Film Project 1 ‘Hedgehog Love’ – Final Reflection

Note: This reflection will contain direct chunks of my previous reflections and blog posts, as instructed by Jimmy as an option so as to not repeat oneself.

‘Hedgehog Love’, our short film from Film Project 1, was for me more of a learning experience than a creative pursuit. While I was invested in the project and it’s success, I found several road blocks in our groups methods of creating a coherent and successful first film project. Upon viewing our final cut, my criticisms are quite simple: sound poorly edited (Although I was happy to do the sound work in post, I was assured that the job would easily be done by our editor. In the future perhaps the roles should be more clearly defined as to who does what during what times of pre, prod and post.), lack of clear narrative (could’ve been avoided entirely by purposely neglecting a narrative as per the original pitch), and poor framing and cinematography (I don’t blame anyone for this personally, it was simply an afterthought due to our focus seemingly being 100% on capturing the acting effectively). All in all I consider the project a failure as an actual piece, but I’ve learnt a lot and will outline that here.

Our first major mistake, which set us back considerably, was the place of original shooting, which wasted not only our members time but also the actors who were all doing us a favour. We originally shot at Ben’s house in Glenbrook (which was a 90+ minute commute for a few members of our group), and didn’t appropriately organise a shooting schedule or a proper plan, which ultimately led to the camera battery running out (for some reason we decided not to borrow an RMIT camera which has several backup batteries) after several hours of shooting and only a small percentage of the work that was required was completed. As to expect everyone to make the commute again was not appropriate, we had to scrap that days work (an entire Sunday night wasted) and begin reshoots at Neville’s house in Camberwell, far closer for everyone in the group.

While shooting, I learnt several lessons for future projects (be aware of other people’s travel times and distance to and from shoots, especially when working for free.. always make shooting schedules as to not waste people’s time and so we know how long we will need.. and don’t be too ambitious when writing scripts, know your skills and your limits). As well as these, I learnt some more practical lessons regarding equipment and skills on shoots.

While on set, I was working primarily on the sound, an aspect of cinema that I think is one of the most important and most under-utilised at times, and also an area that I think it is possible to achieve to a high level with our limited capabilities and experience. I got moderately comfortable using the external boom mic. The model of mic used was a Zoom F4 Audio Kit. Although designed as a field recorder, it was adequate in recording voices. Unfortunately, a major downfall of our final cut is the out of sync audio. I think this could’ve easily been avoided if I had mastered the controls regarding labelling each individual recording to a specific scene and take, and synchronising that with the video so that each clip had a corresponding audio take. Synchronising the timing with the director would also have helped avoid this.

Where the boom operator is standing while recording is an art that I have yet to master, as you need to avoid creating shadows and being in the frame of the shot, as well as being in a good position to pick up the sound from each actor. Sometimes several takes are necessary simply to get the correct audio from both actors, as moving the mic from actor to actor can at times create unwanted background noise, and uneven levels. Another major oversight in the recording and general shoot process was the lack of a clap-board, which would’ve again helped synchronise video and audio. I am satisfied with the sound itself in the film, despite the obvious syncing issues.

As well as all these practical lessons, I’ve also learnt a lot when it comes to balancing creative roles, the importance of assigning production roles and specifying what each individual role involves, as well as managing expectations and knowing exactly what you’re capable of. I intend to take all these lessons with me to the next film project.

When we were first given this assignment, I was excited to use it as a chance to expand not only my technical skills and to gain more practical experience, but to express myself creatively and input towards an idea. However soon after we began our project, I realised that there would not be a lot of room for me to move creatively, so I kind of “switched off” in a creative sense, so to speak.

Although we sort of chose my pitch for the project, the final piece was immensely different to my original intention. My original pitch was a simple, short conversation between two characters, with no major narrative. It would simply be an exercise in cinematography and realistic screenwriting (two areas I wish to expand on much more in my next project). We also discussed the ideas of having an internal dialogue, and exploring themes of conscious and unconscious mind.

While I blame myself for this, I missed a class soon after we chose my pitch, and during that class the group switched the focus towards the more narrative based and melodramatic piece that we have ended up with. I feel strongly that this change of focus, mixed with some practical issues, have led to our final piece which I personally find to be of a far lower quality and benchmark than what we were capable of.

During an early discussion with Neville, we considered an interesting idea involving what he called a “shadow effect”: an editing technique in which we film two shots, using the same actors in different clothes, from the exact same angle, and lay one over the other and reducing opacity, creating a ghost like or shadow effect. I thought this was an interesting idea and would be a simple yet different way to have an internal dialogue of sorts. However when Ben began writing the script, he changed the idea to having 4 actors, and scrapping the shadow effect. (Although I am listed as a co-screenwriter, Ben wrote the entire first draft alone despite several attempts to collaborate and see an unfinished version to provide notes on. By the time the draft was finished, it was too far gone and changing back to the original idea would involve scrapping lots of Ben’s work). I helped with the next couple of drafts (mainly with specific language and wording more than any narrative structure) but the majority of the script was written by Ben.

At this point I was happy to just fulfil my role on sound, recording all the dialogue and field recordings on the set. I will hope to take a more central creative role in my next project as I understand that sometimes you have to take a back seat in the creative process.

While I don’t consider the process a complete failure (for the reasons listed above), I found the experience to be a disappointing one and as a waste of what could’ve been a fun and satisfying little project into what was a lost, unfocused and poor quality piece. I look very much forward to the next project and putting my all into creating something that I really want to create, using all the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Below is a link to all the appropriate documents related to the project:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SYKoFvXR6FOHI12OvBKyuDDsjVDI8hC1