In today’s workshop, we screen a mini film festival of our completed portraits. We teamed up into groups to give feedback on each other’s films, keeping in mind de Bono’s six hats system, which I mentioned earlier on this blog, the technical and aesthetic aspects, the controlling idea, and more.

Firstly, Jason Hendriks’ portrait of a barber. I thought this portrait was really well done. I liked that it opened with a few establishing shots of the barber shop, and there was really good coverage of the shop overall, utilising different angles and shot types. The opening titles look good and it was clear that time and effort was put into this. As with many of the portraits, the audio quality was quite poor and it is quite jarring when the barber first begins to speak, but it was clearly audible over the background music. Also, the split screen editing used the space of the frame in a quirky, interesting way.

Sylvia’s portrait of an artist used lots of varied camera angles which made it an interesting film. It was however hard to understand the subject at times as his voice was competing with the background music. I think some of the transitions between shots were quite hard and could have been softened a bit. However, the controlling idea (art, creativity) is clear and the film remains interesting throughout.

Yolanda’s portrait was about a student fashion designer. These was a variation of shots of the subject working on a dress, but these shots were quite long – I think some faster editing could have heightened the engagement of the portrait, perhaps interspersed with more shots of the interviewee speaking. I did like that different shots were included of the subject buying fabric.

Watching everyone’s projects was really interesting and inspiring (and a little sad for me because they were all so good). It’s cool to see how everyone takes a brief and fulfils it in very different and creative ways.