Evaluation of Short Film

Evaluation of Short Film

What were the aims of your brief from your chosen charity/campaign and did you fulfil them?

The aim of the brief was to produce a short film for a charity in order to raise awareness to inform viewers about what the charity does. I believe we managed to fulfil this brief because the film we produced was just over 3 minutes long and it helped to raise awareness of Childline. It did this by telling a narrative about a girl that was being bullied and how her friend introduced her to Childline. We also put contact details at the end of the film for viewers to be able to understand the whole concept and be able to contact the charity if they needed support.

What were your original ideas about how did these develop throughout the project?

Initially we brainstormed ideas individually, then we came together as a group and talked through our ideas until we were in agreement about which organisation we wanted to promote and ways of doing this. Initially we thought about using a girl who was being bullied about her sexuality with her eventually committing suicide. However this has ethical implications and we decided there were other ways to highlight bullying without it being so brutal for the audience to view. We were also going to use quite strong language/ swear words but decided not to in the end as we felt it wasn’t needed to get our message across.

We were also planning to film one scene outside on a bus but we didn’t do this because we realised it would be difficult to get the bus drivers permission to film as well as any other passengers on the bus, we would also be unable to stop a bus so that we could film the scene as bus drivers have a schedule they need to stick to. We decided to film inside a classroom instead as this was a lot easier to manage.

When doing the post production we got feedback from our tutor who said that when she first viewed the film our message wasn’t very clear. We thought about this and decided to add a voice over which was the girl being bullied talking on the phone to Childline. We felt this was an effective way of getting our message across for the campaign. There were also a lot of scenes in the film that were too long and didn’t really add anything to the narrative, so we edited some scenes out of our final film.

How well did you plan out your short film? Evaluate strengths and weaknesses?

The planning for our film didn’t go very well. We had an initial idea but as we came across problems that was the point where we tried to find solutions. So instead of having everything planned out and organised we were doing things unplanned. One of the weaknesses I found was that we had problems with our group because we had one member that had time off and didn’t contribute much to the whole project, so this wasn’t helpful. We were also a group member down as one student left college during this time, this had an effect on filming and pre-production as we had more work to do individually due to our smaller group size.

When we pitched our idea to the class this was good so could be seen as a strength for our planning, it went well and the class seemed to like our idea. All members of our group were involved in the pitch so this was really positive.

What were the strengths and weaknesses during filming?

Our strength as a group during filming was our flexibility and use of our own time in order to get the filming done to schedule. We were also able to get other student to help us by acting for out film which was really helpful as we were unable to act it all ourselves due to the small number in the group. The weakness again was the member of the group that was supposed to do the camera work and film but he did not attend college due to ill health. This meant we had to film an extra day and ask other students to help with filming as my own fine motor skills do not allow me to do this effectively. I had to rely heavily on other people to do the filming but I was taking a more of a directing role.

Which editing skills did you develop and how could you improve in this area?

Before we started this campaign I had limited experience of using editing software so it was quite a challenge. Neither of my group members had much experience either. So it was a real learning curve for all of us and we learnt new skills as we went along, for example how to add audio, how to add voice overs, how to import logos etc.

I feel the best way to improve on my editing skills is to play around with the software and familiarise myself with all the functions and effects before I do another film in the future.

Other comments

Lastly I would like to say that I am really grateful for all the help and support that I received from my group member Leticia because without her input our campaign video would have been impossible to complete. I feel Safwan did give good contributions when he was there but could have been more proactive in helping with editing, filming and preproduction documents as these were left for myself and Leticia to mainly do.