Evaluation

Using the questions below as prompts, complete a written evaluation of your research,
scriptwriting and production making process.

What specialism did you choose and why? How are you hoping it will help to improve your future
productions?
I chose directing as my specialism however, decided to focus quite heavily on a more specific form of
directing called “auteur theory” this is a theory that the director is the author of the film and although
technically this could be argued as the script writer/s job, the director has a duty to take the script and
make it come alive. In that aspect they are writing the story with pictures, making it come alive.
Typical auteur theory directors would include Wes Anderson and Tim Burton, directors with a distinct
style to their productions; without having seen who is the director of a film, you should be able to tell
due to the unmistakeable work on screen. I chose this specialism because these and the type of
films/directors I tend to find the most influential. Growing up I had always been a big fan of Tim
Burton films and I found it fascinating that he had a particular way about them that made you well
aware they were his before you were explicitly shown. To me, the idea of creating films that someone
can watch and immediately think of you means that you are doing your job right. I’m hoping this is
going to improve my future productions because I’ve really got to understand how these directors see
their work and how they used their visions to make something come to life on screen, I am hoping
that combining some of their tips and trick with my own views and visions, I can create something
that really shows the style of filmmaking that I have and I hope that once I have really been able to
pinpoint that style, it stick with me.

How effective do you feel your research is? Are there any gaps or did you have to complete further
research when putting your script together?
Overall, I would say that my research is pretty effective, I managed to put the whole first draft of my
script together and feel fairly confident in my research, that it was enough to carry my script through,
the only thing I found I needed to add to my research with the help of some feedback was that, I
needed to tie technological developments within filmmaking over the years into how this has changed
the way directors work.
At first you wouldn’t think much has changed within their work however, the more advanced
technology has gotten in around 100 years is mind-blowing and rather than the director taking on
majority of the work, you now tend to see bigger crews within the production of films, which the
directors job is to overview and direct them. Once adding this to my research, it seemed to flow a lot
better and after editing this to my script and playing around with the structure of it for a bit I came to
my final script and felt confident with it.

Do you think all your sources were reliable? Which were good and which were less so?
For a majority of my research, I would say that I picked out information from
sources that are reliable. Especially on my research into directors, I made sure to do
research on the places I was sourcing from, this would include “studiobinder” they
have a website where I collected information from, I then found out they had a
YouTube channel, this felt like it unlocked some research opportunities for me as I
found out they had interviewed quite a few well known people, this felt reassuring to
me. I then found out they had interviewed Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, this was especially
useful to me as they are both extremally well known auteur directors, getting tips and quotes from
them directly,, I feel as if this boosted the standard of my research a huge amount. Some sources I
would say could be less reliable was when I was searching about the use of colour in film, a lot of
sources were telling me that the Wizard Of Oz was indeed the first film to use colour, this conflicted
with others telling me there were many films before that just got a substantial amount of less
coverage. I took this upon myself to dig deeper and research for myself, I felt a lot more confident in
my findings then.

Did you complete any primary research and how did it help you in understanding techniques in
greater detail?
As auteur theory is about the significance of themes, for my primary research I played around with
colour editing. Much like Wes Anderson who is heavily known for his use of colour, I wanted to
experiment with colour within my editing, I recorded a short clip of some fire and within my editing I
managed to change the colour of the fire to purple and green using two separate techniques. This
helped my understanding of these techniques in much more detail; when you’re watching a film with
extravagant use of colour you don’t normally think about how the colour got there and if it changed
during the editing process. After experimenting around with editing colour, it made me realise that
most film probably go through extreme colouring in order to make the colours appear as bright as they
do on screen (especially kid’s films.) Doing this research showed me how much truly goes into the
process of making professional films and helped me to really understand the depth of colour in film.

What do you feel the strengths of your script are and how could you further improve it?
I think that my script has got a lot of information and depth to it, this is particularly important for this
unit as it is a specialist study. The aim of this unit is to create a production that provides detailed
information into a particular specialism. Having my script at the depth it is at should hopefully mean
the standard of my work is fairly high, this feels more important to me than ever within a unit of
sharing information, if the standard I am working at is high, then the task of informing others should
come naturally within the script itself. I do however know that my script is not perfect and could
defiantly do with some further improvements to ensure the standard remains high. Although the
knowledge inside my script is there, my structuring is quite inconsistent and at times can throw the
reader off, like a well done film, you need everything to be running smoothly on screen with no
unintentional jump cuts, at the moment my script has the “jump cut” esc moments between certain
paragraphs. To improve on this, I am going to go through my script again and reorder my paragraphs
to makes everything flow smoothly and make sense to read. Rather than jumping from directors to
technology without any consistency I need to blend the two topics together.

What have you learnt from this process and how can you utilise it in your remaining projects?
I have learnt quite a lot from this process I would say. The research process in
particular, I found very fulfilling to conclude, not only did I learn about new things
such as the Vitaphone and early sound recording in productions, but furthered my
understanding in how the colouring process of film works (as mentioned earlier) I
think it is easy to get lost in the technology of today, especially being from a
generation that has been brough up with it so to say, that going back and really
understanding how early productions before the use of the tech we use currently is eye opening. This
is something that I would like to get the opportunity to experiment with in remaining projects if the
option becomes available, for example making a short film without any sound; I feel this would be
challenging as we rely on sound for a numerous amount of ques in productions, to cause tension, to
set a tone, to give basic information to the audience and this is something we have been made so
accustomed to. Personally I think that taking this challenge would be a risk as I feel there is a lot of
room for error as you’d be relying completely on camera ques and lighting, however from doing the
research for this unit I do feel inspired to try something new,, and a slightly different way of working.