Evaluation of Final Product

We've come a long way since Space Cups, and we now have a finished product! I'm just gonna take a few seconds to reflect on what went well with Ode to Boots and Cats. Watch it here:

As much as I would like to claim that this is my magnum opus, and that it is far and away a perfect piece of filmmaking, it's not. There are flaws, just like with any piece. But there are also strong points, and this is precisely the reason why we are evaluating!

We'll start off with the mise-en-scene, or what we'd refer to as 'symbolic codes' in high school. Despite the fact that the location changed at the last minute, I think the one we went for helped the sort of inner-city feel, and it helped tie the characters together. Also, rather coincidentally in fact, the costume (which was just whatever our performers were wearing on the day) helped differentiate the extras from our poet and our beatboxer. in that both Tom and Angelo were wearing sort of brown coats, whilst the extras were only wearing sort of blues and browns. This isn't really that noticeable to the casual viewer, but it does help our main performers stand out.

Mainly negative-wise we had a few continuity errors here and there, namely Angelo's hood kept popping up and down, like so:

Camerawork was well received, which I'm proud about. Most noted was how well the geography was established, everyone knew exactly where people where and what was going on, and that the shots were well composed/framed.
Personally, I think the framing could have been a little better, but I'm somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to that.

Generally editing was seen as good, if a little passive. I fault this at not having enough shot variation on set, which I then fault at us rushing because it started to rain. Admittedly, there were a couple of lingering shots that we could have intersected a little, such as the poem reading shots.

Audio, however, is where the video comes into its own in my opinion. We had to replace the audio for the entire video, because cars were too loud, and the microphone was covered on the camera for the last few shots. I personally put a lot of emotional investment into audio (I think I'm going to end up as some form of audio technician or foley artist if the directing thing doesn't work out) so we spent good while in ADR and syncing the dub to the video. It seems as though the investment paid off, as there was a fair amount of praise for the syncing, however apparently it wasn't perfect. Room to improve!