Evaluation: The New Ticker

As a whole, working on Ticker has been an amazing experience, working first hand with actors but also, this is the most technically advanced production I have worked on. The project as a whole has many strengths and weaknesses, but in my opinion the strengths outweigh the weaknesses by a long shot. When we started production on the film we as a group knew that it was a very ambitious production to choose. We also knew that it would be a huge learning experience for us, allowing us to create a film which none o us had ever tried before. By this I mean in terms of the production value; needing to stage a heart surgery being the biggest aspect due to the large amount of props and carefully thought out cinematography in order to make the surgery look real.

Before we began filming, the pre-production process saw us doing a lot of research, some of which included looking for inspiration from other films and even programmes. Our biggest inspirations were American Horror Story and Sweeney Todd, but both for different reasons. We decided that Sweeney Todd would be the best place to start in terms of its aesthetics. The vibrantly red blood throughout the film, alongside extremely dark colour correction almost makes the film look fake with its over stylised production; this is exactly the look we were going for. We knew that staging the heart surgery portion of the film would be difficult, but we knew we wanted to make it as real as possible, in order to do this we saw it fit to use bright, fake red blood during the shots. With our other inspiration, whilst Sweeney Todd was for aesthetics, American Horror Story was an inspiration and a good point of reference during the filming and editing process. The jump-cut montages along with the  dutch angles used from a cinematography point of view it was great to see and be able to replicate shots that were heavily inspired by the sow. However, the inspiration is very subtle whereby I chose to replicate some movements in shots that I saw during season one.

I have loved working on Ticker, and I feel as though I have played a strong role as cinematographer providing my editor with well-shot footage in order to make a well-executed piece of drama. Having said this, there are some things about the production that made some points stressful. Some members of our team seemed to put more effort and heart into the production compared to others, to a point where a crucial element of the piece was left until the last few days before the deadline. We felt organised throughout the production, with all hands on deck ordering props, getting documents ready and getting filming sorted at the earliest point possible in order to ensure production ran as smoothly as possible. The visual side of the edit had a lot of hours put in from as soon as the footage came out of the studio, however the sound was left much later meaning we had less time to keep the snd as consistent as the edit.

All in all I feel as if we have produced a great drama piece, and I have seen it as an eye-opening experience from the start until the finished product was ready for the presentation.