Weekly Evaluation

Week 1
02/11/20 – 08/11/20
At the beginning of the week we were tasked to generate ideas, write up a project proposal,
and create a production schedule. We had to choose from 3 types of mediums and 2
different target audiences. The three types of mediums were: Short Film, Stop Motion
Animation and Music Video. The two target audiences were: 5-12 and year olds.

I have chosen the 5 – 12 year old’s as my target audience and I have chosen to produce a
short film and an animation as I am focusing to improve on my scriptwriting as well as not
only have, I been a child once before, but I have siblings who also have friends that are
within the target audience. I have also chosen to do these productions as I wanted to create
meaningful pieces of work that younger audiences will learn from.

The focus group has helped me change my main ideas. I am happy and excited to produce
the two final ideas that were chosen.

Week 2
09/11/20 – 15/11/20
From my secondary research, I have found out that 5-12 year old’s often enjoy watching
animations. I think it’s mainly because it allows the creators to be more creative with what
characters they will be creating. It’s easier to do this as an animation rather than a live
action. Animations that are targeted at younger audiences often include comedy and so, I
will try to include at least some comedy into the final ideas that I have came up with for
these units. This way, both of my productions will appeal to my target audience.

It was exceedingly difficult to get responses to my survey. I reached out to people on

Snapchat as well as Discord. I have stayed away from social media platforms that older users
might use such as Instagram and Facebook except when I shared my survey so that parents
with children around the age of my target audience could fill out the survey. To improve the
number of responses to my survey for my FMP, I will share the link more broadly asking if
they could send it out further to the people I might not have reached.

Week 3
16/11/20 – 22/11/20
From my secondary research I have found out that most short films for children are
animations. It might be because animators can not only create physical features that attract
the younger audiences but also the setting in which the actions take place. Therefore, they
end up making a film that is memorable which will increase sales in not only the box office
but merchandise as well i.e. FROZEN. I have also learnt that the typical genres for younger
audiences include adventure, comedy and a tinge of drama which is exactly why I want to
incorporate these genres into my own productions, both the short film and the stop motion
animation.

The key convention for my chosen genres includes Propp’s theory on character stereotypes
which I definitely must include in my productions.

Week 4
23/11/20 – 29/11/20
In my previous weekly evaluation, I have clearly stated that I had learnt that most films for
younger audiences are animations. It is incredibly to find live-action films that would
interest 5-year olds compared to my older target audience of 9-12-year olds. Therefore, I
had to fit to both of their needs and noticed that my target audience enjoys watching
animations. However, it does not mean that my short film should be a CGI since I lack skill in
that area and most animations that come out from production companies have a story
structure similar to those films with real people.

This week was mostly based on analysing scenes from professional productions on things
like the mise-en-scene and cinematography, especially camera angles. Since there is no
dialogue, the things that I have mentioned above become incredibly important in the
productions as well as the location and sound. All of these will help the audience to infer the
meaning of what action on the screen might mean however, since my target audience is
young, I will have to make the gestures more obvious which might mean that I might have
to exaggerate every single aspect of my production i.e. camera angles. I will also have to use
different colours as each and every colour has a different connotation, either positive or
negative.

The developments that I need to make to my production for it to meet the codes and
convention requirement includes making the hero look like a stereotypical hero and the
villain look like a stereotypical villain. Adding cloaks and capes will neatly meet the Propp’s
character theory. I will also make sure that the colours are retrospective of those
stereotypes such as brighter or starker colours of the primary colours for the hero whilst the
villain will be dressed in darker clothing.

Week 5
30/11/20 – 06/12/20
Planning is incredibly important when it comes to production as it may determine the cost
to film and produce the final cuts. The director Bong Joon Ho usually plans everything and
sticks to the pre-production, almost never changing anything. The pre-production helped
me to establish the locations that I will be filming in, how and when I will be filming as well
as who will I be filming. This will be most prominent in my short film as I will have many
locations that I’d like to film in, various set designs, props, costumes. In addition, the
auditions are also important when casting actors. This will be important as you need to
know how good your actors are before filming so you know whether or not they should be
in your production.
There really weren't issues whilst planning although it was hard for me to estimate when I
will be filming and so, putting together a production schedule was proven to be more
difficult than I expected. However, I did manage to pull through by thinking logically. That is,
completing the stop motion animation and begin editing it and during the winter break, I
would finish filming my short film which would be edited as soon as we get back into
college.

I am prepared to film my stop motion next week. I have everything ready including the
characters, set, equipment etc.

In my personal opinion, I think that my storyboards are up to standard as I perfectly

understand what is going on within the frames.

