(POST 31) Narnia Evaluation / assessment
Evaluation
For our task we got given a scene from Narnia, which we had to create on our own as a group.In this evaluation I will be talking about the decisions made and
the outcomes overall. This is our response and reflection to our final cut of
the Narnia task we were given. I will also be talking about certain aspects of
our group and how everyone participated in the roles we were given.
1.a
Shots and Angles
we included a variety of shots and angles in Narnia film, for example we used over the shoulder , eye level, close ups, high angle, and low angle shots. I think our most used shot was over the shoulder, as this is an effective way to build up tension. we decided to not use a tripod, mainly due to all the movement in the scene. This would have been extremely, difficult to move the tripod and get the right framing for every shot that has different movement.
These are the costumes we used for the beavers. These coats work really well for the beavers body beacuse its warm and fluffy which represents the beavers skin. I think the colours work really well and texture is perfect for the characters they are playing.
Peter is the oldest character, so we decided to not give him a coat mainly because we needed to show the audience how brave he is, and how he cares about his family and younger siblings. we gave him a smart look, which included a collared shirt, jumper and black trousers, this shows how he is part of a well brought up family. Peter always puts his family first, which is what we wanted to show through this outfit by not including a coat or scarf.
For lucy, we decided she should wear a hat, scarf and gloves, this mainly is because she is the youngest character, who is looked after well by her siblings. We needed to show the audience how she is innocent and harmless, but at the same time has a lot of confidence and is brave at times. I think the patterned cardigan adds alot of outgoing personality to the character being played, which is what we want to show the audience.
This was the outfit we used for susan. we decided to give susan a contasting outfit to lucy, as there is an age difference between them both. we gave susan a coat and a scarf, for ocverall warmth, I also wanted to show the audience how susan looks after the group and is the leader with peter. susan is the oldest female out of her siblings, which is why i wanted the coat to symbolise leadership.
This is costume we used for edmund. We gave edmund a jumper and trousers, as we wanted to show how edmund is the youngest male, out of the four siblings. This outfit shows how edmund is quite lazy, and is the less smart and brave one of the family. Edmund is quite adventurous which is why we chose to style him in a casual look.
Makeup
At the start of this film we decided as a group , that
someone would be in charge of makeup. Then a few of us starting looking up
turtorials for the beavers makeup. We had a few problems with the setting and
timing for our film, as none of us were free at the same time so it took us a
while to organise things. This however took time away from things like makeup,
props and costumes.So as we ran out of time for this particular part, we
decided as a group to not include makeup, mainly because we thought setting was
more important to us. However, susan still wore a bit of makeup, as she is one
of the eldest. It would have been even better if we got creative with the
beavers makeup, but it wasn’t one of our main problems. Many other problems
came up along the way, which we got around eventually.
Props
For props we decided as a group for a few of us to volunteer to do a prop if we had time. I did the hanky which was to sew the initials of lucy pevensie’s name into the hanky. One of us did the portrait of the two beavers, one of us created some fake snow, by experimenting using different ingredients while another created the woodeos using a cereal box. We discussed what objects and props we had at home and a few of us brought some old books and objects. I brought some fake flickering tea lights which were placed in the middle of the table.The overall outcome from making these objects worked really well, the hanky I made looked really good, as the white thread really stood out amongst the red. The woodeos box looked quite realistic, and the beavers portrait looked really impressive in the beavers house. While all our props were in place, the whole setting came together nicely, and everything dropped into place.
Setting
At the beginning of this task, we decided as a group
to email bewilderwood and see if we
could use there area to video our short film, as we thought their treehouses
would be perfect for the beavers house, which was in the scene we got given.
Unfortunelty due to maintenance work, they could not help with our project. We
all thought that bewilderwood could have been the perfect atmosphere for our
film. We were all really disappointed, however a few days later we found a
perfect beavers house in which we could use to film the beavers scene.Overall, the setting turned out to be better than we
thought. Emily realised we could film in her cabin at the bottom of her garden,
which was perfect for the scene, as its all wooden inside. We added lots of
logs, books and tealights to make it feel warm, cosy and homely. For the forest
part, we the filmed amongst some trees
on our school field which actually looked really surprisingly good, considering
it wasn’t a proper woods. We filmed the woods part after we filmed the beavers
hut, as the beavers hut was the main
part of our film.
part of our film.
