My group initially consisted of me, Ellouise Marney, Evie Gallagher and Will Millar although Jack Cocklin later joined the group. We were assigned to make a short Christmas Film set in a particular decade. My group drew the 1980’s so we collectively did Primary and Secondary research by creating surveys on Survey Monkey relating to Christmas in the 1980’s and the decade in general and looking out for materials and styles that were popular in the 80s on the internet and also looking in history books and charity shops and shops in general. We also worked very hard together during pre-production and during the filming process. I volunteered to be Producer, Ellouise would be the cinematographer, Will was supposed to be the Director and Evie Sound and Lighting but they eventually swapped roles. When Jack joined our group, he shared the Cinematographer’s role with Ellouise who in turn, ended up as the Director as Evie, Will and I provided most of the cast. Our plot focused on a family in the 80s celebrating Christmas together, this was primarily my idea but Ellouise and I helped each other to develop it and pitch it to the rest of the group. This idea was one I had recalled from a shelved Christmas show project that the ESPA College Performing Arts students and I had briefly rehearsed for in 2007. I played the role of George the father, Evie and Will played Bonnie and Clyde (although Will was never referred to by his name in the actual film) the two teenaged children and my Gran Sheila played herself.  

     

There was little communication from Evie and Will during pre-production and friction between Evie and Ellouise over lack of communications and disagreements over what to include in our Christmas Film and where to go with it. Most of the communication was between Ellouise and I and also from Jack once he joined our group.

 

To a certain degree, the teamwork went well in that we accepted each other’s ideas and tried to use the best bits of everyone’s scripts in our Final script. The group accepted my ideas with few qualms apart from the fact that it was very brief and required development, little did we know, this would eventually become a bigger problem for us than we anticipated. The final script mostly consisted of what I wrote and what Jack wrote as he also served as our script supervisor. The filming mostly went well despite the far from ideal location apart from a few instances of the cast cocking up their lines but we all acquitted ourselves well as actors and my gran’s years of experience in stage acting proved very helpful to us all. I was determined to fulfil my role as Producer well as I provided the Christmas tree and decorations and also my mum’s Spandau Ballet CD as props. Will, Evie and Ellouise provided other props such as party poppers, tinsel and various empty boxes and tins and wrapping paper. I was determined to do my research well as well and went out to various shops, including charity shops to look into material that was popular in the 80s as well as striving to do online research that did not involve Wikipedia.    

 

Teamwork was not always our strong point as we kept splitting whenever we had to go out into the community to do our research and there was a lot of friction between Ellouise and Evie during pre-production and while composing questionnaires. We had a lot of trouble developing our plot into a short film that would keep the audience interested as our pitch was a disaster. Ollie said our plot sounded really boring, thin on the ground, underdeveloped and seemingly leading nowhere as far as the story was concerned and certainly not all that amusing for a comedy. We tried to make the film more of a tragi-comedy but then Natalie said no one would want to see that and even asked us personally if we would want to see that which of course we would not. On suggestion from the tutors and our peers, we decided to have several things go wrong in our film such as the Christmas tree falling over and the Christmas dinner getting burnt but we found we had no time to include those scenarios during filming so we just had the family wind each other up and repeatedly let off party-poppers and Christmas crackers. Finding people to star in our Christmas film went badly as Evie, Will and I ended up providing the cast as well as the crew with only my gran Sheila joining us. As far as I know, none of us thought to consult the Performing Arts students and Ellouise was intending to ask some of her family members to take part but she forgot to do that and she also forgot to bring a Christmas Angel for our tree. We booked the media studio relatively early during pre-production only for Ollie to tell us during our ill-fated pitch that it would have been better to film somewhere else, especially if we were supposed to be doing a family comedy but by that time, there was no going back. We had to film in the media studio whether it was ideal or not.  

 

While I was doing my individual edit, I somehow learned how to cut out certain bits of dialogue without breaking continuity which had previously been a big problem for me while trying to edit the footage of the Performing Arts students’ recent show. I cut out a bit of a dialogue in which I unintentionally referred to my Gran as ‘Gran’ when she was supposed to pretend to be Will and Evie’s gran and my mum-in-law. I am developing my skills in acquiring non-copyrighted music and including it in my films and looking out for potential continuity errors.

Next time, I would put more thought into where our film should take place and not automatically go and book the media studio and put a bit more thought into my idea for a the plot i.e. think of an idea and then try to develop it more. I also need to try and not look at the camera so much in future even if I am supposed to be breaking the 4th wall.

 

We used a Canon XF100 camcorder, tripod and boom pole supplied by the Media Section of Oaklands College. We encountered relatively little in the way of problems apart from where to conveniently position the camera and boom pole amongst all the furniture and props that were already in the media studio and that we were using. We used Adobe Premier Pro via the computers in Ollie and Natalie’s rooms to do our editing.  

We edited and exported our individual edits using Adobe Premier Pro and exported them to YouTube then placed the links on our websites. At the time of writing, we had yet to decide whose individual edit we wanted to show to rest of the media department.

 

The most important thing I need to learn in future is that the Media Studio at Oaklands College is not ideal for filming a family oriented film, especially one set in a different era, as it is just a dark room with a few pieces of furniture that are clearly up to more modern standards and certainly does not look like a lounge or dining area as Ollie has been all too keen to remind me and the rest of my group. I also still have not quite learned how to export my videos from Adobe Premier Pro to YouTube properly. I also need to learn that individual edits may not always be under 5 minutes long and that I cannot always rely on my peers to do what they say they are going to do and to to remember to save my chosen music onto my hard drive before adding it to my footage and exporting it.