Fictional Adaptation - Project Evaluation

The process of generating an idea was not as easy as I had imagined, my main issue was that I came up with several ideas for several different poems. My main idea was a poem by Claude McKay, "If We Must Die" When I read the poem I thought of a group of soldiers pinned behind enemy lines or something similar, in my research I discovered that the poem had been written during the Red Summer, a time where African Americans and the white populace clashed together in a series of riots which resulted in many people being killed.

In my mind I was thinking of a group of African Americans trapped or hiding and someone gave a rousing speech to fight back at their oppresors. When I pitched my idea to Mike he suggested to me that the idea might be Insensitive to the true meaning of the poem. When he said this I realised what he meant, I had been so eager to find an idea that I didn't fully think through my idea which was to replace the guns with paintball guns instead which would devalue the impact of the poems original meaning.

I attempted to come up with some other ideas which would be more suited to the poems original intentions but I couldn't think of any, I also felt like I was not suited to adapt the poem as it wasn't something I could relate to.

Instead, I chose the poem by Elizabeth Mary Frye, the poem " Do not stand above my grave and weep" was the only one that I could actively think of ideas for, I thought of several ideas but the one I went for was the story about the Dog whose owner dies. The issue I had with this was that I could not find a dog who was well trained enough to play the role.

I decided that I would animate the dog, I felt that this would be different from what other people would attempt and I would be able to invoke a wider range of emotions in a drawn dog than with a real one.

Having the Dog animated causes its own issues but I was confident that I would be able to get it done. My aim was to animate the dog at 12 frames a second and actually film the real footage in the form of a timelapse which would also play at 12 frames a second. However, after some testing I decided to instead film at 25 frames and animate at 12 frames a second. This would cause a jittering effect with the dog but It works with the intent I wanted.

In the future I will research my idea more thourougjly and rather than racing ahead with my idea without consulting anyone, I will discuss my idea with someone, this way I will also be able to hear my idea out loud which can also help flush out details better.

When reading the source material I will also try and keep an objective mind, this can be difficult when the source is something you enjoy as you can let your emotions get the better of you and not fully realise the risks and obstructions the idea may entail.

For my actors I should have branched out more, I decided to use an acquaintance called Kieren who has worked as an actor on several plays and shows, Kieren whilst experienced in acting has not really acted before a camera, this became an issue as he would over act small things, where he works on a stage he has to make his actions more obvious and revealing when in front of a camera I wanted to movements to be subtle and small.

It was also difficult because as we knew each other the attitude was casual, I frequently had to get the conversation back onto the work at hand and not on social things. Kieren played his role well and didn't complain about the cold weather, he was very professional about his role and attitude other than being a bit too chatty between shots.

My girlfriend Chloe played the role of Sarah, she has done acting several times before and stepped forward to help after I received no applications. on mandy.com(casting call).

Location

For my locations I decided to keep it simple, in the past I have always had issues getting a hold of locations as most people are unwilling to have a student film in their property.

I decided to use contacts I already had such as friends and Family, the only location I sourced outside of my social circle was the park, to which I called my local council for permission to film at a close by park and they said it would be fine as long as I didn't film anyone there. This meant I had to choose my shots carefully to avoid having the public in the background.

The other location I used was my own home, I knew the location well and had permission from the owners, there was only a small issue which was that I had to take down and put back up Christmas decorations, I decided to keep them for the shots that happen later in the narrative but took them down for the earlier shots.

The third locations I needed for my project was a grave yard, this posed more of an issue as many of the places I called were unwilling to let me film there or if they were they did not want me filming any gravestones with names on it.

I knew I could use a friends allotment as a location but the issue was to have a gravestone, I got creative with some cardboard and spray paint and was very pleased with the end result. (insert pic here)

Filming

I used all of my own equipment in the filming of my project which allowed me more freedom with the days I would be able to film, typically Ferg will book out equipment for a few days at a time but by using my own I could choose my own filming days which was needed as my schedule was very erratic during the time of filming along with my talent who could only film certain days.

The main issue I had during filming was the weather, the first day I intended to film it rained continuously all day, then on my last day of filming we had a downpour of snow instead.

This didn’t really end up being much of a problem but it did derail my plans and because of the increased traffic I had less time to film. I still got all the shots I needed but filming in the snow with no gloves was unpleasant.

In the future I will keep an eye on the weather for my filming days, I will also try to free my schedule during my filming days however in this case it wasn’t really possible.

Creativity

I tried to be creative in this project as typically we are quite restricted in what we do, in this project I did several things which I think were creative, firstly I decided to use animation on top of actual footage this added many layers of difficulty to the project but I think it was worth it.

Secondly I wanted to have a time lapse showing the passage of time as the dog waits for its owner to come back through the front door, I felt like this showed the dogs belief that his owner was not dead and the passage of time will help the audience emphasize with the dog.

The decided to have a over head tracking shot as well of “Owen” on the floor as the dog runs around him confused. This slow track really helps set the emotion of the scene.

In summary there are many things I would change in future projects, namely it would be scheduling, I had limited availability during the filming period and I think my project suffered because of it, I will also endeavour to keep weather in mind for shoots, having to cancel a shoot because of rain and then having to film in the snow were definite hindrances which I could have predicted if I had simply checked the weather online.

Research will be another key thing I will work on, having to change my poem halfway through the project, this could have been avoided If I had thought more about what I would be doing and saying. I will also pitch my idea to a group of friends for their honest opinion, this will help me avoid tunnel vision with my projects and help smooth out any plot holes or difficulties during filming.