Week 6
07/12/20 – 13/12/20
The filming process for the stop motion animation went somewhat smoothly. However, I
have learnt that it is quite difficult to maintain the shape of the characters which have found
ways in which to look disfigured or get bits of red plasticine on them which makes them look
like they have been beaten or abused and that isn’t the look that I want to go for in a stop
motion animation that is aimed at children. Lighting also became an issue, and whenever it
looked different, I grew frustrated and so I deleted everything I had captured before the
change and began to film again and that did end up wasting my time. Besides what I have
mentioned, I don’t think there were any other problems that I encountered during the stop
motion animation filming; therefore I don’t think it was necessary to reshoot. I also decided
to use different camera angles and shots as in my previous unit I haven’t done that so I
could say that I have experimented in this production.

Week 7
As I mentioned in the previous week, the filming process for the stop motion animation
went smoothly although I did find it quite frustrating when the plasticine figures didn’t
really follow through with what I had wanted to do. Apart from that problem, there was also
an issue with the lighting as it frequently changed although my camera setting remained the
same on manual mode and so I decided that I should film again from scratch. Even though I
have wasted time doing so, I am incredibly happy with how the images turned out. I haven’t
planned any techniques for the stop motion animation, but I have improvised whilst filming
and I dare say that I am proud.

Week 8
The editing was pretty simple for the stop motion animation although I did have to look
back at how to batch process the images on Adobe Photoshop. I have realised that I have
taken less images that I could have taken but it was fixed in post-production when scaled so
that the whole video would be much longer than it is.

Week 9
Stop Motion Animation
Even though the editing process went smoothly for the stop motion animation I did
encounter some issues such as not being able to process extra images that I managed to
take to extend the running time of the animation as my scratch disk was full. One of my
teachers suggested to use BatchPhoto as well as Fotor however, to process the images you
need to purchase the full version and not use the demo version. As a result, I have decided
to leave out the extra images.
The second issue regarding stop motion animation was that Adobe Premiere Pro could not
locate most of the files (1) which resulted in the production not having any sound (2), so I
took it upon myself to export the video not the audio, and then download the music as well
as the sound effects and editing it all together (3).

2 3

I personally think that my stop motion animation did meet my target audience. The
production is colourful, somewhat exaggerated, easy to understand and there is an element
of comedy to it. Although, I must admit that I could have targeted my audience far better if
there were no darker overtones, meaning that there is an implication to depression.
As far as conventions go, I did try to match them up with this production especially Propp’s
character theory. We have a hero who helps the other characters and in one scene we can
see that Dog is wearing a red cape. If that doesn’t make him a hero, then I don’t know what
does. However, each hero have their own flaws. By being selfless and kind, the hero of this
production attracts the villain which is the darkness. At the end, the sidekick helps them out
of this darkness. I have also tried to apply Todorov’s narrative theory in my production
although it’s very subtle, so I don’t think the attempt was done well.
If I were to compare my work with professional productions like the works of Aardman, I
would say that there needs to be a lot more done in my production to reach that high
standard. By increasing the frame rate, the movements within my production would be
smoother since the movement currently is somewhat choppy. That is one of the areas I
could improve on in the future. Another area that I could improve on when comparing my
work to professional productions is set design as well as character design. The set design
was made by myself and I’m no great artist whereas the characters were designed by my
sister who does art for her GCSE’s however, she was unwilling to paint the backdrops. In the
future, I could ask someone that I know or someone from the Art department that is
possibly willing to help me in order to increase the production value.

Unfortunately, due to some inconveniences I could not film my short film production. These
would include the insufficient funding for props, costumes, and décor and for equipment
such as lighting and tripods as I could not continue going to work to earn those funds. Even
if my parents did offer to sponsor this production, which they did not, I would feel bad
about ‘mooching off’ from them. In addition to this, it had rained throughout the winter
break through to January and I did not want to risk the health and safety of not only my
crew but also the actors as the outdoor filming takes place in a forest which is on a steep
gradient and even a small slip could incur some serious injuries. Furthermore, we would be
at risk of catching a flu or in the worst case scenario, COVID 19 as the viral disease is
airborne.

I had learnt that I should not react harshly when things go wrong although it is quite natural
to do so. I should carry on, not being demotivated or being on the verge of procrastination.
In fact, even though I should not rush into things, I think it would be best if I got things done
the moment they were assigned as tasks and finish them within a few days however, it is
incredibly hard for me to do that as I like to spend my time researching every single detail.
Looking back, researching is the main section that has slowed me down and prevented me
from moving forward with the pre-production.