EVALUATION & REFLECTION

Introduce the project in your words

My final major project is about visualising depression. The main reason I chose this topic is because it interests me the most as I have my personal struggles with it, and also I feel like it needs to be spoken about more and destigmatised in teenagers. Because of my knowledge on this topic, it further emphasizes the emotions portrayed in the short film. I want people to become more comfortable talking about this topic, and how it affects nearly everyone in different ways. Throughout my short film It’s sort of daily life for me, and many other people, from the start of the day till the end, and how depression effects people’s everyday lives, from feeling numb to having no motivation, and also having suicidal thoughts quite often. But I wanted my film to have a positive side at the end, which is my dad coming to sit next to me for support, meaning not all stories like this have a bad ending.

 

List five strengths and weaknesses in your final design:

Strengths

• My final product was the way I imagined it to be

• I made changes to my shots but they still fit really well in the final product

• I successfully edited the colour tint in my video

• I managed to find the right audio/ song that fitted my video

• It effectively describes the emotion I wanted it to from the start

 

Weaknesses

• I feel like I could’ve come up with more shots or scene ideas

• I could’ve found a longer song rather than looping a shorter one

• I didn’t have actors so I had to be in it myself

• I didn’t have many location ideas

• I didn’t have much crew either

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Was there a theme for the design idea or a question that you were trying to explore? Can you reference any influences - art movement, filmmaker, artist, campaign etc.

In terms of the theme of my project, my ideas were different topic wise, but the way I wanted to shoot them were all similar, which includes dark tones and colour tints, also low exposure. Most of my influences are the films I stated in my favourite media products in my research, but others such as Twilight and Requiem for a Dream have inspired me for their similar ways of cinematography, these films are very different in terms of the storyline but the way they are shot are similar in terms of the colours. Requiem for a Dream has really good cinematography for a dark film, it's about addiction and how it progresses from the start and how it ends. The different shot types and the general theme of the film fits really well with the story which aided me in getting ideas for the way I wanted to shoot and edit my film. In addition, it’s an indie film made in the 2000s, and the director Darren Aronofsky actually directed Black Swan a few years later which is another really good film in terms of how it looks.

 

What experiments and exploration did you do (what happened). How did it affect the development of your project?

For my experimentation, I decided to go onto Premiere Pro and play around with some sample clips I took from Pexels, to get a better understanding of how the controls work and what settings go with each other to achieve the look I want. I have very briefly used colour before for my FMP last year, so I don't know much about the settings, so I went onto YouTube and found a couple of videos that explain colour grading on Premier Pro pretty well. From watching these videos, it made me gain more confidence in what I wanted to experiment with. I took samples of small videos of nature from Pexels as I know one of my scenes in my FMP is in a woods, put them into a timeline, and proceeded to change the colour. I changed the faded film, vibrance, saturation and shadow tint. Completing this experimentation has helped me overall accomplish the look I want for the film, and also aided me in gaining more editing skills I can put to use in the future for other projects or short films. Its allowed me to further develop my skills in editing video and become more comfortable with editing in general.

 

Find a similar type of media product (film, radio podcast, magazine, photographs etc) - place it next to your own - what comparison / difference can you identify?

For this, I have found a video that is similar to mine and I will compare and speak about influences it has and the similarities and differences etc. Here are the links below:

 

My FMP video:

Melancholy (2022)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC_z6G_3yrY&ab_channel=AEJGALLERY

 

Comparison video:

LIVING WITH DEPRESSION (2015)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ_S5Rjt_iI&ab_channel=KatNapiorkowska

 

Differences:

The comparison video has a narrator voicing over the struggles of depression whereas mine just has music. This was something I thought about doing but eventually I decided to stick with just music as I feel like it would show the emotions I am creating more. Having a voiceover on a video talking about a topic like this is actually a good idea, it gives people a better understanding of what depression is and how it’s affecting people.

