentality, but going forward, I now know what it takes to keep professionalism running throughout a project. I can do this by acting on a proactive mindset, clear communication between my team (consistent availability to answer questions), and constant involvement in every role in the technical cast/crew e.g. sound tests, rehearsals, costume meetings - the director should be involved with everything to ensure it's working correctly.

Post Production Evaluation

I had done most of the editing during the production phase, which I have already evaluated on, but after filming finished I did have a few tasks left to complete in this phase. I brought together all of the clips I'd edited over the course production and found that wouldn't have time to complete a complete colour grade, as I'd hoped. Some of my research was focused on colour theory and I mentioned it as a skill which I would've wished to develop the most in the project. But because we were so low on time, we couldn't dedicate enough time to colour grading, rather, we focused most of our attention on getting a rough cut finished. I was disappointed by this. I should've set aside a week of the project to colour grading, or predicted that the project wouldn't leave me enough time to do that critical, extra work. Then I would've spent more time on researching nicher areas that would've benefited the production more. The matter of music was tricky for me to decide upon. After watching a full cut of the film, it still felt quite empty; I knew this was because it didn't have any music behind it. Alison put me in contact with a composer she knows from the BBC, he said he'd be up for doing something but not in the near future. So I decided to not worry about putting in music for the rough edit - but I can see that it certainly needs it.

I haven't learnt as much as I would've liked to in post-production unfortunately, if we had more time to focus on editing and post production as a separate phase, then I would've put more of my time into perfecting the edits. However, I did develop my skills in time management, and quick drafts within premier pro. I implemented an editing strategy which maximized time efficiency, as well as work-space efficiency: I decided to edit each sequence in it's own premier pro file, rather than editing the entire film in one big file. That way, my laptop could manage each file without overheating or risk crashing. Then, I exported each sequence and brought them all together in one file where I can then completed a rough colour grade, audio edit, and final export. This system allowed for me to work on my laptop efficiently, thereby allowing me to work from home outside of college hours - rather than being limited to work on the edit at college. This strategy worked really well for me and I'm glad I stuck with it. For example, nearing the end of the editing phase, when bringing all of the edits together, I accidentally deleted all of the individual timelines for each sequence. Thankfully, I had already brought in the exported sequences to one timeline, therefore having a complete edit. I technically didn't lose much there but it still meant that I couldn't go back to the individual sequences and tweak them there. I did manage to recover most of these sequences though, thanks to Premier Pro's auto-save feature. Some of the timelines where still lost but I recovered most it, which was a slight relief. After I'd done this, I figured out cause of the problem: When 'removing' sequences from another, I was actually deleting the sequence, not closing it down. When I clicked 'save changes', it finalized the deletion process. I need to be much more careful, in future, to not make mistakes like this. To avoid this problem and stop it from happening again, I will only have one premier pro save open at one time, that way I won't get confused by the multiple timelines and accidentally delete one of them. Since I'm still quite new to premier pro, something similar to this is likely to happen again, so if I ensure that each timeline is appropriately supervised, then it won't happen again.

I did also learn about the importance of structure in the editing phase. Whilst it's good to get an edit done quickly, the best edits are done with precision and time. From the rugby sequence, I learnt that I should've planned out a scope for the scene and should've had an understanding of what could've naturally caused jarr and inconsistency before starting the edit. I didn't do this, which wasted a whole day of editing. In future, I will, first, develop an understanding of the scene and lay out exactly what needs to be achieved from the sequence, then I can work backwards and plan what needs to go where. Then, I can start working instinctively as a director, and decide on which reaction I like best, or which take had the best pacing etc. I could tell that my role as the director clashed with the editing role, I now know the similarities and differences between them and know what to expect in the future.

When watching the film in full, I can see what I think needs improving. Bar the obvious changes, which we will be making through reshoots, I noticed that the film is too quick. I feel it moves far too quickly and perhaps needed more time to develop the characters and their lives. After this project finishes, I'd like to write this story in a feature length format to see if that improves any of the pacing issues, I have a feeling this could. Unfortunately though, I didn't have enough time to write and make a longer film for this FMP - I feel I pushed the boundaries as far as they'll go for this FMP.

Summarized Evaluation

I wanted to challenge myself more than I ever have been before. I am canonically ambitious and I chose the idea which I felt best pushed my limits and others around me. This experience has been one that I'll never forget. It has taught me so much from within the realms of film-making that I couldn't possibly have expected going into it. I'm glad that I managed to accomplish what I set out to do for myself. I feel I've made a film, inspired by a true story, and adapted it faithfully to the best of my ability. I surprised myself in many ways, notably, managing to meet the brief of the FMP as well as create a film in association with a client company. I feel this film meets the FMP's brief in creating a media product that shows off: my skills as a director and how they've developed over the past year; my ability to critically research for a production that is then clearly exampled in my final product; my skills in reflection and critical evaluation. I did this by: constantly relating my efforts to previous projects in the past year, learning from these projects and adapting those recently acquired skills by putting them into practice; and by exploring a diverse range of research topics that covered practical elements of film making and theoretical works of storytelling; and by consistently updating a reflective log that critically evaluated on my technical, creative and emotional management. I feel my skills in collaboration have exponentially increased more than anything else in this project; I feel I led the project efficiently and made sure that each action and decision was clear for others in the crew to understand. I also developed a new found appreciation and skill in producing a media product. I learnt the importance of logistical film-making, and scheduling a production plan. This project has opened my eyes to the world of producing, it has led me to want to learn more about the role and study it in future, perhaps in university, or in my career. I feel, as a director, I've helped others learn more about film-making, I've helped stage actors transition into screen acting, and helped an entire drama organisation step into the realm of film-making for the first time and complete a successfully narrative-driven short film inspired by an incredible story, which I felt, needed to be told.

I feel this film has also helped prepare me for my future film making career, and will definitely propel me forward for the next steps in the journey. I will genuinely submit this film to local film festivals, not necessarily Raindance, but I hope this film could win a few awards, which will be good for me to have before going into university. And then, I will keep this film at the front of my show reel for now, as I think it's the best example of what I can achieve currently. I feel that this FMP has given me the skills to communicate with external companies and approach them with new ideas. I was exposed to pitching an actual film idea to a company, which they accepted, so I feel I have developed this pitching skill, which I will definitely use in the near and coming future. I feel this project has also prepared me for the university course I've applied to, Film Production at Winchester; it has tested my strengths in directing and my weaknesses in producing (it, being a new skill), and those are skills that will need to be demonstrated for the university course as well. This project has massively boosted my confidence in my ability to lead a team professionally, and I now feel capable of running a similar sized production (if not, bigger), in coming projects. 

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