The document provides an evaluation of the production process for a short film called "Hunted". It summarizes that the film followed a man being stalked by a masked person, exploring feelings of paranoia. The film was produced by a group of 4 students who took on roles like director, editor, and camera operator. Some challenges included scheduling issues, last minute location changes, and an absent editor. However, the group worked well together and was able to complete filming and editing, creating a film that closely matched the director's vision. Areas for improvement included planning, having a shot list, and focusing more on audio quality.

1. HUNTED EVALUATION
Brief description of the product you have made
We were given the task to create a short film with the name ‘Hunted’, it
should include multiple shot and at least one dialogue sequence, all we
were given was the title, from this we came up with an idea of a thriller
with horror elements. The idea was that the audience would follow a man
who would be walking to an unknown destination, he would be being
followed by a masked person whose presence would be subtle at first but
as the shots progressed would be more visible to the viewer, eventually
the masked person would capture the man, which would then show it was
all in his imagination. It explores the feelings of paranoia, anxiety and
insanity, as the man is obsessed with reading horror books, he now
struggles to tell the difference between his imagination and reality, this is
shown in the flashbacks sequences which is also our dialogue sequences,
they explain subtly what is happening.
Production Planning
First we decided on the rules our group would have, we had a group of 4
so we had to have a meeting and decide who would do what. After much
consideration we decided that I would be the director and script writer as I
had a clear idea of what we should create and I truly believed I could
transfer that idea into the script effectively, Phoenix was the production
design for his artistic skills, Rob was the editor due to his good edit for the
bomb sequence and Will would be the camera operator which he also did
for the bomb sequence.
When writing the script I spent a few days going around asking my friends
and family on their thoughts for my idea for the film and what their opinion
was on it, I got mainly positive feedback from that and decided to go
forward with my idea, I first wrote a basic draft of the whole script to
create a structure to build up from, at this point there was no dialogue as I
wanted to do that with Phoenix as we’d both be playing characters that
had social interaction, so I thought it best to write the dialogue with him,
we did this by trying to think of natural responses to the lines each other
came up with in order to create an effective script.
The group put together some rough storyboards for us to work from, they
were not incredibly in-depth but they were good enough to give us an idea
of what we had to do and what the shot should be like, though one thing
we didn’t create was a shot list which would have helped as some of the
shots we did ended up being improvised without much thought going into
their construction, though despite this we managed to use the storyboard

2. and the script together to create an idea in our heads of what we wanted
the shots to be like, which was effective in some ways.
When picking out costumes for all the different character we decided the
two main characters “being Vince and his Friend” would just wear normal
clothes anyone would wear, so me and Phoenix just wore what we had on
the day of filming as the costumes for the characters, for the masked
stranger we purchased a black morph suit online and cut off the lower part
of it so we only has the arms and head parts of it as this is all we needed,
Phoenix decided to just wear a hoodie as well so no human skin would
show, to make it more mysterious.
When I was creating the script I thought it would be best if the location of
filming were to be in town, with lots of people present at first but Vince
would eventually wonder out of the crowd and be alone with the masked
stranger, but after we had finished planning everything and gotten round
to being able to film we began to run into problems, a couple of the
members of the group said it’d be too hard for them to make it into town
despite saying they would be able to during planning, also we were
running out of time so we decided to film behind the college in a forest
area which we actually used for the bomb sequence, flashbacks took
place in a classroom that was free at the time, we had to make these
unorganised changes due to the fact that the original idea of filming in
town had become less practical than first thought and more time
consuming.
Looking back on it know I can see we should have organised everything a
bit better, we were too caught up with getting all the ideas we had down
and writing the script that we overlooked important things like when we
would be filming and if it was practical to film in town, with filming we
pretty much filmed one day for an hour and then one that day decide when
we’d film again rather than having a proper schedule to follow. Though
despite this we managed to overcome these issues and work well together
as a team and create a good quality final product, this was possible due to
everyone in the group helping each other with different aspects.
Filming
When we got round to shooting the film we’d go out knowing what parts
we were going to film and where, it was either going to be outside filming
the chase scene or inside filming the flashbacks, a lot of the time during
the film I’d insist that a scene should be filmed again if it was not to my
liking, I wanted each scene to be just right to get my idea across, due to
our group all having a clear understanding of my script we were able to
work effectively together with no problems and film things pretty quickly
with no issues.

