4x4

Link to Final film
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16YSW4FKl1bq9BH7OrB6DuIf-GBNwWuh-/view?usp=sharing

This week we were set a one week project with the aim of creating a 16 second film with 4 shots that lasted 4 seconds. We started the week watching a couple of the film 4x4 competitions shorts. Trying to identify what the set up and pay off was in each story.
Touching distance
http://www.rob-savage.co.uk/touching-from-a-distance/

Since we only had a week to produce this film, our group was keen quickly think of an idea so that we could quickly start filming. We decided with the film title 'Birdwatching'. About someone who appears to voyueristcally be looking at a woman when in the end it turns out that he is in fact being watched by a bird. This project proved to be a huge learning curve for us As soon as we had our idea we happily set out to find the first free room within college with two bird puppets, that Beth had brought in and used our classmates as actors and started filming.

Link to first version.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1y7KXWZ5CTZXFJEKh7VS8R7ybgw1CvKJv

We had tutorials the following day and it was pointed out to us that we hadn't put any consideration into why we decided to film in our location and that it wasn't believable. There is no reason for someone to be watching someone with binoculars indoors, this wouldn't make the viewer uncomfortable. We started our research again, this time looking at nature documentaries about birds and decided to film outside, e.g. in a park. Immediately by choosing to film outside we had better ideas for what the woman  or girl should be doing. We came up with options such as feeding ducks and gardening. We developed the gardening theme and decided that filming in a garden was the best option as the idea of someone being watched from their own home is more intrusive and more of a violation of privacy than if we filmed in a public space such as a park. One of our friends was able to offer his garden to film in and we chose to have our actress use the washing up line as her errand. On the day of filming we ran into a problem, we no longer had access to a bird mask that we were going to use. We improvised and filmed a bird statue that we found in the garden. This meant we lost the pay off that we had originally written with play on the words' bird watching'. In the edit in order to make the set up and pay off more obvious Beth added sinister and amusing music behind the opening and final scenes respectively. In the crit, whilst Laura agreed that by choosing to film outside the second version was stronger we should have tried to film on another date when we could have had access to the bird mask because there was no point in having three strong set up shots if the final pay off wasn't strong enough. Most people in the crit were able to follow the story because we chose to include the title at the beginning to set up the expectation surrounding 'birds';however most people agreed that our new final shot did a feel a little abrupt and random and that our intended final scene could have been more impactful. We were also asked why didn't choose to use actors instead of our friends. This project made me realise that we are no longer making videos to pass the time and that I need to start being more ambitious with our briefs and actually start setting aside time to find appropriate locations and actors to bring our scripts to life. I also need to plan better and insist on making the film that I want to make instead of compromising to meet the deadline.