Evaluation

Final Film

Ancillary - FINAL POSTER

Ancillary DPS - FINAL DPS

I am really happy with my final outcome. I feel it has the codes and conventions of a film double page spread.

Film Drafts

This is the first draft I have put together of Katie and I's film. After I posted it on YoutTube and shared it on social media and with our cast/crew directly I started to get a lot of useful audience feedback.

Everyone agreed that the first scene was really professional and that the lighting/mise-en-scene made it look like an actual crime genre film as it followed a lot of the professional conventions I had researched closely to get this right. However non-media people in the audience thought the scene dragged on to long, this was something we had not noticed as we were really drawn to our shot types, angles and movements. When we got this feedback it made sense when we looked at it again so Katie and I decided to add more sound and shorten the scene a bit. Also, we thought that another reason why the non media viewer, might find the the first scene of the autopsy boring was due to the lack of sound. We are thinking of adding non-diegetic music which would help create tension.

Editing wise, I did not need to, or want to, make many changes on the initial morgue scene as even on this draft I had worked really hard to get the continuity editing right and smooth with techniques like, movement and graphic matches and not breaking the 180 degree rule line.

However, we were not completely happy with the parallel editing as the cutting to a from the murder scene made the edit too clumsy and too long. This was something I knew we needed to improve on the second edit. Obviously, we also still needed to add the credits like the actors names and our production/distribution logos to fit professional conventions of the short film genre.

In terms of sound, we decided we might need to add more ambient sound to add tension and realism.

Overall with the morgue scene, looking at the first edit, I feel that the mies-en-scene, namely the lighting effect i created onset and in Premiere Pro, is really suitable in the morgue scene. Also, I think the first edit shows our costume and casting choices match genre conventions as we have the right aged actor wearing a full medical suit using a range of props that make this scene look real.

Regarding our other scenes, the train station scene was too light, I think we might try black and white or Super 8 effects to make it more tense and creepy in the next edit. The crime scene tent scene that was really hard to get right because of the high wind and rain on the day, looks good in terms of props and costumes but may need some audio work to get the wind levels down a bit.

This is the second edited draft for the film. I have added the institutions, age certificate and end credits to this. Even though I thought this was going to be my final edit, I still gathered feedback from the audience. This proved useful as they said 'The end credits look to comical for the genre.' I knew from this they referred to the 'Written and Directed By Katie Price.' It appears with soft edges when a crime/drama is sharp edges. Also, my audience said the sound was still not right in places - being too loud in parts of the morgue scene and to quite at the station - this meant more editing improvements before the final draft.

Ancillary DPS - Draft DPS

I like the idea of what we have done with the whiten background. I also have my poster image in the bottom right. From class feedback, they also like the image but think there is too much space on the left. Someone suggested adding a second main image to fill the space. I will look into this concept as the posters I analyised only had 1 main image. They would prefer the article on one page and not spread over two.

Ancillary DPS - Photoshoot reflection

For my double page spread, I was very happy with the outcome of my images and article layout. The images I got from the film shoots as it was easier doing it that way then setting up a new photoshoot day.

One of the main images is actually a shot I took during filming - I took the time to do this as I wanted to follow the conventions of a behind the scenes style shoot for my magazines as I had seen this worked well for magazines like Empire who want to attract readers in the audience with an exclusive behind the scenes story.

I took a range of images on set as I wanted lighting, set and costume continuity between the film and ancillary.

With the editing of the images, I experimented in Photoshop with changing opacity and blend modes as I wanted to follow creative conventions of mixes text and image to sell the film.