My Evaluation

For my evaluation I decided to create a prezi. This is the link to watch it:

http://prezi.com/rw7tv9zxhaov/evaluation/

The final project

This is the two minutes film opening. I hope you enjoy watching it and I would be very pleased about some comments as well.

Audiences Feedback

I have put our film on Facebook and got my friends to comment on it. These are a few answers that I got:

Translation of Frank Nerz:

"Awesome! Very nice! A story which was started to be told and the imagination started running! Congratulations!"

Franz Alwin:

"A-Grade! That's very very good. A great idea, creative as well as professional. Maybe just the voice could be turned a bit louder or the music faded down a bit more while speaking - makes it easier to focus on the speech."

Nine people liked it on Facebook

Shaminder Gill:

"This is amazing"

Zhane Nashara Simpson:

"This is really good. I need part two!"

Clive Isherwood:

"Excellent work."

Most of the Feedback is positive which I very appreciate. The only thing which a few of the audience noted was that we should try to fade down a bit of the music or tune the voice-over a bit louder. Unfortunately, I got those comments after we finished the film, but I am very happy about those tips and ideas and I definitely will bare it in mind for next time.

Assignment of tasks

Our crew members: Faraz, Nora (me), Julia

Pre-production
In the pre-production we all worked together. We didn't use the internet a lot, we rather discussed in our group to find out the typical aspects of different film genres, especially of the teen romance. As a reason that I am a foreign students I could bring many ideas into the discussion and we got different views about films. Interesting was to see, that even if we are from different countries, the main criteria of a stereotypical romance or teenage drama are the same which I was talking about earlier on in that blog. We viewed a few different teen drama romance films, for example "10 things I hate about you" to get more detailed ideas.
I wrote the final draft of the script after working on earlier drafts with Julia and Faraz. I also drew our final story board.

Filming
When it came to the actual filming we worked on different parts. All in all it took us just five days to finish our filming, but we spread out over weeks because it was hard to find a day where everyone could come.
On filming day one we first went to town to film in the library. Our friend Andre was the actor and Julia, Faraz and me were filming by turns. After that we went to my house to film the scene where I put my make up on. That means I was the actor and Faraz was filming. But even if I was acting, I kind of gave my ideas of how to film it still into the discussion.
After that day I checked what we had filmed over the day and unfortunately it was very shaky because we didn't take a tripod with us. That is why Julia and I decided to film the scene again where I put my make up on- the second day of filming.
The third day of filming was when we went to the library at the Northwood campus to film again, but this time with a tripod to see if it works better. This time we were all filming by turns again. I had the idea of putting the book shelfs together to make the library look more stuffed.
We were filming at school the fourth day. Faraz was filming most of these scenes because Julia, me and Andre were the actors.
The fifth day of filming isn't really a day. The idea was to record a whole day a clock to speed it up later and put it over the film. Me and Julia put the camera up twice, but it didn't work the way we wanted it to so we decided not to use it.

Editing
Julia and I did the most of the editing. Faraz helped us at the end to refine everything. The voice over was done by me and Faraz. We wrote the text together and then recorded it. During the editing I did not use a lot of transition between the shots. Mainly I tried to use the scenes themselves to create the transitions. It was sometimes not very easy but it makes it look more realistic.

Final
At the end I think everyone was involved in everything, but sometimes less then someone else. I was there for every filming, filmed a lot myself and gave ideas to it. The editing was one of my favourite parts and I did a lot on it.

Construction

For our filming we used a camera, a tripod and for the voice over a microphone all from the school provided.
During the filming we experimented with different camera movements. We tried the steady camera on a tripod as well as the hand held camera. In our finished product we only used the steady shots because it worked better for our film and the film genre.
We used only natural light so it seems more common and the viewers can imagine the story better.
While filming we thought carefully about what we want to have in our shot, for example in the library scene. We moved one of the shelves and made sure not to have the window in our frame so it would look more stuffed and full of books.

We tried to bring in a great variety of different shots and shot distances to make it more interesting for the viewer. We used an arc shot for the scene where the boy- Leon leaves the school to make him look lonely as i said before.

The mainly used shot is the mid-shot. Close ups were used by focussing on the diary as it fell on the ground and the little sequences of me putting my make up on. In these sequences at the end we used an extreme close up as well- focussing on the lipstick print on the mirror. That brings the viewer closer to what is happening.
As a reason that our two minutes film opening is a teenage romance, we paid attention to make the transitions between the shots smooth. We used the match on action for example to finish a action, to make it round end not just to let it end like for example the book drop or when Leon throws the paper on the ground. The sequences with me putting the make up on, the voice over and the music give the whole film continuity and make it better flowing.
The use of different titles helps us to make our film look more realistic, more authentic. First we put in the cast names, by doing that we made sure that there is the right distance between each of them- again to make sure it is smooth. After that we wrote "produced by", "edited by" and " written by". The names we used for that aren't actually the Persons who did it; we just pasted it in to make it more realistic. We did the same with the production company at the very beginning, it is a fictional company but it makes it more professional. We decided to call it "Babel Productions" because it works very good with our topic- babel fish for example which helps with language barrier and it helps with translating all the languages.
When we put in the music we made sure that certain parts of the music are in the right position and go along well with the film. There is a scene for example where Leon leaves the school, lonely, and in this shot the music slows down as well. The voice over is not just there either. It interacts with the film and what is happening.
All this brings it down to a round figure.

Song

The English translation of the song we put over our film. It seems a bit melancholic but we thought that might fit into our genre of teenage romance. Julia and me picked that song. We wrote earlier on a letter for permission of copyright for the song but we did not get an answer. Therefore we are just going to ask our friends on Facebook for feedback on our film.

I will change the world

I know thsoe days

For years it's been enough

And its almost as if

I like to fight myself

I cant be well alone

And among people I start going crazy

I can ask myself way too many questions

But I cant see the solutions clearly

But someday it will all come to an end

And I will start celebrating my life

I will change the world

Will make everything better at last

Will start coping again

And laugh about myself

And I know that someday

Good can come out of evil

And when nothing at all is going

I simply start over from scratch

Maybe I should just count the days

I have to suffer through annoying hours of pain

No matter how long that goes on

Cause I know who will stand at the end

I will stop losing

Will throw away everyone

I'm just going to copy myself

I will change the world

Will simply change the rules

And gladly go back home

And above all decompress