Evaluation : Shellshocked

We have finally completed our depict short film. You can find our finished video here :


Camerawork : When drafting up our storyboard we decided to keep the camerawork simple with a more complex intro and outro. This way the conversation could be followed closely without the distraction of confusing camerawork. This way the film would look simplistic and get the meaning of the conversation over better. We wanted the viewers to concentrate more about the conversation then the camerawork itself. For the intro we used a follow shot moving from the humans down to the snails. After this shot we used one single shot of the snails and then edited the zoom in conjunction with what snails spoke. By doing this it made it easier to know which snail was speaking. This was a issue we had as all the snails looked the same so it was very tough to distinguish between them when talking. We decided to have a mid angle shot on the snails as this meant it was level to the snails body, due to how small the snails were it was nearly impossible to have any other angle. A high angle would have meant you would have only been able to see the shell and a low angle would't have been possible as the snails were already located on the floor so the camera could not have been able to be placed underneath the snails. As well as the intro, the outro was one of our more complex shots. It is very similar to the intro but instead the opposite as it moves in a different direction (from snail to human). This way we could have the last shot on the humans to end the narrative of the short. We made sure we followed the storyboard throughout so it went the way we planned it to.

Mise - en - scene 

After drawing up the storyboard we realised that the on screen visuals would be very simplistic as there was not much happening except conversation. This was due to the visuals simply being a conversation with no movement of setting. Due to this we had to try and make the on screen visuals look as god as they could be. The damp concrete created a nice look as the snail's shiny look blended in with it. We didn't have any props as we wanted it to have a natural look and props would have cluttered the setting. We used only natural lighting as artificial lighting wouldn't have helped with the look we wanted. Obviously the outdoor look we were trying to perfect would not have looked as natural with artificial lighting. To get the perfect natural lighting we had to wait for the best hours for shooting, this was around 1o'clock as this light wasn't too harsh neither was it too dark. The snails were very hard to organise in a way that would look good on camera, in the end we went with a fairly symmetrical looking setup which had all 4 snails lined up next to each other. The other option to get the conversation was to get different angles for each snail talking but this would have been very confusing for the viewer and also not looked as clean as the shots we chose. We also decided to get the bench leg in the shot to make the scene look as natural as possible and to show that the snails were in close proximity to the people sitting on the bench. We had decided on the pre-production work on what shot types to use and we executed this when filming. Most of the shots were close ups on each individual snail, this way we could show which snail was speaking and it also gave a nice close up alternative rather than the long shot that we used for the scene setting shot with all snails in shot.

Editing + continuity 

The editing was one of the most difficult challenges we faced as this is where the storyline would be created. We had some pretty simplistic footage to work with but footage that would shape up nicely. We recorded the voice over separately so this was then brought in and synced up with the footage. Adam throughout this project had the idea that he wanted this to look a lot like the work of Guy Ritchie, he is of course famous for using stylised screenshots to introduce characters and this is exactly what we done. When we introduced each character we took a screenshot and placed this image into Photoshop, we knew what kind of look we were aiming for as this was one of the topics we discussed in the pre-production work. Using a system of conscious trail and error we come up with the look we wanted and we were happy with the final look. One of the toughest things we had to overcome was the snail on the far left of the screen as it was slightly out of focus. We decided to leave it be as it leaves the audience with a sense of uncertainty as this snail is a strange character with a hidden personality, this is portrayed through the slighly out of focus footage of him.  We also needed to edit some text into the film for the title card and also the names of the snails on the stylised screenshots. We decided that typography was going to be very important to make the film look clean and stylish. We tried a lot of different texts in the film before we were finally happy with the end product. Finally after all of the editing we needed to export the video in a H.264 format to make it compatible with YouTube, the final quality of the video was 1080p.

Sound 

Sound was another hugely important factor to our film as this was what was going to make the film. Due to the our film being conversation based it was hugely important that the sound quality was good and the microphone we used was capable of capturing the best audio quality possible. We used a Zoom H1 to record the audio as we felt this was the best microphone we had at our disposal. To record the voice over we went into a quiet room which had lots of absorbing materials in so there was no echo. We made sure everyone who voice acted had the same audio levels and recorded everyone in different clips which would make it easier to import into the editing process - that was the voices complete. Due to our film being in an outdoor setting we needed to make sure we captured the natural sounds that you hear outside, to do this we simply stood outside and recorded a few minutes of the ambient background noise. This made everything sound a lot more natural and as previously mentioned this was the look we wanted. Of course once we had all of the sound recorded we still needed to edit it all in sync with the video footage, this was made a lot easier after recording all of the audio files separately. Once all of the voice clips and ambient background noise was edited in we decided that it sounded a bit bare. This is when as a group we trawled the internet for some royalty free background music. We found some 'animal documentary' music on YouTube which was royalty free and fitted perfectly. We also found some music which would fit in with the stylised screenshots which gave the whole viewing experience slightly more texture. We then experimented with all of this in premiere pro and found the perfect levels for everything. After this process we were complete with sound.

Conclusion

From pre-production to the finished edit most things went very smoothly. The idea we came up with was a very unique one and that is the effect we wanted, we didn't to create something that has already been done before. I felt the vigorous pre-production work made everything a lot easier in filming and post-production as we had a plan to follow. By following this plan it meant we could create something that replicated our original idea. There are some things that I would change such as better voice acting and the way you relate to each chararcter but these are very minor things, in all I am very happy with the finished product.