Reflective analysis

I had watched many other short films in my research into what to include in mine and had discovered that a lot of shorts feature prominently the theme of death. With only a few minutes available to make the audience feel something for the characters, I decided that a heightened emotional situation such as the grief over the death of a friend would be the most adequate in creating drama within the short in a small time period. From this concept I began to develop the script and storyboard. At the commence, my screenplay was very different to the one that appears in my final draft, the original film contained dialogue and a much more complex plot that would have struggled to find an adequate resolution in under five minutes. The script went through many changes; I eradicated all dialogue and decided to use more visual elements to convey the story, and I significantly simplified the plot so that it would be easier to film for both me and the actors.
    After the outline of the story was produced, I created a storyboard roughly outlining the shots I wanted to use. Cinematography is a key element in aiding the visual telling of the story and as my short heavily relies on the visual, a variety of shots, lighting, and camera movement was needed to help the movement of the plot, to create meaning, and interesting viewing experience. I ensured in my storyboard that I used a range of different shots and camera techniques that were also practical to film and not overly distracting so as to take away from the narrative of the short. In retrospect it is evident that I should have used more camera movement but due to the lack of equipment (dollys ect.) I had a limited options as to what camera movements I could produce with the Canon 550D and a tripod without them looking unprofessional and shaky, as a consequence of this I only used pans.
    I cast the male actor in the film after the recommendation of a friend who is in a drama club with him, after a tester shoot decided that he would be a good choice for the film as he could act quite well which was necessary to the serious element of the short. The female actor was cast in Spain as she was closer to the location in Spain in which the opening sequence was filmed and for the sake of practicality this was my only option.
    After I had decided on my actors and made sure I had a detailed outline what I was going to film, I commenced shooting at my locations. My first location is an abandoned railway and neighbouring factories, I chose this as the backdrop for the opening sequence as I thought that the urban decay shot in black and white would give a nice somber background to the death of the character while also creating some interesting visuals. The following sequence of the failed exam was filmed at school, this was due to practicality and also aided in lessening the search for props and materials as they were readily available nearby. The final scene and rest of the short was filmed at my house as it was easily accessible to the actor but in hindsight I would have shot those scenes in another house as the bad lighting causes technical difficulties and produced grainy shots.
    To compensate for the difference in lighting in both the school and home scenes and the overpowering yellow tones due to bad lighting in the latter, I colour corrected the scenes in Adobe Premier and reduced the saturation to give an overall more coherent appearance to the short. I also made the opening sequence black and white using this software and changed the brightness and contrast to give the short a more cinematic feel. I began visual effects editing shortly after I had completed my craft-editing, which involved selecting the best clips and cutting them to suit the pace of the short. I used mainly non-diegetic sound with Vampire Weekend's 'Hannah Hunt' to give the short a melancholic feel and then a sense of tension as the song progresses and becomes louder in cohesion with the escalating drama of the short. It was also necessary for me to add diegetic sound, mostly foley sound effects to give a sense of the actions of the character with the film's world, despite there being no dialogue as I felt without it the short felt more like a music video.