Prelim Evaluation - Question 2

Explain the creative decisions you made during the process.

Our first creative decision we discovered was our decision on what story to use. This was an important decision because we wanted to decide on a simple story that wouldn't involve alot of complex shots, which would prove difficult for our first time of filming. Because we were only beginners we needed to have shots that were possible to take and a simple story would allow us to be in control of the camera, whilst getting used to the whole filming consept. Me and Courtney had thought of a plot before our group was created. This included us already creating the script and some of the storyboard, so our group continued with that idea. It not only saved time but the plot was already simple.
Another creative decision my group had come across was the decision of our set. We initially were going to use an office, but because of another group wanting it too, we decided on changing our setting to a meeting room. This caused our film to stay the same, as the location stayed similar to the office. Our decision however did cause a few problems as we couldn't use that room again after our first day of filming so we had to find another setting that was also similar to the meeting room. This was difficult but once we settled for a room we realised that continuity of the rooms would be obvious to the audience. This caused our storyboard to be altered a bit to fit the changes of the room. Props were needed in the second room to make it look like the meeting room, but our decision I believe was still a good one as our room suited our story/plot.
That problem also created another creative decision from my group because we had to decide on the second room to film in. This become a very difficult decision for our group because we needed to find a location that wasn't being used and one that was similar to the meeting room. We in the end found a classroom that wasn't occupied so transformed that as much as we could to look like the meeting room. This problem has made it clear in our prelim that our location had changed.
A different creative decision me and my group come up with was to cut some of the opening shots from our story. This was because we felt that it was best to begin with the teacher sitting at the desk than our original opening of the 'orange girl' walking towards the headteachers office. We thought this because it would not only decrease the time of our story, even though that wasn't a problem of our prelim, but we felt it made the audience get straight into the plot and not drag the beginning out. This opening took a few discussions within the group to get it right. We included our production logo and title of the film before any shots were shown. This allowed us to cut two shots out. We all agreed that our beginning fitted our story, along with our opening music which totally set the scene.
Another creative decision that we made was to put in our missing shot counter shot. This was essential for our prelim as we knew that it had to be included. However, we recently had forgotten to include it, so we had to make a creative decision on where to place it in our story. Once we found a good place to put it we needed to film the shots and then insert it into our film that we had already edited and put together. Once the element was in the plot we were happy our decision was made at that time and not any later as we may of easily forgotten to include it.
Our last creative decision was to use some teachers in our film. This meant that most of our group could consentrate on the filming and directing, than focusing on the acting and remembering lines etc. We decided to use trust worthy teachers that we knew well, so we could trust them to take our task seriously so work could be complete.