Little Red Riding Hood Evaluation
At the beginning I felt thrown in at the deep-end seen as this was my first media production I had directed therefore I believe there are many things that I would change when it comes to the real production.
Choosing Conventions
At first Autumn and I had struggled as to which fairytale we wanted to do and how we could make it more neo-noir. After many mind maps and storyboards we had decided upon Little Red Riding Hood. We believed we could create a very mysterious production and change the concepts of the fairytale into film noir. Therefore we decided upon trying to change the characters roles around slightly, we wanted Little Red to be the anti-hero, the wolf as the femme fatale and the axe man as the girl next door. We wanted to create a dramatic production and yet keep the scenes almost the same as the fairytale. We had to decide upon who would be acting for us and considering no other young people we know live near to us and the location we were using in such little time we just decided to use ourselves. Our location was perfect for the forest scenes as it looks dark and spooky with natural sounds like whistling trees and cracking branches, we decided to film it at Sprowston Green. Throughout my blog you will see the use of many kinds of planning techniques such as script writing, storyboards, comic strips and mood boards. We spent hours on perfecting scripts and what camera angles we were going to use rather than perfecting our final.
Research
Between us we had researched the full Red Riding Hood fairytale and Autumn had even looked at the film of the fairytale that was out in 2011 starring Amanda Seyfried. I had enjoyed watching these clips because they showed dramatic and action scenes, and how they had positioned their camera.
Planning
For our planning we had created many mindmaps and storyboards the position where the scenes will take place and what characters will be involved. We had spent hours planning the final shoot including holding a photo shoot a few nights before. However, when we had started the photo shoot in October around 7pm the sky was already extremely dark. I am very happy that we had looked into the timings of the evening and realising when to do the final due to weather conditions and how dark it is outside. Then, we had decided to film in the holiday so that we could do it slightly earlier of a time of 4pm. As we chose the timing three hours earlier it was much brighter outside and therefore our cameras had picked up more focus still gave the glum and eerie feel to the film.
Organisation
I believe we organised the production very well however if I were to do it again I would take many different takes of the same scenes so that we had more to work with whilst editing. As I was playing the main character we agreed that Autumn would do the majority of the filming and we would leave the camera on the tripod filming whilst in a scene together. I had organised all the props that we had borrowed from out drama studios in sixth form, I believe we picked the best props we could find without having to purchase any. I had also been in charge of creating the comic strip and storyboards. I believe we worked well together in the time we had.
Production
We agreed that because this was our first production we would try all different camera angles and lighting (as best a lighting we could work with in a forest). We had tried to use pan shots, low and high angles, close-ups and using the 180 degrees. I believe our set continuity task was edited extremely well. Autumn edited the whole production on iMovie, I believe Autumn did the best. We both had difficulty on adding the sound on iMovie to fit in with the production and then discovered that it was actually extremely loud compared to the characters dialogue. I think even though we had little time and difficulty having the same time together that for our first ever production this went really well considering neither of us has ever taken media before. We both really enjoyed taking part in both the filming and (bad) acting of this production and it was definitely worthwhile. There are however many things I would change about the production including how the ending finished so fast, I would add more scenes and drama in and how the music was too. I would have liked to attempt to create our own sounds a little more, even though we did foley the gun shot at the end by clapping together. I would have liked to use different actors instead of ourselves as well as I believe we would both be able to concentrate on the editing and actual filming of the production a lot more. We are
Feedback
We are now receiving feedback from Survey Monkey after I had created a short survey and shared it on some social media sites. I am just waiting for a good number of people to have anonymously taken art in my feedback to show the results. I shall keep you posted!
Conclusion
I think we did try really hard to have a good piece of work and as this was both our first production without having any prior Media experience i think it was a really good effort and our work did pay off. There are many pieces i would change like perhaps planning our script and also including different people to play the characters rather than us as we arent the best actors, this would allow us to have more control over our production. We are now in the process of receiving feedback as this will allow us to capture what we can improve and how other people see our work.
With more time and as our knowlege of media grows i think me and Charlotte will improve with our filming and editing.
