Through my work in FILM 3 I have learnt a great deal about what goes into filmmaking from a practical standpoint. I had worked on several projects before but with very little emphasis on people having defined roles and goals within the crew. Through this work I have seen the importance of having defined roles with each member having specific affordances and boundaries, this allows for a much more streamlined process with little confusion on what is to be done and who has the say in a given situation. I have also been given a new understanding of the many elements of filmmaking that I previously overlooked to a certain extent. For example, the importance of lighting. I had previously acknowledged the importance of lighting in past works that I had been a part of but not the the extent that I now know is necessary.

With my piece, I set out to create a look inside the mind of somebody who is undergoing some form of intense mental illness. The sequence that will be showcased takes place in a paranoid delusion of the protagonist. The scene is not intended to be an action scene with crisp fighting technique and choreography, but rather a confused, rage-fueled and deluded gentlemen stumbling through an erratic mess. Through the way I chose to shoot the scene I attempted to convey panic and instability.

I found that putting my ideas for this scene into practice were difficult due to the nature of what I was shooting and how it was being shot. The long-take moving from outside to inside posed a lighting issue that I didn’t end up solving that I believe negatively impacted greatly on the final product. The set was also a challenge as the hallways of the house were very narrow and didn’t allow for much room for the camera operator to achieve a wide enough angle for a lot of the sequence, limiting the scenes overall visibility even further. Even though it is not intended to depict real, authentic violence, much of the scene still looks very contrived, limiting it’s plausibility. This is mainly attributed to me and my cast not being professional actors.

Overall, I feel this was a successful endeavor as it allowed me to attempt to put my ideas into practice. Bearing both successes and failures in the process, which allowed me to learn from what worked and what didn’t work.