Blinded- Short Film Critique

Rationale:
The short film that my group made was titled "Blinded". This film is about a generous man who gives his blind girlfriend his eyes so she can see the world and eventually marry him. Yet when, he does, the girl gradually veers away from him until they are no longer together.

Commentary:
My responsibility in this film was being the director. I was responsible for taking part in the script writing, but also made decisions during post-production such as: overlooking the shots by the cinematographer, telling the actors where to be and when, bringing the props needed, and organizing the location according to our desires. Last, i also overlooked the editing so the film would turn out as planned, which i thought was pretty successful.

Some problems that arose for me and my responsibility was getting all of our actors together at once. Our main actress was constantly busy which really tampered with our schedule to a point where some scenes were rushed. This was apparent in the 7th scene at the Burlingame train station in which we could only hint at what Lauren's mind set is as opposed to convincing to the audience her change in attitude towards John. This aggravated the plot line, yet it still was plausible due to this small hint. Another problem that we had was accessibility to props. As seen in the film, John's glasses constantly change throughout the film. This is due to the fact that original pair of sunglasses that we had were not available; thus, we encountered some continuity issues.

In some cases, we could not fix some of these problems. For example, we had to comply with our actresses schedule as opposed to our which really put us at a disadvantage in relation to time. In turn, we were unable to meet the required deadline and, as i stated before, disallowed us to develop some of our crucial scenes which jeopardized the plausibility of the plot. As for the glasses, we had to replace with other dark-looking glasses in order to cover our actors' face.It generally worked for the film and didnt penalize it in any significant way. Overall, with a good team effort we were able to finish the film with a good amount of success despite some rough times during production. On top of that, editing also really helped the success of the film as it was well put together and was put in a good sequential order.

Some problems that arose as a whole went hand in hand with the problems with the actors; we had missing shots by the time of the edit that we were unable to reshoot. This problem made it hard for our editors. For instance, in the third scene when Lauren is about to sit down she has her glasses on, but in the next shot she has them off.This continuity error forced us to put in an unprofessional cross fade in it. Another large problem was the recording the audio. Using the new adapter for the first time, we didn't really know how to use it properly; thus, the audio became unclear and constantly buzzed. This overall created problems with the quality of the film as it becomes irritating to the audience. When I tried to get rid of the buzzing noise in soundtrack pro, i was unable to because soundtrack pro takes in two recordings of audio while we mysteriously only had one while the other one seemed to not have recorded any audio. This problem was very apparent in the last scene, as we unavoidably had to keep raising and dropping the audio, so it would be completely silent in the background when John was talking, but when Lauren was talking their was a constant buzzing. Last, We also had problems with the camera. We kept interchanging between two lenses which was very distracting to the audience. We were forced to do so because the long lens blurred in any close up shots, so we had to use the wide angle lens. Although it is not a glaring problem, it is still a bit noticeable which took away from some of the quality of the film. Overall, these problems did have some effect on the outcome of the film, yet we were still able to get by by having a tied-together storyline.

The problems stated above were generally hard to fix, but we managed to handle in the post production stage. First, to deal with missing shots, we either cut the scene short before the noticed problem, or we used cross fades as stated before. Another unique way we dealt with this was in the first scene. In the first scene, we put titles between the missing shots, for it wasn't their, we would have had jump cuts. By putting in titles, the audience can assume that a certain amount of time had passed, thus, the reason why they are much further ahead. This also was generally a presentable way to present the titles as it continued throughout the first scene while establishing Lauren's daily problems dealing with her blindness. To deal with the audio, we chose either to take out the dialogue itself, or we put music over it to hide the buzzing sound. For instance, since we couldn't get rid of the buzzing sound, in the second scene, we put a very faint background sound so the buzzing seemed more subtle. Not only did this music hide the buzzing sound, but it also contributed to the overall tone of the scene; thus, it was a very affective method. On the other hand, their was some instances in which the buzzing sound was unavoidable, such as the resolution of the film. Last, we were unable to deal with the lens problem. Only in some small shots we could, such as in the first scene when Lauren falls, we put a blur filter on it so the depth of field is a little more hidden.

Despite all of the problems that my group and I faced, I thought that the film was compelling and pleasant. The plot itself was very attention grabbing, as you end up feeling really sorry for John, and end up hating Lauren. This attachment to the characters allowed the story to prevail itself. Along with that, i thought all of the shots and scenes we had were very purposeful, and i though that the editing was very solid. Despite all of the problems that we had faced, I thought we handled them to the fullest potential, and were successful at conveying the plot effectively. Contrarily though, i thought many improvements could have been made. To begin, I would like to have had a more reliable and skilled actress. Disregarding the fact that she was always busy, it was really hard to get her to convey our desired emotion. For instance, when she is breaking up with John, she kept smiling, which was out of character. In addition, we could have improved on developing the relationship between the two after the surgery a little more thoroughly. This would give a better justification of why she wanted to leave them. Last, I think we could have improved on the dialogue At times the dialogues is either very cliche or is unrealistic which took away from the validity of the scene. Despite all of the problems, i thought that our film "Blinded" was a good showcase of my groups' talent in film making.