HUNTED EVALUATION

Brief description of the product you have made

We were given the task to create a short film with the name ‘Hunted’, it

should include multiple shot and at least one dialogue sequence, all we

were given was the title, from this we came up with an idea of a thriller

with horror elements. The idea was that the audience would follow a man

who would be walking to an unknown destination, he would be being

followed by a masked person whose presence would be subtle at first but

as the shots progressed would be more visible to the viewer, eventually

the masked person would capture the man, which would then show it was

all in his imagination. It explores the feelings of paranoia, anxiety and

insanity, as the man is obsessed with reading horror books, he now

struggles to tell the difference between his imagination and reality, this is

shown in the flashbacks sequences which is also our dialogue sequences,

they explain subtly what is happening.

Production Planning

First we decided on the rules our group would have, we had a group of 4

so we had to have a meeting and decide who would do what. After much

consideration we decided that I would be the director and script writer as I

had a clear idea of what we should create and I truly believed I could

transfer that idea into the script effectively, Phoenix was the production

design for his artistic skills, Rob was the editor due to his good edit for the

bomb sequence and Will would be the camera operator which he also did

for the bomb sequence.

When writing the script I spent a few days going around asking my friends

and family on their thoughts for my idea for the film and what their opinion

was on it, I got mainly positive feedback from that and decided to go

forward with my idea, I first wrote a basic draft of the whole script to

create a structure to build up from, at this point there was no dialogue as I

wanted to do that with Phoenix as we’d both be playing characters that

had social interaction, so I thought it best to write the dialogue with him,

we did this by trying to think of natural responses to the lines each other

came up with in order to create an effective script.

The group put together some rough storyboards for us to work from, they

were not incredibly in-depth but they were good enough to give us an idea

of what we had to do and what the shot should be like, though one thing

we didn’t create was a shot l ist which would have helped as some of the

shots we did ended up being improvised without much thought going into

their construction, though despite this we managed to use the storyboard

and the script together to create an idea in our heads of what we wanted

the shots to be like, which was effective in some ways.

When picking out costumes for all the different character we decided the

two main characters “being Vince and his Friend” would just wear normal

clothes anyone would wear, so me and Phoenix just wore what we had on

the day of filming as the costumes for the characters, for the masked

stranger we purchased a black morph suit online and cut off the lower part

of it so we only has the arms and head parts of it as this is all we needed,

Phoenix decided to just wear a hoodie as well so no human skin would

show, to make it more mysterious.

When I was creating the script I thought it would be best if the location of

filming were to be in town, with lots of people present at first but Vince

would eventually wonder out of the crowd and be alone with the masked

stranger, but after we had finished planning everything and gotten round

to being able to film we began to run into problems, a couple of t he

members of the group said it’d be too hard for them to make it into town

despite saying they would be able to during planning, also we were

running out of time so we decided to film behind the college in a forest

area which we actually used for the bomb sequence, flashbacks took

place in a classroom that was free at the time, we had to make these

unorganised changes due to the fact that the original idea of fi lming in

town had become less practical than first thought and more time

consuming.

Looking back on it know I can see we should have organised everything a

bit better, we were too caught up with getting all the ideas we had down

and writing the script that we overlooked important things like when we

would be fi lming and if it was practical to film in town, with filming we

pretty much fi lmed one day for an hour and then one that day decide when

we’d fi lm again rather than having a proper schedule to follow. Though

despite this we managed to overcome these issues and work well together

as a team and create a good quality final product, this was possible due to

everyone in the group helping each other with different aspects.

Filming

When we got round to shooting the film we’d go out knowing what parts

we were going to film and where, it was either going to be outside filming

the chase scene or inside fi lming the flashbacks, a lot of the time during

the film I’d insist that a scene should be filmed again if it was not to my

liking, I wanted each scene to be just right to get my idea across, du e to

our group all having a clear understanding of my script we were able to

work effectively together with no problems and fi lm things pretty quickly

with no issues.

During the film we used a wide range of different camera shot types, we

used panning shots, a vertigo shot and a P.O.V. shot, all these different

shot types work effectively in different ways, the panning shots are to

build the location up a bit more and give the viewer a wider field of view in

their head, the vertigo shot is to show terror or something shocking and

that P.O.V shot is to put the viewer into Vince’s body. Using all these

techniques we can create themes such as suspense and dread. Filming

the P.O.V. shot was difficult as we had to make it look like Phoenix had

disappeared during the short time that the camera was looking away from

him, we had to fi lm this about 6-7 times in order to finally get it right as it

was a tricky shot.

