Western Showdown Task and Evaluation

As a group, we completed the filming in two days. I think we all worked well together as we all shared ideas on which shots to use, etc. and equally decided on the equipment we would use. When allocating the roles of the two cowboys, we asked each other who would be most comfortable doing it, to which me and Sophie said we wouldn’t mind. I then went away and created a list of camera shots and as a group we decided which shots we would and wouldn’t use. 

I think our filming experience went good, but could’ve gone slightly better. We originally chose one location, behind the media building, but didn’t get much footage. Therefore, the next day we found a better location where we knew we wouldn't be disturbed when filming and began again, all while it started heavily raining - in the end we got all the shots we had planned to get so it turned out good. 

We made the choices we did, such as using extreme close ups and crotch shots, because we researched into other cowboy themed films and noticed these were used quite regularly. Specifically I chose to use the extreme close up shots more than once because it builds tension for the audience between the two 'cowboys'. We also chose to reveal the 'gun' in a crotch shot, as after watching clips from 'The Good The Bad and The Ugly', they do the same thing since the reveal once again creates tension, while also setting the scene and relating more to the genre of cowboys. 

When it came to editing the clips, I took inspiration from the film 'The Good The Bad and The Ugly' and therefore used the same song during the well known scene of the characters having a stand off, since when you hear the theme music you know you're watching a cowboy film. After editing the clips and putting them all together to form the minute video, I think it turned out the way I wanted it to and I am happy with the end result. We also decided to add some humour at the end to contrast the rest of the video since it's so serious. 

If we were to do this task again, I think more planning could’ve possibly helped us, like creating a storyboard to visualise the clips beforehand. As well as this, we used microphones as ‘guns’ so perhaps using different, or even more, props would make this short clip better.