THEORETICAL PROBLEMS

Time management The limited time that we have for this project doesn’t
leave room for unproductive lessons. Keeping on top
of my production schedule, and filling this out weekly,
would minimise the risk of missing deadlines. It is also
critical to plan out my project well so that I can
coordinate meetings & shoots with my cast & crew.

Topic research The topic of co-dependent friendship that I am

covering with my short film isn’t something that I
believe will have extensive resources to research. I will
have to make use of predominantly primary research,
from focus groups and surveys, to fill this out.

Weekly blogs I have noticed a pattern throughout past projects of

neglecting to give enough time and effort to weekly
blogs. Since they are a crucial denominator of my
grade, I must prioritise them. I plan to complete them
every Friday, so that the week’s work is still fresh in my
mind, and I am not distracted by further tasks.

Scriptwriting Writing dialogue is something that I have found to be a

challenge in the past. For support, I am going to speak
to my target audience & cast directly to figure out how
to script my characters realistically. I will need to
understand my characters in depth as soon as possible,
meaning to prioritise this part of the research.

MID PROJECT REVIEW

During the research and planning, one problem that I faced was writing my script. There
was one point where I had only written a third of my script, however I had proposed that
Of
I would already be filming at that time. I had other issues with planning/ organisation that
prevented me from finishing the script, which I will also discuss later. Ultimately, I had
reached a date where I had to leave to go on holiday and my script + planning was not
complete. Because I was so stuck and unsatisfied with what I had so far, I made the
decision to start again. I simplified my narrative by a lot and began to write up the first
scenes again, leading me to create around 3 pages of much improved script in only an
hour. The impact that this had on my story, however, is that it no longer showed the
main character cycling through the 7 stages of grief. It was a much-reduced version of
this original idea, where the main character only felt shock, grief, depression, testing, and
finally acceptance. I was concerned that the story wouldn’t be interesting or dynamic
enough, but my mentality was to get things done rather than perfect at this point.
Another issue that I faced was the long delay in casting my characters. I had been
considering casting people within our course, or in the year below. I didn’t have any other
people close to me who would be interested in or committed to acting in a short film. It
was also important to me that my characters were feasible characters, and therefore I
knew that I had to cast someone who was able to act. I narrowed down my search to
those with experience in drama/theatre/ other acting and was for the most part
unsuccessful. I felt too intimidated to go to the drama department in my college, even
though this would have been a great option for the film. I didn’t know my own idea in
enough detail, this was the stage at which my script was not complete, and I couldn’t
confidently deliver it to anyone else. What I ultimately did was asked everyone I knew
close to me, including my co-workers from my part time job. One girl was really
enthusiastic about the idea and thought that she would find it fun to help. She also
suggested that her friend from the drama department could audition too, which is where
everything fell into place. This had a great impact: I was able to write my whole outline;
plan for locations; and develop my characters further. I was also able to really connect
with my actors, and we were comfortable around each other since the very first time we
met. When I started this project, I knew that I wanted a cast that I could communicate
easily with & get support from. This is exactly what I ended up getting, which I am so
grateful for.
When it comes to other problems that I imagined I would have, they weren’t as
prominent. Since I made myself aware of my weaknesses in past projects, I set myself up
better for this one. I imagined that time management would be a crucial problem that
would prevent me from achieving my best work, and to an extent I was right. I overcame
this partly by being very detailed at the beginning of my project. I felt that I built a solid
foundation for the rest of the process, and therefore was able to restart my script so
easily when I decided to do so. I was very familiar with my initial concept and liked it/ felt
confident in it. I was able to develop complex characters and a create an interesting
narrative, because of my dedication at the beginning of the project. I also believe that
this is why everything worked out and fell into place, for example my character casting.
 PRACTICAL/ TECHNICAL PROBLEMS

Equipment availability There is a limited amount of filming equipment

available to us within the course. Since we are all
completing out final projects, it is very likely that the
tools I need would be booked out. To minimise the risk
of lacking important gear, I will judge my needs based
on my production schedule and book as soon as
possible.

Actors’ reliability In order to minimise the risk of working with people

who aren’t reliable, I will cast my actors and assign my
crew based on how important the project is to them as
well as myself. Looking for actors who may need
something for their own showreel/ portfolio, or ones
that are genuinely interested in my topic, would be a
good idea.

Sound quality I have discovered some issues with my own camera

when it comes to recording sound. At times there is no
sound at all, other times it is distorted and unusable. I
plan to book the college film cameras as much as
possible to record scenes with sound, otherwise taking
extra care with my own and listening back to footage
before concluding shoots.

END OF PROJECT REVIEW

I initially planned to borrow college equipment over the Easter holidays in order for me to film
and be ahead by the time we had to go back. Due to the ways that I organised my time, and
because of work that I neglected to complete quickly enough, I wasn’t able to film over these
holidays. Therefore, I ended up returning the camera & mic and filming with my own equipment
instead when it came time to actually film. I have a great DSLR to film with, however I have
noticed that the quality of footage has deteriorated over time due to some damage to the
camera. If I had been ahead of my work, I would have been ready to film over Easter and also
have my short film come out in higher quality. The impact that this ultimately has is that it is that
my short film looks less professional than it could have.

I would describe my actors during this process as very reliable. I only had 1 situation in which my
main actress Ellie had to cancel the narration recording session, in the case that she had
something urgent to complete for her own course examination. How I overcame this cancellation
was by figuring out another issue that day and rescheduling to record sound the following week.
The ripple effect that this cancellation had, however, was that the final scene shooting day was
also
postponed, which meant that we were trying to fit in a lot of filming in the last days leading up to
the deadline. Otherwise, I would have had more time to organise my props for the last scene,
which was a little flawed due to the fact that I handwrote the placard beneath Anaya’s final work.
If I had the time to repeat that shoot, I would print out the text and pin it like the image is on the
wall.

The last point that I wrote about however didn’t really face was issues with sound quality. I had
initially planned to record with a borrowed mic to ensure great sound quality when filming
outdoors, however, due to aforementioned reasons of disorganisation I didn’t end up using it and
had to utilise the voice memos on my phone instead. I positioned my phone in the background of
scenes and clapped loudly to be heard on the camera and phone: later to be synced up in editing
to ensure a smooth deliver of dialogue and other foley sounds. I see that my substitute for
prevention of a sound quality issue was successful, and I had a really easy task of putting the
recordings together.