3. During the film we used a wide range of different camera shot types, we
used panning shots, a vertigo shot and a P.O.V. shot, all these different
shot types work effectively in different ways, the panning shots are to
build the location up a bit more and give the viewer a wider field of view in
their head, the vertigo shot is to show terror or something shocking and
that P.O.V shot is to put the viewer into Vince’s body. Using all these
techniques we can create themes such as suspense and dread. Filming
the P.O.V. shot was difficult as we had to make it look like Phoenix had
disappeared during the short time that the camera was looking away from
him, we had to film this about 6-7 times in order to finally get it right as it
was a tricky shot.
Whilst filming I had a big input on everything that was happening, as the
director and script writer of the film I had the final say in what happened,
this was a big responsibility but I handled it well, if I felt like something we
had filmed wasn’t good enough I’d make sure we did it over and over until
we got it right, I had to make sure the script I had written was being
followed along with all my stage directions also.
The filming went really well with no major problems, it took a little while to
film everything and we need a few re-shoots also as sometimes we’d get
into editing and notice a scene doesn’t quite work so we had to re-shoot it,
but all of the hard work was worth it as we got a lot of good coverage and
a lot of video to work with in editing, which worked in our favour.
Editing
Despite Rob being the editor of our film he was absent a lot of the time
meaning me and Phoenix had to do a lot of editing on the film, the way it’d
work was for each different scene it’d have its own sequence, the flash
backs all had their own sequences and so did all the different chase
scenes between the flashbacks, this way it made it easier to put it
together once we had finished editing and also easier to edit individual
parts of the time.
There was one issue where Rob had removed the original audio from the
clips during the editing which to me ruined the mood of the film for me, I
didn’t like the idea of having only a music track playing with no Foley to
create the tension, since no one else was in I decided to find those clips
and re-add all the audio myself and sync it up perfectly so no one could
tell the audio had ever been taken out, when I watched it with the original
audio still in I felt like the film had gotten a lot better no thanks to this.
During editing numerous effects were used to make the film stand out a bit
more and make it less dull, most notably was making the flashbacks black
and white and keeping the chase scenes in colour, this got the point

4. across that these were indeed flashbacks and added to the overall tone
and effect and mainly the impact of the flashbacks. When the stalker was
in view of the camera the audio would introduce white noise into the mix
as to make it feel like his presence messes with electronics and causes
this effect, this works well and make the character a lot creepier.
Also during editing we made various improvements to the footage, such as
colour correcting footage to give it a more creepy tone and also adding a
zoom to the final flashback, to make it a bit more interesting and draw the
audience in a bit more. Also when the white noise enters the audio mix it
is also paired with static overlaying over the visuals to further add to the
effect.
Once we had finished editing the separate scenes it was easy to put them
all together as we had put them all into labelled separate sequences, all
we had to do was drag to sequences into a final composition and that was
done, the benefit of doing it that was is if we want to change something we
can go back into the individual sequence rather than a sequence
containing all the clips to change something. Some scenes were left out
but I don’t think this was on purpose, I think due to the close deadline our
editor had forgotten to put these scenes in, one example is the camera
slowly zooming in on the Hunted book that Phoenix had created, this shot
was going to be at the end to further show Vince’s insanity, we noticed
this scene wasn’t in when we had the viewing for our film.
Reflection
Looking back on the project as a whole I can see many things we could
have done better, one thing was is to create a shot list and a more
detailed storyboard, if we had done this we could have probably filmed the
scenes we needed much faster, rather than having to think about it and
work it all, one thing we noticed when we had watched the final video was
that the credit sequence Phoenix had created was very slow and could
have done with being sped up a lot as it took like 2 minutes to show a few
names, I believe there was an error with rendering the video that caused
this.
Though also as well as the negatives there are a lot of positives also. One
of the things we did really well was the script, because of the way me and
Phoenix worked together hard to create it make it look as a professional
as possible I think it worked really well and that was reflected in the final
video. I think in the end we managed to really get a good edit of the film
by working together as a team in order to better it, such as me putting
back in the Foley sound that had been taken out, and Phoenix creating the
credits sequence in After Effects, it all came together to create a good
edit.

