Strengths
- Concept & Narrative: I feel my concept is strong and has a clear meaning and is easy to follow throughout the film. Even though I have taken lots of different influence from various places I feel they have all come together cohesively and everything looks like it belongs together
- Team Working & Organising: This project has involved a lot of team working and organisation skills from me. Organising the location, 4 site visits, 2 model agencies, 4 models, make up artists, accessory and jewellery designers, music composer, photographer and assistants, required a great deal of time management and thorough plan.
- Styling: For this project I got a bit more hands on with the styling than I have done with previous projects, I made some of the bits such as the skirt, necklace and pompoms and I think the looks wouldn't have been the same without these bits and wouldn't have reflected my vision for the outfits. Also I extended my sourcing to people at uni because after using some garments from a student for a previous shoot I found that having that element of uniqueness with the styling is a bonus.
- Flip Book: My flip book has had a lot of positive feedback for its professional appearance and overall impact, during my mock interview they said that my book should have been the first thing that I showed because its a really professional way of presenting my work in hard copy. I'm really glad I took the effort and time to put together the book, as I am really happy with the way it turned out.
- Photoshop & InDesign: I have always had fairly good skills when it came to using photoshop and indesign, however for this project it has really pushed my skills further and they have developed a bit more. Due to the fact that my photographer didn't have any professional lighting, the lighting of the final pictures are a bit all over the place, so I had to photoshop a large percent of the final images to get them looking cohesive.
- The Team: I think despite the problems I had finding models, with so many cancellations I ended up with a pretty good set of models, all of whom looked good on camera and took direction well especially as stop motion is so long to shoot. Also, my photographer Jacqui, who I had worked with before, is a talented photographer and gave me some good lighting despite not having proper kit. Also my make up artist Caitlin, worked really hard as she had a lot of make up and hair changes to do. I think we all worked really well together and I tried really hard to help everyone out (by providing pose boards and make up boards) and make everyone feel comfortable.
- Stop Motion: I fully stand by my decision to do stop motion, as when it works it looks really interesting and I like the quirky element it adds, however I feel in areas of my film the sequences don't match together too well and parts are a bit jolty. Also I feel that parts are too much like stills put together rather than a flowing sequence of stills, however I guess this is just the nature of stop motion sometimes.
- Editing: The decision to edit the film myself was my own, so I have no one else to blame for the editing of the film. Some parts are a bit dodgy and parts are too fast, however I tried my hardest and it took a long time, and I don't think I would have ever of been happy with it, I could have spent forever tweaking it, but I didn't want anyone else to edit it and I wanted full control over that area.
- Commerciality: I feel that my work wouldn't be appropriate for a commercial purpose. My film isn't trend led or based around anything that would be relevant to the commercial world. With sites such as SHOWstudio, this isn't such a problem however I think that it would be very hard to place my film somewhere, however I created this film as a way of promoting myself to show my skills, not necessarily thinking about where it would be placed in the industry.
- Communication: I have always struggled with talking about my work, especially in front of a group however I have had real trouble this year communicating my ideas clearly to the tutors and I feel that's where things get confused. I'm not really sure why this has happened, I think MPP really made me doubt a lot of things about myself and what I was doing at uni, which I guess made me loose my confidence with speaking about my work.
- Relying on other people: Part of the role I do is organising other people, however people are not very reliable, this project I had a massive problem organising models, I had so many drop out and cancel last minute and many more who weren't available, however at the last minute everything came together. Also I was relying on my photographer to get lighting as I was after a very specific effect and she wasn't able to get lighting, this is something that was out of my control and we had to make do with what we had.
- Sourcing: Finding exactly the right clothing that I am thinking of is very difficult. This is why for this project I have made some of the pieces to get the right look, as relying on whats available in the shops is very tricky and not always what I am after.
- Technical: The opportunities I have had have mainly been learning new technical processes. I have improved my InDesign and Photoshop skills as well as skills with film editing, which will be helpful to know in the future.
- Assisting: During the shoot I had a lot of opportunities to help out Jacqui with the lighting and photography which gave me a better knowledge of the photography side of things, such as how is best to get the right shot and the type of appropriate lighting, whether natural or flash lighting would work best.
