"The Disappearance of Tabitha McCready" - Evaluation of preliminary task

Preliminary task - "The Disappearance of Tabitha McCready"

This is the video we produced from the script, storyboard, shooting and editing. Below is my evaluation of how the final product turned out.

Evaluation

What went well

• Choppy editing gives the film the dark and gritty feel of a thriller (i.e. Bourne, Taken, Se7en etc.)
• Different angles work effectively, such as close-ups to convey emotion and tracking shots to show movement.
• The intensity of the performances is clear when things heat up and the murder twist comes out - Paddy convinces as a man who has murdered a child and I convince as a grief-stricken father.

What failed

• The lighting was bad: sometimes it was too dark in shots where it needed to be bright, like the close-up of an actor's face; sometimes it was too bright when it needed to be darker, like the grimmer action shots.
• Some of the acting was poor - I think I over-gunned it on the violence and frustration and Paddy was much too calm to be a paedophile under such pressure
• Terrible resolution

What I would change

• The video's resolution could be sharper, and for the next task will be improved by rendering
• I would control the lighting better, as we allowed natural light to take its course during production on this
• The Ben Sherlock/Luke Jamieson credit don't feature for nearly as much screen time as the Liam Edwards/Paddy Brennan credit, which Luke and I were unhappy with. The credits on the next video will need tooling up to feature equal screen time for each credit.
• I would move the camera more to give the film a more kinesthetic feel

Preliminary task - group project

Script

I wrote the script for our group project, an interrogation scene. In the scene, a grizzled detective named Frank McCready is interrogating a paedophile named Alan Smith who has kidnapped a young girl, Tabitha. We wanted the main tension to come from Frank's desperation to find out where this girl is. The audience is led to believe it is because of his passion for upholding the law, but the twist ending reveals it is because Tabitha is his daughter. We chose this subject matter as a group, and we handled it this way because we thought the action and the intensity would present more opportunities to use interesting camera angles, and it did. Also, we thought some gritty realism would add to the scene's cinematic integrity.

When we filmed it, the dialogue differed from the script, as when it was spoken it didn't sound as natural as when it was written. We also had to tone down some of the torture and violence, due to a lack of resources, but we're glad it turned out this way because we also believe this kept the character of Frank more likeable, and as the main protagonist, he's someone the audience should root for. We think these changes vastly improved the scene and gave it an improvisational quality.

Direction

This diagram represents the camera movements we will use, and how we will position the camera around the room. There is a key in the top-right corner to show that the red line shows the movements of the Frank McCready character, the black dot show where the camera will be placed, and the blue line shows which direction the camera will move in. These angles support the actions as written in the script, and so we think this will help the look of the scene to flow with what is happening on-screen. Alan is represented as green, but he has no movement as he stays seated for the whole scene. The angles are numbered so we will know what order to put them in during the editing process.

Storyboard

This is our storyboard, detailing each camera angle in the scene, which will be an invaluable resource, both whilst filming and whilst editing. It gives us a visual representation of what the scene should look like, and it will make the process easier to have it to work from, instead of all four of us having to visualise the whole thing in our heads, which would give us each different visions. This storyboard will come in handy.