Throughout the weeks of forming my final major project, I feel as though I have developed my own style in creating my own film. One first thinking about the project I wanted to create a film about domestic abuse however while planning I decided it would be better to make a film about moving on from domestic abuse. Changing my idea helped me thoroughly plan.
Throughout this project, I have come across many challenges. When doing research into my topic I struggled to find detailed materials to help me form my idea more. Although based on personal experience I wanted to make my project look as realistic and raise as much awareness as possible. During the planning process I struggled to keep myself organised as I was trying to do multiple different tasks at once and I wasn’t completing things fully before moving onto something else this caused a lot of stress and confusion for me as I didn’t know what I had completed and what was yet to be done. Although the filming went mostly smoothly some of the camera footage came out shakey and some clips were missing and had to be re-filmed this caused a delay in the schedule I had made. The editing of my production was the most difficult part of all my original idea for the way I wanted my film to look didn’t fit the purpose I wanted to create and seemed to cause confusion in the story line after creating different edits I was able to find a style I liked the most and gave me confidence that it was giving the message I wanted to create.
Although encountering some difficulties as expected there were also many things that went well for me. I had a clear vision of what I wanted to make and was able to adapt and create new ideas when the original wasn’t going as planned, throughout this whole process I discovered a creative side to myself and felt this task developed my skills I was able to plan produce and edit an entire project independently with only help needed was to film. During my filming process my camera operator was able to give me feedback and we worked well as a team to change or develop ideas to make it look more appealing to an audience and create the emotion I was looking for.
If I was to repeat this project I would look into more directors and their work in order to develop my own and use different skills I don’t already have I would also ensure I was more organised with my planning and wouldn’t refrain myself from being more creative as I feel that this would have created a different look for my film and I think that some directors would create emotion in a different way that perhaps would have influenced me more within my own vision.
The purpose of my short film was to show the impact domestic abuse has on a person and the healing process I think that I have achieved this in my film as when planning I broke down everything into sections this helped me to truly see the journey a person experiencing something like this goes on and how difficult it can be. During planning and producing I was able to reflect on my own personal experiences to aid me into creating an informative piece. Using different types of camera shots and editing techniques created a very emotional story through imagery and sound. I used technical elements I had never used before such as an extreme close up, jump-cuts and fades the choice of music and sound helped to bring my entire product to life.
Overall I think that I achieved what I set out to do and produced a product I am very proud of there are a few elements in my film I personally liked such as using slow motion to create tension, being able to focus the audiences attention on specific elements through the different camera angles I decided to use as well as showing the audience the message the character was looking at, the same time you could see the reaction of the character I feel like these specific elements I am proud of helped to add emotion, tension and avoid confusion. Informing my camera operator of my intention for my film encouraged us to work as a team and suggest and get feedback on the different ideas we both had, this made filming less stressful and encouraged me to think of different approaches and techniques to improve.
Emily 
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