The conversation (Four hour film challenge) - Reflection

This task was designed to explore our skills when it comes to working on a group project, as well as time management, practical and organisational skills. The most apparent issue that first came up was the time limit which had been set for the whole film to be complete. It did not help however, when we took an unnecessary amount of time to plan the narrative of the video. To make up for lost time, we decided on a vague plot and began to shoot. It was decided, to achieve the best possible look for our film to shoot the majority of the video outside. This meant we had natural light to work with and therefore would avoid film grain which would lower the quality of the picture.

As soon as the exposure had been calibrated we began the shoot at a variety of sense in many different locations. As time was running out, one of us volunteered to begin editing the footage that we had already shot whilst the rest simultaneously shot the remaining footage that was needed to complete the film. This saved a lot of time when it came to the editing process.

What I felt we achieved particularly successfully was the fact we were able to manage time efficiently that we had time left to experiment with different shot transitions during the editing process, such as fades and different text graphics as apposed to the simple cut.

What did lack however that could defiantly have been improved was the lack of experimentation with different shot types which made the film look a bit uninteresting and plain. I would defiantly be more inclined to use a larger variety of lenses with different aperture settings in the future. The different aperture settings offered by different lenses would have given us more freedom to explore different shot types.

What also lacked in this film was a cohesive narrative. I felt like the concept was rushed and therefore not fleshed out to its full potential which left it as an unorganised and cohesive plot structure. What we took away from this was that the concept of the video is just as important as the visuals in order to overcome this issue and not make the same mistake again.