Portrait of Place Evaluation

This evaluation will mainly cover the day of the shoot and the camerawork for I was the DOP, I did all the camera work and my partner did all the Editing, and we both contributed ideas to each other in both fields.

On the day of the shoot, a problem occurred with the camera we took out of stores. The batteries, which we charged all night, were faulty in the end. We double checked the batteries the night before the shoot and they seemed fine but when we started shooting, the battery went from full to a quarter after a 30 second shot. It then died shortly after and the reserve battery did not even work at all. Luckily we had a reserve camera, a small Samsung handy cam. We used that and when we took the camera from stores back, the person behind the counter said the batteries must have been faulty. Anyway, moving on, just had to state that because it explains the slightly poor quality of picture, compared to work produced by the cameras from stores.

Camera Work

The camera we now had to uses was fairly simple and I got to grips with it fairly quickly. The footage I believe fitted the requirements of what we needed for our idea. I got a large variety of different shots from Wide Angle’s of the landscape (mountains and trees) to Close Ups of wildlife such as a moth we found on a dead leaf. The POV shot I am very pleased with because the glare from the sun on parts of it really looked beautiful in the edit, especially walking under the branches of a tree looking up and having the sun shining through, flashing as the branches passed it. Of course using the handy cam was a bit of a drawback because we could not use some shots we intended such as a focus pull but we made the most of what we had and I am pleased, and almost surprised at the quality of some of the shots.

Editing

As I stated above my partner took care of the editing but even so, I think I should state that it went really well in my opinion and the use of the different effects to give that old school film style to the footage was very effective. I am very pleased with the final edit.

Working as a Team

I think me and Robbie worked really well together, we both had similar creative ideas in both the camera work and the editing and generally co-operated well as a working pair.

Conclusion

The loss of the camera from stores was quite a devastating blow but we made most of our materials and I am just so glad we had a spare camera! The main thing I would put a lot more energy and effort in to if we could re do this would be the research and pre production paperwork. Because we had never been to the location and could only look at images on the Internet, I think we planned the shots as best we could, but we were mainly going to let the environment influence us on the day. The research that I have done for this project though I believe is not enough and I should of put more effort and time into researching beforehand. I believe though, the project as a whole went really well and I am very pleased with the final outcome. Our piece I think does as we intended it to do, with the POV shots blended with the varied shots of the rural environment it documents in a subtle and experimental way.