The film that my group and I made went fairly well, however there are a few things that we could have improved. The part of the film that we chose to create was the complication stage. We came up with a variety of ideas but we decided on this one. In our film a ‘mentally disabled’ women discovers that her ex partner has a new girlfriend. She is infuriated by this, so decides to get her vengeance by killing both her ex partner and his girlfriend. My role in all of this was the cameraman (cinematographer). I was in charge of making sure that the camera as in the correct position whilst filming, some of the shots (I.e. canted angles, long/close shot) and also to make sure the camera was actually filming.
There are many films which influenced ours, one of them being Mr & Mrs Smith (Doug Liman, 2005). The film briefly is about a couple how work for separate organisations and each are told to kill the other. We liked this idea so we tried to incorporate some ideas into our film.
On the day we had to film our piece, the typical British weather was against. There were very strong winds making it hard to pick up any speech on the camera and to top it off , it started to rain which made it extremely hard to film due to where we where filming as the camera was mostly pointing into the direction of the rain. This made it harder to film as we had to make each scene quick so that the rain did not cover the camera lens.
As you can see in the above screen shot shows the rain disrupted the filming. Unfortunately the weather stopped us from filming much more in the end so when we where in the editing phase we realised that we had to keep one shot even though the rain had distorted the camera picture. The wind traveling passed the cameras microphone made it incredibly hard for us to hear any of the dialogue that the camera recorded therefore we had to re-record and overly the voices onto the separate sequences as shown
below:
Overall I believe our sequence was as a good as the weather allowed it to be. I think in one way we could of improved our film by using several different locations instead of just the one. Also if we had of had the time we could have re-shot some of the distorted sequences and therefore creating a better overall outcome of the film
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Monday, 15 March 2010
evaluation
Evaluation
After creating the short sequence my group and I made, overall I was pleased. Our sequence is based during the complication stage in our film, on a couple enjoying a walk in the countryside when a crazy character ambushes them, there is little dialogue as characters refer to events that would have taken place before the part in our film we decided to create, the sequences genre then takes a turn as it becomes less serious, the genre becomes more of a comedy as the couple characters are chased by the crazy character. We chose this sequence as we thought it would be the most interesting to create. I was put in control of the editing part of our sequence. It involved using final cut software to piece together all our footage, as the screenshot below shows.
I then used the effects available to create a story of our original footage. I also contributed to fitting the sound into the sequence.
There were many films I thought I could try and make our sequence feel similar to, other thriller titles such as The Dark Knight (2008) continuously have a dark feeling created with low lighting and dark effects, however I thought our sequence was more closely related to Inglorious Basterds (2009) which runs a thriller theme throughout but strongly touches into the comedy genre as well, in nearly the same way as our sequence. Inglorious Basterds does this mainly with the editing and soundtrack played, the film shows a fairly serious story in which the soundtrack changes the mood, the editing is made to create tension then drop it all. This is done by lots of quick shots during an actions scene, and then as scenes slow into a more comedy feel, there are lots of slow shots in which the camera barely moves. This doesn’t give a serious feel.
We didn’t plan to make our sequence a comedy; however feedback showed that the way the footage had been filmed was better shown as a comedy, we agreed with this idea and changed the style of our video. We thought the opening shots in our sequence should be kept as a thriller style, I thought it was a very effective opening. The later scenes resemble, although not the desired effect, a benny hill scene. As the characters run past the screen as the camera tracks them. The music also resembles something of a benny hill scene.
Being in control of the editing allowed me to put more of my ideas into the work, also due to the genre being a thriller/comedy it influenced me to change the way the cuts were shown during different parts of the sequence. Being in control of editing gave me the opportunity to control a lot of the narrative structure of the footage. As we originally started with the idea of making the whole sequence a thriller, the narrative was limited as the footage didn’t fit the thriller genre, so as we changed to a comedy, the narrative became more open. I think our group worked well together, we all covered our own micro elements and mixed in to help each other. We adapted out whole story late on in the editing stage, after the opening shots the scene now takes a complete turn of genre. As the crazy character chases the couple with the gun held out in front in a clearly comic way, we only needed to change to speed of shots to slow the tension and add a different soundtrack. All the feedback we got was related to the soundtrack and change of genre, we were also advised to add background sounds to give viewers more of a relation with the sequence.I tried to adapt the sequence so it would be more recognisable by the audience, the sound effects we added in included bird songs, wind and creaking door. These are simple sounds however they enable the viewer to relate with the environment. I had experience in the software final cut which allowed me to help the rest of the group to input their ideas, I think it also allowed me to make better use of time.
