Film Opening - Evaluation

Overall, I feel that our film opening was successful despite having small issues and improvements to make and overcome. We all worked well together by making our own suggestions on changes to make and what we think would work as well as all doing our own bit when editing and filming.

What went well?:
I feel that a lot went well when planning and filming our film opening as we all worked well and got on well as a group. I feel that this was a huge advantage when producing our film opening as it meant that we all communicated our own thoughts and ideas for the film opening effectively and also meant that there were no disputes when planning, filming and editing. We also worked well by all carrying out our chosen roles and bringing all the props and equipment we needed to film all of the footage.
I feel that one of the first things that went well was when we planned our first storyboard draft. We all agreed that the genre of our film opening would be a slasher horror and then began planning the plot of our film. We all made an input into the storyboard and worked together to decide the best camera angles and techniques that we could use to make it effective. We know that this was successful as it aided us when we were filming all the shots and enabled us to ensure that we filmed all the shots we needed. We also worked well as a group to create the longer and altered second storyboard when our first lot of footage wasn't long enough.
I also think that we worked well when we filmed the second lot of footage for our film opening as the first lot wasn't long enough. We were a lot more successful when we filmed our footage the second time round as we created a much more detailed and longer storyboard to follow when filming and we also worked a lot better and quicker as we had already filmed some of the footage and we knew what camera angles and shots to use and where the best places to set up and film the footage was. We came out of the second day of filming with a lot more footage which meant that when edited and cut down the footage we had was long enough.
Another thing that was successful was the editing of the footage. We all made suggestions and inputs into what we thought worked well and what we thought didn't and took each others ideas on board. We all took turns editing by using the blade tool, using slow motion, adding and removing sound, adding opening credits and creating and inserting the production companies. Everyone was able to make changes and improvements to the film opening as we went over what had been done and changed areas that we thought didn't work or took some sections out completely if they were too long or shaky. We also all made different improvements that were suggested in the feedback we received and were able to change areas that we hadn't noticed needed improving or altering.

What didn't go well?:
One of the main issues we had was that the our first set of footage wasn't long enough and that we had to refilm. This meant that we had to add in some extra scenes and redraw our storyboard. However, this turned out to be a positive as the footage was a lot better quality and we were able to improve any areas that we thought weren't to a high quality. It also meant that we had a lot more footage once we had finished which meant that we had a lot more to edit and work with for out film opening.
Another issue we had was when we were editing the sound in our film opening. We decided that our sound recordings of the girl screaming were to a high enough quality and so we decided to download one from Soundcloud. However, we found it extremely difficult to find a scream that sounded realistic that fitted with our film opening. It took us a while to find the scream we thought would work but we eventually found one that was high quality and realistic that we could use. As well as this we found it difficult to find a soundtrack to use that sounded tense and built suspension. For this we used Youtube as there was a bigger variety of tracks that we could look through and download. It also took us a while to find the soundtrack that we used as we wanted one that fitted well with the scenes in our film opening and gradually got more tense as the film opening neared the end.