Evaluation of short film

In my opinion we achieved our purpose with the short film. We set out to make an entertaining drama, which in the opinion of everyone who has seen the film believes we have done. We gave negative messages as the police couldn't catch the killer, however this wasn't our intension. We included both boys and girls in our film. When we wrote the script the ethnicity of the characters was irrelevant, but in the video we did have actors of different ethnic origins. The music track furthered the sense of dramatic tension in the film, with the music over the credits sounding like it could be from a real detective drama. The locations we used in the film weren't appropriate, but considering we weren't allowed to film outside of school and didn't have access to a real police interview room the setting turned out fine. The language we used was suitable for our target audience- it was complex language, but not complex enough to alienate our target age group of teenagers and young adults. The inclusion of the stereotypical 70's cop show credits at the end, furthered the belief that the film looked realistic for the genre- we used police interview scenes, black and white effects, a voiceover and a constant enigma, giving it the impression of a real detective drama. That said, the film did look good, and despite adding comical effects at the start, we managed to make a mature, polished and entertaining drama film. The mid-shot inbetween me and Matty is the first shot we'd like to mention, as although me and Matty are at the front of the shot, all attention is focused on Eddie. The second shot I'd like to mention is the tracking shot leading into Eddie and Emma.

At first, we had difficulty with the voiceover, as Matty's original voiceover had some pronunciation mistakes in it. We decided that we'd both do voiceovers, and after much editing and tweaking of the sound levels, the voiceover levels turned out fine. The music bed turned out fine straight away, it wasn't loud enough to distract you from the film, but was loud enough to create suspense. My second voiceover from the film originally had the start of it cut off, which resulted in it being re-recorded.

The camera work was problematic during the first few weeks of recording as we didn't have a cameraman, which resulted in the police interview scenes looking like they were clearly filmed in the performance classrooms. We eventually got a cameraman and the scenes were re-filmed to a high standard. Between the clips, the only transition we used was a fade in effect to show the change between characters in the interview room, and for the titles we used the basic font, but with red lettering to link with the film title 'Grangefield blood'.

To keep the audience interested we stayed with the same storyline throughout, but made it more suspenseful as the film progressed- the reason we chose this as opposed to a multi-layered storyline, as if there was only one storyline we would have the opportunity to add more suspense. We didn't use an external microphone, as there was no spoken dialogue in the film, as voiceover was used throughout.

Our film didn't subscribe to the theory that every film had an equilbrium, disruption and resolution, as the film started with a disruption in the form of a murder, and there was no resolution as the killer wasn't caught. However, the whole film involved an enigma, to find who the real murderer was. The film also had heroes (the policemen) and villians (the suspscted murderers). Our story was a single strand narrative, but it had different elements, like exploring the identity of the different characters. In a professional film it would be a multi-strand narrative, but the suspsenful music and enigma would remain, even if we were replaced by professional actors, this would have a major advantage in terms of setting, and creating suspense. The reason I chose this music bed was because it was appropriate for the film's theme, as It wasn't too upbeat and tied the whole film together.

I became more confident in using Imovie as a result of making this film, and I am also more confident in terms of writing scripts with an enigma for a narrative, rather than just eating an apple for four minutes. One of the strengths in making the project was the decision to use the voiceover, which made the film more effective than if it was powered by spoken dialogue. The major weakness was still adding comical elements to the film, such as 'the slap' at the end, and the gurgling water music we originally used for the credits. However, it is to our strengths that we replaced these with serious elements that were effective and made our film more powerful.n In my opinion I was a stronger team member than I was in the making of previous films, I pulled my weight and made sure everybody involved got their ideas into the film in some way.

Next time, if we were making a proper film, in terms of promotion we would advertise it before films with a '12a' or '15' certificate, as well as advertising it virally on sites such as facebook and youtube and on T.V before shows that people in our age group watch.