MD-Q6 Evaluation

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of making your film opening?

Throughout the project I have gained a lot of experience in a series of areas including: editing, camera work and blogging.

One paramount part of the project I utilized technology was by using the blog. This allowed me to express my ideas not only to my peers and teacher but also allowed our group to work collaboratively making suggestions and ideas that we think would be suitable for the opening sequence. This allowed us to mould our ideas and create a better more professional looking opening sequence. The first thing we did was to put up our ideas for the movie. This was a stark contrast to other methods of presenting and it was a challenge designing and presenting the work in a suitable way. It was clear that chunks of texts would make the piece unattractive and therefore colors, pictures and separation of texts was key.

Another way that I developed my understanding throughout the project was in camera work. This was an imperative part of the learning curve of learning to use technology. The rule of thirds was an important way that I developed my understanding and huge improvements were made paying close attention to detail. This was evident in a smooth shallow to deep focus shot in the opening sequence.

We filmed our work inside which gave us greater flexibility about lighting and reduced the environmental noise that could have limited the verisimilitude of the sequence. One example of how this helped us when we used dramatic shadow patterning when the killer enters the door by adjusting the amount of light that was getting through the window as to be able to see the shadow on the wall which our group though added to the tension.

Nevertheless, one clear limitation was the height of the tripod, as we wanted to film the killer’s feet as he or she was walking up the stairs. Consequently we reverted to holding the tripod of the floor that allowed this shot to be taken but the difficulty was trying to keep the shot as still as possible. We tried to minimize the impact of this by putting a lot of weight onto the character who was holding the tripod.

Another possible limitation was regarding framing as the screen that we played it back on was very small allowing for only a very rough overview of how well a certain frame or lighting effect resulted in. Our group tried to diverge away from using huge special effects as with Adobe 8 they were difficult to achieve without severely damaging the verisimilitude and credibility and tension that this type of genre so heavily relies upon.

The most common problem was not being able to see the shot and the framing and other parts of the Mise-en-scene in such detail we overcame this problem by taking lots of shot and consequently minimizing the risk of not having the correct shot.

Another problem was to do with continuing and making the shots interesting whilst still maintaining the continuity of the opening sequence. One shot that I personally feel allowed us to clear this problem was using shallow focus to deep focus which also allowed us to introduce a part of the Mise-en-scene that conveyed to the audience that this was a typical teenager.

First of all it was key for us to get the chronology of the piece correct and then choose accordingly the shots that were most effective at evoking emotion, as well as, telling the story. After we had all the correct shot we created a news report script that would show that the sequence of events was very closely related. This continued the enigma of the opening sequence. We recorded the audio on a microphone and simply added the MP3 file onto the end of the sequence. A sound bridge was used to link the end of the footage with the disturbing cut off the TV.

Furthermore, we used sepia and damage effect to convey that killer part was a vision that the girl had about this murder. After changing the setting a couple of times we decided that a low damaged was appropriate to convey that it was a different time frame but not to suggest that it was very past time. Adding to this, we also decided that we were going to have the vision cutting in and out of present time in order to convey the fragmented and obscurity of her vision that allows her not to realize that the events are closely relate. This allowed us to reveal a secret to the audience evoking a foreboding sensation that something is going to happen between the protagonist and this murder allowing any possible scenes to play on this sequence of events like many other films for instance; The Grudge 2.