Week 1: 'Pickpocket' - assessment

Finally Penumbra Pictures's first film was assessed by the lecturers and other students. All in all, I expected more criticism about our script or the way we put the premise on the screen. Given the amount of time to think about the film, come up with something script-like (unfortunately unwritten) and finally put it through its paces, which was altogether about 2.5 hours, we did pretty well. We used a variety of shots (especially numerous well-composed close-ups), and their angles, which played a great role in telling our story. Another thing that contributed to the overall positive comments was the pace of the film (length of shots in the edited piece). I was complimented on a quite steady hand which allowed me to do a rather smooth tracking shot (towards the end of the film). Also the story was quite intriguing and not so obvious (especially the ending). However, some pointed out that especially the point of view shot of the main character looking around to spot the robber was rather confusing. On the one hand this was the goal we wanted to achieve. On the other hand, however, had this shot been carefully planned, such confusion wouldn't have occurred. I just came up with it as we went through the editing. All in all, everything went better than expected. After what I've seen during production, and heard during the screening today, I'm pretty sure that our next films will be getting gradually better.