Evaluation

Over the past few months I've been working on a film called 'Outbreak'. It is an action zombie film that was planned and shot at Loxton college in Weston-super-mare, the main outcome for this film was to try and push myself in VFX, PFX and choreography whilst also delivering a well written story with good dialogue. In this evaluation i will highlight the kind of struggles and challenges i had to face during this project at all different stages of production, i will also discuss what went well through these stages and what i should consider for the future as well as in the final film i make later this year. 

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When initially planning to make a film for this exploratory project my first thought was to go for something that I've never made before and i started planning for a film i had titled 'escapism' which focused on the positives of using a walk through nature as a form of escapism in our day to day life rather than watching TV or going on your phone. When i presented this idea i received a lot of positive feedback however i felt that this film didn't inspire me much or feel like much of a challenge, it would also have been tricky getting a crew together as i had planned to film in my home town which is about a forty minute drive from Weston and so would take up a lot of people's time from just travel alone. With the film 'escapism' put on the back burner i knew that the film i would make instead would need to be something that engages me and pushes me as a filmmaker so i decided to produce another action/horror film as i have had experience in making these genres of film before, having made two action films in second year and a horror film in first year. As i had watched a lot of zombie shows and films throughout this academic year i thought it would be a good challenge to see how well i could make a short zombie film with a small budget and basic VFX skills featuring a well choreographed action sequence with the zombies. I had planned for the film to start shooting about two weeks after changing my idea which gave me a good amount of time to get the essential pre-production planning done, i also decided to team up with another student in my class Harley Bridgman on this film and gave him the role of 'co director' as well as 'director of photography' among other roles. Thankfully this meant that i didn't have to worry about making storyboards or shot lists for the film and gave me more time to focus on my writing and producing, his role in co-directing also removed a lot of pressure from me as we agreed that he would direct the action scenes and i would direct the scenes that were very dialogue focused since i was the one who wrote and envisioned those scenes, since he was also the DOP he had much more of a vision for the action scenes than me and so he directed them instead of me. Originally i had written an action scene in the cafeteria towards the end of the film that would have required a lot more zombies and at this point we didn't have had enough extras for that scene so i had to cut that scene from the film unfortunately. If i hadn't changed my idea with only 2 weeks of planning time left then i could've put casting notices' out via teams and might've had enough zombies for this scene, but since this film was still going to be a big challenge anyways regardless of that scene i wasn't too worried about the film turning out lack luster as there was still the first action scene in the hallway i could focus on more to make even more impressive. At this point in my pre production stage everything was going well although i still needed a plan for what kind of look i wanted to go for with the zombies which i had a few ideas for, my first idea was to purchase some zombie masks online that i would try make look as convincing as possible during the shoot through different shot types and organizing outfits that would work well with the masks to make them look as seamless as possible although when looking for masks online i quickly realized how expensive each mask would be which i didn't have the budget for. My next idea was to get in contact with a student from the hair and make up department to do the make up for the five zombies required on the day which given the short notice was an unlikely option although ended up working out and i got in to communication with a student on the course who had some very impressive work with making zombies using make up and prosthesics , unfortunately they were not available on the same day as all of the zombie extras and so i was back to square one. My final idea for making the zombies was a very last minute decision given the circumstances and i ended up flicking fake blood onto face masks that night which dried up and worked quite well for a recently turned COVID type zombie so it made sense in terms of story, fortunately one of the zombie extras Ellen Harding had some experience in PFX before and was able to do the make up for herself and a couple other zombies on that day which meant i was able to make the closer up shots look much more convincing and zombie-like improving the film by a lot.

