When starting the pre-production stage for this film i decided that i wanted to find a interesting filming location that wasn't too far from my university campus which was achieved when i found a location called 'Brean Down Fort' which gave me lots of ideas for different action scenes that i could create. The overall process of making 'The Shootout' was much more organised this time in comparison to my other films which suffered from lack of planning, although it still had it's own problems i had to try and conquer.

When beginning the planning stages for this film i had recently passed my driving test and I had also bought a car so for this film i was set on finding a location myself that i could drive to with a crew and equipment, after some research and searching for locations i settled on 'Brean Down Fort' and decided to go on a location recce there with another one of my crew members. I found this recce to be very useful as the photos i took gave me lots to work with to build up my pre-production material especially the shot list which happened to be the longest shot list i've made for a film before as i was able to explore my shots much more with the information gathered about the location, i also decided to use microsoft paint this time for creating a shot list which i found to be much easier than using example shot images from the internet which i had used for my previous film and found to be very time consuming and often not the images i originally planned for. Originally in the script i had a different ending that took place near the entrance of the fort in which John sneaks up behind Jim and shoots him in the head but i decided to change this ending to a different location of the fort as i had a fight scene in mind that i wanted to create with a certain backdrop. When i first got the idea for this film i had been in talks with another student assisting him with his film that featured fake weapons, fake blood and body armor which made me feel much more confident in building my idea for this film as i knew it was all feasible. I decided that my film would be very action focused and didn't need to have a super complex story as that's not what i'm trying to show off in this film, the main aspects I wanted to show off in this film were the choreography, cinematography and the location. For this film i decided i would use a Sony FX3 camera for shooting with as i am most familiar with it and i know how to produce high quality film using it, i also decided i would use a tripod for this film to ensure the footage is as clear as possible with no shaky cam and also a boom microphone with a boom pole and dead cat to ensure the clearest sound possible and to have flexibility with the sound. 

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The production stage for this film came with it's own set of problems which made the shoot take a while longer than it should've. Firstly when getting a crew for this film i originally had someone helping out with the sound department and would be a boom mic operator although something came up last minute and they weren't able to do it so i had to change some equipment around on the day and unfortunately had to opt for a lower quality microphone. Another issue on the day was the walk from the car park to the location was very uphill which was very difficult and exhausting with everyone carrying 2-3 piece of equipment the entire way there, the day was also very sunny and hot which wasn't anticipated on the weather app leaving some of the crew with harsh sunburns. The next issue we had was a big delay with the shoot after the microphone was having problems not working which was frustrating as we had tested the microphone earlier that day and it was working fine, after about 40 minutes of playing around with the settings we realised that the microphone would only work once in a camera mode called 'movie mode' to which the sound seemed to be fine after this. We also had a big issue with outside noise as I had decided to shoot this film through midday in which the location seemed to be visited most by other people which became an issue mainly at the start of the film as you can hear the voices of other people in the background talking, In retrospect i think i should've started the shoot later in order to avoid as many people as possible. Fortunately as the day went on there were less people at the fort and the weather also picked up a bit making the shots look even nicer, unfortunately however we were still behind schedule as i decided to change some of the scenes last minute such as when John hides down the pathway i decided to take a much more mysterious approach for Jim making him appear from on top of one of the buildings shooting down at John out of nowhere and i decided to have John get shot in the leg here rather than have Jim get shot in the shoulder as i wanted to have John be more of an underdog for the final scene. 

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As for post production i found myself very much enjoying the editing stage as i found the action scenes very entertaining to create with sound, music and video effects, i also found the opening scene satisfying to edit as i found the traversal of John throughout the fort to be very seamless and it came together just how i wanted it to. I did come across some problems at the time with some strange effects on some of the moving shots which felt very off putting so i decided to try and find a video effect tool that could fix this which the warp stabilizer seemed to work perfectly for some of the shots like the side on of John walking through the hall, however i found it didn't help some other shots quite as much such as the behind tracking shot of John just before he finds Jim seemed to be quite jumpy for some reason. To avoid the issue of people talking in the first couple shots i decided to keep the intro soundtrack playing over the top which i think worked very well and i decided to fade out the track once John steps in the puddle as i like the audio from it and it also happened to be when the background talking stopped aswell. In the final scene the shots look quite overexposed which i tried looking at and researching how to solve this problem but when trying several different things it didnt seem to do much so i decided to leave it how it is but in the future i will make sure i am checking the shots with the cameraman before every shoot to avoid issues like this. In the final scene i also noticed that some of the choreography was very noticeable which didn't surprise me too much as this was an improvised fight scene that we had not planned for so in the future when i am improvising something like this i will be sure to check the footage afterwards to ensure it is realistic. Another issue that occurred during production that i attempted to fix in post was during the tracking shot of John running to hide from Jim, during this sequence you can hear the microphone hitting the camera and making quite a noticeable noise throughout as well as the cameraman's footsteps as well, I tried fixing this with a denoise effect although it didn't seem to help the issue unfortunately. 

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To conclude this evaluation i believe i've learned a lot from creating 'The Shootout' but i think one of the main things i've learned is that you can never be prepared enough for a shoot as there will always be at least one thing that goes wrong each time. However, i am very pleased with the outcome of this film as it was something simple but it worked as a strong action short film and in my opinion is quite impressive for a 3 man crew with some improvised changes last minute.