Overall, I am very happy with the final product of our film. I believe that the use of cinematography, editing, sound and mise-en-scene are representative of our skills, and that they are used effectively to attract our target audience. We used a range of camera shots and angles, multiple editing techniques, both stereotypical and non-stereotypical music, and the mise-en-scene was appropriate to our narrative. I feel that the narrative of our piece is clear, and that the photo montage at the start helps to tie this in more so than if we had not included it.
At the start of the process, we were struggling to establish the way that we wanted our narrative to go, as our creativity was lacking slightly. We managed to combat this by conducting plenty of research into thriller films and their narratives, and conducting questionnaires, which helped to get an insight into what people enjoyed the most. For this, I found that the questionnaire that I conducted was extremely useful as I was able to directly find out what narrative themes people preferred, and what sub-genre of thriller people preferred. With a combination of the information from the research and the questionnaires, we were able to brainstorm narrative ideas based on what we found were most popular with people. We found that crime thrillers were most popular, and that murder was the most popular theme. These findings heavily influenced our decision to create a crime thriller based around the theme of murder.
As a group of friends outside of the group, filming ran smoothly, and there was no conflict between any members of the group. Filming with my friends allowed us to be comfortable in bouncing ideas off each other, and to be confident in being able to critique any suggestions of others, without anyone being offended. This made us be able to come up with the best ideas possible, as we used a combination of ideas, and critiqued them until we were entirely happy. I thoroughly enjoy using the camera equipment, so I really enjoyed filming for shots that I was not in.
The first edit of our piece was absolutely vital to making our final product the best it could be. It was during this process that we could establish any continuity errors, and shots that needed re-filming, or any shots that we need to go and film to include in our piece to help tie in the narrative. Here, we were also able to discard a lot of footage that we had filmed, as we felt it was not necessary for the piece. After the first edit, we created our final story board, in which we follow extremely closely for the final edit of the piece. We were able to create our final story board at this point, as we had established exactly what we needed to include in our opening sequence in order to make it effective, appealing and so that it made the narrative clear to the audience.
In my opinion, our film is very effective in portraying the narrative. However, there are certain elements in which I feel do this the best. I really like the use of the photo montage, which we got inspiration to do from BBC’s “The Missing”, as I feel this establishes the equilibrium well at the beginning of our piece, and is a good means to portray the background of the characters. My favourite piece of the film is the inclusion of the 360° pan of Jazz, that zooms into her eye, and then out of Josh’s. I feel that this shot is very unique, and that it is very effective in establishing binary opposition in our piece. Additionally, I think that the speed of this scene represents the confusion of the audience, as they are yet to know whether Jazz took her own life, or whether she was murder, or even, whether she framed to look like she had taken her own life, when she had not done so. Something about the 360° pan that, on reflection, I would re-do, is make sure that the filming of it was a lot more smooth. It was extremely hard to film that shot smoothly, as it involved someone walking around holding the camera. If this was produced professionally, they would have a camera on tracks, that would ensure that the shot was smooth. Of course, we were unable to access this equipment. What also intensified the unsteadiness of this shot, was that we had to speed it up by 100x to make it more effective for the audience. Something else that I would re-film if I was to do this again, would be to make sure that when the camera zooms into my eye, it zooms into the centre of my eye. In the footage we used, the shot is slightly off, and in my opinion, this takes away from the intensity of the shot, as my stare is not focused directly into the camera, like Josh’s is.
Our use of narrative theorists is something that I am particularly pleased with in our piece. I think that we effectively establish equilibrium during the title sequence, and then, disequilibrium following straight after, with the shots of Jazz’s body lying lifeless on the garage floor. As we did not produce the whole film, we did not re-establish equilibrium in our opening sequence, however, the intended equilibrium was to be brought about by Josh’s character being brought to justice.
The use of binary opposition in our piece, I felt, was very effective. We included a variety of examples of binary opposition, including life vs. death, good vs. evil, and innocence vs. guilt. In my opinion, the juxtaposition of shots of the photo montage, and the dead body, and Hannah and Josh alive, and shots related to the murder, were used appropriately in order to portray these oppositions in our piece. I feel that the zoom in to Jazz’s eye, and zoom out of Josh’s eye was incredibly effective in portray the binary opposites, because the two characters are a total antithesis of each other - Jazz is innocent, and Josh is guilty. Additionally, the lighting we have used in juxtaposing shots of life and death is significant. In shots that portray life, the lighting is bright and warm, whereas, in shots that portray death, the lighting is dark and sinister.
Finally, something else that I like about our final piece is our use of sound. I like how that at the end of our opening sequence, we reintroduce “Jealousy” by Frankie Miller, as the slam of the garage door happens. I think that introducing the music back on that beat adds emphasis to the music, and reinforces to the audience that the contrast between innocence and guilt, that is being portraying in the coming shots of Jazz and Josh, is caused by jealousy. The re-introduction of this music also serves as a means to reinforce the main theme of the narrative to the audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment