I think that the most important thing that I've come to learn is how important planning is.
It took a couple of hours to film the Mootrix despite it being shorter than Equality which took about an hour and a half to film.
Saying that, the Destined, which was the practice video, took about three hours to film, however, for that very little planning was done.
For Equality I did loads of storyboarding, in fact i storyboarded the whole thing! Meaning that i knew every single shot and was able to film it in good time.
You'll see in both the mootrix and Equality that i tracking shot was used. You'll notice that the shot in the Mootrix is a bit wobbly and unprofessional looking. This is because we simply used a chair with wheels on it and pulled the chair along.
In Equality however, in the tracking shot there, i was sat in a wheel chair and was being pushed. This way I had complete control of the camera and ended up with a better result and a smoother motion.
In the Mootrix you'll notice at the end, that i unintentionally broke the 180 degree rule, as the bad guy picks up the pill. I wanted to make sure that i didn't do this again. So with the tracking shot, mentioned earlier, i was able to make a good transition that broke no rules.
In Equality I was also more in control of the mise-en-scene. When filming the Mootrix i was sort of restricted as to how much I move and take out because I was filming within college.
In the Destined I just made the mistake of filming in the wrong place, as there was drum kits in the background, and a laptop. When in reality i could have had more control.
When it came down to Equality I had learned that to make a good film anything that was irrelevant needed to be taken down. The room was filled with ballet posters and decorations that were hanging from the ceiling. However I did decide to keep up the picture of the smiling man as it kind of acted as a juxtaposition to the mood of the characters.
Lighting was also a big factor. In the Mootrix and the Destined everything was lit up a bit too much and there was no real style. In the Mootrix the lighting even changed from one cut to the next!
So for Equality I decided to bring in some lights, to make it seem darker and gave it a more film noir look. This in the end proved to be more stylish than the previous films as i had worked on a film noir before in film studies and I knew how to make it look good.
Shell - Directed by Me :)
I also feel that I had greater consideration for my audience, as in the Mootrix i was just playing around and trying to give it a funny script as opposed to trying to find out what my audience wanted.
In the Destined i tried to make it too serious and as 'Hollywood' as possible and in the end it looked funny anyway. I think I got the mix just right in Equality as i think it is impossible not to get a laugh from the audience when employing film techniques used in old martial arts film from the 70's.
A lot more closeups were used in Equality too, making it all seem more intense, as opposed to the Destined which just all seemed to be one mid shot after the other. The cuts and edits were a lot faster in equality and the camera was also a lot more active, following the moves of the actors and creating even more effect than the fighting alone would create.
In the time from my preliminary task to my final film i have learnt a lot a good few things that helped me in creating my final film. I learnt about atmosphere and about how to be more in control of the mise-en-scene. I also got good practice in the more dialogue heavy parts of the film and my whole approach to cinematography was a lot better than in the preliminary and practice film.
All in all i feel that i had learnt a lot and i really helped when making Equality.
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