MEDI 126 (Critical Evaluation: The Envelope Project)

Critical Evaluation:

Perspective 

For our Envelope project we were given; a slide with a leaf in it, some charcoal, an audio file that everyone got as well, a link to a video called violin power and a text about war and technology. These I feel we worked into our film very well as they not only appeared or were referenced in the film but also flavoured the feel of the film.

Our initial ideas were to have a very post apocalyptical feel to it that was mainly inspired by the ‘rusty leaf’ in the slide and the text about war and technology. I feel we did keep some of the bleak post or near apocalyptical feel with the final film as we kept the main character very isolated. Also most of our initial ideas involved a single character that was faceless and therefore supposedly unimportant to the world. We kept with this very strongly as you don’t get to see the girls face. She is important only in her world which is a separate reality.

We wanted our film to really challenge people’s perceptions and get them thinking and have stuck fairly to close our script. Within our film there is an ongoing clash of nature and technology that we wanted to convey that I think was fairly successful. It is important to the materials that there was both a balance and a clash of these things. Or so we felt.

We used charcoal a lot as we liked the idea of the character drawing things in her world as drawing is very escapist and charcoal is both a natural thing and a metaphor for destruction given that it is burned wood. Also this meant that we could focus solely on the girl’s hands adding further to her anonymity.
We wanted the voice over to sound innocent and slightly melancholy in a wistful way, a bitter sweet blend of happy and sad to reflect her isolation but also her contentment with it. We thought also that her relative innocents is important because she could remain happy in a bleak and uncaring world.

I liked the technical side of this project but I did more filming really than anything else. I enjoy filming as it is akin to photography and all about the best angles and perspective to get the best shots which I feel for the most part was achieved. It was great using a tripod as it enabled us to get the best shots and hold them steady. I would love to have a bigger role in editing next time as I have yet to fully flex that side of things and tend to prefer being behind a camera rather than in a computer lab. However to widen my skill set this does need to be remedied.

I have really enjoyed working with my group as creatively it was a lot of fun and we generated a huge amount of ideas and bounced off each other very well. So much so that it was hard to narrow the ideas down! Also our group gets on well and has a fairly broad skill set. I think we achieved our aims with the film. The only few things I would do differently is have maybe a more permanent actor since I do notice the difference in hands, hopefully this doesn’t spoil the film however.