Lighting
For lighting we decided
to use the natural light from outside. We filmed after school, which was when
it started to get a bit darker, this was less effective.We added props like candles tealights and lamps to add extra
warmth to the surroundings and extra light too, however the light wasn't consistent all the way through, mainly because it lit from the floor. There was a contrast between the beavers house and the natural. to improve our lighting we could of used studio lights but this would of gave off a really harsh lighting.
Casting
when finding the right people to be our cast, we had to decide what audition was the best, and wether it would suit the characters personality.We had a lot of tough decisions to make when it came to choosing the right cast. several people auditioned for Lucy's role which made it so hard to decide. All their auditions were good quality, and there were certain aspects in each person that were worth choosing. However we had to choose the person who we thought had the best audition overall. Hannah understood lucys personality, and how she can be shy and timide but also brave and loud. Her voice sounded exactly like lucys voice in the film, which made it even more effective. Our other roles didn't have as many auditions then lucys, but their auditions were still impressive. For peter we had Elliot play the role and for Edmund we had Marcus, both of their auditions were extremely good, and they both take GCSE drama. Due to timing and communication with our cast, the original person playing susan, we had to cut out, as she couldn't attend the dates we set to film on, so one of our group members, lauren, decided she would play the part as she takes A level drama. This worked out really well, and mad eit easier for us to decide on a date and time to film the parts we needed. For the two beavers, we had a GCSE drama student play the role of mrs beaver, however we changed this role to fit a male part. We also had a yr 10 student, Ben cook to play the main role of Mr beaver. He had taken drama before and shown good understanding of the characters personality.
Character expression/movement
out of all our characters I would say the two beavers had the most character expressions and movement overall. The two beavers had to communicate quite a lot with not only each other but with the other characters too. you can tell what characters are important at different times through their expressions and movement. The beavers are standing up and moving around while the pevensies are all sitting down. The two beavers move in relation to their words, and use their character expressions to speak, to the other characters. All of the characters communicated really well, through their expressions and movement.
Editing
- For editing, Aston took control with editing all of the footage we took, to try and produce a final cut. The colour tones were changed to blue and green tones, which gave off a mysterious and cold feeling. The blue tones made it look really effective and gives a Narnia feel to the surroundings. The editor, also used the same original sound track, which makes it feel even more mysterious. Aston also lowered the background noise on the final cut, which turned out to be really successful, as there was a football math going ahead when we were filming this project.
1.b
Planning
Our planning for our video, was rather
more difficult than we thought it would be. Especially, the planning of the
location. Originally we decided as a group to email bewilder wood and film in
the tree houses for the beavers scene. But due to some events going on in the
area, we received an email stating there is work being done in bewilderwood,
and it is closed for the time being. Even though this would have been the
perfect place to recreate Narnia, we found a cabin/hut which turned out to be
just as good. The location for the forest part, orginally we decided to go into
a woods and film, but due to timing we ended up filming at the back of the
field in our school. Even though it wasn’t as effective as we wanted it to be,
it was still achievable. The planning for our storyboard went really well. During
the whole process of filming our storyboard was our main plan for the
individual shots and we followed these shots to keep the process structured and
not building too much on the plan we had. We had to plan our video around a
certain scene in Narnia. Our task was to recreate the beaver’s scene, so our
storyboard mainly reflected this scene, however also included features of other
scenes. We had some ups and downs with our cast planning. At the start of our
planning we auditioned many people who were willing to participate in our film,
to act out one of the characters we needed to create this short video. We had
some problems with finding the right people, as some people dropped out or
couldn’t do it, while on the other hand we found it difficult to pick certain
people for certain characters. We struggled with finding a susan, so Lauren
stepped in and took the part for susan. Eventually we picked the cast we needed
and all of our cast were determined and excited to produce this piece of work.
Our cast had amazing acting skills and were willing to go to any extreme for
us. We were extremely happy with our overall outcome.