To conclude, I was pleased with the outcome of our sequence. Although the change of genre gave us some doubts, I feel we improved the sequence. We conformed to the feedback we received and as a group changed the way we used our micro elements to improve the sequence. If I were to change anything about the sequence, it would be to re-film the entire sequence, allowing tension to be carried throughout and the thriller genre to be used.
After creating the short sequence my group and I made, overall I was pleased. Our sequence is based during the complication stage in our film, on a couple enjoying a walk in the countryside when a crazy character ambushes them, there is little dialogue as characters refer to events that would have taken place before the part in our film we decided to create, the sequences genre then takes a turn as it becomes less serious, the genre becomes more of a comedy as the couple characters are chased by the crazy character. We chose this sequence as we thought it would be the most interesting to create. I was put in control of the editing part of our sequence. It involved using final cut software to piece together all our footage, as the screenshot below shows.
I then used the effects available to create a story of our original footage. I also contributed to fitting the sound into the sequence.
There were many films I thought I could try and make our sequence feel similar to, other thriller titles such as The Dark Knight (2008) continuously have a dark feeling created with low lighting and dark effects, however I thought our sequence was more closely related to Inglorious Basterds (2009) which runs a thriller theme throughout but strongly touches into the comedy genre as well, in nearly the same way as our sequence. Inglorious Basterds does this mainly with the editing and soundtrack played, the film shows a fairly serious story in which the soundtrack changes the mood, the editing is made to create tension then drop it all. This is done by lots of quick shots during an actions scene, and then as scenes slow into a more comedy feel, there are lots of slow shots in which the camera barely moves. This doesn’t give a serious feel.
We didn’t plan to make our sequence a comedy; however feedback showed that the way the footage had been filmed was better shown as a comedy, we agreed with this idea and changed the style of our video. We thought the opening shots in our sequence should be kept as a thriller style, I thought it was a very effective opening. The later scenes resemble, although not the desired effect, a benny hill scene. As the characters run past the screen as the camera tracks them. The music also resembles something of a benny hill scene.
Being in control of the editing allowed me to put more of my ideas into the work, also due to the genre being a thriller/comedy it influenced me to change the way the cuts were shown during different parts of the sequence. Being in control of editing gave me the opportunity to control a lot of the narrative structure of the footage. As we originally started with the idea of making the whole sequence a thriller, the narrative was limited as the footage didn’t fit the thriller genre, so as we changed to a comedy, the narrative became more open. I think our group worked well together, we all covered our own micro elements and mixed in to help each other. We adapted out whole story late on in the editing stage, after the opening shots the scene now takes a complete turn of genre. As the crazy character chases the couple with the gun held out in front in a clearly comic way, we only needed to change to speed of shots to slow the tension and add a different soundtrack. All the feedback we got was related to the soundtrack and change of genre, we were also advised to add background sounds to give viewers more of a relation with the sequence.I tried to adapt the sequence so it would be more recognisable by the audience, the sound effects we added in included bird songs, wind and creaking door. These are simple sounds however they enable the viewer to relate with the environment. I had experience in the software final cut which allowed me to help the rest of the group to input their ideas, I think it also allowed me to make better use of time.
To conclude, I was pleased with the outcome of our sequence. Although the change of genre gave us some doubts, I feel we improved the sequence. We conformed to the feedback we received and as a group changed the way we used our micro elements to improve the sequence. If I were to change anything about the sequence, it would be to re-film the entire sequence, allowing tension to be carried throughout and the thriller genre to be used.
Friday, 12 March 2010
Evaluation by James Ackroyd
As all of the sound on the extract is effects and music, every piece of sound has been put there for a reason. The sounds were edited and placed along with the video using Final Cut (shown Below).
I made the music to suit what the extract needed using Garage Band and mixing different styles to make it how I wanted.
Our film mixes comedy, action and romance. In the extract it is more just comedy and action genres being used, these genres are the reason for the sound effects and music used and with out them the extract would lose purpose and wouldn’t work.
