Evaluation

Planning

Although I finished the project on time, I didn't make it easy for myself. This was down to the fact that I started slowly, as I found it hard to understand the brief at first. This meant the first two or three weeks were not very productive. So it wasn't until week three or four that I started to organise and work out what I was doing.

The thing that helped me the most and get organised was Miro.

Miro is an online post-it note app that allows you to manage projects. I broke my project down into:

• Research

• Auteur research

• Pre-production

• Production

• Post-production

  
  

As you can see from the image below, I started writing down everything I needed to do in each section.

This allowed me to keep track and mark things as done when finished. Miro was extremely helpful because it meant I wasn’t lost working on different things at different times. Without it, I would have gotten disorganised and spent too long on certain things. Moving from one thing to another wasting time.

Another time-wise thing that helped me create the storyboards and animatics for my stop-motion scenes. These helped me keep track of my shots, the sequence of my shots and how long they needed to be. This then saved me time in premier pro as my shots were all the correct length, and I could easily match up the audio dialogue.

Stop motion Evaluation

The stop motion went smoothly, and nearly all the shots were filmed for the first time. I quickly learnt how to use the camera settings on my phone, such as frame size, exposure, and focus.

Although there were some issues I encountered when filming. First, I had to figure out a way to keep my phone steady while also being able to move the Minifigures between each frame. That's when I created the polystyrene stand which worked really well. This gave me a lot more freedom as I could be hands-free while adjusting the LEGO. It also assured me that my phone wasn't going to move or fall over while I work on the set.

Even though this helped me film, it was difficult to change my camera settings while it was on the stand. I couldn't risk taking it off as this could cause me to change the possession of the camera.

Another problem while filming was taking the correct amount of images and moving the Minifigures at the correct speed, so the audio lined up. There was no efficient way of doing this accurately so I had to estimate as I went along.

To accommodate for any missed timings in my animation, I had to duplicate or erase some frames in Premiere Pro. This would either lengthen or shorten some of the shots.

In Premiere Pro I also managed to animate my call-outs for the Fight Club scene which went well, although, my computer found it very hard to keep up. It was very laggy and slightly buggy. However, this was out of my control as it was my computer's fault and not mine.

Moving on to After Effects, it went smoothly in almost all aspects, however, I did bump into a couple of problems. I found it hard to move Premiere Pro projects over to After Effects as a lot of the time it couldn't accept the format it was in. Although I had used After Effects many times in the past, I had never transferred a Premiere Pro project. After some research though I managed to sort it out.

Overall I am happy with the filming of the stop motion and I am especially happy with the special effects I had made in post-production. Even though I bumped into a couple of problems on the way, there was nothing I wasn't able to overcome.

The Final Outcome

Generally, I felt like I responded well to the brief, and I am pleased I chose animation as my medium and auteurs as my genre.

Animation as it showcases things that I am passionate about and what I want to potentially do in the future. I am genuinely interested in auteur because it is something that I would like to find out more about.

The animation also worked well as it's very versatile and allowed me to tell five different stories. Because I wanted my film to be entertaining and tell a story simultaneously, animation was the suitable medium to choose.

Furthermore, I'm happy with the way I've incorporated film and animation together, as I spent my first year in Westminster Kingsway doing animation and special effects, then changing to film and photography for my second.

I'm also pleased with the way my film ended up being structured. The five different scenes allowed me to develop my after-effect motion graphic skills. This is also something I want to build in the future.

I do think I could have reshot a few scenes as some of the frames show the outskirts of the set and the background of the room. I tried my best to crop and edit as much of this out as possible but it is still visible in some frames. I would also invest in a prober camera mount or steady cam as some of my shots had movement.

Overall, however, there were no significant errors or setbacks in creating the animation, for which I am pleased. Additionally, any mistakes or problems could be solved with minimal effort or struggle.

When I imagined this project as I first began working on it, I very much imagined it being like this. However, I definitely didn't think I was going to complete it on time but luckily I can say that I've done as much as I can and that I'm happy with how it turned out.

Conclusion

If I were to re-do this project, there are many things I would do differently, including being more prepared and five steps ahead of what I'm doing. I say this because I panicked and underestimated how long things take. I would also try to keep my time management a lot better as I found myself behind schedule.

This project has helped me learn how much work goes into a project like this, let alone a feature film. It has also helped me learn to be better organised and stick to a schedule to ensure I can complete things effectively and on time.

Overall, the project was extremely useful and enjoyable, as I could create something I genuinely enjoyed doing and something I can be very proud of.