Life On Mars Reflection

For our 'Life on Mars' exercise, we were told to put ourselves into groups and my group consisted of myself, Romina, Lizeth and Georgia. We began by watching a clip from the tv series 'Life on Mars' which we were then asked to recreate. Before we began the actual filming process, we needed to watch the clip as many times as we could in order to record all the individual shots and timings, and we also had to be sure that our short film would fit the soundtrack. In order to record our findings, we were given a timetable to record the timings, and we also created a page full of screen grabs. This was incredibly helpful for our filming process as we could easily use them to guide us.

I found the filming process to be an incredibly fun and interesting experience, however we did endure struggles. For example, the weather was definitely not on our side! Due to the fact that majority of our filming was situated outside, we couldn't avoid the terrible cold and rainy weather. For our first shot, we chose to shoot this in the car park, as a car was needed in this section. Georgia was to take on the role of the protagonist, therefore unfortunately for her in this scene, she had to lay down on the cold, wet ground for a long period of time, as we really wanted to get the shot as accurate as we could. It was also really difficult being behind the camera for this shot, as I was required to lay on the ground alongside Georgia, and position the camera in a way which correctly mimicked the screen grab. After shooting that, our clothes were both wet and covered in dirt, but the end result was definitely worth it!

My favourite scene to film would probably be the clip where we had to get plenty of shots of trees and the sky in order to contribute to the surrealism and dreamy aspect of this section. I really enjoyed it because we didn't have to be perfect with it, we could just be free with the camera and I believe the end result looked really pretty, despite the fact that we might've looked strange to those passing by! 

Apart from the minor struggles we faced, I really enjoyed enjoyed everything about this exercise. It was a real learning experience, and my favourite part would probably be the editing process. I learned a lot more about editing from doing this exercise, and I can say that I'd feel comfortable doing so on my own, as I learned a lot from my teacher and also my group!