Film Review

 

 

During the pre-production and making progress of our film Hollow there was a lot of things that went well. Firstly, when deciding our idea although it took a while we had a really good well thought out idea which was bought onto a really well wrote script. Our script writers done a really good job at portraying an idea onto the script which meant the script was relevantly easy to understand. I also thought the idea of rehearsing the script as a whole was a really good idea, an idea I have not done before because I never really saw the point, but I was wrong! I found it really beneficial to go through the script with my cast mates and get a good idea of what us as actors were going to be doing when on set. I also thought bearing in mind this was our first time as a class working together we collaborated well. There were a few little niggles throughout the process but that is normal when making a film. 

If I were to make this film again firstly I would’ve tried to push my classmates to come up with the idea a bit more quickly. In my opinion I believe we took a little to long coming up with an idea, which meant we had to rush a little towards the end which wasn’t the end of the world, but I feel we could’ve made a slightly better final product. Also, there was one scene in our script in my opinion that was very bulky, the bird watching scene, we really struggled to film this on set because there was a lack of a leader on set and nobody really understood what was being filmed.

When it came to our final product, I am incredibly happy with how it turned out. Firstly, I thought the editing was fantastic, thanks Luke! The film was cut well together, also the separate audio files were bought together very well. I also really liked the music. Secondly I thought the casting was done well. At one point the casting was a bit different than it was in the final product and I actually suggested a change to the castings based on their personalities and I think it worked really well. The acting itself was also particularly good. Jake’s acting was very good, he was very confident, and he fit his role fairly well. Robbie also, although his character didn’t really match his real-life personality, but Robbie did a really good job at portraying his character on screen. 

If I could add more to our final product I would’ve added a few more close ups. I think at times our final product was a bit dry with consistent long shots, in distance and in timing length. Although this wasn’t a big issue, I just think that it would’ve made the film look a little more intense, if the shots were shorter. I also think that more of us could’ve had stuff to do with the editing, I know it’s very hard for a lot of people to be around one computer but I believe we could’ve potentially split it up a bit to even out the workload post-production. I’d say generally most of the team done their share of the work. Something that needed addressing as well is that there was a clear lack of experience on set. Not everyone knew how to use the camera, and this proved a hinderance on set. This will hopefully be worked on throughout the year with skill development etc. Another issue I found on set is that there was not enough people behind the scenes to keep the flow of the filming going, this is an issue I found when the flow of the film wasn’t going well. To solve this I would propose we have less people acting in our next film or get people in from other classes to act for us and we focus on more behind the scenes work. 

Targets for next time:

• Plan the idea quicker
• Less bulky scenes in the script 
• Skill building with the equipment for less experienced class members 
• A wider variety of camera angles
• Less people acting and more people behind the scenes or get people into act.