Highlight the skills and knowledge you have gained and developed and show how you have gained them. Provide suggestions for improvement and how these attributes will inform your study in future modules this year.
In this project we were asked to create a two-minute film. The brief was divided into four stages to help us break the project down; the first three stages required us to work as part of a group. In this report I will reflect on my learning and development during this module highlighting the skills and knowledge I have gained. The first stage was to come up with a brief outline of our film, and we worked well as a team to develop a basic storyline and decide the genre and intended effect on the audience. We decided to produce a film with a basic but humorous storyline, with some surreal aspects. Our seminars and lectures about narratives helped us largely with the structure for the film as we learnt about basic storylines (i.e. man on quest, girl meets boy, etc.) and this gave us a frame to work around. The film would be made up of a series of still images and text slides, we decided this would be easier to complete than a motion picture as none of us had any real editing experience. When we thought about this later we were sure it would not challenge us enough so we came up with the idea of using computer graphics as backgrounds, and this would make the film more original as well.
Once we had completed the first stage we moved onto the next, which was to produce a ten-minute presentation. We divided up the tasks that needed to be completed before putting this presentation together. One of the tasks, which had to be done straight away, was writing the script, this was important, as it would enable another member of the group to put together a storyboard for us to present. Another main job was research as that would help us throughout the project, and it would back up our ideas for the film in the presentation. This research made us realise that the most efficient way to do our photography would be with a blue screen, as we did not need the backgrounds. This presentation was our first major task as a group and it was quite difficult. As we did not know each other before this project it was hard at first to realise how different people work in different ways. After our presentation I felt we were more of a team, as we had to work together for this.
In future presentations I will learn from the mistakes we made and use the skills I have picked up. This will include more preparation, such as, extra rehearsal time as this will make the presentation look professional through added confidence and knowledge of the material I am presenting. In this presentation we should have rehearsed in the room we would be presenting in so we would have known what equipment is available and been able to check it all worked, for example our sound file that was attached to the presentation would not play but if we had known this earlier we could have either fixed the problem or taken the sound file out. From the feedback we received after the presentation we realised that it may have been a good idea to theme out presentation to make it more suited to what we were presenting and this will be a key factor for any future presentations.
I devised a detailed time plan for the for the next stage of the project, this broke the time down day by day giving tasks to each individual member of the group. By this time we had hoped for completed storyboards so we could get straight into the photography stage but unfortunately this was not the case so in the time plan I gave an extra week for this to be finished, the other group members and myself carried out some more detailed research, I created some sample text slides to show the group and Ian created some simple backgrounds for us to get an idea of how each scene would work, I felt it was important that this extra week was not wasted by waiting for someone else to do something and that we should all do something constructive.
In the second week we had booked out the TV studio in order to use the blue screen, so everything asked to be done had to be done by this day. As we had looked at the blue screen earlier we knew that it was not big enough for a full length photograph and we had ideas on how to deal with this by certain camera angles and poses. When we came set up the lights we realised that none of us had any lighting experience and the research had not been done, because of this there were too many shadows on the blue screen which made the use of it pointless when it came to cutting out the backgrounds of the photos later on in Photoshop. Now we have had seminars on lighting we know for the future how to set them up properly to avoid this happening again. We knew that none of us had much photography experience and because of this we had decided to use a simple digital camera that we would all be able to use, because of this we were all able to have a go at the photography. We worked from the storyboards to take the photographs but unfortunately two of the five scenes were still missing so for the last two scenes we had to work straight from the script which was much more difficult. At this stage we should have taken the job of storyboarding away from that particular person and passed it on to another group member as they had now missed many deadlines for the work to be done by, if we had done this we would not have been delayed in later parts of the project, this is a tactic that I plan to use in future group work.
Once we had all of the photos I took them into Adobe Photoshop in order to resize them to the standard PAL format and to cut out the background from each photograph leaving just the main character(s). As I knew that I would be carrying out this task I had done some research into ‘batch jobs’ (www.sitepoint.com/article/file-processes-photoshop). I found out that by creating a batch job I would make my life much easier as once I had done one photo, it would copy what I had done and apply it to all the rest. This sounded too good to be true and unfortunately it was. Due to the amount of shadows that matched the dark colours on the character, and the small blue screen that we had in the photos each photo had to be cut out individually. This was highly time consuming and frustrating.
