Main exercise final evaluation

The whole coursework process has been a very interesting and enjoyable. When my group and I began the preliminary exercise I was completely new to film making as this was my first experience of producing a short film. Previous to the coursework I hadn’t had much experience using video cameras and had absolutely no experience in using any form of video editing software so both the main exercise and the preliminary exercise have taught me a lot about the process of film making. With the main exercise I took on the roles of editor and sound engineer which gave me an opportunity to learn how the editing programmes, windows movie maker and adobe premiere pro work.


When we first started planning our main exercise the group sat down and discussed the possible genres that our film could be. After discussing the possibilities we decided that we were going to produce the opening sequence for a social realist drama. With this in mind we started to develop the main ideas of the film. The story line that we came up with involved a pair of teenagers dealing with issues of crime and a sense of belonging. When thinking about this we researched existing films that conveyed similar themes, the films that we looked at were Green Street,A Way of Life and Kidulthood. We also looked at social realist drama as a genre and the subculture stereotype ‘chavs’. This gave us more insight into the style of the opening titles for these types of film and also the codes and conventions that needed to be conveyed.










Our story opens as two people, a boy and a girl, are getting ready to go out. The girl is getting dressed to go to a party and is shown putting on make up and styling her hair to show that she is a typical young woman getting ready for a night out. The boy on the other hand is shown to be dressed in quite scruffy clothes and stares at him self in the mirror before getting a knife out of a kitchen drawer and leaving the house. The film is aimed at young people particularly ones growing up in urban environments and I feel that we have been able to portray this well with the choice of music for the opening sequence, the dress codes of the two characters and also the locations that we used.



With the production side of the project my roles were sound engineer and editor. During the preliminary exercise I had the role of camera man but didn’t take much part in the post production aspects so I was excited to learn how this side of things worked. I also helped choose one of the locations and the male actor for our film. When it came to filming I was able to offer help to Amy who was doing the camera work for the main exercise as I had previous expirience with using the camera and I was able to give advice on the framing of some shots that we used. One of the more difficult shots that we had to get was of the male character looking into the mirror. The difficulties arose because the bathroom that we were using was very small and cramped and there wasn’t much room between that bath and the sink. So to get a good shot we had to set the tripod and camera up in the bath as to be able to get the framing that we required.

As the sound engineer I encountered several problems whilst we were filming. The biggest problem was when filming the parts with the male character. There was a dog in the house that we did the filming and even though we were able to put him out in the back garden there was still a lot of unwanted noise created by the dog. The problem was overcome because of the use of music in our film which was able to cover up the sounds made by the dog. The other problem that became and issue that went unnoticed while filming was the sound as the camera person walked up the stairs in the first shot of the female character. This problem became apparent when we came to edit the film. The sound of the foot steps as the camera moves up the steps was very distinct when we were watching back our film. The solution we came up with was to mute the sound from the fist part of the shot. However the sound of the next bit of the shot didn’t seem to fit right after that was removed so we decided to include that scene into the section with the music track playing over the top.





When it came to the editing of the film I was completely new to the software that we had access to. Luckily Mia had experience in using Windows movie maker so she was able to help me out if I was unsure of how to do something. The first thing we did when we started the editing process was to sit down as a group and decide on what shots were the best out of the takes and how they would fit together to create a flowing piece. Once we had the order and sequence of the shots planned out I set about removing the excess from each shot and deciding on how it was going to cut. The most complex shot that I had to edit was the shot where the male character takes the knife out of the drawer. We had filmed to different sequences for this, the first was a mid shot of him removing the knife and putting it into his back pocket and the second was a close up of his hands as he opened the drawer and removed the knife. In the end as a group we decided to edit the two shots together so that you see him walk up to the drawer then it cuts to the close up of his hands picking up the knife and finally back to a mid shot of him putting the knife into his back pocket. We were all very pleased with how the sequenced came together and flowed with the rest of the film. The next big problem was the films title, we had chosen to name the film after the street where the male character was to be living. We decided to film the male character walking past the road sign to end our film but when we watched the shot back on the computer we were unable to see the road sign clearly. We decided to take a still of the road sign from the shot and edit it on the Photoshop program to make it more visible. We the added it to the end of the film and included a fade to bring the picture in and also a fade out to white to end out film.

Over all and I very pleased with how the group work with all the stages of our coursework. Even though at the beginning of the main exercise we had a slight change to the group (the edition of Amy) we were able to help input ideas and give criticisms to help achieve the final product. I learned many new skills whilst completing the course work such as the camera work skills from the preliminary exercise and also all the new skills that picked up when using the editing software.

This is the finished film that me and my group produced.


Any use of music in this film complies with 'Fair Dealing' under the 1988 Copyright Designs and Patents Act (UK), Sections 6(i) and 6(ii); Fair dealing is a term used to describe some limited activities that are allowed without infringing copyright. Briefly these are as follows:Section 6i. Research and private studyCopying parts of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or of a typographical arrangement of a published edition for the purpose of research or private study is allowed under the following conditions:· The copy is made for the purposes of research or private study.· The copy is made for non-commercial purposes.· The source of the material is acknowledged.· The person making the copy does not make copies of the material available for a number of people.ii Instruction or examinationCopying parts of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or a sound recording, film or broadcast for the purpose of instruction or examination is allowed under the following conditions:· The copying is done by the student or the person giving instruction.· The copying is not done via a reprographic process.· The source of the material is acknowledged.· The instruction is for a non-commercial purpose.