5. When the time came to watch our film in front of the class we got some
helpful feedback on our film, which the majority of it was positive. Some
things that were criticized was that the story was a little hard to
understand and required one to think about it for a while to understand
what’s actually happening. Our camera work was also criticized, saying
that the camera was jumping about all over the place and wasn’t very
organised, this is likely because of our lack of a shot list.
Despite some negative feedback the storyline was praised for being
interested and different, with people saying that it seemed to be written
well and the dialogue sequences seemed natural rather than forced, the
acting by Phoenix and myself was also praised.
After all is said and done I can see numerous improvements we could
have made to make a better film, the obvious one was to have a shot list
and a more in-depth storyboard, this would have helped a lot. Another
thing would have been to put more time aside to work into the project, if
we had more time we could have fixed errors in the film, such as the long
credit sequence and also get a better soundtrack rather than the one we
used that had constant beeping in it. Also we should have been more
organised in our films, specifying dates for filming and make sure
everyone could be there on that date.
Evaluation of production process
The group worked really well together during the production process,
everyone got along and was helping each other out, though a lot of the
time during production process a member of the group would be absent
meaning someone else would have to take on their roles, which I had to
do numerous times. Despite this we managed to get the work done as we
often helped each other out.
A lot of the time we spent waiting, either for a member of the group to be
in so we could film, or waiting for the right conditions to film. This was
quite bad and time consuming when we still wanted to film in town as we
had to figure out how we’d all get into town and then everyone had to be
in and willing to go into town, if we couldn’t go into town there wasn’t
much to do. Once we decided to film at college our work flow became
much faster and more efficient.
We were all under pressure to finish the film on time, meaning some
things had to be rushed and not done as well as they could have been,
though we still managed to create a high quality film despite this and in a
way having the deadline pushed us to complete the work on time and
really get to work and work hard.

6. When we were filming we worked very well together as a team, we’d be
speaking to each other about whether or not what we had just filmed
would work or not and openly suggesting new ideas to each other to try
out, this was probably the most enjoyable part for me as we could all be
as creative as we wanted without anything holding us back, when editing
we also all had an input on what should go where and what take we
should use.
During the production process I really pushed for things to be done and
completed on time, things I did such as adding the audio back onto certain
clips I did without distraction and didn’t stop until it was finished and I was
happy with it, if I saw someone in the group wasn’t doing something I’d
make sure they had something to do to keep them occupied and to benefit
the team more, I really took a leadership role through-out the whole
production process to meet the deadline on time.
Evaluation of finished Hunted short film
The final film closely resembles what I had wanted it to look like, and what
I imagined it to look like. The film looked professional and all our efforts
were clearly visible in the final film. Some things that contributed to this
were; the script, acting and editing. We also met all legal and ethical
requirements during production of the film, anyone in the film we made
sure had signed a slip giving us permission to film them, and we also
obtained permission from our teacher to film on college site and used no
copyrighted imagery or audio.
I think the most important aspect was for the script to be good and
fortunately I and Phoenix worked very hard on it to get it to a professional
standard, it wasn’t easy but it was worth it in the end and our hard work
was reflected in the final film, things such as trying to create natural
dialogue sequences between Phoenix and I were effective and made the
film feel more real and more professional.
Something that was not very good was the audio, if I had time I would
have been the audio engineer but I had too much to do already with
directing it, writing the script and eventually having to help with the editing
among other tasks, the job of the audio was left to the editor and he had
used some songs from an album he liked and none of them fit the tone of
the film at all, along with this we had to extra Foley sounds we had gone
out and recorded ourselves so sometimes the audio would sound a bit
weird. We could have also benefited from re-recording the dialogue
sequences audio as the microphone in the camera wasn’t very good.
If we had more time I would have taken on the role of being the audio
engineer, I would have taken time to compose the music myself

7. electronically so it’d fit the film perfectly, and also push for re-recording of
Foley sound and dialogue, though unfortunately this is something I could
not do, but from this whole experience I have learnt how important audio
is in a film and this is something that will benefit me in the future.
I think the overall editing was very effective and added to the overall
quality of the film, as we all worked together and worked hard on the
editing we managed to get that up to a professional standard. Along with
the editing some of the shots we had done worked really well, such as the
P.O.V. shot where Vince stumbles once viewing the masked stranger and
when he looks back up the masked stranger is gone, this worked well as it
put the audio into the character shoes and gave them his perspective of
what he was seeing, since the masked stranger disappeared it makes the
audio begin to question if he is real or a figment of Vince’s imagination.
Overall I am very pleased with how everything turned out, I think the group
worked really together and there were no arguments on what we would do,
everyone had a clear idea of what the script wanted as it was clear and
got across the point effectively. Ways we could have improved would be to
have a much better soundtrack, as the one we put in we very annoying
and no one really liked it as it had a constant beeping in it, the editing
could have been neater and more organised also, as well as that we
should have been much more organised with our filming, scheduling and
post-production process. Other than those things everything else went
really well and the final film is really good, it looked professional and
good, and that’s the most important thing.