Pre-production went very well, communication hit off to a good start, with several positive meetings with Liz & Tracey. I feel that perhaps my lack of in depth planning had a nock on effect in the filming of the project. For instance if I’d of carried out an extensive recce I’d of spotted that there was a lot of clutter in the room, which was visible on camera, distracting the viewer in the final edited film.
Originally it was decided to have two days filming, the 1st days filming went without any problems, equipment was at the hospice ready and set up ½ hour before filming was due to commence. We got plenty of footage, but felt as a team we did not get enough cut a ways of around the hospice, this was mainly down to the hospice placing major constraints on us with what we could & couldn’t film with regard to patient confidentiality. Two days before the second shoot we found out that the equipment scheduled for the 2nd days filming had been double booked to the 1st year students. It was at this juncture we had to cancel the 2nd days filming, which displeased the hospice as they had invested time & people into the organising the 2nd days content. We were unable schedule the days shoot due to deadlines & coursework constraints fast approaching which inevitably left us short of material to fulfil our brief.
It was then decided to schedule a meeting with the hospice to discuss the content of the film. Structure & content were agreed at this point over the phone, as I stupidly forgot about the scheduled meeting. The next day keely & I scheduled a meeting to view the material edited, make any changes & add finishing touches, so a DVD could be burnt off & given to the hospice at our next meeting. Due to technical problems with Keely’s computer we were unable to burn a copy of the disk, so it was decided that Keely would come with me to the hospice to view material from Keely’s computer. The hospice were very pleased with the final DVD only commenting on the sound issues & asked us to change the sequence of two sections. Although it was decided that the hospice were not going to use our DVD it secured the desire for professional DVD in their minds.
This was the 1st time I had taken on the role as producer organising a team of people. I feel I did not carry out this role as effectively as I could of due to lack of preparation & organisation on my part & poor communication skills between the hospice, my team, & the college. I also feel I did not fulfil the role as a producer of overseeing all aspects of the production i.e. during the edit I should have been more proactive, informing Keely of the changes I thought necessary, rather than letting her get on with it. I know Keely put a lot of hard work & effort into this project & spent more time on the edit than she should of to get the film as polished as it is.
I have learnt from this project that producing is not one of my strengths, I know I should’ve been more thorough in double checking things & should’ve been more proactive throughout the whole project, rather than being my comfortable passive self. If I was going to do this project again I feel would take on a more passive role for instance scripting as I know this is something I am good at & I know I can deliver the goods well.
I have learnt from this project that if filming I would keep the main camera on a wide shot of the speaker rather than zooming in & out, Having the hand held getting zooming shots and audience reaction shots. I also feel from a technical point of view I would need to pay more attention the quality of sound.
All in all I think we managed to pull off an extremely hard project, quite well, we managed to deliver the hospice with a DVD that they could use for training purposes, which is what they set out to achieve when they approached the college at the beginning of this project, & I feel as a group we have learnt a lot of invaluable skills from making this film.
Links:
http://www.westonhospicecare.org.uk
www.weston.ac.uk
