Review on Titus Andronicus work

By Lee Delves

The Project
We were asked by the Royal Shakespeare Company to produce a film based upon the Shakespeare play Titus Andronicus using the original texts. We worked alongside the drama academy students to produce the film. My roles within the production were the secondary cameraman on the first day of filming and also the main editor.

Editing

As the main editor it was important to also consider and incorporate the ideas that came from the rest of the class, this allowed us to discuss what we thought looked best and would work well within the piece. Another large part of this process was choosing the music that would be playing in the different scenes, this was difficult as the music had to be royalty free but also fit the atmosphere that we wanted to create at that moment within the film.

Reflection on working to a brief

I think that working to a brief was very useful as it allowed us to work to a deadline in a real life work situation. This helped us work efficiently and manage our time much more effectively especially as we had to work with the drama department. The brief also gave us guidelines for us to work within which helped give the project a direction to go in.

Client Feedback
To aid our evaluation of our film we received feedback from our clients, Sam Lawlor, Kim Morison and Melanie Whitehead. Some of the key positive aspects from the feedback was that through the medium of film we helped boost some of the performances to create a stronger atmosphere. A main criticism was to have a greater consideration of the framing which is evident in some shots. Some other minor improvements were to do with fixing audio levels in certain shots, as they were too loud and became distorted.

General Audience Feedback

To help us receive more feedback we also produced a questionnaire that was targeted at the general public, after watching the film they filled out the questionnaire which helped us to evaluate our own work. Some criticisms we received were based on the framing of our shots, the audio levels and also the overall clarity of the story. The positive feedback we received was based upon the wide variation in shots, the flow of editing and the music used.

Feedback
This shot received a large amount of positive feedback, the overlay worked well to create a very evil and eerie tone which helped emphasize the portrayal of the character.

This is one of the main shots where we should of considered the framing more, as you can see a section of her head has been cut out of the frame.

This is one of the few shots where the audio levels were too loud and caused distortion. We reduced this as much as possible but some of the distortion remained.