Evaluation of “Waiting for the Bus”

Evaluation of “Waiting for the Bus”   

We have been set the task of creating a video about “waiting for a bus”. First we all were put into groups and in our groups we was set the task of creating a rough storyboard. The purpose of the storyboard was to think about how we would use different shot types to get our story across in an engaging way for example we started with an establishing shot of the location and then cut to a close up shot of our actors shoe splashing into puddle as he was running for the bus.

When we finished our storyboard we were then given a shot log to take out with us and we had to choose a role for each person in the group e.g. Director, Cameraman, Actor etc.  Then went out in our groups and shot some footage using the storyboard as our guideline. On out shot log we had a description of each shot and had room to log each take that we recorded this would prove useful when we capture the footage for our editing as we knew were the good footage is on the tape.

We used various shot types such as MCU (Medium Close Up), Establishing shot, POV (Point of View) etc.  To so tell the story and were given the chance to come up with out own ending.  We used our storyboard to think about the audio, location, shot types and editing.

As we had our own roles as Caroline was the cameraman, Henry was the primary actor, Ellis was the clapperboard, Louise was he director and I was the Assistant Director. For the storyboard I was writing the shooting script which when editing helps us to know what we filmed and saves the editing to show us what is good footage or bad.

We filmed on a Cannon ZX1 in high definition and used a tripod for most shots. Louise directed the film that meant she called action and cut and we learnt about communicating on set whilst filming on set, which was hard.

The filming process that went well was that we followed the storyboard so we knew what to film and we filmed some different shot types but the things that didn’t go well was that the other groups had taken the location that we needed so we got a bus stop cone and placed it outside college and we didn’t have any audio for our footage.

For the editing I captured the footage from the camera onto Adobe Premier Pro CS6 and after I rough cut the footage into a basic sequence using the shooting script then I did a assembly edit by refining the rough edit and working on the flow, pace and rhythm and finally the final cut by tweaking and adding effects.

I edited the film in the way I did because I thought it would be linked to the kind of shots we had taken. To tell the story I edited the shot types, re arranging clips, added effects and added titles to help the viewer to understand the story.

Overall I feel that the footage we had shot could have been better, the location could have been better and next time adding audio, finding a better location and maybe time managing. Things that were positive were that we varied in all kinds of shots from wide shots to close-ups. In future if we had more time I will spend more time finding a good location and add audio.

When or group looked at the other groups finished films, it was clear that our story was not as convincing as it could have been. The idea was use different shot types to give a sense of time passing slowly at a bus stop. Our film didn’t really establish the setting of the bus stop and the boy missing the bus. We then had some footage of the boy skateboarding and drawing in his book that we hoped would give the idea of time passing, but it didn’t really work because it was really long and the audience would have forgotten he was waiting for a bus. We put this down to not getting the right location and shots that we needed of a bus.

With the other groups they had a soundtrack, which was really good and edited it to fit in with the footage that was shown. I think our film could have been more convincing and flowed better if we had used a soundtrack and if we had recorded good audio when filming.