Arecaceae - Tuppence Collective // Experimental Film

Brief

To create a two-minute experimental film which is based on London. 

Final Video 

Process

Working in group projects can be highly stressful, especial when you don’t know the other people. My group we had very different cultures, background and were very different people, this caused some problems at the start of the project with coming up with ideas and concepts for the treatment. We split the group in half and came up with 2 ideas and put together a document. 

1. Treatment // The idea that was chosen to be taken forward was the one I developed. I knew we didn’t have long for this project, I wanted a simple idea that we executed in a brilliantly way. I wanted the film to look professional, to have a large emphasises on cinematography, be a documentary but in a reflective way. This took a lot longer than it should have done as the person I was with had a very different idea of what they wanted and we both had to comprimise, however this made the whole process double the time. The first idea that the group wanted to go down was a deep serious video of realationship and love. I thought this was a good idea at first, however after hearing the ideas for the group I was very worried that it would look like a chessy, girly and unoriginal film. 

Reference Videos: 

2. Finding people for documentary //  We then went away and tried to find people to do the documentary on. Half of my group found a singer who worked in a toy shop by day and theatre by night. I strongly disagreed with this idea for various reasons, because of this it caused some tension between the group. In the end, they saw the points that I was saying such as lighting would be bad, we don't have permission to film in the area or children, busy time ect... This meant we took forward the people that I had chosen. It also meant that I had to do most of the planning work on my own, as they were putting all their time into that idea, which felt quite stressful as I felt that everything was my decision. 

3. Primary research in Kew Gardens //  We went to Kew garden to look at the environment and try some test shoots, this was key as I need to know what the location looked like that we were going to place our actors too, so I could plan out the narative. 

Kew Garden Photography to show set for film

Here is an example of some test shoots that I wanted to try

4. Planning Document // This was the part of the project I planned everything from timing, to the story line of video, the shots, what I wanted to see in each frame ect... I think this was what made the day and the final film successful as every one knew what they had to do.   

The voice over of the girls was very important as it would set the tone of film, I wrote the script as I didn't want it to sound like it hard been thought up on the spot. The girls looked at the script and then slighly change little bits to fit what there on refelctions. 

It was great working with one of my group members, as I talked though what I want and gave her a stickman story board so she went away and drew a more detailed one

5. Day of filming // I never really worked in a team before, so it felt wired that I had a clipboard and I was in charge of the whole project, my job was to check that we got all the shots and that it matched the idea that I had in my head. Also to make sure everything went smoothly and for communication to slow between all the stakeholders. It was very stressful, but I think that I managed it well. 

6. Editing // I wanted the edit team to be at my house, so I could have full control of what clips where going in, in the correct order, as I knew actual what I wanted. After the draft edit was done, I let them do the final edit and then watched them back to give them things to change. 

Here are some example of the edit process. 

Evaluation

I think that a strength with this project was in the end we worked well as a group, there was one member I didn’t feel like contributed much. But in the end once we decided to go with an idea, people strengths started to kick in. For example, I gave a stick man storyboard to one of my members and in one night she produced a beautiful storyboard, that could communicate my ideas to all the stakeholders involved so that they could understand the shoots and the story line that I wanted, which then had an impact later on in the project as people knew what was needed and where the shots were placed. 

I think a weakness was that as I soon as I step back and let other people try and work through it, it started to go slightly wrong, this meant that I had to step back in and I felt that I was quite bossy and overpowering, I wasn’t doing it to be harsh or mean, I was just focused on the end goal, which was to produce a great movies. But some members of the group didn’t agree with how I handle things, which caused a little tension, if they wanted to change it or have an opine, then they should have worked on it. An example of this, was I knew the opening scene of Kew was very important, I asked one member of my team to film this shoot. She went away, I then looked at her footage and I thought it wasn't smooth enough, so I asked her to re-film with the stabiliser, she went away but wasn't happy that I had asked her to do it again. I wasn't asking to be mean, I was just worried that we didn't have a high-quality smooth shoot that was so important to our movie, unfortunately I trusted that she went away and got the correct shot liked I asked, but when we came to the edit, it was all unsteady so we couldn't use it. 

Overall I am really happy with how the video looks, we really didn’t want a girly film, that had a commercial feel to it. We wanted it to just capture urban beauty, in a simply beautiful way. I also think I learnt a lot about working in a group and learning to use all of our strength to get the best outcome. I also learnt a lot about leadership, managing people and compramise.