Project Evaluation:

Having successfully finished the filming, editing and sound design of my film based on scenes from 'The Living Daylights' directed by John Glen. I have learnt from my experience in ways which highlight both positives and she rather glaring negatives about my work. The following is my thoughts on each aspect of my project as a whole. I will outline what I thought were very positive aspects and how I would like to use similar techniques in future projects as well as talking about the issues I have faced and how i shall learn from these mistakes for in future circumstances.

Firstly, the filming process:
One of the first mistakes I made was not actually going to Casting Call Pro from the start and instead trying to find actors through known associates. This ultimately fell through as various actors which I had acquired were suddenly unable to help due to other engagements such as family and work. It wasn't until the week before that I was feeling rather desperate and finally worked towards using professional sites on the internet to find my actors. During this process, however, I was lucky enough to find my casting for the character of 'James Bond' while helping a fellow student film their project and thus acquired the actor at short notice. The main actress to play Kara was contacted through Casting Call Pro and I was able to successfully acquire her acting services. For the future, I have learnt to go straight to professional sites on the internet from the start when looking for my actors.

The filming process, although difficult in theory, proved to be quite easy to accomplish. I was able to create a buzz track on the bus while it was in motion straight away, capturing the sound of the engine from inside at varying levels of speed for use in sound editing. The actors arrived relatively earlier than I had initially panned so we were able to start filming early with the equipment already set up.

I believe that each of the shots which take place on the bus itself were successful. The shots were all either mid-shots or close-ups of the characters on board the bus which I believe successfully conveyed reactions from the actors whenever something happens. For example, the bus was audibly slowing down so I would have a close-up on a character's face reacting to what might be sowing the bus down so suddenly. One particular shot which I am rather proud of is when the police come onto the bus: the camera starts which a close-up of their feet from outside the bus, then raises to an over-the-shoulder shot as they enter and follows as such when they walk down the bus aisle in one continuous shot. I believe that this worked very well and shows use of a technique that I'd wanted to use through research of other directors.

However, several shots that take place outside the bus were not so successful. One particular shot which depicts the police-man waving at the bus as if for it to stop appears very over-exposed. Another shot depicting the police taking Kara off of the bus appeared fine when the shot was inside the bus but then it moves outside of the bus and immediately becomes over-exposed and there are even noticeable marks on the screen where the sense of the camera has not been properly cleaned out.

I believe these problems to be attributed to two main things. First of all, I didn't have a big crew. There were, in fact, only two of us in the crew: myself on directing and cinematography and one other operating the sound equipment. This is due to the fact that the people originally in our crew were unable to make it to the shooting location at the last minute. This lead to myself concentrating too much on the directing aspects and not giving enough attention to setting up each shot properly, despite my best efforts to configure the exposure level for each shot. What I have learnt from this is that I should always have a replacement crew member in mind or insist someone at the last minute if they are able and happy to help.

The second reason I would list as the cause for the lower quality in picture is the fact that I didn't give myself a larger time-gap to film all of my scenes. By this, I mean that I only allowed myself from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon to get every single shot and rap up the shooting in its entirety. I had originally planned to shoot over two separate days but one of the days became unavailable due to the TV studios requiring the cameras on the second day. Despite this, I still could have used the day before the first day of shooting but didn't, thinking I could get all of the filming done in one day. I did, but not to as high a quality as I would have liked. From this, I have learnt to give myself more time to film and not try to film so much in such as tight time-frame.

The scene that takes place in the toilets where Bond finds the rifle Kara's guitar case is successful for the most part; I make use of various different types of shot while also adding certain parts of humour with the toilet cleaner reacting to the noise which Bond is making in the cubicle. One shot which I had planned from the start and I think was a success was a shot which travels through the cubicle door and ends in a close-up on Bond's face. I used editing to put two shots together to create this effect. In hind-sight, however, I feel that sound effect would have made the shot more effective.
When Bond actually unzips the guitar case and tinkers with the gun, I ended up using an array of sound effects. I don't think this worked too well. I would have like to have a prop gun which Bond would have visibly pulled out but unfortunately health and safety regulations restricted me from using the prop at the late stage of planning the scene. In the future, I will need to make sure that I will sort out the requirements that will fit the health and safety regulations when it comes to props. I believe the sound effects will allow audiences to know that he is actually holding a gun but it is not as effective as it could have been with an actual prop.

The last scene is where I believe my variation of shots are it their best. I used close-ups, long shots, mid shots, over-the-shoulder shots, POVs and many tracking shots as Bond and Kara have their conversation in Kara's bedroom. However, the shot I am most happy with is the first shot where Kara enters the room and the camera pans around the room to see it has been ransacked and then focuses back on her with Bond appearing behind her. There are some minor problems, however, such as the dressing of the set. Although there are many clothes thrown on the floor, a lot of the room still looks in tact such as books in the bookcases and the teddy bears still neatly placed on the bed despite the covers being complete wrecked. I feel to develop the idea of ransacking the room, I would have simply made the room look more destructing, even with extra bits of furniture toppled onto the floor. I would have had to have been careful of the amount of floor space, however, as it would have been even more limited than it already was. Another problem I have with this scene is the amount of exposure coming through the bedroom window. Reasons and improvements for this I have already aforementioned.

