Evaluation and video

Evaluation

This project was called “The Land That Time Forgot”. We first were told to come up with two separate ideas; one to actually film and another as test. My first idea (and the one I used) was a documentary about three missing students. It showed what lead up to their disappearance into an alternate dimension. This related to the theme through the fact that they found the way to the dimension through a book. This means that someone had already been through before as they have written it down in this dimension. It was filmed through various video clips done by the central characters and, with this in mind; I purposely filmed it in a poor way. As if recording the videos are secondary things to the character. His main focus is whatever can help him get to the dimension. This is why I didn’t use a tripod and had the camera placed on whatever was around. I’d always wanted to do a project in this fashion. Due to it being a found footage type movie almost everything was adlibbed. This meant the actors had to work together to make the conversation work without a script. I think we did an excellent job. The video itself (in story context) was uploaded by another student to the internet. Because of this neither a title nor credits appear in the movie so it seems more realistic.

The test idea was about a village that disappeared in the 1800’s and documents were eventually discovered in present day. It was told from the point of view of a bedridden priest and all of it was second hand information. My aim for this project seemed to be showing things from different perspectives or speculations. Was the priest lied to? Was he just going senile? These are questions the audience would have had to ask. Sadly due to the fact that I thought it would work best as an animation and my lack of animating skills, I didn’t use this idea.  This idea was the better received of the two but due to the reason’s above and the fact I liked the first idea more, I used the first idea.

Filming

Despite my planning for the filming (Which I thought was good) things were immediately difficult. The main actress had to drop out due to her own project. I quickly changed the script so that it could be done with two people. This didn’t create as many problems as anticipated. I purposely chose people who I knew worked well of each other. My original plan was to give each person a limited amount of information so they could see from their characters point of view easier. Due to the loss of the main actress, I didn’t have to do this as I ended up in the main role. The biggest problem that came of this is that I ended up playing both the main character and the narrator and I had to erase a part of the plot.

The project was filmed in around 5 days. The first day was dedicated to filming inside the college with both characters there. I’d intended to film more there but after the loss of the third character I decided against it. We first filmed the main character trying to convince his friend. This took a few takes which helped to evolve the conversation. Each take was around 10 minutes long. After this we went around college filming random parts which could be used for fodder. These were basically just the characters wandering around.

For the parts with the main character by himself I chose to film them at home. These were done on a few different days. They were done at the times that the character himself would have filmed them. The first one was done at 3am in the morning. I put it on a shelf and placed myself too far to the right. This was done to make it look like he’s tired enough not to particularly care how good the shot is.  It was done in around 4 takes with lots of hesitation and rambling to show how tired he was.

The next part was filmed after college and the final part was filmed early in the morning. These were all done so I’d be in a similar mind set to the character. These were all done with varied amount of takes.

Editing

The editing was surprisingly fun. I usually hate editing but this time around it wasn’t so bad. I first started off by editing the distorted footage. This was a first for me as I’ve never tried anything of the sort before. I firstly looked at some of the “ToTheArk” videos from the Marble Hornets series.  It gave me a rough idea of what to do and I enjoyed messing with the footage. It came to edit the project itself together next. I recorded my narration and while slightly cheesy, I think it was still okay. The only real problem I had while filming was the length of the clips. Due to the fact it was all a single uninterrupted shot each clip was very long. The video would have been way too long (It’s already too long) for the project. So I came up with an in story reason for shortening to footage. The characters ramble on and a lot of the stuff said wasn’t important. The narrator only wanted to have the relevant information in the video. This meant I could cut out any unneeded parts from the footage. Next was the audio. I first considered putting in subtitles for the clips but the audio turned out to be good enough not to. The narration had to be re written again as I didn’t have the updated version from the college computer. I think I prefer the newer narration to the old one.  Overall there were surprisingly few problems with editing and it was done very quickly (about 4 hours).                                                                               

Conclusion

Overall I think the project went very well. The work was done on time and the video came out great…despite it being 5 minutes too long. Sadly I can’t fix this without taking away from the short so I’m going to leave it like that. It’s better as it is and shortening it would only cause the pacing to mess up. With found footage movies it always has to have a slow pacing for it to be effective. It didn't come out exactly as I wanted due to the previously mentioned cast change but I still think it was a very good piece.

VIDEO: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDOJ-xptMsI