Looking back at my AS coursework piece I can clearly evaluate several positive and negative aspects of the planning, production and post-production. Throughout the duration of creating the product, both Courtney and I feel that we worked hard and to our full ability to achieve the marks we did; however, there are still some improvements we feel we could have made in order to improve our marks.
Planning
We believed our idea was a true representation of the lives of some teens that other members of society would often overlook and would not think twice about. We believe our idea emphasised the struggles some people are faced with and would raise awareness of what some people may be going through, therefore encouraging members of society to not simply ignore nor pass judgement as easily as they often do. However, the theme of teens mixing with the wrong crowd is a popular topic and therefore is not as original as we would have hoped for. For the casting of our opening, we advertised our idea to a group of people available to us allowing us to film whenever and wherever. When assigning the role of the main character we had a selection of people and decided Chantelle would fit the role perfectly due to the stereotype we had developed; however, the acting experience of the people we chose was rather limited and this may have affected how the characters came across as a whole. Our script was extremely detailed as it included all the lines each character would have to say, which scene it would take place in and even the credits which would be inputted within the post-production process. Our storyboard was additionally very detailed as it showed, mostly, shot-for-shot sections with details such as what type of shot to use, what would happen through the duration of the shot and how long the shot would last for. Overall, I feel that Courtney and I planned thoroughly for the production and even the post-production for our product and if we had to complete our AS coursework again, we would only make subtle changes, such as altering the storyline slightly to make our idea more original and widening our casting search to people who had more professional acting experience.
Production
Overall the organisation our the production of our coursework was extremely efficient; we created a detailed plan of what scenes we would film on which dates at certain times and at specific locations. By strictly following this plan we reached all the deadlines in plenty of time, leaving us more time to play around with the post-production side to achieve the best result. The filming however was not as successful; due to the lack of experience of our actors we had to retake several shots which meant spending a bit more time on some scenes, although we still managed to stick to our deadlines. Overall, Courtney and I were content with most scenes within our film opening and by sticking to our plan we were able to spend some time tweaking scenes that raised concerns without having to stress or worry about not reaching deadlines.
Post-production
The editing process was overall very positive as the scenes we filmed were simply easily trimmed to fit the plan set out in our storyboard. At first we struggled to use the Adobe Premier Pro software as both Courtney and I had hardly any experience using it beforehand, meaning we had to spent a rather long time just figuring out how to use it and how to apply what we knew of the software into the editing of our filming. The two idents used at the beginning of our film opening are effective in the way that they do not seem out of place, especially the use of the second one, which clearly states "Covert-Teen Productions", the word "teen" directly linking to our intended target audience of mostly teenagers. The soundtrack within our film opening mainly consists of three pieces, the first simply a short section of instrumental music found on YouTube to create a tense atmosphere, leading up to the scene where an act of violence is seen taking place. The second is a cover, also found on YouTube, to display the feelings of our main character and to encourage the audience to understand her difficult position and why she is so emotional. The last piece of music is a song often heard in nightclubs and at house parties to fit the scene we created of a house party. The music is originally from the speakers within the house, but we enhanced it to make the audience feel more involved in the hectic scene and make them feel as if they are actually there. During the post-production of our film opening we encountered a huge problem regarding the audio from our film, being that some scenes it was barely audible. However, during the creation of our idents, Courtney and I discovered how we could improve it and soon fixed the problem, leaving the audio is all scenes clear and easy to hear.
A2 Coursework
In relation to my A2 coursework, I will ensure to learn from the negative aspects of my AS coursework; to make certain of this I will focus my casting on people who have more acting experience to avoid having to retake several shots in order to achieve the results I want.
- Plan in advance to avoid falling behind deadlines
- When going through the casting process, include people who have previous acting experience
- Ensure that the idea is engaging to avoid the audience loosing interest
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