Ian had done a great job producing the backgrounds for each scene, but was let down at the last minute when another group member was unable to produce their share of the work, this took valuable time away from the editing part of the project and meant we were unable to do a viewing of the film, which we had planned to do in the final week, which would have given us valuable feedback before the final deadline of the project. We used Photoshop to insert the photographs of the characters into the backgrounds, but again this was hard to do without the storyboards and therefore took longer than originally planned. When we finally started putting the photos and text-slides together in Adobe Premiere it was Tuesday of the final week, two days before the deadline, this left us little room for manoeuvre. This was also made even more difficult as our audio was not produced until Tuesday night. We learnt our editing skills. We had to rush our editing and therefore the final film was not as good as it could have been had other members of the group managed their time better.
In this project I found myself in an organisational role which I did not know I was capable of, I did however find that because of this I was the one who was left feeling responsible for the entire project and this could be quite stressful at times. I feel that in future projects a lot more research is needed than was done as we did not have the technical skills needed for certain parts of the project such as the lighting and editing, if we had researched thoroughly we would not have encountered as many problems as we did. Through my research I have learnt to use software, which was necessary in this project, from Adobe Premiere, which I have not used before, to Adobe Photoshop, which I have learnt to use to a higher standard. I also carried out some basic research of SDK Hammer so that I would have a clearer understanding of what other group members would be doing and I found this very interesting to learn about.
I now know that time management is extremely important, so creating a time-plan is no good unless you stick to it. It is also important to make group meetings more formal, by taking minutes for example, as this gives everyone a clearer understanding of what has been discussed and what needs to be done and by when. In this project the most important thing I have learnt that it is important to choose your team members carefully as this is the foundation of any project when you are required to work as a team. In this project I quickly realised that each group member had varying levels of skills and commitment, which made it difficult to assign equal amounts of work to each person. In future, when choosing a group to work with I will be looking for people with skills and attributes suited to the project, and also people who are highly motivated to complete the task in hand to a high standard.
Overall I think there are many areas for improvement in this project. On the final film the quality of the sound editing is not very good as it was rushed and we did not research this thoroughly enough. Towards the end of the project many group members lost their motivation and this hindered the outcome of the project, in future I would try to find this out early and what caused it and the we could work as a group to keep team spirit up. I enjoyed this experience and I feel I have learnt some invaluable skills for the future, both at university and in my career.
Bibliography
Adobe Photoshop Batch Jobs Tutorial
www.sitepoint.com/article/file-processes-photoshop
SDK Hammer – Getting Started
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Getting_Started
Useful Lectures
Narrative 1 (Jools Ayodeji, Week 11, 13th October 2006) https://elearn.ntu.ac.uk/mle/system/learningroom/moduleview.asp?folder=true&href=https://elearn.ntu.ac.uk/07VLP/2005%20Modules/Level%201/MMPR10107_0/notes/&modulecode=MMPR10107&modulename=Narratives
Narrative 1 (Jools Ayodeji, Week 12, 20th October 2006) https://elearn.ntu.ac.uk/mle/system/learningroom/moduleview.asp?folder=true&href=https://elearn.ntu.ac.uk/07VLP/2005%20Modules/Level%201/MMPR10107_0/notes/&modulecode=MMPR10107&modulename=Narratives
Video Editing (Danny Kaye, Week 15, 10th November 2006) https://elearn.ntu.ac.uk/mle/system/learningroom/moduleview.asp?folder=true&href=https://elearn.ntu.ac.uk/07VLP/2005%20Modules/Level%201/MMPR10107_0/notes/&modulecode=MMPR10107&modulename=Narratives
Useful Seminars
Narrative_2_seminar.doc
https://elearn.ntu.ac.uk/mle/system/learningroom/moduleview.asp?folder=true&href=https://elearn.ntu.ac.uk/07VLP/2005%20Modules/Level%201/MMPR10107_0/seminars/&modulecode=MMPR10107&modulename=Narratives
Video Editing (Danny Kaye, Week 16, 16th November 2006)
Lighting (Danny Kaye and Deborah Tuck, Week 17, 23rd November 2006)
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