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When the shoot week had finally arrived, the first scene we started with was the action sequence featuring all of the zombies. As some extras were showing up at different times from others and some of the zombies weren't okay with having make up on it meant that we were very limited as directors and had to consider what type of shots to use on each zombie and what time they will need filming at, luckily the shoot schedule helped a lot with this and i will make sure to use it in my next film. As stated earlier in my production journal we faced a lot of problems on this shoot day as the college we filmed at was having a lock down procedure to prepare students for what they would need to do in case the college was facing an armed intruder, this obviously didn't pair well with the fact we were using prop guns and geared up in bullet proof vests, knee pads and fake axes. Due to the unfortunate circumstances we had somebody from the health and safety department talk to us and told us we can't have any of the prop guns/weaponry shown during the lock down procedure which lasted around thirty minutes, this meant we had to lose some valuable filming time but all things considered I was just happy that we were still able to film that day. As i was only told about the lock down procedure happening on the morning of this shoot there unfortunately wasn't much i could've done and getting the zombie extras back for another day would've been very tricky as this was a week before Christmas holidays where some people will have gone back home to see their family. Despite the setbacks we faced on this day everyone seemed to stay in good spirits and the shoot went as planned without going over on time which was surprising given our late start and lock down delay, there were only some small issues regarding shots and sound that i hadn't noticed until starting my edit so i do feel we may have rushed the shoot a little bit at times given the pressure we had on our backs that day. Our next shoot day was on the Thursday and was only me and the other director shooting the suit up scene as well as the zombie teacher scene as this was the only day that Ross (the lecturer) was available, we also didn't need a camera man for this shoot as there were a lot of close up shots which we could film with the tripod or use Ross as our camera man for the shots he wasn't in. We first arrived at the college quite late for the shoot at 1pm when we should've been in for 12am, this unfortunately meant we had some issues with the Sony fx6 camera as this was our first time using it so by the time we had it fully figured out it and all of the equipment was moved up in to the tv studio we had only managed to get a start on the suit up scene by the time Ross was available at 3pm. Due to my underestimation of how long it would take us to be ready for this shoot we were then behind schedule and had to push the suit up scene to the Friday instead. I had no way of knowing how long the fx6 would've taken us to learn as i thought it was very similar to the Sony fx3 which i was much more experienced in, either way we should've shown up at the time i had on the schedule so that we didn't take any risks in being short on time which we ended up being. If we were to have shown up at 12am like i had on the schedule then we would've had a lot more footage and possibly have had finished the suit up scene. On our final day of filming on the Friday we were shooting all of the dialogue heavy scenes and so i had gotten a boom operator for this day in order to record sound as clear as possible, this day was quite tricky for filming as we needed there to be complete silence in the background of our shots and no students in shot either. We were told that Friday was the quietest day of the week at college so thought that it wouldn't be much of an issue, however the boom mic is very sensitive and picked up on sounds from very far away including students talking in classrooms and other outside noise during the outside scenes. To combat this issue as prepared for in the risk assessment we had to ask a lot of lecturers politely to keep their classroom door shut during our shoot which ended up blocking out the talking sounds well and the lecturers didn't have any issues with this as we were very quick to get some of the shots. However as for the final outside shoot we had tried asking a group outside the college to keep quiet during this shoot which i thought worked at the time but when i got to editing i realized that you could still pick up on talking/shouting sounds in the background which i spent a lot of time tweaking in order to try and fix. As there were also some other small issues in line delivery, shadows in the shot and some continuity issues, i believe we should've spent some more time on this shoot or planned to re shoot in the new year as it is the final scene in the film and even after extensive editing seems quite rushed in my opinion. The final scene for this film that was shot was actually the scene played at the start of the film in Mark's bedroom when he's playing video games with Phil, this scene was tricky to film at the time as i was worried that the audio quality recorded from my computer was going to sound really bad in comparison to the audio recorded with the boom mic in my room. When editing this together in post i had found that even though the sound in the recording is worse, it isn't bad enough to where it ruins the scene at all and it also kind of makes sense for the audio to not be as clear when showing the game play. It gives off a much more relaxed, unserious and laid back feeling aswell which works perfectly for this scene.

