I stuck to my idea pretty well throughout the process. I found making the dream catcher was not as hard as I had previously thought, however adding the photos proved to be a very difficult task that I spent a very long time on. Each photo had to be glued precisely to very thing string and then left to dry before moving on to the next ones. The strings would often get tangled and it was very easy to get confused and lost while doing this. I really enjoyed using the polaroid camera as an alternative to my normal dslr and I had a lot more fun with experimenting with it. My final photos could be better, however I think the simplisticness to them makes them seem more realistic and relatable which is the style I wanted to go for. I intended to add more of life in through the photographs, but this proved hard for me to re-create and I should have timed myself more accordingly for this. Overall I enjoyed the design of the set up and making it into kind of a 3D art piece was a lot of fun and something I didn't really think I would get to do again during my degree.  To me the polaroid style makes it a bit more unique and original and it's a style I would like to delve deeper into the future possibly.

From the pitch, I was never very confident about what direction my film would go in and to be honest I never really thought I'd get chosen to actually make my project. However the experience has taught me a lot and being a first time director, as I tend to lean more towards editing, made me learn a lot of new skills. I adapted a lot better than I thought to the role, as I'm not a very outspoken person generally. I think I would definitely consider going down a directing path in future.

Key skills that I learnt from being director:

• Listen to others ideas and not just focus on how you want the film to look
• Be understanding to the others in the group
• Be more assertive to ensure everyone is doing their jobs properly
• Remain positive and keep the other member's spirits high - an unhappy crew could ruin the final outcome
• How to work with interviewees and get my ideas across to them so as they understand the project

I really enjoyed working with Shahid, Lydia and Josh and together we had a lot of fun during the whole process. Of course as always, there were stressful times and moments where we got a bit confused about where to take the film, but we worked through this together.  I feel we worked very well as a group, Josh and Shahid present at all times when asked and Lydia being there when she could understandably to us all and I feel we bonded very well. I learnt to appreciate any hard work done by my group and seeing them help to bring my project to life, whenever it was not their own, made me recognise and value their effort and skills that they brought. Special acknowledgement to the extras that helped us, such as Thomas Doukinitsas, Rosie Coutier-Dutton, Harry Clarke and Rob Campion, who stayed around even when they didn't have to, and this taught me even more about team work. My favourite part of being in the team was seeing them light up when Anne and Leah said positive things about the rough edit, as we were all very nervous, and seeing them become more confident made me happy. 

The Film

The final version didn't really come out anything like I originally imagined when pitching, however I do think we created an interesting piece. I intended it to be a little more experimental, particularly with sound as it was meant to be remixed into more of a musical piece. In the end we chose a different route as we felt it worked better with the footage we got. I feel the strongest part visually of the film are the moments when the photos are held to the camera, as you can view the emotions in the people before their memories appear and this kind of sets a tone for what is to come. The sound was a little grainy in the interviews and little could be done to improve it as much as we tried, but I am looking at this as a learning curve to improve on this for future reference. Being present with Josh the entire way through the edit, I saw the amount of effort he put in to get it the way we wanted and this made me appreciate the editing a lot more throughout it, as I understand how hard it was to get it finalised as there were so many ways we could go and it wasn't always a clear end. Overall I am happy with what we produced, even though there are definitely areas to improve and ways to move forward with our skills. If I had to do the film again I would make sure everything was a little more organised and that I was more strict about what had to be done for when. I thoroughly enjoyed working on the project however and it has been a lot of fun. 

When watching the rough edit I noticed there were problems with sound: there was a lot of grain and not everyone's interview voice was at the same level making some stand out more than others which I found to be distracting. I asked Josh if he could level out the loudness so that this wasn't so distinct and we got it down so they were all of a similar tone. We played around with trying to remove the background noise but we found that it muted down a lot of the voices to a point where they weren't easily understandable. This resulted is us coming to a midpoint that muted down the sound a bit but left the voices clear to listen, which meant we had to sacrifice the cleaness of the audio slightly. I also advised Josh try out another filter for the footage as the current one seemed to make the shots look lesser quality rather than vintage old. A few more sound pieces were added here and there where we felt there was too long of a pause between the voices. 

Final Project

My final film consists of two screens showing a variety of found footage clips of the effects and factors that cause Global Warming. A hurricane can be seen at one point, representing the dramatic increase.  The middle screen is of the Earth slowly deteriorating from this. 

What I've Learned

Feelings

I had a hard time with the project as I found getting to grips with After Effects to be very challenging. As a beginner, even learning the effects proved to be stressful and left me very confused at many times. However I feel that the whole process has been a learning curve and I can now use AE to a certain extent. I'm happy with the effects that I have learned to use and hopefully this will be a good start to continuing with my learning of the software in the future. I've enjoyed seeing the Earth (screen two) come together, as it was a lot of work and I think it turned out to look semi-decent. If I had've managed my time better, I would have preferred to add some text showing some facts based around Global Warming. I feel the hurricane doesn't make sense without it. 

If I had to re-do the project, I would probably use a less after - effected route and try and make the project more simple. I think I was too ambitious with what I wanted to achieve through it based on my lack of knowledge of AE before the project started. I also think I would narrow my theme down to something more limited that Global Warming, and while I am interested in the topic, I feel like it was too broad and I got confused as to what I should include. 

http://www.freesound.org/people/dsp9000/sounds/76405/

http://www.freesound.org/people/cormi/sounds/104112/

http://www.freesound.org/people/ninebilly/sounds/173010/

http://www.freesound.org/people/andrew1280/sounds/42893/

http://www.freesound.org/people/Gzmo/sounds/140256/

http://www.freesound.org/people/ekzem/sounds/178882/

I felt like the beginning was too plain and didn't have much depth, but I was advised by friends who reviewed it before being finalised and exported that it was better to keep things simple rather than over complicate with many noises. I am a little worried that it doesn't sound 'religious' enough but I'm hoping the bells and the priest's voice will make it obvious as to the setting. I am pleased with the middle section of the piece as I think it is pretty close to what I wanted the chaotic atmosphere to sound like. Towards the start the church bells are relatively slow and spread apart but the tempo of them is increased when the action begins in order for it to fit in with the pace at this point. I like how this turned out and I feel it was necessary to remind the audience of the church setting and the religious background. I was also relatively pleased with how the scratching noises sound at the end as think it gathers a real feel to the look of the actual painting, as well as contributing to the story. I was disappointed that I wasn't able to follow my initial thoughts of having some kind of musical rhythm as I was looking forward to composing it, but I feel like the narrative was a lot more sensible to represent the picture on a bigger scale and perhaps a more musical approach may have been too repetitive or boring.

I am not sure if all these ideas will definitely get transferred into the final project, as it is taking me awhile to get my head around the software, but this is the rough plan for the layout and I aim to try and get as much into the piece as possible.