Single Camera Production Evaluation

1 Taking the script into production
Choosing our script was a great difficulty originally there were two that had the quality and the setting that would be applicable for production. We settled on Shauna's horror short "thanksgiving". I took it upon myself to edit the script so that we could film it on a micro budget. I also changed the setting of the film to England and removed the connotations of thanksgiving (including the title) because of our shooting location in Great Yarmoth. I also removed a pair of grandparents from the script as we agreed it would be hard to cast.

2 DSLR Filming
While shooting manually on a DSLR was not necessarily new to me there was still a learning curve to working with exposure. Whilst shooting my segment I had no initial problems with focus ( Later during re shoots problems occurred due to urgency). Exposure was my biggest trouble as during the early days of filming I didn't know how to get the best lighting out of my locations in the first few scenes in the dining room you can see this at it over exposed at it's worst. By the end of the shoot we were able to shoot well in low light.

3 Coverage
Essentially we had no trouble with coverage however. due to technical problems we required re shoots to correct problems like exposure, bad framing or sound. Our coverage generally revolved around multiple takes running through the lines we required over each shot. as well as this we opted to compose certain master shots for specific scenes. This coverage even though sometimes containing bad takes was vital in post.

4 Personal Sequence Management 
I was responsible for the first sequence of the film, This came as quite shock as I 'd never been tasked with leading before. Although the some of the quality of footage required re shoots organizing all the mise-en-scene was a huge success for a first day of filming. I got in and got a modest job done which I was able to rectify in post production. My re shoots were a mixed en devour, some of the footage need replacing while other shots could be polished. Other members of the team looked to me for advice and consultation on how to frame shots or take on extra direction and cinematography.

5 Finished Project

•  Mise-en-scene: I can't thank my team enough for being able to bring their clothes and props in for every day of filming. the requirement of the doll was essential for most of footage and there was never a day were we didn't have it at our disposal.
• Camera: While the rest of my team hadn't had experience in using it my camera still proved to be a useful tool.  Me and Ollie took the majority of the shooting and I assisted him where I could. We did have a couple of situations with bad exposure and grain however we were able to fix most of the problems in most. During the scene were Rachel and Max find the ouji board Ollie needed to resort to using a different camera, this generates bad look for that scene that feels out of place compares to the rest of the film.
• Editing: Editing went greatly, we were able to improve most of the footage taken, and manages to import clouds and mist to greatly improve our horror theme. Even if some of our takes were bad we were able to solve the problems a great example was to blow up a shot were one of the crew had held the corner of one of our lamps in shot. 
• Sound: The live sound in our short wasn't without fault however our music tracks to convey horror in my mind were a great success. However the audio quality of our dialog was sub standard, I can geuss that the fault of it goes to the use of my DLSR's on board microphone rather than one of the colleges new shotgun mics. 

6 Conclusion 

• Went well: All in all I think our production could have gone allot worse. we had no major continuity errors and all of the sound was legible. the music along with some of the pace successfully made an eerie feel. Pre and Post production went amazingly smoothly.
• Went not so well: Our sound quality in the short was atrocious, my directorial capacity was quite limited and I didn't make many good shots during filming, some of the lessons we were less organised than I would have liked.
• I've leant: Sound quality is key for a good short and its important to have plenty of experiance in the camera you are using.