In the first bit of the extract the action genre is being pulled on, 
we used Mr and Mrs Smith (Doug Liman 2005) as an influence. With fast edgy music when Miriam is shown for the first time this makes tension and creates an action atmosphere. This music breaks a peaceful scene of sound of wind and birds; this brings in the action genre with quick changes of mood to fast pace and uncertainty of what’s happening next.
I decided to use voiceovers to replace the speech on the video because of the bad quality and to get it how it how I wanted it. We used actors outside our filming group so we only had one chance to do voiceovers that where realistic so after we did them we couldn’t change them and I think a few could have been done better but we had to do with what we got. Also we couldn’t get one of the actors to come in and do voiceovers so I had to do his voice for the extract and if you look carefully I think you can tell its not the voice of the actor talking.
Sound effects of wind and bird sounds run through most of the extract, because the sound effects weren’t long enough for the whole piece I repeated them. With the wind it’s not noticeable but if listened to carefully the bird sounds can be noticed that they are repeating. Also when watching the video back now I think the wind sound effect is too loud and although being there to create an atmosphere destroys it at the same time because of the overpowering loudness of it. 
Of Originally the chase scene was going to be action as well but we thought it would look better to add in some comedy after some comments when we got other people to watch our extract. We changed the whole aim for the genre just by changing the music for the chase scene. I think this worked well in some ways because as the aim of our movie was to combine three different genres and in our extract it was a good idea to show at least two of these. But as we only made this change late on in the project the transition between action and comedy hasn’t worked as well as planned, it also makes the viewer unsure about the genre of the extract. The original music for the chase scene was a typical, high tempo action sequence soundtrack but as our test audience told us it didn’t really fit with the pictures being shown as they had more of a comical affect. To help the change I also added a voiceover and a comical scream.
Another thing that I would have changed if I could go back now would be to add more gate sounds when they are crossing the railway on the first gate. This way it would have made the railway crossing feel more realistic as the gates looked the same you would have expected them to sound the same.
I think our group worked well but some people contributed more than others. The final piece was good but I think it could be improved further but we don’t have anymore time.
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Evaluation-Sophie Alard
I am pleased with the work that we have produced as a group. Our film extract 
is largely influenced by the narrative of Mr and Mrs Smith, (Doug Liman 2005). We liked the idea of the couple, where they at first do not know they have to kill each other, but then have a massive fight and ruin their house. We tried to portray something similar into our extract, of a couple who had broke up in the past due to the woman’s medical issues (mentally disabled), who finds that her ex is in another relationship, so she attempts to kill them both. We also had other ideas such as an opening of a gangster film which would have worked just as well but as a group we thought it would be better to do the first idea as the gangster opening would be hard to get good actors who could make the extract look realistic.
My role in the group was to be the director. I felt like I needed to be the director in order to keep the group organised. My role included doing the story board for the group and other directing duties. For our extract, I wanted the clip to start calm and peaceful in order to contrast it with the following scenes. We did this by using diegetic sound such as birds singing in the background and wind to build up the atmospheric environment and also to represent the calmness of the countryside. Also, the extract starts with a slow pan to establish the surroundings. I wanted it to be like this in order to give a false pretence that it is just an ordinary scene and also to shock the audience with the following scenes when the crazy girl jumps out of the bushes. Even though we had certain roles to do within the group, I felt that we all helped each other with our group roles.
We pretty much k
ept to our storyboard apart from a few changes we needed to change to keep the continuity and flow of each scene to the next, such as
; we had two similar shots next to each other but in slightly different places due to moving the camera. We overcame this by using a different shot to cover over it which works just as good. Also another fault with our actors was that they didn’t react to a gunshot which is partly my fault seeing it was my duty as the director, we overcame this problem by adding a frame from a scene after it. However, we didn’t realise that the shot was the wrong way round, which meant the fence was on the wrong side. We could overcome this by easily flipping the image round.
We tried to make our scene serious, but after watching over it a couple of times, we realised that it was completely the opposite and in fact quite humorous. This was mainly due to the actors acting skills that we used as we noticed that during the chase scene towards the end, the guy closes the gate behind him in a very neat fashion, which just wouldn’t happen in a real life situation. However, after talking to Jake, he said it would be better to change the soundtrack for the chase scene to something more comical. We found his feedback very useful as it styled the way we ended our scene. The genre of the film extract ended up being an action/adventure/comedy.
