BSA 325 : Eval Time
We watched the film again and had to see how we feel after so long:
- The colour wasn't great in the BTS and there were some bad sound mixing, it also looks way worse than the film itself, which presented itself in a very professional light. Looking back at it now I feel like we could have done a much better job to make the BTS feel closer to the film itself (a good way would have been to change the aspect ratio and make it more appropriately cinematic - the grading needed some work, we didn't focus on it much and should have viewed it on more different monitor types. The odd thing is that watching it in class this was much more jarring than I remember it being at the screening). The sound was alright for music, but there were some weird peaks and troughs in the dialogue.
- Those Germans and their professionality line in the BTS felt a little repetitive on rewatch, it wasn't a problem in editing but watching it back after such a long time it feels like retreading the same ground over again. I finished the edit hours before the day it was due so didn't have that much time to reflect properly, think if we had more of a breather between that we would have cut this bit.
- The movie itself came across as very professional, the music I think really made it all come together. There were only a few moments where the visual effects looked a bit odd, the green screen stuff feels fake (but that is a really hard thing to do considering its a completely CG backdrop), the floor in the railing shot looked a bit odd (they did an amazing job considering how much that shot had to fix though) but I think it would have been easier to just re-shoot this bit. If we filmed in a higher resolution this shot would not have been a problem either as there was a good crop available. If we did it again I think we would have gone for 4K or 2K at least.
- The budget is probably close to half a mil 😕, this is quite a lot especially considering what we produced and I find myself getting anxious at the thought that this is how much a short film costs. I think there must be a way to produce something at this level for cheaper, but I don't have much knowledge about VFX and animation - I am assuming most of the money spent here went towards the programs used and many, many man hours put into the post-production. I think the film had a bit too much VFX, Tyler said it was something like 80% VFX shots, that is a lot of work and some of it I feel weren't necessary. Having said that damn everyone did such a good job, there was so much to animate and fix and post and for me the film didn't have anything too jarringly distracting.
- The doll being burned at the end of the film was a bit weird for me, you couldn't really tell what was being thrown in and I am confused as to the metaphor. This and the thumbtacks were two elements in the movie which I felt needed to be more clearly communicated to the audience - in case of the thumbtacks I felt you couldn't really tell what it was supposed to be because the screen they were displayed on was so heavily graded towards green or red.
- The premiere went really well, and I've heard from a lot of people loving it, I even heard from some individuals that they were very impressed with the film (considering it is a student film and feels so professionally made). The thing I was involved in mostly (the catering and BTS) got a good amount of praise as well so it was a very positive experience overall.
The main aim of this paper was, of course, the communication side of things and for the most part, I think that this went really well - I mainly worked on BTS with Matt B, communicating mostly with Jacqui and Tyler. They were great and very helpful, we couldn't have made it as good without Tyler's input especially who had an idea of what was required for final BTS. The social media stuff was where Jacqui worked with us most, basically acting as a sensor - we never had any problems and things went very smoothly (I am disappointed some of the things we made weren't ever used for the page, but whatever that happens as well I suppose). I think if I was more fully in charge of the facebook page all our video content would have been used, and I would have liked to upload photos with funny captions like in my Infomercial blog. Ultimately we were just the content creators though and that's fine too. Working with Matthew Butler was the best thing the whole semester, communication and sharing of ideas felt effortless and I feel like we were always on the same page. We spent a lot of time brainstorming, editing and filming stuff together, would definitely do so again as this was by far the most enjoyable element of the whole project for me. I am so happy we were left with some creative freedom, this was the one place in the project where I felt like I was thinking the same and working completely in sync with someone else - I noticed other departments didn't always have such a flow in their interactions and sharing of ideas (like the writing and such), the other one I did notice was doing really well with communication was the producers (Ryan, Jacqui and Tyler) who all seemed to be working towards the same goal and didn't have much clashing of heads, if any.
- The colour wasn't great in the BTS and there were some bad sound mixing, it also looks way worse than the film itself, which presented itself in a very professional light. Looking back at it now I feel like we could have done a much better job to make the BTS feel closer to the film itself (a good way would have been to change the aspect ratio and make it more appropriately cinematic - the grading needed some work, we didn't focus on it much and should have viewed it on more different monitor types. The odd thing is that watching it in class this was much more jarring than I remember it being at the screening). The sound was alright for music, but there were some weird peaks and troughs in the dialogue.
- Those Germans and their professionality line in the BTS felt a little repetitive on rewatch, it wasn't a problem in editing but watching it back after such a long time it feels like retreading the same ground over again. I finished the edit hours before the day it was due so didn't have that much time to reflect properly, think if we had more of a breather between that we would have cut this bit.
- The movie itself came across as very professional, the music I think really made it all come together. There were only a few moments where the visual effects looked a bit odd, the green screen stuff feels fake (but that is a really hard thing to do considering its a completely CG backdrop), the floor in the railing shot looked a bit odd (they did an amazing job considering how much that shot had to fix though) but I think it would have been easier to just re-shoot this bit. If we filmed in a higher resolution this shot would not have been a problem either as there was a good crop available. If we did it again I think we would have gone for 4K or 2K at least.
- The budget is probably close to half a mil 😕, this is quite a lot especially considering what we produced and I find myself getting anxious at the thought that this is how much a short film costs. I think there must be a way to produce something at this level for cheaper, but I don't have much knowledge about VFX and animation - I am assuming most of the money spent here went towards the programs used and many, many man hours put into the post-production. I think the film had a bit too much VFX, Tyler said it was something like 80% VFX shots, that is a lot of work and some of it I feel weren't necessary. Having said that damn everyone did such a good job, there was so much to animate and fix and post and for me the film didn't have anything too jarringly distracting.
- The doll being burned at the end of the film was a bit weird for me, you couldn't really tell what was being thrown in and I am confused as to the metaphor. This and the thumbtacks were two elements in the movie which I felt needed to be more clearly communicated to the audience - in case of the thumbtacks I felt you couldn't really tell what it was supposed to be because the screen they were displayed on was so heavily graded towards green or red.
- The premiere went really well, and I've heard from a lot of people loving it, I even heard from some individuals that they were very impressed with the film (considering it is a student film and feels so professionally made). The thing I was involved in mostly (the catering and BTS) got a good amount of praise as well so it was a very positive experience overall.
The main aim of this paper was, of course, the communication side of things and for the most part, I think that this went really well - I mainly worked on BTS with Matt B, communicating mostly with Jacqui and Tyler. They were great and very helpful, we couldn't have made it as good without Tyler's input especially who had an idea of what was required for final BTS. The social media stuff was where Jacqui worked with us most, basically acting as a sensor - we never had any problems and things went very smoothly (I am disappointed some of the things we made weren't ever used for the page, but whatever that happens as well I suppose). I think if I was more fully in charge of the facebook page all our video content would have been used, and I would have liked to upload photos with funny captions like in my Infomercial blog. Ultimately we were just the content creators though and that's fine too. Working with Matthew Butler was the best thing the whole semester, communication and sharing of ideas felt effortless and I feel like we were always on the same page. We spent a lot of time brainstorming, editing and filming stuff together, would definitely do so again as this was by far the most enjoyable element of the whole project for me. I am so happy we were left with some creative freedom, this was the one place in the project where I felt like I was thinking the same and working completely in sync with someone else - I noticed other departments didn't always have such a flow in their interactions and sharing of ideas (like the writing and such), the other one I did notice was doing really well with communication was the producers (Ryan, Jacqui and Tyler) who all seemed to be working towards the same goal and didn't have much clashing of heads, if any.
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