This year has been quite the learning experience for me as when I had first joined I hadn't any experience in this area so everything was new to me. Over the year, I had worked on many projects and from these projects I have learnt a fair bit.
I'm not going to lie, I feel pre production has been my weakest area and something I seriously need to improve on next year. Only on a few projects have I featured a plan of what I'm going to do as most of the time when I have the idea of what I'm going to do, I just make random notes that eventually form the idea. I don't have any call sheets or stuff like that as all my films are very 'up in the air' until I start filming and usually change what they are as time goes on so I can't necessarily pin down what my film is going to be until after editing it. This is something I need to change for next year as this is not the correct way of operating as a filmmaker. So for next year I will try more on the pre production of filming and make sure to feature more items such as storyboards, call sheets etc. within my work.
I felt that I have a good understanding of the production requirements that are involved with making a film as over the year. I have managed to learn about these areas as for the majority of the projects I have worked alone and therefore have had to cover these areas to make my films so the best way to learn about the roles is to learn them through practical means. I have covered these roles and how well I performed in them (not just my knowledge about each role but how I worked at them) throughout my evaluations for my film production projects. For all my films I was, of course, the director and therefore had the most experience in this area over the year but I still feel like I've got some way to go as all my films were all very simple in the pre production side and I would like to take the next step to directing, for example, within a team of people or working with more actors/actresses, basically working with a larger crew. Working well within a team (instead of the director) is something I displayed over the Residential/Berlin project (look at the 'Berlin Evaluation' (Film Production Skills->Berlin). As all the projects for this area of the course had a hand-in date I felt I worked well to deadlines as everything I gave in was to the time that was requested. The more projects I had worked on, the more I was understanding how to allocate my time to each part of the film making process. I also became more able to judge how much time I would need depending on the type of film I was making. If I felt that I would need to put a lot of time into the post production side then I was sure to give myself the extra time that I would need. I feel this ability to make adjustments in time allocation is something that I have felt is something that has worked out well over the year. Next year however, I would like to work towards having even better time management and maybe incorporate making actual physical plans so I can show the people I will be working with in the future.
Cinematography is an area in which I really wanted to learn/ practice over this year as it is one of the specific routes that I want to try out after leaving the course. I feel I have demonstrated some understanding that can be seen within my films. Usually, there will be one or two shots in my film that I feel are alright. Examples of this is the first shot from the Berlin film (of the table and chairs by the window), the final shot of my everyday activity (the blowing out of the candles scene) and the last two shots of my experimental film. With all these shots, I had felt they each worked in their own way. For the experimental and everyday shots, I think they have good composition within the frame. They are aesthetically sound in their respective ways and that is why I have highlighted them. With the shot from the Berlin film I have felt this is my best shot in regards to how it is lit. However, for the few shots that seem decent there are many in which I wish I could've done differently and I critique a few of these shots and how I could have done them differently in each projects evaluation. I feel the more I try to focus on getting more aesthetically nice shots, the more understanding (through trail and error) I'll have the ability to then further increase the amount of shots I'm happy within future projects. A way I can also improve is to carry on watching a wider range of films featuring different styles to inspire me to try different styles of cinematography for my own films.
Audio recording is another area in which I would like to improve on as I feel that it's not something I'm completely sound at. Even though I do know the basics I feel like I should actually utilize the knowledge I have gained over the year. I think this could be why when I make a film, I try and keep the dialogue to a minimum. In the future I would need to involve more dialogue and hence why I would need more experience with setting up sound recordings in my film. But this will come with making more films as I understand how crucial sound is to a film (some people say it makes up 50% of the film).
The skill of video editing is something that I have feel developed well over the year. From starting off with having very little about editing techniques (such as how to appropriately put together the footage). I am now in the position where I feel like I can effectively and efficiently put together footage to make a film that I can be happy with the editing side. I have learnt to pay more attention on how and when to cut footage to make the film seem more seamless and also work on finding appropriate lengths for footage to be. This shift in focus has meant that the overall quality of editing has massively improved since the beginning of the year and that can be seen in my films where I might choose a way to edit my films in a fashion that I was unaware of at the beginning of the year. Furthermore, over the year I have shown more interest in the title sequence segment of my films and have drawn inspirations from such people at Jean-Luc Goddard and Gasper Noe in an attempt to create interesting title cards, this is a skill that I would like to further develop over the next year by continuing to research into the area and also out the research into practice to further this editing skill.
I would like to finish this evaluation by saying if there are segments that you feel could do with more explaining could you (whosoever reading this) check my other evaluations on each brief as in them I go into detail and give specific examples about the 5 topics and I didn't want to repeat myself as I can't imagine that wouldn't be the most interesting read for you. So to actually conclude, I feel like coming from the beginning where I didn't have any knowledge on the majority of the areas to where I am now I think it's been pretty decent but I still have a lot things I still have to learn.