Freya Wood - Personal evaluation

Throughout the process of making this experimental film work was divided amongst us and so I didn’t have a specific role. As having already worked with Georgia and Andrea the previous year on our documentary ‘Legend’, we decided to re-group this year and work together again. Last year we all communicated and worked well with one another to produce our film, which if felt was a success, which is why I was excited to work with both of them again. After forming our group, we each came up with different ideas which we shared with each other. We then settled on an idea that focused on a dancer/contortionist/someone different, moving in different ways through Leeds and showing their ‘abnormal’ behaviour. Julia joined our group not so long after and we began to develop our idea more.

I volunteered to be our production representative, so I had the main contact with Lee. I was responsible for booking a meeting with him where I had many questions lined up for him, which he helpfully answered, that aided our pre-production phase of the film to progress.  I also had contact with Helena, sending her the required health and safety forms and location filming permissions as well.

During pre-production, me and Georgia also made an initial rough storyboard. This was made once we had developed our idea and made it a bit firmer. We drew up the storyboard, so it followed our idea at the time, and as this idea changed, we had to make adjustments to the storyboard. When our idea was solid, we used the storyboard to help create a shot list. From this I could make call sheets for each day to determine when us as crew needed to arrive to set or location as well as when the actors were needed.

Whilst filming, I would be checking the time against the shot list and schedule to ensure that we stayed on track and would finish when we needed too. I also tried to get us filming permission at the County Arcade as it had very nice architecture that we felt would be a really nice setting for this film. Unfortunately, due to the times we would have had to shoot at and some permissions that were unobtainable, we couldn’t film there and so went with plan B.

In the post production stage of the film before we made a rough cut, I looked through the footage and made notes on the clips that I either liked of thought would be the best for a shot. We met up as a group to agree upon which shots we felt should be in the film. From this a rough cut was made. Andrea was our main editor who would send us links to the film as it changed and progressed. This way we were able to make suggestions for changes and let him know what we liked also. Julia helped with the colour grading of the film once we had an almost finished film.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed working with my group and felt that the process of making this experimental piece went very well and I am proud of what we have all managed to produce. I’m glad to have had this experience as it has helped expand my skills and show me new and creative ways in which to do things.