Project Evaluation

I enjoyed the freedom offered during this unit to largely work individually and feel as though I successfully stepped up to the plate, adequately handling each responsibility that I was required to fulfil. It was a welcome change to be able to have complete creative control of a project- for good or bad, and to learn and grow individually when faced with the challenges that presented themselves. 

From the beginning of this unit, I knew I wanted to take on something that would challenge me to continue pushing my boundaries as a filmmaker and develop my skills and understanding of producing media and this seemed like the unit to do this. The premise of the unit was incredibly interesting, with us being given free rein to interpret one of the sonnets in any way that we wanted. This vagueness allowed us to be imaginative, and experimentation was strongly encouraged. I had initially considered shooting without a story, capturing short vignettes of 'feelings', or 'moments in time' and editing them together to create a visual atmosphere that told a story in a looser construct. I felt as though the source material, Fulke-Greville's 'Sonnet 100', was strong though, and could easily form the basis of a short story and I felt that it was also appropriate when adapting, to try and capture some of the essence of the original source. 

One of the considered alternate endings.

With high hopes, I set about planning my project, but I soon ran into my first hurdle- writers' block. Some personal issues that I experienced at the beginning of the unit also didn't help with clarity of thought, and I struggled with the writing process many times, revisiting the same story beats and feeling as though the story lacked cohesion and an appropriate climax. I considered a great many options, especially the initial framing of the story- Should it be one night? Should it leap forward in time? Should it be deliberately confusing? And, how to end it; a crack of the wishbone and an ambiguous ending? Should he die? There were so many possibilities to consider in such a short timeframe, that it felt impossible to choose the 'right one', settling instead, with the most feasible and seemingly logical option. Because of this experience, I didn't (and still don't) feel absolutely confident in the story that I was telling.  Time was permitting though, and I of course had to settle on something. I'm thankful, though, that I did choose an ending after many discussions with peers and tutors. It wasn't perfect, but it was functional and achievable- two things that ultimately mattered most in order to have a finished project. Sometimes, you may have limited options and in that case, the best option is to get it done and reflect. Had I continued my indecision, I would not have made a finished product, ultimately weakening the story as a whole, so I'm glad that I wasn't too stubborn to settle on one of the options.

One of the main issues that I experienced during this project was with audio problems. I decided on the first day that not every take would need audio recorded as we had some back-up audio in the camera. This, however, was not the case and I found out later on that the internal camera mic had unfortunately been turned off. This meant that we had only a few takes of sound, and that these didn't necessarily correspond with the shots used in the edit (They also didn't match the action on screen closely enough to be used). On the second day, I didn't check the batteries on the mic, which were very low and made the sound recorded during the first half of the day unusable. I was fortunate in the fact that there was very little dialogue, and for the shots with dialogue, I had great sound. 

Here's a small section of 'Changeling' with only sound that I recorded myself in post-production.

My original intention was to try and mask the lack of diegetic sound with a low musical score, but after putting this in place, it seemed unnatural. I decided that the only way around this was to record some additional sound and put this in instead. I had a small rode mic that I could plug into my Mac, and having never done this before, and had no idea how it would work. After some googling, I created an additional track for the sound and began to watch and painstakingly try to replicate different actions on screen and record different sections at a time. I think that the results were surprisingly effective, having never done it before, and it's definitely something that I would consider doing again in the future to emphasise certain sounds.

A screenshot of the final timeline for my project in Premiere Pro (I suspect that this could be a visual headache for an experienced editor)

I also knew from the beginning that the music in Horror was absolutely vital in creating the atmosphere (Ma et al., A computational lens into how music characterizes genre in film 2021). Much as I couldn't rely on the music alone, I also couldn't just rely on diegetic sound to carry the story. After a lot of searching but having no luck on various websites to find any royalty free music that I liked as it was, I tried to find different sounds or ambient tracks in the BBC Sound effects library and on Youtube instead. I found various sounds such as violin shrieks, that when slowed and reverbed, sounded like a slow moving train engine. I also found piano keys, and individually pitched and placed each key 'on action'. I layered all of these sounds, and listened over and over to get the levels right and the timing correct. The 'soundscape' ended up being an amalgamation of all of these things, along with some additional sound that I thought fit the scene i.e. Throat singing. This whole process was the final part of my edit, and I'm glad that I spent such a great deal of time doing it. Being able to comment retrospectively of the screening, I think the sound was a hugely successful part of the project that I hadn't have thought was possible for me to do, it added an extra layer of immersion that helped to really push the feeling more so than a lot of the visuals in my opinion and something that I also found enjoyable to do (At times, listening to a baby crying over and over wasn't a highlight)

Audio troubles aside, there were other difficulties encountered during my time creating the project; they say don't work with children or animals- I did both. Having a specific shot list for the baby proved difficult, as of course- no offence to babies out there- babies can't act. It meant that a lot of the shots of the baby laughing/crying etc. were purely opportunist and it was a scenario of trying to get the best viable option. It was also difficult as the baby often looked down the lens of the camera, which for me, worked at times, but at others, broke the immersion and made the audience hyper-aware of the camera. Time was also limited for filming, between the baby sleeping, eating and other baby-centric pastimes. All of this aside though, I think that mostly, the shots of the baby worked and with the audio track, the baby didn't need to be overly present on screen, the audio was enough to tell the viewer that the baby was present in the scene, so this was a good workaround.

Working individually was a welcome breath of fresh air, and despite the difficulties I have experienced during this unit, I think that it has helped me greatly in improving my practise; my ability to plan has greatly improved and I've proven that I can handle a great deal of pre-planning workload, having more hands on time with the camera and the importance of lens choice, camera movement and blocking, and of Premiere Pro and working to create a cohesive narrative, building layers of sound and tying everything together to achieve the goal that I set myself. I'm proud of the project, and, although there are some rough edges, and retrospectively some things that I would already change, I again stepped outside of my comfort zone, worked really hard and believe that I created a worthwhile project at the end of it. 

Bibliography:

"Criticism has been bedevilled by emotive words such as "violation', 'vulgarization' and 'betrayal', all emphasising what has been lost rather than what has been gained, and suggesting the forceful robbing of innocence from the pure literary text." Cartmell, D. and Whelehan, I. (2010) “Introduction,” in Screen adaptation: Impure Cinema. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 3–3. 

"Music plays a crucial role in the experience and enjoyment of film. While the narrative of movie scenes may be driven by non-musical audio and visual information, a film's music carries a significant impact on audience interpretation of the director's intent and style" Ma, B. et al. (2021) “A computational lens into how music characterizes genre in film,” PLOS ONE, 16(4). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249957.