Evaluation

Mise en Scene

All the mise en scene was kept fairly natural. We kept props and general surroundings as natural as possible to add to the feeling that it was a documentary. However, we only removed things that were foreign in the shot, such as the camera case. Although we kept the Grim Reapers scythe in(for obvious reason). In keeping with a natural feel, we didn't use any artificial lights. Luckily on a few of the days we filmed it was sunny so we had ample natural light. Mise En Scene was definitely the easiest part of the production, but that's because we didn't have to change too much about the locations we were filming in. We did put the thought into our shots, but we didn't put in as much as some of the other groups because we didn't need to change too much apart from where the Grim Reaper and his scythe should be.

Editing & Continuity

We used minimal editing in our production to keep to the conventions of the documentary. We primarily used cuts, however we have the final shot fading out with some contrapuntal music playing over the top. We had to cut down some of our footage to reach the allowed time of 90 seconds. During the interview scenes we could have possibly included a lower third. But that is something we can remember for next time. We made sure that we didn't have any glaring continuity errors. We all kept continuity in mind when filming and went back through it during editing. 

Camerawork

We used a handheld style for our film to keep with the conventions of the documentary genre. We only had to re-shoot a few shots for one reason or another. We only used a tripod once, which was during the interview scenes everything else was handheld. We didn't use any external equipment, we only used the microphone and such that was on the camera. We didn't use a huge variation of camera angles either, we had a few close up's, but most of our shots are medium shots. Once again this kept within the documentary conventions. Next time I would like to experiment with some different camera angles and shot types. 

Sound

We included happy, contrapuntal music with the titles and credits. This added to the underlying humor effect we were trying to create. The contrapuntal music was the only sound we added. Everything else was on the Wild-track during the time of filming. Personally I think maybe it would have been better if we had stripped the audio away from some shots and re-dubbed it without so much background/white noise. However we didn't think about it at the time, plus we also thought that the background noise kept more to the documentary genre. But since watching it in class, I think the background noise was a bit too much.