MEST4 Preliminary exercise: evaluation

Video starts from 2:19 and ends at 2:49.

1) Why did you choose this particular recreation and how does it link to your main production?

I chose this part of the recreation because of the level of difficulty. Even though I believed that it was quite simple to do, there was a lot of background music and camerawork that was needed in it. For example, the cinematography used in this was shot/reverse shot and since I had never done any sort of editing from last year, I believed that this was a great starting point for me and can therefore progress from this. The reason why I chose this particular scene and how it will link to main production is because of the two characters. In the movie, the football coach would persuade the father to let her daughter to pursue her dream of becoming a footballer but since the main protagonist had traditional Indian parents, they were against their daughter playing sports and this is linked to my main production because it will be based on a teenager girl always being controlled by her parents.

2) What difficulties did you face in producing this recreation?

The difficulties that I had faced during producing this recreation are the following:

• Lighting - In the actual film, the two characters faces were really bright and the audience would be able to see them very clearly. However, in my piece, it was hard for me not to get the shadows of the characters faces and therefore, the whole piece looked very dark when it shouldn't have.
• Sound - Because of the fact it was outside and the roads were very noisy, it was always hard to get the right tone from the character compared to the last shot. On some occasions of my recreational piece, the character would have a low tone on one shot but a higher sound on the other.
• Characters - Since in the actual film, it required a older male with a beard, it was very hard to find one in such a short amount of time so therefore, I had to use anyone that was willing to dress up in that character.

3) What are the strengths of the production?

Personally, I believe that the strengths of the production was the mise-en-scene. In particular, the costumes. Since the costumes were very basic, it was really easy for me to get the accurate costumes for the characters and therefore, this is why I believe that this was a strength as the audience could then get the feeling that I was trying to recreate a particular scene from the movie.

4) What aspects would you look to improve?

The main aspects that I would like to improve on would be the following:

• Lighting - making the characters more visible by the audience and make sure that there wasn't any shadows on the characters
• Sound - make sure all the sound on every single shot is level and balanced out (all of the shots have the same tone by the character). Also, next time I would try to clear out all of the background music, e.g. from the characters and the wind.

5) What lessons will you take from this process that will help you with your main production?

The main thing which I have learnt from this process is where to do the shooting. I believe that unless if it is necessary to do so, I will seriously consider avoid shooting for my main production outside. Considering it will be in the winder/autumn time which I will be shooting the production, outside will be very windy and really hard to record the footage without having the background sound problem. So, I will therefore try not to record outside.

6) Now that you are ready to start your actual linked production, explain clearly what you will be creating and how confident you are in delivering this.

My linked production will be based around a teenage Indian girl. She is a typical teenage girl who has been bought up in England but has these traditional Indian parents who want to bring her up how they had been bought up in India. Her parents believe that she is this innocent, traditional girl who doesn't do anything 'westernized', but that's not how her friends see her. I will be creating the opening of a short drama film where the teenage girl has been harassed by her parents because they found out that she was doing something which would completely embarrass her family and ruin their reputation. It will firstly start off with the ending (teasing the audience) and then start from the beginning, e.g. "3 weeks later". I already feel very confident with this because I have already planned the costumes and the characters which I am going to use for this production.