Practice opening: Evaluation

You can watch the final video HERE.

Filming process:
We had some difficulties with the casting, as the people we organised to be our actors cancelled and then the people we arranged to replace them cancelled the night before so we had to get our actors very last  minute. This mean that our actors did not fit the original idea we had, but in the end they were very easy to direct and we got all the shots that we needed. The actual filming went well, although we didn't have a tripod to use so some of the shots are not quite as smooth as they could have been but I still think that they create the effect that we wanted. When filming, we made sure to film more than we thought we needed and retaking lots of shots so when we got to editing the process would be easier as we would have plenty of footage to use and choose from. The location was perfect, there was not too many people and we were able to film most of the footage undisturbed, except the scene in front of the rollercoaster which we had to reshoot a few times due to passerby's getting in the shot. The footage filmed of the woman was all fine to film and we got all the shots we needed fairly quickly. We also managed to include all of the conditioned mis-en-scene we were given so it was successful on this front.

Editing process:
The editing process went fairly smoothly as we had filmed a lot of footage, so we had a lot that we could choose from. However the lighting caused a bit a of a problem as the colour contrast between the sand and the sea made the overall colour very off, and although we tried to fix this during editing it didn't work very well so the overall finish of the film looks a bit strange. However we managed to edit the actual plot very well and played around with jump cuts and fades to get the overall effect that we were looking for. We didn't have time to put in credits, which is something I would like to have done to improve the overall finish of the opening.

Thoughts and criticisms:
I am happy with the overall finished video, I think it contains all our original ideas and depicts what we wanted to effectively. However I would go back and improve certain aspects if I could, for example having actors that fit our original image more as the teen girl and the woman look nothing alike so it makes the story line a bit weaker than we originally planned. Furthermore, I would make sure that we had a tripod so we could film shots easier and make them look more professional, although I think that having filmed it without a tripod gives the opening a more 'homemade' feel which I personally quite like. I would also check all the footage back to check for things like the lighting to avoid similar problems in any future projects.