BSA 331 - Semester 2 - Self-evaluation after Think&Create

During the night itself after the Think&Create premiere, it was perceived well by the audiences. While it was perceived well by them, in my own eyes after looking at it on a big screen, I felt like there were a few links(story wise) missing in my short film and felt gutted about it as it could not be changed anymore.

For me fortunately, I went over to the bar with a few friends after the premiere and talked together as a group in terms of the giving feedbacks and "what do you think" for each film that was played during the night.

Without going into context of the other films, they told me it was a good try on the whole concept idea of doing a switch but wished that there was more in the story of how it started and possibly ended. Another was that they felt the hinting of Dave saying "I'm you, and you are me" went on for too many times and that I should had shorten that part. One feedback that they said which I felt was really important was that there was no proper motif for Jones to kill of Dave, this got me thinking and realized that what they said was mostly true.

Again, thinking back there would be alot of changes that I would like to do for this project but did not achieve it because of my lack of motivation which made me gave up real quick. But what done is done and there were positives and negatives about how I felt towards the short film.

In the future, if I was given the chance, I would like to rewrite and reshoot the whole short film again with a proper budget and a more proper film crew to work. I believe that if I had done a proper planning and pre-production, this would had gone differently.

BSA 331 - Semester 2 - Self-reflection before Think&Create

As for my self-reflection up to now, there are a few things that I could improve on and work on better in the future. Overall I think this project was a success and I'm neutral with it as I could have done better.

Coming into this project, I wanted to make a crime drama film but did not think about the amount of critique and struggle that I would had gotten with it especially during the scriptwriting stage. Trying to write away from the clique cop films is very tough and really made me unmotivated. 

During that stage, a mistake that I did was not putting much effort into fixing my script and had given up too early without doing anything due to being really demotivated. Despite all that, I was constantly being pushed by Josh Clive who helped me alot during this project.

After sitting down one night and writing a new script, things went better and smoothly until having my actors pulling out last minute and location not going through due to "money". This really put a lot of pressure and stress on me but I eventually pulled through and had both Ben Wilmot and Luke Page on board.

During the shooting period, I was really over confident on some of the shots and did not call for a safety or having to shoot another one. This really affected some of my shots in terms of editing and had to cut away from the action. However, I felt that I did direct my actors in the way I wanted it to be as it was a small location and the crew respected the space between the Director and Actors.

On the editing stage, the only problem that I went through was probably the sound as sometimes it would was not loud or would clip. Despite having so, I worked through it and achieved what I wanted to achieve. Another problem that I found was that I would always call cut instead of letting the actors play through and this affected a part of the editing.

Overall, I believe that I did well even though I had to go through a few troubles here and there. But in all honesty, I am currently very neutral with what I've produced so far for this year as I thought I could do better on some parts of the film. Some things that I would like to take back to myself for the future to improve on is my attitude when being demotivated and to work harder even if most of the feedback was negative to begin with.

BSA 331 - Semester 2 - Week 16

For this week, my focus was to finish up the film before Think&Create. There were a few things that I had to do before rendering out my final product which was finding free sound effects and colour grading.

I would had gotten Carlos to help me with my sound but as he was really busy, I decided to do this myself and source free sound effects online. 

Below are the pictures from my editing process, timeline and an example of my colour grade.

BSA 331 - Semester 2 - Week 15

This week we did a feedback session with the whole class from just the rough cut. This is to see and critique/help everyone with what they can improve on or what did not work. It was a really good to have feedback from others as it's like having some fresh eyes on it.

One thing coming into this was me worrying if the switch between Jones and Dave would work. A feedback that was given by the class was that at the moment, it works fine and maybe considering taking a few things out. Overall they said the story worked well with the editing and adviced me to use some sort of sound effects when I cut to the switch.