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Once 'Outbreak' was finished filming i begun editing straight away to try and get a rough edit done for the Tuesday the week after so that i could give everyone an idea of what the film will eventually look like and i could receive feedback to use for my final edit. When putting the files onto my computer i realized that the format they were in weren't a format that i could edit with and i needed to find a converter online, i had found a free converter which  didn't take long to install so i imported the files and began extracting them as mp4s. However, there was a big issue when i exported the files and realized that the only shot's duration had been cut in half. At the time this made me panic a lot as i thought there was an issue with the files and the entire film had been ruined but after seeing the name of the converted files had 'Trial' in the name i had realized what had actually happened, the free file mp4 converter i had used was only a free trial and so only exported half the duration of the clips. As i didn't want to convert them all individually through premier pro due to time management I then had to find another way to convert the footage so i did some research online and found that there was a way to convert them using another adobe software know as 'Media encoder' which was perfect for what i needed. Once i had pieced together a very rough edit i had already begun to notice a number of issues with sound, certain shots and some continuity errors which at the time felt very overwhelming having to deal with all of these issues, however once i begun to chip away at some of the lesser problems the film begun to look better and better. Some of the issues i faced weren't as simple though and couldn't really be fixed through editing such as the tripod being in the background of a shot as circled in red below

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Shots like these are tricky because i had no way of editing the tripod out unless i had cut this shot earlier but that wouldn't have worked as the zombie wasn't killed until after the tripod is shown so the next shot would not have made sense in that order. This wasn't always the case though and some issues like this were quite fixable, such as a shot at the very end of the film having shadows of people walking in the background i was able to zoom in on the shot making the shadows disappear off screen. (Shadows are a lot more noticeable in the film as they came in and out of shot)

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Unfortunately however this fix isn't perfect as it worsens the quality of film due to there being less pixels on the screen with a different resolution. Once i had shown the class my rough edit of this film i received lots of important feedback and one of the main issues being with the sound, the dialogue was very quiet when i showed my film but the music later on was very loud. Solving the audio issue wasn't much of a hastle in this final edit and simply required me to balance the audio levels more, although there were still issues with audio in a different way with there being background talking in some of the shots which i spent a while trying to find a fix for. I had tried repeating audio tracks to keep the same ambience layer but without the background talking in it, However this only ended up sounding strange in the edit and you could clearly hear where the audio had been repeated. I then tried to slow down the audio so that the part of the audio with the background talking wasn't there anymore but this also was very surprisingly noticeable and so i had to settle with just bringing the sound down for some of those shots, the de noise effect is something i've tried in the past for this issue and it didn't help much unfortunately. As i was only experienced in using premiere pro for my VFX work it became a challenge trying to add different effects such as blood splatters and muzzle flashes, i ended up using green screen effects for the most part and animating them on the timeline which despite it's amateurish look at times ended up being quite convincing in some shots. The main aspect i wanted to improve for my final edit was in the VFX work which mainly involved making the blood splatter effects looking as realistic as possible, originally in the rough edit i had used a blood splatter effect for the POV of Mark cutting the final zombie in half.

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My first blood effect worked well but since there are two axe swings in this shot i decided to add a different effect better suited for appearing twice compared to the other effect, the only issue i have with the new effect is the chroma key for green screening i used didn't completely remove all of the green and so makes the blood sort of green/yellow looking. When i was editing the suit up sequence i had the song 'Welcome to the jungle' kept in mind but the footage i had gotten for the scene was too much for the intro for the song which i wanted to end as Mark and Phil start fighting the zombies, i decided that the scene where the music pauses and Mark helps Phil put his vest on would be a good point to restart the song and so it would the match up with the action sequence. Preferably i would've liked the song to continue from where it was paused but there wasn't enough time in the song intro to do this unfortunately.

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To conclude this evaluation i think that despite all of the issues i faced with this film, i had dealt with everything in the best way i could and anything i felt like could've been done differently was also heavily considered. The film ended up being different in some ways to what i had originally planned in my script like the final cafe zombie scene being removed and the bedroom scene being added at the start of the film, however these are both changes that the film benefited from greatly as the cafe scene was too ambitious for the time and the bedroom scene added a lot more context to the film which was needed. I am very happy with this film and i believe its come a very long way from where it was originally, i developed my skills in editing, producing, directing and managing which is exactly what i wanted to take out of this film.