​AARON'S AS MEDIA

To film the first scene of our film, The Rise and Fall of Harry Clarke, we went to the local park, following what we had drawn up on our storyboard in the previous lesson. Upon arrival we realised, because of the area being surrounded by trees, the microphone was picking up a lot of wind, making the vocals a little distorted, if we had more time to edit the film we could have boosted the vocals and softened the harshness of the wind. Also, the microphone picked up some noise from the birds in the trees; although we thought this enhanced the film by giving it a more realistic feel.

The filming was going very well and we managed to get some really good shots that worked well with the surrounding area, however after a while we realised the microphone wasn’t turned on, so the shots had no sound accompanying them. This was a massive hindrance but, luckily, we just had enough time to shoot the shots again and keep the visual quality.

Another problem with shooting was the brightness of the sun and how exposed the camera was to the light because of the open park. We adjusted the exposure setting on the camera, it made a big difference but some of the shots were still a little too bright, and we found quite a few ‘dead’ pixels. We did our best when editing to dampen the brightness and bring the shots down to a better visual quality.

Editing and putting all our shots together into one film went really well; we managed to cut the shots finely and consequently create some great match-on-action shots. Although we did run out of time towards the end of the session, therefore the ‘titles’ were a bit rushed, if we had more time we planned to work them into the start of the film.

Upon receiving feedback from the rest of the class, we learned most people really enjoyed our film and admired our use of shots such as the match-on-action, shot-reverse-shot and rule of thirds. Matt was really impressed with our use of the rule-of-thirds and how we worked the bodies into the camera’s grid, for example: in the second shot, when Ben is looking from the gate towards Dillon, on the bench, we have Ben’s head and shoulders in the right-hand squares and Dillon, in the distance, in the left-hand squares. This worked well as it showed the audience the setting, the 2 characters and the intent all in one shot. We believe the rule of thirds worked well because we drew the camera’s grid on the storyboard and stuck to the planned shots.

The class also complimented our use of the 180-degree rule. Technically we didn’t stick to the rule, however, using the second shot, we showed the audience the lay-out and structure of the set, from there we manipulated the camera round by following Ben from behind Dillon’s shoulder.

The class also thought our use of match-on-action when Ben rises from the bench and walks off went well. We achieved this quality of shot by spending time zooming-in and making the cuts fine, consequently, the sequence flowed seamlessly.

One possible improvement that the class picked out was the consistency of contrast throughout the film. As I mentioned previously, the exposure and sunlight in the park caused us problems. When editing we had to darken a lot of the shots to make them more visually pleasing, however, in a few shots the exposure was fine and we must have forgotten to adapt them like the others. Personally, one improvement I think we could have made, provided we had more time would have been to change the audio of the film as the vocals were really drowned out by the disrupting noise of the harsh wind. I would avoid this next time by using a ‘dead-cat’ (Microphone Muff) to cancel-out the affecting noise. This way we could focus more on the vocals and ensure they make the impact they are intended to.

Overall I think our drawing-up of the storyboard, filming and editing went well for a first project. I was reasonably happy with the final-product. However I would have liked more time to fine-tune the film and make it even more visually and audibly pleasing.