Evaluation of our opening sequence

‘Jinx’By Grace Lester, Owen

Livett, Hannah Waters and Yasmeen Mohamed

Story Idea’s • Owen story was based on a day out on the beach, which we

realised would be very unrealistic to film on time therefore we ruled his story out. Hannah’s was based on a suicide – an interesting idea however we thought this would be too difficult to film as well.

• Then there was Grace’s idea of a kidnapping case and Yasmeen’s idea of a romantic type drama where two friends fall in love with the same person and these two where the ones we debated about using.

• We decided on Yasmeen’s as we thought it would have the most appealing opening sequence in comparison to Grace’s which would be much harder to make engaging in the first 2 minutes.

Hannah• In our production, I was acting, playing the part of one of the

girls that falls for the waiter. • Me and Yasmeen are quite giggly so looking back now, we might

not have been the best two to work as actresses together as we did go off track laughing repeatedly.

• I would have struggled to use the camera so from that respect, I am pleased I was acting but in the future I might like to work more with the camera, just to learn a new technique.

• As well as acting, I provided the props, which were a key feature in our production as they ensured that the canteen looked more like a restaurant. I brought in table cloths, candles, flowers and bread baskets and as we filmed in front of the fire place, it did actually look like a restaurant, which we were all really pleased about because our initial idea of filming in a real restaurant fell through.

Grace• For our production Owen and myself did the filming, we worked

well together, although at points we didn’t manage our time effectively. If we were to work in a group again I feel our time would have been much better spend by planning the filming before hand and knowing exactly what we were going to do at the start of each lesson.

• However saying this we did get some good shots and in the end achieve our goal.

• I feel we could of done with having taking more high angle, low angle shots – also we would of benefited from being more daring with takes and interesting angles, just to see if they would of helped to improve our final outcome.

• From working with the camera, I learnt a lot of new skills on how to use and create different types of shots effectively. I feel as a team we all worked well together, all we needed was to be more organised – possibly by having more production meetings.

• In the end I was happy with our efforts.

Yasmeen• My role in our production was acting in our opening sequence. I

really enjoyed the acting part, working opposite Hannah was a delight, we had a lot of fun and worked well together.

• I think we should of prepared our filming more efficiently, because we did waste time deciding what camera angles we were going to use.

• I think the props worked really well with our set and on camera it did look like a real restaurant because of the props and the extra characters we included.

• In the future I would like to work behind the camera I think it would be challenging but enjoyable.

Owen• In the production piece I was an director/editor. I was the one

along with Grace who decided what shots to take for the rushes. I think we worked well as a pair when filming and that we managed to get some good shots, however we didn’t manage our time as effectively as we could have, when in that time we could have more shots/angles in which would have helped to the final piece and gave me more to choose from when editing.

• I found at first that I didn’t know how to use the camera but managed to work it out during our first day of filming. I then told my group that I didn’t mind taking the rushes home and working on making the film.

• I found that when editing there wasn’t a significant amount of shots to use which didn’t help the continuity of the piece. Which in my opinion it effected the overall standard of the film. I did find it useful to work on Windows movie Maker using the different effects on the piece. I also added credits to the end which I shouldn’t have because it makes it seem like a short story instead of and opening of a film.

• Overall we worked well as a group.

Filming• Grace and Owen were responsible for the filming part of the

production, and equally shared the role of doing it. In the end we managed to get up to 20mins of rushes, however a lot of it was unusable for at some occasions we went off task.

• The filming went well and we managed to finish this part of the production in 3 lessons.

• We had to overcome the problem of finding somewhere on the Henley Campus that resembled a restaurant to get the correct mise-en-scene as when we tried to find somewhere in Henley most weren't keen on the idea and others were only available at difficult times.

• Therefore we set up in the Rotherfield canteen, where we tried our best to make it look more professional and like an actual restaurant. We did this by setting up in front of a fireplace adding to the feel of a quaint little restaurant. We then removed all posters and objects in the shooting view and placed table cloths and flowers on two tables, we also had extras in the background to give it more of a busy atmosphere like a restaurant would be.

Filming Cont.• Overall we think the filming when well, however next time it

would help to do it in a quiet, more secluded spot where there are less distractions from friends – as we were filming at college. We also wasted quite a bit of tape by filming unnecessary things that we later had to spend a bit of time deleting.

• However, the time we had to film was very sparse as we weren't given a lot of time to use the cameras. We should have had more chance to film different scenes and come up with new ideas on shooting and editing our story boards to film more of each scene

from different camera shoots for maximum benefit whilst filming. • For our piece, we focused on high and low angles shots of both

Hannah and Yasmeen whilst dialect occurred.

Editing• Editing we all found very tough and didn’t have any or little

experience in, therefore Owen took it upon himself to take home the rushes over Easter and do his best to edit the film, which we were all grateful for.

• Whilst looking through the rushes, we realised that we would of benefited much more from having more takes of each scene and also we wished we would of spent more time on different camera shots and angles as this would of helped the continuity of our piece, improving our final piece.

Final Outcome• Overall we are pleased with our production, however we all agree

we should have taken more rushes so we had more choice in what we used. In order to get better shots though, we needed more filming time which was not possible.

• We feel that the background music enhanced our production and made it more believable as a feature film.

• We also would have liked to have made our production a bit longer, but struggled to think of what we could add to extend it.

• Considering how little experience we had before, we have come a long way and are all happy with ‘Jinx’ on the whole.