Whilst filming I had a big input on everything that was happening, as the

director and script writer of the film I had the final say in what happened,

this was a big responsibility but I handled it well, if I felt like something we

had filmed wasn’t good enough I’d make sure we did it over and over until

we got it right, I had to make sure the script I had written was being

followed along with all my stage directions also.

The filming went really well with no major problems, it took a little while to

film everything and we need a few re-shoots also as sometimes we’d get

into editing and notice a scene doesn’ t quite work so we had to re-shoot it,

but all of the hard work was worth it as we got a lot of good coverage and

a lot of video to work with in editing, which worked in our favour.

Editing

Despite Rob being the editor of our film he was absen t a lot of the time

meaning me and Phoenix had to do a lot of editing on the film, the way it’d

work was for each different scene it’d have its own sequence, the flash

backs all had their own sequences and so did all the different chase

scenes between the flashbacks, this way it made it easier to put it

together once we had finished editing and also easier to edit individual

parts of the time.

There was one issue where Rob had removed the original audio from the

clips during the editing which to me ruined the mood of the fi lm for me, I

didn’t like the idea of having only a music track playing with no Foley to

create the tension, since no one else was in I decided to find those clips

and re-add all the audio myself and sync it up perfectly so no one could

tell the audio had ever been taken out, when I watched it with the original

audio sti ll in I felt l ike the film had gotten a lot better no thanks to this.

During editing numerous effects were used to make the fi lm stand out a bit

more and make it less dull, most notably was making the flashbacks black

and white and keeping the chase scenes in colour, this got the point

across that these were indeed flashbacks and added to the overall tone

and effect and mainly the impact of the flashbacks. When the stalker was

in view of the camera the audio would introduce white noise into the mix

as to make it feel l ike his presence messes with electronics and causes

this effect, this works well and make the character a lot creepier.

Also during editing we made various improvements to the footage, such as

colour correcting footage to give it a more creepy tone and also adding a

zoom to the final flashback, to make it a bit more interesting and draw the

audience in a bit more. Also when the white noise enters the audio mix it

is also paired with static overlaying over the visuals to further add to the

effect.

Once we had finished editing the separate scenes it was easy to put them

all together as we had put them all into labelled separate sequences, all

we had to do was drag to sequences into a final composition and that was

done, the benefit of doing it that was is if we want to change something we

can go back into the individual sequence rather than a sequence

containing all the clips to change something. Some scenes were lef t out

but I don’t think this was on purpose, I think due to the close deadline our

editor had forgotten to put these scenes in, one example is the camera

slowly zooming in on the Hunted book that Phoenix had created, this shot

was going to be at the end to further show Vince’s insanity, we noticed

this scene wasn’t in when we had the viewing for our film.

Reflection

Looking back on the project as a whole I can see many things we could

have done better, one thing was is to create a shot list and a more

detailed storyboard, if we had done this we could have probably filmed the

scenes we needed much faster, rather than having to think about it and

work it all, one thing we noticed when we had watched the final video was

that the credit sequence Phoenix had created was very slow and could

have done with being sped up a lot as it took like 2 minutes to show a few

names, I believe there was an error with rendering the video that caused

this.

Though also as well as the negatives there are a lot of positives also. One

of the things we did really well was the script, because of the way me and

Phoenix worked together hard to create it make it look as a professional

as possible I think it worked really well and that was reflected in the final

video. I think in the end we managed to really get a good edit of the film

by working together as a team in order to better it, such as me putting

back in the Foley sound that had been taken out, and Phoenix creating the

credits sequence in After Effects, it all came together to create a good

edit.

When the time came to watch our fi lm in front of the class we got some

helpful feedback on our film, which the majority of it was positive. Some

things that were criticized was that the story was a little hard to

understand and required one to think about it for a while to understand

what ’s actually happening . Our camera work was also criticized, saying

that the camera was jumping about all over the place and wasn ’t very

organised, this is likely because of our lack of a shot l ist.

Despite some negative feedback the storyline was praised for being

interested and different, with people saying that it seemed to be written

well and the dialogue sequences seemed natural rather than forced, the

acting by Phoenix and myself was also praised.

