What have you learnt from doing the project?

This was one of the most key parts of our project. When it was all finished me and Amir finally had time to reflect and when we were in planning for our interview and making our PowerPoint for the class presentation we had to ask ourselves 'what have we learnt?'

Firstly i have learnt that organisation is huge key feature for making not just a film project but for any media product. After our first attempt of making a film me and Amir realised how much easier and swiftly the filming process could have gone has we planned and organised everything but we didn't we just asked people we never really spoke to 'Can you film this?' or 'Can you play this part?' without any real thought as the majority of times we asked people to play in our film and they said yes we would find about 5 minutes before shooting that 'We can't make it' or 'I completely forgot' and as much as they didnt help us by telling us last minute we were mainly to blame as we should have constantly reminded them, asked if they still can do it and ensure that we contacted each all the time. Another problem was with ourselves but i will admit that the majority of the time it was my fault, i do allot of things when i get in from school such as playing for my football team which fully cancels out Tuesdays and half of a Saturday which at the time didn't seem bad because i had the rest of the day to film but i wouldn't be back till 3 and at the time of filming it was dark nights meaning it was dark at 4:30. But also at the time our football team was in the semi-final of a cup meaning i trained occasionally 3 times a week. Also one of my other subjects did not help, as chemistry tore a huge chunk of my time as our whole course is based entirely on coursework meaning that when we finished one we would start another straight away which would have to be done about 3 weeks later. However i eventually found time and was able to film with Amir who I'm thankful for his patience and understanding. But the biggest culprit of them all was the weather, as the time of filming we werent getting any good of it. Especially with 2/3's of our film being outside it really made it horrendous. We filmed some of our shots on different days and on one it was snowing and was forecast this the rest of the week, however next time it came to shooting the snow had melted and the sun was shining meaning that we had a huge continuity error which meant we had to re film the scene were it snowed. So we have learnt that organising is key and that when the next task occurs we will be in touch all the time, using the Internet for weather forecasts and sunset times and choosing our locations wisely as a location inside would bet better as weather and time wont effect the film.

Imagination, Ideas and initiative was another thing we learnt, these three I's were the key to our film as without them it wouldn't have been the way it was. Imagination and ideas interlocked with each other as without them the basis of our film would we bland and boring , we used this in our opening tracking sequence as i had the idea of showing hints of a zombie apocalypse without being blunt and abrupt so for example when Greg (a zombie) is behind a fence eating someone and blood on bollards and hand prints on windows creating one of those quizzical moments for the audience as they will ask 'Wait! What was that?' which keeps them alert and focused on the film. Amir also had the amazing idea of placing the credits on the wall to make it part of the scene rather then making it looked inserted.

The intuitive part was Amirs doing as at first we wanted to create a tracking shot of us walking down a road and we firstly used his sister to film us walking, however it was far to shaking and the camera and tripod were heavy to hold for a long period some Amir had the idea and initiative to place the camera on a tripod in the car to create a smooth and good tracking shot.





I have learnt some more about editing but i still have a lot to learn. Amir was kind enough to show me the basics such as inserts, depth of field, cutting, importing, compositions and changing textures, lighting and contrasts. Hopefully Amir will show me how to do more complex editing or more variety of basics to use in either our project or my own.