Final Reconstruction

Evaluation

The Maltese falcon task for this we had to be put into groups of 4-5 people and deconstruct the beginning sequence to the film, create a story board, give people roles and characters within the group, decide on locations, costumes and props and then reconstruct it by filming the scenes we acted out and then editing them together.

 

We faced many problems from the start of the task; our story board artist was away so we only had half a story board to work with, so when it came to filming the first scenes we couldn’t shoot as many. We overcame this by playing the video on a computer and we worked from that. Another problem we faced was that the room we intended to film in was an exam and counselling room so we only had slotted time to film, however when we first started filming and had got the key to the room the fire alarm went off at the college which forced us to pack up and discontinue with our task for that lesson. This set our production schedule back as we didn’t have the shots we intended to have. The next problem we faced was not being able to have class time to film and with most of our group not having any of the same frees we wasn’t able to film at all, however when we did get class time to film we found that half of our group had forgotten their costumes so we had to settle for the close ups and exterior shots.

 

The next problem we faced was that the room we intended to film in wasn’t available so we had to change rooms, our cast had also forgotten their costume again so we had to film in a different room with no costume so this mess up the continuity throughout our film. Since we didn’t have enough time to film the whole sequence we had to shorten the clip down dramatically and miss our key speeches so that we would have enough time to edit and also finish by the deadline. By having little time we rushed the filming and by also using a tape camera recorder we couldn’t look back at our scenes which we had filmed so we had to do many of the same shots, from this it lead to bad continuity editing when we came to editing it together. An example would be the speech in which Beth (Miss Wonderly) makes, the shot is a close up but because we didn’t have a story board and couldn’t look back at our scenes we forgot what we had shot and ended up doing many single shots which, when edited together, was jerky and looked unprofessional. However when we came to put our recordings onto the edit suites we found that the suite and camera had cut off the beginning and ending of some of the scenes which meant we had to compromise on the little scenes we had anyway. Even though we did in fact wait the required 3 seconds before and after the camera still cut the shots which made editing difficult for us. In the end we was able to finish filming but we had to miss out the end scene where Archer got shot and killed, even though we had filmed it we didn’t have enough time to edit it together.

 

I had prior knowledge of how to use the edit suites from the previous task I had done in another subject so using the edit suites was a quick and easy job. However time management proved to be the key element in this task, also our organisation skills. We had little time to create a 5 minute clip and with many of our team mates forgetting costumes organisation was unsuccessful. Even though we had a production schedule we found that we was messing scenes up and shooting them in different orders which proved difficult when it came to finding out what we had shot and what we hadn’t.

 

What we learnt to be most important in projects like these is to be thoroughly organised with yourself and your team mates, to make sure everyone knows what they are doing when and also what they need i.e. costumes. Also they need to know their lines and what they are required to do regarding acting.

 

It took us one hour to plan our production schedule, give everyone roles and characters, sort out locations, costumes and props, it took us three days to film which was longer than we had intended as we had numerous setbacks and problems. Then it took us two hours to edit as we had to cut our scenes ourselves as the edit suite decided to make what we filmed one big clip.  

 

 

Outtakes