Feedback
This week in class all the groups presented rough drafts of their films followed by a ‘round’ (rectangle) table discussion and feedback. It was really cool to see the progress of some of the groups, and the vast variance of the films. A couple of my favourites were the poem one, the haunted/scary elevator one and the lost dog in the bush one. I can’t wait to see all the completed films again in the upcoming end of semester screening.

When it came our turn for our films to be screened, I was a little surprised with how much I liked the overall vibe we had achieved for each of our films – Blue Moon and The Club. I felt the real star of both films was the location, and I felt we were able to exhibit the beauty and surrealism of the Thornbury Bowls Club well. I believe the exterior shots were vital in conveying this. Coming into the feedback session I was keen to gauge peoples opinions on the appearing out of thin air zoom shot in The Club. This particular shot had been a point of discussion for a while amongst our group. I really liked the idea and the mechanics of the shot. I felt it added to the films surrealist vibe and was a really cool way to introduce Club member Rich into Club member Sam’s space. However, the quality of the footage was quite low and grainy, especially in comparison to the other lens we used. Whilst our classmates didn’t seem to notice the difference too much, I think seeing the shot on a big screen really drove home its imperfections and helped us decide to cut the shot once and for all.

Sidenote: I did some investigating into why the zoom shot was rubbish and the other camera, with a different lens, was great. Turns out, it all has to do with the aperture of the lens. The lens we used for the shot in question was a Canon 18-135 f3.5-5.6 zoom lens, while the other lens was a Canon 50mm f1.2 prime lens. A smaller f-stop means a larger aperture, which means more light is let onto the lens, which means its better suited for the type of low light conditions we were shooting. A valuable lesson to keep handy for any low light shoots in the future.
Other feedback we received for The Club included the sound effects being much too loud; I hadn’t begun editing sound yet, so it definitely was a fair call.