Communication
As a group we decided our roles for the
film we were recreating. There was no arguments between one another with who
wanted to do what roles, everyone agreed to what others wanted to do, and we
all listened to one another. Our group as a whole get on really well and
communicate which is the main part of team work. On the otherhand we had
difficulty communicating with the actors and trying to all meet up and film
when everyone is free at the same time, this is one aspect we could improve on.
Due to the scene we had there was a lot of casting we had to deal with, which
means we had more people to communicate with, this made it extremely hard for
us, which is why we ended up filming it with little time left, close to the due
date. We used many lunchtimes and breaktimes to get everything organised and
communicate with our actors as that was the only time in school which we had
free. These lunchtimes and breaktimes really helped us out, and gave us time to
communicate with our cast and team. Some of us stayed behind after school and
in our frees to help our cast learn the lines from our script, and to make sure
they knew what they were doing, in order to maintain a good outcome. We also
had a group chat in which our team and our cast could communicate all together.
When filming our video our team had some ideas along the way which we
considered doing. Our roles made our film more organised, as everyone had their
individual tasks to complete.
Organisation
Our team lacked a lot of organisation
skills, mainly on the timing aspect of our film. As previously discussed we had
issues with communicating with our cast, so that was our main problem with
organisation. Furthermore we made a lot of last minute changes, and this was
when our organisation skills dropped. This lead to issues like mentioning our
changes to our cast and members and making sure everyone knew what was
happening, time and the place. However because a lot of our cast and team were
not free at the same time, we had to fit it in with the members of our team due
to their roles. This was not always possible, due to there being so many of us.Our
timing overall was quite bad as we had little time left to edit and film
everything, this was mainly due to communication. The organisation with
costumes/ makeup, didn’t really go to plan. We decided to not do any makeup,
which was last minute partly because, we wanted to focus more on setting and
because we had very little time to film everything. I think our organisation
for costumes went as expected, we decided for the cast to wear their own
clothes, but with an old-fashioned twist. This would make them look more
sophisticated. We were very organised with props, individually some of us
decided to create a prop, depending on how many roles each of us had. Our set
up of our scene, was really organised, we all brought some old books and
objects with us to create a similar atmosphere to Narnia. Overall our
organisation skills need to be our main priority, than any other aspect when it
comes to filming. This would make our task a whole lot easy than what it was.
Distribution of roles
As
soon as we were given this task, we started off by reading the script through
and brainstorming any ideas in which we might have to make this short film come
together. We then started thinking about allocating roles to each other within
the film studies team. Our
distribution of roles, we decided as a group. Some of us in our team had 2 or
more roles depending on how little or how much work the role contained. For our
main director, joe stepped forward for this role, mainly because he is a good
team leader, and it is one of his ambitions later in life. Lauren then decided
to be the co-director, to help joe when he needs it, and to make sure everything
runs smoothly. Our two producers, are Lucy and Keri. They thought a joint
effort would benefit more, as everything is more likely to get done in the set
time given. Also to make sure everything is complete and presented to the highest
quality possible. For our film crew, we have Emily and Ellie. They thought a
joint effort on filming would also benefit more, depending if one of them isn’t
present, due to our communication skills. Also, they could get the best possible
angles in the locations and refer to each other’s knowledge for second opinions.
Lighting, we have Emily. Who is interested in the lighting and focal aspect of
film, she is also experienced in her photography projects with different types
of lighting. Everyone decided to chip in, with props, depending on how busy we
were with our blog posts. Emily decided to create the fake snow and portrait. She
also brought some plates and cutlery, for the set up. I decided to create the
handkerchief , and sew the initials on to it. Lauren then decided to create the
wood chips. For costume and makeup, I decided to do costume and makup mainly
because I take textiles and wanted to show my creative skills through this
project. Me and ellie contributed together on this aspect, as we are both
creative and will ensure their clothing looks suitable to the time period.
Overall, I am really proud of what we have
produced, there are aspects of this in which could have been improved a lot and
aspects which went really well as a whole. Our team communicate really well and
always help each other out if we need second opinions on anything. Even though
we all had separate roles, and got on individually, its important to still
communicate with each other and see where everyone is at on their blog posts,
to make sure all of us understand our tasks and what needs organising as group.
This is our final cut.
This is our final cut.
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