Evaluation

 

When I was first told about this unit I was very apprehensive as I am not really a film person, when we started the lesson as a quick warm up we had a class quiz which was to guess the directors based of pictures of films… I couldn’t even name the films let alone the directors. I knew that with this unit I was really going to struggle, over the half term break we were told to watch Pulp fiction when watching this film I was very confused the whole time, I found the film way too graphic for my liking and I did not like the film didn’t follow a linear structure. We then started our research into “what is an auteur?” we did this by looking into definitions and researching Quentin Tarintino compared to someone like Steven Spielberg, this really helped me start to understand what an auteur is as I could see a clear difference.

 

After starting to look more into Quentin Tarintino we then watched some more of his films starting with Django unchained, this is a film that I have seen before in my own time so I knew what to expect unlike Pulp fiction which I didn’t know what to expect. Django was another one of the autuers films that clearly showed his stylings which when I first watched the film in my own time I wouldn’t have picked up on at all. After this as a class we all watched resvior dogs  which I had never seen before so I didn’t know what to expect, again I didn’t really like the film as I found it quite confusing. From watching these three films I discovered I was not a fan of this auteur. We then started even more research into the auteur so that we could plan for our essay. After completing enough research I started to write my essay I found this very very hard as we had to write in the third person and was not allowed to say I or myself which I am used to so I really struggled with that. I discussed in my essay what it means to be an auteur and why Tarintino can be considered an auteur.

I found the essay fun to write as I got to express my views and opinions however very hard to not be biased.

 

After writing the essay as a class we got separated into groups and each chose another auteur to make a film based on their film stylings as a group we chose Christopher Nolan, for my research I looked into his life and what films he has directed I soon realised I had never seen one of his films either. I then started to watch clips from different films of his and wrote short descriptions about what I had picked up on from watching the short clips. I found that Nolan likes to not use a lot of audio in his films especially in his intense scenes. We then started to plan our short film. We decided it would be a good idea to use some of the research we had found which was that in our questionaires when asking “if Christopher Nolan were to direct any film which would you want it to be?” the most popular answer was James Bond so we decided to create a plot twist which would be combining James Bond with Batman and explaining that the target Bond had to get was the joker who actually turned out to become Bond’s brother. At first we all thought that this was a very good idea however when it came to writing the script we discovered it was actually quite hard to fit in and when it came to editing I didn’t include the twist as I thought it didn’t really work very well.

 

During pre-production we all chose our roles, I decided to be camera operator as even though I am not very confident with a camera however I knew that if I needed any help at all my group members would be happy to help me. After finishing pre-production we then started filming. We chose some locations that were outside of college so we decided to get them all filmed in one day. Because we decided to do this it meant that we managed to get most things done in one day. Filming went really really smoothly and I was quite proud of myself that I hardly had to ask for help. In the short film I was playing 007’s boss which meant that I was not always behind the camera however any scenes that I was not in I was in charge of the camera. This was something I have only recently just taken on as a role which I did enjoy however I know that it would not be my first choice as a role for any future projects. During filming I did have to take a day off due to illness however this was on the day that the last shot that needed to be done only involved M ringing bond which could have easily been filmed by somebody else.

 

After this we then started to edit, which is always my least favourite part of any project. I have started to find editing a little easier compared to when I first started, however I still do not enjoy it. Since being in second year we have started to make production logs which means whenever we use a new technique in our edits we have to log it, it is taking me a while to be able to get used to this and for this project I completely forgot and so therefore I had to go back and re screenshot everything so I know for next time to try and remember to create my production log as I go on.

 

I then held a test screening with my peers in my class, I involved one person from my group and one person from a different group to see what I needed to improve on and what I could include or remove. Both peers seemed to like my edit and was happy that I did not need to remove anything . I then finished my final edit the next day and was happy with what I had achieved for the whole unit. After finishing the edit I conducted a interview with one of my peers to see what she thought of the edit and what I can do better for the next time. In my feedback Chloe was happy with my edit and said that she liked the use of audio which is clear that it’s the stylings of Nolan.

 

 

 

Overall with this unit I found it very very challenging however I do feel that I have learnt a lot about a subject I had never even heard of. For the next unit I am going to research a little more into what I am studying so that I have a clear idea.