MATTHEW WILLIAMS
MW MEDIA PRODUCTIONS
Waste
An individual project produced at
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Farnborough College of Technology, as part of Level 3 National Extended Diploma in Creative Media Practice
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Produced in May 2022
The Assignment Brief:
This individual assignment was producied at the end of my Level 3 BTEC in Creative Media Practice at Farnborough College of Technology, and was thus my first ever college-firs-years Final Major Project (although, the Final Major Project a year later would go onto shape my overall grade much more than this project). Alongside this, it accounted for 50% of my final grade for my first year of Level 3 Media.
The assignment was produced in celebration of World Environmental Dag, whereby Farnborough College felt empowered to produce a range of Media based for this event. World Environment Day, created in 1974, is held annually on 5th June and aims to raise awareness of environmental issues. We all had the choice of producing a short film, TV advert for an eco-friendly product, or documentary or an tutorial / instructional video on how to look after the environment.
The Target Audience for this project was from 15 to 25 years of age, making this project different from other projects I had done so far (which had thus far had a target audience of 16 to 19 years of age).
For this project, I included pitching materials, detailed plans (treatments, script, storyboards etc.), Risk Assessments and Written Permissions.
Inspiration and Realism:
For the A2 Creative Project, I had several ideas. One included... However, the final idea which I chose to produce was based on a more everyday, domestic-related environmental issue: waste, hence why I titled the film "Waste". I used the simple act of littering to create a storyline whereby the Wilson questions Ralph (both the protagonist and antagonist) of this film towards him throwing the bottle on the floor, which enabled me to produce a dialogue based on environmental facts and stats which related towards World Environment Day.
The ideology of this film was that even the simplest of actions have the power to create a ripple-like effect when it comes to social change and social justice for the environment, thus leading to change and better treatment of the environment.
Legal and Ethical Considerations:
Upon having my first-draft of my "Waste" script checked by an FCOT lecturer, it was felt that my dialogue was very angry (which I agree with), and that it felt unrealistic, because the facts were coming from nowhere and did not have a natural cue for when any scientific information was spoken. (such as "I read this website the other day and it said that..."). This made the dialogue very unrelatable, and unrealistic because it consequently did not represent how someone would speak in real life and did not make the facts provided in the video feel convincing, backed-up by proof, trustworthy or credible.
First came toning down the anger from my script, which would have been subjective had it not been further edited. Furthermore, by making the characters calmer, I was creating my first step towards making viewers want to know about environmental regarding waste, in that they were not frightened by too much shouting. Also, Ofcom states that it shall prosecute any film that influences, causes harm, or is not impartial towards its viewer. Hence, it was also an ethical necessity of moral integrity to make the dialogue in my script much friendlier.
The next step was to provide Wilson with more context and background information, so that his mention of environmental statics were less abrupt and sudden, thus making the script more realistic towards how we (referring to a target audience between 26 and 25) would speak to other in a causal environment). To do this, I gave Wilson a job at an environmentally-friendly institution, thus reflecting in the dialogue to show where all the stats / facts originated from and helping Wilson's character profile to make more sense. This (I hope) would enable you to relate to they/them when you watch "Waste".
Producing and Reshooting Waste:
After all the planning came the production phase of my short film - however, this incidentally turned out to be the hardest part of "Waste" for several reasons. For a start, not all my crew turned up (bearing in kind, I had cam/tripod kit, and audio-recording kit) and despite the forecast indicating that it would be sunny, the weather was the complete opposite. It was dingy! It was dark! It was wet! High frustrating and risky weather to be filming in. Luckily, the benches in the Cedar Courtyard had recently seen tents put over them. However, the torrential weather did make it harder to get the lighting levels ight, to the point where I ended up having to reshoot a whole because of the background being overexposed and the foreground being underexposed, as a consequence of my image having too many blacks. Since then, I have always set my White-Blanxce and Lighting before I hit record ands have not had to film outside in badf weather saince.
When reshooting Scene 3 of "Waste" (where Ralph has changed his ways and is now more environmentally friendly), the weather was sunny and I was able to correctly set my camera setting settings, thus resulting in a much more visually-appealing shot where everything was correctly exposed.
Thankfully, on the first day of shooting, Ashton (my actor) and few a few of their friends (one of which was in Level 1 Media at FCOT back then), agreed to help with the production of "Waste". Regardless of this turning-point, the experience taught me the importance of effective communication within your Production Team, and the necessity to correctly set your Camera's Lighting before filming takes place.
Re-Editing 'Waste' in 1 Year Later:
A year passed and my Media Conduct had changed dramatically. I saw no need for unnecessary transitions and 'Waste' was full of them. Hence, I was no keen towards 'Waste' at this point and the unnecessary and somewhat random transitions made the film feel clunky and lazy in its editing. However, the story still had potential so I looked back at it in 2023, in the final month proceeding my departure from Farnborough College of Technology. At that point in time, my primary focus was making the most of my time at college so that I could leave with as high a quality of Media Productions as possible.
The most important thing I did in 'Waste' was removing my transitions. This was vital as it made the film feel much smoother., less clunky, much less jarring and at least very-near professional. This also included removing accompanying sound effects so that the audio and consequently the story could flow much ore nicely. This enabled the dialogue to be much more dominant so that the morals of "Waste" were much more apparent and meaningful.
Alongside this, I also added text by each picture to state their sources. This (I feel) made my short film much more ethical as it acknowledges the work of other people and provides legal protection against any claims of copyright in doing so. This also enabled me the chance to use green text to reinforce the vital themes of nature and the environment, thus relating to both my film's story and the assignment brief which dictated it.
Another way in which I feel I improved and refined "Waste" was through Colour Grading.
