Short film analysis

During our filming project in which was our first collaborative piece of work together as a class, issues arose as well as us discovering each other’s strengths. 

Something that I thought was both an issue and a strength was, during our brain storming phase, so many ideas were thrown around. This worked well for us because it allowed us to hear what certain individuals’ styles were as they gave suggestions for a plot. Contrastingly, at times people would become distracted and spout off ideas that, ultimately, distracted us from coming up with and fleshing out a proper film idea.

I think that, at the beginning there should be a short brainstorming period in which everybody contributes, but then once that is over the people who have the role of writers should be the only ones to work on the script until the first draft is finished and we read it together as a group. This can then be where people give their input on what they think works and what they think should be changed or added, and so from there the rest of the drafts are written up until the final draft is created. Having a smaller team of people working on the script makes things much easier as there are less opinions to consider until the very last moment.

Another issue I thought happened was that people felt the need to take up important roles without consultation. As we’re a class that hasn’t worked together (mostly), assigning roles was an issue. People took important parts without discussing with the other team members. I felt this put a strain on the operation because I didn’t feel comfortable assigning roles without asking everybody how they felt and what roles they wished to take up, yet individuals in the group picked roles blindly, because they were an authoritative role.

Some people also felt the need to take up roles that weren’t theirs to begin with. Individuals who weren’t featured in the crew behind the camera attempted to take over specific parts of the filming, such as directing, where it very much wasn’t needed. This made me feel as if people thought that I wasn’t doing a particularly good job, so next time we work together and – if I am given a directing role – I will look to be more direct and sterner with what happens on the scene.

The biggest issue I think was people in our group stating that being frustrated was good and it meant we cared about the work. I wholeheartedly disagree with this ideology. Working in an environment where the stuff you do and the people who surround you irritate and frustrate you, is not good. It’s not healthy, nowhere near in fact. Personally, when I become irritated with the people around me, I begin to become closed off and quiet - being like this in a place where filming and collaborative work is happening every other day is very bad.

Some good things that happened was that people showed their strengths - we knew who was good on the camera, who was good on sound and music, who was good at the writing, etc. 

We also began to get to know each other as individuals and as a group. Our understanding of one another’s work ethics and personality’s will only get better from this point onward. Something I thought was working well was having two separate directors - one for the camera and another for the actors themselves. This made things a lot smoother than having one single director. I worked as a writer and director, both roles of which I enjoyed doing as it let me to work creatively and attempt to make my vision of what the story was, realised.

Something that I thought was good but also has downsides is how quickly we were able to get the filming process finished. It took us around a day and a half to finish filming which I first thought was amazing as we had lots of time to edit and think about what work we had managed to do. Once we reached the completion of the project, I thought about how I wished we had spent a little more time on filming so that we would’ve been able to get the perfect take – or near enough – for each shot, but I wasn’t at all upset with the final product.

Although it wasn’t what I initially planned for it to look like, with the assets and time that we had, we were able to produce a 5 minute short film that put across a narrative, the camerawork was good, the sound came out well, the editing and sound brought it all together, and we as a class were pleased with how it turned out.