After all is said and done I can see numerous improvements we could

have made to make a better fi lm, the obvious one was to have a shot l ist

and a more in-depth storyboard, this would have helped a lot . Another

thing would have been to put more time aside to work into the project, if

we had more time we could have fixed errors in the film, such as the long

credit sequence and also get a better soundtrack rather than the one we

used that had constant beeping in it. Also we should have been more

organised in our films, specifying dates for filming and make sure

everyone could be there on that date.

Evaluation of production process

The group worked really well together during the production process,

everyone got along and was helping each other out, though a lot of the

time during production process a member of the group would be absent

meaning someone else would have to take on their roles, which I had to

do numerous times. Despite this we managed to get the work done as we

often helped each other out.

A lot of the time we spent waiting, either for a member of the group to be

in so we could film, or waiting for the right conditions to film. This was

quite bad and time consuming when we still wanted to film in town as we

had to figure out how we ’d all get into town and then everyone had to be

in and willing to go into town, if we couldn ’t go into town there wasn’t

much to do. Once we decided to film at college our work flow became

much faster and more efficient.

We were all under pressure to finish the film on time, meaning some

things had to be rushed and not done as well as they could have been,

though we stil l managed to create a high quality film despite this and in a

way having the deadline pushed us to complete the work on time and

really get to work and work hard.

When we were fi lming we worked very well together as a team, we ’d be

speaking to each other about whether or not what we had just fi lmed

would work or not and openly suggesting new ideas to each o ther to try

out, this was probably the most enjoyable part for me as we could all be

as creative as we wanted without anything holding us back, when editing

we also all had an input on what should go where and what take we

should use.

During the production process I really pushed for things to be done and

completed on time, things I did such as adding the audio back onto certain

clips I did without distraction and didn ’t stop until it was finished and I was

happy with it, if I saw someone in the group wasn ’t doing something I ’d

make sure they had something to do to keep them occupied and to benefit

the team more, I really took a leadership role through-out the whole

production process to meet the deadline on time.

Evaluation of finished Hunted short film

The final film closely resembles what I had wanted it to look like, and what

I imagined it to look like. The film looked professional and all our efforts

were clearly visible in the final film. Some things that contributed to this

were; the script, acting and editing. We also met all legal and ethical

requirements during production of the film, anyone in the film we made

sure had signed a slip giving us permission to fi lm them, and we also

obtained permission from our teacher to film on college site and used no

copyrighted imagery or audio.

I think the most important aspect was for the script to be good and

fortunately I and Phoenix worked very hard on it to get it to a professional

standard, it wasn ’t easy but it was worth it in the end and our hard work

was reflected in the final film, things such as trying to create natural

dialogue sequences between Phoenix and I were effective and made the

film feel more real and more professional.

Something that was not very good was the audio, if I had time I would

have been the audio engineer but I had too much to do already with

directing it, writing the script and eventually having to help with the editing

among other tasks, the job of the audio was left to the edi tor and he had

used some songs from an album he liked and none of them fit the tone of

the film at all, along with this we had to extra Foley sounds we had gone

out and recorded ourselves so sometimes the audio would sound a bit

weird. We could have also benefited from re-recording the dialogue

sequences audio as the microphone in the camera wasn ’t very good.

If we had more time I would have taken on the role of being the audio

engineer, I would have taken time to compose the music myself

electronically so it’d fit the film perfectly, and also push for re -recording of

Foley sound and dialogue, though unfortunately this is something I could

not do, but from this whole experience I have learnt how important audio

is in a film and this is something that will benefit me in the future.

I think the overall editing was very effective and added to the overall

quality of the fi lm, as we all worked together and worked hard on the

editing we managed to get that up to a professional standard. Along with

the editing some of the shots we had done worked really well, such as the

P.O.V. shot where Vince stumbles once viewing the masked stranger and

when he looks back up the masked stranger is gone, this worked well as it

put the audio into the character shoes and gave them his perspective of

what he was seeing, since the masked stranger disappeared it makes the

audio begin to question if he is real or a figment of Vince ’s imagination.

Overall I am very pleased with how everything turned out, I think the group

worked real ly together and there were no arguments on what we would do,

everyone had a clear idea of what the script wanted as it was clear and

got across the point effectively. Ways we could have improved would be to

have a much better soundtrack, as the one we put in we very annoying

and no one really liked it as it had a constant beeping in it, the editing

could have been neater and more organised also, as well as that we

should have been much more organised with our fi lming, scheduling and

post-production process. Other than those things everything else went

really well and the final film is really good, it looked professional and

good, and that ’s the most important thing.