Filmmaking- Critical Evaluation

Critical Evaluation – Filmmaking

The filmmaking lesson started back in September 2015, where we were given the choice between creating a piece for NAHEMI KODAK COMMERCIALS AWARDS, or develop our own idea or project individually or as a team to fulfil the brief. The whole class seemed very excited about entering a competition and creating a commercial so that became the focus of our time. Once we received the briefs for the commercial awards, we reviewed them and all went off to create pitches of our own for the briefs that we were interested in. I and Drew had a similar idea for the THINK! Brief so we combined our thoughts and created a joint pitch with the help of John who also had a pitch for THINK! That would work well with ours. John helped combine them all together and created a presentation for our pitch.

I also came up with a separate pitch for the Go Outdoors brief called ‘Go Together, Go Outdoors’; I wrote up a quick treatment and presented it to the tutors and class. The consensus was fairly positive so I continued to develop it into a script, and began research into how we would go around producing this. I then re-pitched and it was chosen as one of the four commercials to get the green light, along with the Think! Idea.

The crews were then assembled and split up evenly, there were four commercials to work on so everyone was working on at least two crews, some even worked on three. The crews I was involved in were:

Go Outdoors-

·       Mikey Barker- Director

·       Simon Douglas – Producer

·       Glenn Wilkinson- Camera Op

·       Dan Whalen- Sound Op/ Co-Producer

·       Steven Brown- Editor

THINK! –

·       Drew Brockbank – Director

·       John Hartill –Producer

·       Simon Douglas- Camera Op

·       Jamie Gibson- Sound Op

·       Mikey Barker – Editor

With the crews all together we could begin to move forward as a unit and work towards our goal. I continued developing the Go Outdoors idea and sketched up storyboards and drafts of the script, as well as lists of props, clothing and actors that we will need, for the producers to look into. Camera Op and Sound Op began testing the equipment to be come comfortable with it for the shoot, as well as working on their secondary commercials with the other crews. After I planned out the main story and had a visual image of how the end product would look, I started researching into a variety of locations that would be suitable for our filming needs. I managed to compile a list and we visited each location to see if it met our standard and would be appropriate to film on for our specific dates without any problems. Pretty quickly we started gaining permission and signed location release forms for multiple locations but some we found difficult to achieve access to or the owners would want money in exchange for access which we didn’t have in the budget. We had hit on obstacle at finding actors for our characters, and we found more and more time going by and us still not finding success. Poor time management from myself and the producers started to cause problems for us, as we raced closer to the agreed shooting date of November 21^st & 22^nd. We were a matter of weeks away from shooting and were still scrambling to find props, a few locations and to lock down some actors.

The pressure of being ready for the shoot started to affect everyone, and pushed people to starting getting work done. Thanks to Steven and Simon, I was able to get in contact with Gaynor, a teacher over at StarStruck, a stage school for children and teenagers. Gaynor cooperated greatly and helped us fine actors for our roles. Together we organised a time and date for auditioning the four actors she had lined up for our roles. Together, Simon and me went down to their stage school and auditioned the four actors, each one seemed suitable and more than capable at fulfilling what we needed from them. With four out of the six main roles casted, we began to make progress on the production; all that was left for casting was to find our Evan and Cassidy as adults. Dan posted a application on StarNow looking for local talent and Simon did the same on the Facebook page Four Bridges. At this time we were also gathering props, we were able to borrow an old 80’s/90’s girls chopper bicycle of our tutor Diane for the shoot, and some tents from fellow classmates. I was in touch with a man who could provide us with fishing gear and agreed to meet at the location on the shooting day. We managed get permission for all the locations after me and Simon contacted councils and authorities for certain ones, but got all the release forms signed. The shot was a matter of days away and we were still struggling to find our last two actors, every response back from Dan’s initial application did not fit the profile we were looking for. I jumped on StarNow and looked through all the profiles of local actors and actresses, I messaged and E-mailed the ones who were suitable and hoped one of them would be free on such short notice, Simon phoned a male actor about the role who was interested but already busy on the day we wanted. All but one of the actresses I messaged were busy, and Jacqueline Davis was both free and interested, I arranged for her to be part of the shoot but we still had no actor. Drew, who was volunteering by been a runner and transporting equipment and crew, stepped in and took on the role. Simon and I gathered last minute clothing, props and food for the shoot.

The shooting days went very smoothly and we were able to keep on schedule even with the lack of pre-production in some areas that had me nervous. We were able to get to all locations on time and had plenty of time to both set up equipment and film the shots. All the actors involved were lovely to work with and cooperated great and were very understanding of issues we had with the shots. Due to Glenn directing another shoot, his primary attention was focused on that and I wasn’t sure how much research or how much understanding of the commercial he had, but he arrived to shoot with a shot list and the storyboard and was really easy and comfortable to work with. Glenn made me feel comfortable behind the camera as he took his time setting up the shot and making sure everything was to a high standard, unlike other camera men who I have seen rush this process. He also wasn’t afraid to tell me if something wasn’t working or if he had suggestion that would benefit the shoot so having Glenn on camera was one of the highlights of the project. Daniel was on sound and we weren’t too sure if sound was going to make the edit or if it was just going to be music playing over the top of the film, but Dan managed to capture certain Foley sound here and there when the wind and the weather would allow it. Simon was great on set at helping move and set up equipment, as well as making the actors and the children’s parents comfortable and up to date with everything that was happening. Drew was a huge help on set with transporting certain crew and the equipment and also standing in as our actor last minute, he was good at helping me keep the crew focused as well as keeping morale up among us.

When we received the rushes back for editing, I was quite pleased and impressed with our some shots turned out, as well as a little disappointed with certain shots that they didn’t turn out as I intended. Steven did a good job at going through and finding the useable shots and editing together our final edit, he managed to stick with the script and storyboards to collaborate the shots together, with the help of my guidance when I could offer it as I was also editing the Think! Shoot. I was only editor on the Think! Shoot but made sure I was on set to help out and to prepare for any problems I could foresee happening in the edit. Drew did a great job at directing and keeping everyone focused and working on the set. The only problem we had was with the weather and we had to film on two separate days. This was a problem for my edit as some shots were in the rain and others were in the sun, I did my best at colour grading to find a balance but it was still noticeable and tricky to work around. We managed to finish a final edit of the advert and Drew and myself were both satisfied with the end result.

Overall I think the project had many errors and faults that were due to time management and in some cases cooperation. I wasn’t sure if my producers lack of work in the early stages of the project was due to me not cooperating well or them waiting for someone to do the work for them. Pre-production was the most stressful part of the project but everything else ran smoothly and I’m happy with. I think we were able to capture what we set out to get and the edit is a good representation of how the treatment presented it. In future productions I will definitely work on time management and not wasting time in pre-production, as well as getting the crew together more often and having them communicate better.