I do like all three separate scenes as a whole though, conveying a concise story successfully and I don't believe than an audience would be confused about what had just happened by the end of the seven minutes. Several revelations unfold during the conversation in the third scene anyway, explaining what was happening in the previous two scenes. The actors were both very good to work with and followed my direction exactly how I would have wanted them to and they both gave genuinely good performances throughout.

Post Production:
Editing:
I feel that my skills with Premiere Pro have increased significantly through my use of the software when editing my scenes. I have discovered several new capabilities that would never have been able to work out before.

My editing of the scenes appears successful in the final cut of my film, despite the difficulty I had with the editing process. These difficulties arose through some of the actors positions or movements not matching up between shots, meaning I would have had to cut the shots slightly earlier or later than I would have wanted to avoid inconsistent action on screen. These sort of problems also occurred when I became aware of problems with the shots such as the over-exposure or soft-looking images. To try and tackle this, I tried cutting as much of the flawed shots as possible so they are not visible for a long period of time. I think this approach was mostly successful although the roughness of the picture quality in these shots can still be seen. For several of the over-exposed shots, I tried using the basic picture correction tools to reduce the amount of exposure. This was mostly successful but often led to the colour looking somewhat unnatural. I lowered the level of the black colour levels for every shot to give the film a more gritty and cinematic look. I think this works as it fits in with the dark tone of a spy thriller and it does not make each scene too dark in their presentation.

Sound editing and design:
The sound editing for the project I found was rather was when I knew what I was doing. At first I wasn't sure how I was to add atmosphere or even any snd effects and how I would place them in the scenes for the right effect. It turns out that once I had worked out how the multiple tools on the editing software worked, the process was actually quite simple.

The first problem I encountered was the different sound levels and noise between each shot, especially those taking place on the bus. I had already created the buzz-track for when the bus was in motion so that wasn't an issue and I feel that editing the sound of the bus while at different speeds proved successful in conveying the fact that the bus was slowing down suddenly. The issues took place when the bus was stopped and the police are boarding the bus and threatening Kara. There was a distinct click between each shot where the audio levels and background noises where changing. To tackle this, I simply faded the audio between each shot into each other to rid of the clicking sound and adjusted the volume so that it was consistent throughout. I found this to be successful as now the audio transitions appear to be smooth.

For atmospheric sounds, I used various different sounds taken from the internet. The bus depot needed so more sounds to emphasise the fact that it was a working environment. There were actually working doing construction work at the time of filming on location and their voices and various tools can be heard in the distance. However, I simply added the sound of hammering to further emphasise this and make the sound more obvious to viewers. I believe this works very well because I adjusted the the volume of the sound effect between each shot to create the sound as if from different distances. If anything, I might have been able to develop this further with more sound effects are even recorded voices to put into the background. The atmospheric sounds which I use when Kara walks across her front garden consist of birds chirping and distant traffic. I feel that I didn't need to include too m much sound for this part as the neighbourhood appeared quiet and there was no traffic on the road at all.

The biggest use of sound effects was of course used when Bond is tinkering with the rifle from the guitar case. Many of the shots don't actually show Bond while this is happening so I left it to the power of suggestion as to what could be in the case. The sound effects I used involved mostly reloading of the gun, a round falling onto the floor and then the sound of a magazine being unclip and emptied. I feel these sound effects are successful in conveying the fact that there is a gun however, more watchful audience may notice that the various sound effects come from several different types of gun. I think to develop this further, I would need to make sure that I am able to acquire the right sound effects to match the one type of gun that is being eluded to.

In terms of music for the piece, I created it through my own equipment. The music was created through the Audacity software and mostly just recorded from synthesised sounds from a keyboard. I wanted to give Bond a motif without directly copying the famous theme used in the films themselves. It consists of just a two note bass line throughout which only occurs when Bond is moving fro one location to another or when something starts to peak his interest. I believe this to be successful as it fit in with the mysterious spy thriller aspect and bears a similar style to that of the themes o James Bond and even, to an extent, The Pink Panther. Another piece of music is just two string section notes. These are sued when something mysterious and unseen by the audience such as Bond unloading the gun. The most developed piece of music, however, was my idea for Kara's theme. She has a very short motif which plays primarily during the third scene. This develops into what eventually become the music for the credits. I think this piece of music is successful however I wish that I had used it earlier on in the other two scenes involving Kara to have the motif repeat consistently throughout. Overall, I would have liked to have developed the music even further because, on rematch, the music is admittedly not as polished as I think I could have made it with various parts speeding up out of tempo and the percussion sometimes being out of time with the rest of the instruments. However, I feel that I was able to appropriately implement it at the right times during the editing process for the best effect. What I've learnt from this is to either allow myself more time to create a more polished piece of work or even just find royalty-free music from the internet to use.

Overall, I find my project to be a bit of a mixed bag. I feel that I have been able to capture the feel and visual style of a gritty spy thriller like the older James Bond films and have been able to differentiate my directing style and camera work to that of John Glen, using several continuous shots and being more experimental rather than using the more traditional style of directing that John Glen utilises. The actors were both great and gave great performance and will happily use them again in any further projects if need be. Despite this, the problems with the quality of the image are a major negative and the fact that I did not give myself enough time will have attributed to this fact. Therefore, the biggest improvement I would give to myself is to allow myself more time make sure that the quality standard of every aspect of my project is high.