Pre-production Evaluation

Initial Film Planning. 

For my film 'Untitled' it was established that I would need certain things to exactly make the film work. These would include transport, costumes and any potential props that i would be using during the filming process. So that we knew exactly where the budget was going we decided to only keep the budget to petrol costs. Our transport would be one of the crew members' cars, Neil's, as it limited unnecessary bus fares as not all of us had bus passes and the added trouble of having to take our equipment too and from each location on a bus. We opted for a car as a cheaper, faster and more practical option. This led to our only costs being the petrol charges for driving to the locations as there were no necessary props needed and the costume of our main character was already in our actresses wardrobe. Using pre-existing outfits saved us money as we weren't blowing it on something we already had.

Initially I had a lot of planning in place and the project was fairly well organised, the pre-production meant that a lot of work had already been done which made filming a lot easier. At the end of completing pre-production and starting to film I came across a few problems, our cast and crew had an argument which resulted in both parties not wanting to take part in the film. To resolve this I decided to do a full recast, six people including myself working on the film which was too many as we only had one actor. So I decided to downsize to one actress and just one crew member who would help transport us between each shooting location. We obviously needed one actress as I would be filming and wasn't comfortable acting in it, myself and one crew member to help drive us as neither myself or the actress can drive. This meant less hassle in the long run when managing the film production as we didn't even have to bother with sorting out multiple crew members. Cutting back on how many people we used also managed to cut down potential costs as we wouldn't have been able to fit all cast and crew members into my car. 

The main idea of my film came from my personal experiences with mental health issues and loneliness and feeling outcast from all my peers. I wanted to use the character of “Girl” to show how I feel like a side-character in my life and I need not be named. The creative process of making the film was almost instant, I had a lot of ideas for shots and I also knew from the start that I didn't want to put any dialogue in the film. This decision for me was to show how lonely and silent depression is, it shows that spending a lot of the time alone isn't very noisy it's eerily silent. I also wanted my main character "Girl" to not show her face at all throughout the film, because originally I was going to star in it but didn't want to in the end. I initially started by doing a draft script that detailed what I thought I wanted at the time, however after refining this I decided there were some scenes that could be swapped out. I also used a storyboard to visually map out what i was thinking in my head since, right at the beginning I had a clear picture of what I wanted but struggled to put it into words until I got to storyboard it. Using a script and storyboard also helped us during the filming process as I knew exactly what shots to use as I had drawn them previously. 

Project Management. 

During the creative process of "Untitled" our original cast and crew became unavailable due to an argument, however this argument allowed me to do a full recast. This recast provided me with enough control over the filming as I could control two people better than trying to manage six. The abundance of crew members were also unnecessary and would lead to transport difficulties, extra costs and would of course not be the easiest to manage. So I decided to use my parents, Neil and Caroline Taylor, the two of them would fit them film better, my mother being the actress and my father being there to transport us in the car and help during filming in public. For the film I loaned out college equipment- camera and batteries, I didn't have my own at home so this made shooting the film a lot easier and clearer, with the camera I may have had to do it on my phone. I used my own tripod that I had at home, this was one I've had for a while and it was easier than having to transport a tripod from college home on the bus since I already had one. For the software I also used the editing software that the college provided as I couldn't access it on my own laptop as it was paid. We didn't have to buy any costumes or props since they were already things that we had at home for practicality reasons. As a group we had one meeting minutes, we found this was enough judging as we are a family and would discuss it randomly in conversation instead of sitting down and having a meeting. We had a fair basis of what I wanted to do already so there was no need for a meeting about that. As we are a family, that means we see each other all day everyday, so having to find time when we could shoot wasn't an issue as it may have been with others.

Initially there were a lot of casting issues, as mentioned earlier our main cast and crew had an argument outside of the film. To relieve tensions I decided it would be best If I recast and picked a different crew, this worked in my favour thankfully as I picked my parents. My mum would be the main actress, they don't show their face in the film so her looking older than I initially wanted wasn't an issue. My dad also acted as a cameraman/ transport for the film as he was the only one out of all three of us who could drive there were no extra transport costs for the film. My storyboarding and script writing for the film did in fact follow industry standards, with the film having no dialogue and lacking in character movement it was hard initially writing the script. However after consulting other examples I found it easier, describing the character and the setting. With copyrighting, we had no copyrighted material in the film as there was in fact no audio or soundtrack which was the best for us, as we wanted ambient sound to make it just quiet and slightly eerie. During the pre-production process I tried to adhere to the Industry Standard protocol as best I could filling in the necessary paperwork to shoot the film properly. 

When it came to Risk Management and the assessment of the production I tried to pick places that would pose the safest, for example; places away from traffic, places that were sheltered or places that weren't near any cliff edges or drops. Both my parents were aware that there may indeed be an injury if the field we film on is wet it could be slippery. They were also aware that there may be traffic but should be cautious and use common sense in the areas of potential injury. Luckily we came out filming with no injuries and everyone had adhered to the safety measures, there was no time when one of us was out of the sight of the others during filming. When it came to documenting our process of filming and the progress there were notes and photographs that were taken during and after everytime we filmed, we only went out twice to film so there were only two days to document. My dad took the pictures as I filmed and I wrote up the notes for the day's filming the best I could to help further the production of the film and keep track of what I had done. 

Overall 

As a whole I felt 'Untitled' went fairly well, there were a few situations that could have gone better while filming but I believe I handled it the best I could. I felt that if I had stuck with my initial want to have at least 4 crew members and one actress, project management would have been a lot more awkward. In future projects I would probably try to change the genre of my film and give it dialogue and allot more time for filming. The genre was gard to write for and a lot of time was wasted on the script writing and pre-production, if I had spent less time on that I would have had more filming time which would have improved the overall quality of my film in the end. The film did let me down a bit but as my first try at direction and producing a film I have learned to accept what I have made even though I may be disappointed with the end product.