One thing we could improve on is the chase scene; I think it would be better if we used quicker shots to build up the tension in the scene. We tried to do this, but we only had 3 different shots to play around with. First of all we those 3 shots and cut them in half and played around with the order in order to fasten up the pace. It would have been better if we included more close ups to show the
emotions of the characters in the scene. However it was still slow and we thought if we did this again then that scene would be too repetitive. We want this scene to resemble something like Casino Royale (Martin Campbell 2006). We used similar shots like point of view shots and long shots to capture the intensity of the scene. This didn’t quite work out, as the actresses were laughing whilst being chase which ruins the serious atmosphere.
We used none of the original sound from the camera for our extract (folly), as the background noise sounded terrible against all the sound effects we put in. We deleted all these, and re-recorded the dialogue. We used many sound effects to build up the atmosphere, such as thunder which could represent something bad happening, a train noise to build tension as the couple run over the train track, which makes the audience think that there is a possibility of them getting run over. Also, the sound effect ‘Heavy Wind’ is used throughout the scene to make it sound realistic.
is largely influenced by the narrative of Mr and Mrs Smith, (Doug Liman 2005). We liked the idea of the couple, where they at first do not know they have to kill each other, but then have a massive fight and ruin their house. We tried to portray something similar into our extract, of a couple who had broke up in the past due to the woman’s medical issues (mentally disabled), who finds that her ex is in another relationship, so she attempts to kill them both. We also had other ideas such as an opening of a gangster film which would have worked just as well but as a group we thought it would be better to do the first idea as the gangster opening would be hard to get good actors who could make the extract look realistic.My role in the group was to be the director. I felt like I needed to be the director in order to keep the group organised. My role included doing the story board for the group and other directing duties. For our extract, I wanted the clip to start calm and peaceful in order to contrast it with the following scenes. We did this by using diegetic sound such as birds singing in the background and wind to build up the atmospheric environment and also to represent the calmness of the countryside. Also, the extract starts with a slow pan to establish the surroundings. I wanted it to be like this in order to give a false pretence that it is just an ordinary scene and also to shock the audience with the following scenes when the crazy girl jumps out of the bushes. Even though we had certain roles to do within the group, I felt that we all helped each other with our group roles.
We pretty much k
ept to our storyboard apart from a few changes we needed to change to keep the continuity and flow of each scene to the next, such as
; we had two similar shots next to each other but in slightly different places due to moving the camera. We overcame this by using a different shot to cover over it which works just as good. Also another fault with our actors was that they didn’t react to a gunshot which is partly my fault seeing it was my duty as the director, we overcame this problem by adding a frame from a scene after it. However, we didn’t realise that the shot was the wrong way round, which meant the fence was on the wrong side. We could overcome this by easily flipping the image round.We tried to make our scene serious, but after watching over it a couple of times, we realised that it was completely the opposite and in fact quite humorous. This was mainly due to the actors acting skills that we used as we noticed that during the chase scene towards the end, the guy closes the gate behind him in a very neat fashion, which just wouldn’t happen in a real life situation. However, after talking to Jake, he said it would be better to change the soundtrack for the chase scene to something more comical. We found his feedback very useful as it styled the way we ended our scene. The genre of the film extract ended up being an action/adventure/comedy.
One thing we could improve on is the chase scene; I think it would be better if we used quicker shots to build up the tension in the scene. We tried to do this, but we only had 3 different shots to play around with. First of all we those 3 shots and cut them in half and played around with the order in order to fasten up the pace. It would have been better if we included more close ups to show the
emotions of the characters in the scene. However it was still slow and we thought if we did this again then that scene would be too repetitive. We want this scene to resemble something like Casino Royale (Martin Campbell 2006). We used similar shots like point of view shots and long shots to capture the intensity of the scene. This didn’t quite work out, as the actresses were laughing whilst being chase which ruins the serious atmosphere.We used none of the original sound from the camera for our extract (folly), as the background noise sounded terrible against all the sound effects we put in. We deleted all these, and re-recorded the dialogue. We used many sound effects to build up the atmosphere, such as thunder which could represent something bad happening, a train noise to build tension as the couple run over the train track, which makes the audience think that there is a possibility of them getting run over. Also, the sound effect ‘Heavy Wind’ is used throughout the scene to make it sound realistic.
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Sound
We decided to change our sound at the end of the extract because it took away the tension of the ending. Also after talking to Jake he said it would be better if we made it into more of a comedy because it wasn't serious at all. We added a more comical soundtrack for the chase scene which goes better with our extract.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)