Its more of a detailed walk through of what someone’s day would look like, mine was quite short as I was doing on my own, it includes arguments with people around you, going to work, working out etc. my video was kind of just going from location to location.

 

Similarities:

Both of these videos focus on the topic of depression, which is really difficult to visually show in a film. Portraying feelings visually is hard to do overall. The shot types are similar to mine, these include lots of close ups and the use of depth of field. In addition, the colour isn’t tinted but it’s definitely darker than what a normal camera would look like which would’ve been done in post-production or changed the cameras exposure settings.

Next, both the videos are a daily walk through of someone’s life. I stated in the differences that the comparison video is more detailed than mine, but they both have the same story, how depression effects doing normal daily things.

Overall, the differences and similarities in these videos show a good contrast of how they are different in their own ways. I would like to be able to create something as good as the comparison video in the future.

 

What were the key areas of development in this project? Use your daily reflections to help you with this.

I had a few key areas of development for my final project, one being the initial development planning stage. I made one storyboard to start off with but the gradually got more ideas and changed the story for my project completely, I gained most of these ideas from watching examples of short films about depression and feedback from family and friends.

Another key developmental stage was thinking of the different shots I was going to do and the individual scenes. Doing the storyboard helped but storyboards are quite brief, and I was struggling to come up with ideas. When I managed to come up with my shots it was quite a relief as I had become organised and had a clear idea on what I wanted to film.

These key parts of development for my project really helped me to visualise my idea and become confident in what I wanted to create by the end of it.

 

Review your proposal - did you manage to complete everything you set out to achieve?

From reviewing my proposal, I can happily say I managed to complete everything I set out to achieve. My aims that I set for myself I completed and achieved it the way I said in my proposal, for example appealing to my target audience as best as I can, wanting my viewers to be able to feel safe and comfortable about reaching out for help, in addition wanted it to be relatable to people who suffer from depression, or it to be a learning curve for people who don’t suffer from depression. The only thing that’s different or I didn’t stick to was the schedule, I created my own a couple weeks later and prefer to record when I think it suits me best.

Overall, I’m pretty confident to say I stuck to my initial ideas and achieved my goals I set at the start.

 

What was the feedback you got like?

I asked a few of my friends who are the same age as me and my family to watch my short film, I then asked what they thought of it overall and if it had impacted them. The overall response was great, one of them suffers from depression and they said they felt heard and impacted by it, which is a huge achievement for me as that was one of my main goals. Another person said they learnt a few things about depression that they didn’t know before, they learnt about the feeling of numbness and boredom nearly all the time, and a few other symptoms of depression. I’m really happy with these responses as one of my main goals was to make people feel impacted by my video. The people who I asked also mentioned the cinematography and directing aspect and said it was brilliant, the use of my drone was something a few people mentioned as it looks a lot more professional. The colour tint was also mentioned as well as the locations I chose were really good and emphasise the feelings I was trying to portray. My tutors said it was really good and could see the emotions I was trying to show, the only issues were they said my camera went out of focus a few times and some of my scenes might’ve been too long but apart from that it was great.

 

How could you make your project better?

There are a couple things that I think could improve my project overall, one being to used a gimble or a Steadicam. I would’ve like to use one of these, but they are really expensive, so I had to stick with just handheld camera movements. I wanted to use one of these because a lot of my shots are shaky of me walking, don’t get me wrong handheld camera shots look really good in the right scenes or shots, but in my opinion for my project I think using a Steadicam would’ve made my short film look a lot better.

The second thing that could make my project better overall is having actors instead of me filming. Personally, I hate being on camera or acting in any way, I prefer to be behind the camera directing or handling the camera/ cinematographer. I wanted to be able to film most of my project myself, but I couldn’t for the majority due to me being in it. Most of my friends were busy doing other things or projects so I couldn’t really get any help. I’m still happy with the outcome I just wish I was able to record most of it. However, being in this film I made felt good for me, due to it being a personal topic for me and I learnt a few things about myself along the way.