Evaluation of the AS year - Zoe Cameron-Waller

Digital Technology:

During the AS year, I have developed a deeper understanding on how much attention must be paid to the camera work and techniques in order to convey the correct atmosphere and genre across to the target audience. An example of this would be the use of several pan outs at the end of my short film that created a dramatic and sad atmosphere by panning out from the spilt glass of wine and the smashed plate after the tense chasing scene up the staircase. However, I struggled with the framing at certain points as we decided to use a Restricted narrative in order to conceal the male character’s identity. This became an issue when filming due to the clumsiness of forgetting to keep his head out of the frame. Some shots display the male character sitting down on a chair and to start off with, his head ended up entering the frame and ruining the Restricted narrative. This meant that we had to ensure throughout the whole sequence that the man’s identity was concealed successfully in the rest of our short film. This was achievable due to our close attention to the editing using Final Cut Pro. We managed to successfully cut out the man’s head from the frame using the cut tool, but it took us several attempts to mould our sequence into a smooth running short film. We came across a few struggles along the way, such as the lighting being different in some of the shots, for example in the kitchen, the window showed a very bright light, but where the evening had progressed, the light in the next few shots differed a lot, meaning that there were continuity issues to be resolved. We managed to do this by using the contrast and brightness tool which allowed us to select the chosen parts of the window to level out the lighting to match the lighting in the next few shots. Our use of these tools were demonstrated on our blog, in which we kept up to date regularly, displaying pictures of us filming and screenshots of our Final Cut Pro activity. We also uploaded a video which justifies the struggles we confronted throughout the editing process and the video format meant that our formats of information were varied from text, pictures, videos and links. Some of our screen shots included audience feedback from social networks such as Facebook, about the ideas we had for our Thriller title and different screen shots displaying different feedback from Facebook about what our target audience would expect to find in our Thriller/Domestic Violence genre/theme. The internet was used regularly to find pictures and information about our chosen theme, and it was the supply of our non-diegetic music and font, (can’t remember the website names). We also used Garage Band to locate appropriate foley diegetic sounds to replace the missing sounds in our short film, which perhaps was another issue we stumbled upon. As we continued to edit, we noticed that some scenes seemed to be rather passive due to the lack of foley effects. We found a suitable car door shutting sound which we used to indicate to the audience that the male character was home. We also used the foley sound of a plate smashing to capture the sudden impact of the dropped plate. The plate caused us a lot of issues to the accidental miss of filming the action; therefore Final Cut Pro had to be used in order to fix this continuity issue. We used a fade to black which cut from the slow motion dropping of the plate, to the plate actually smashed on the floor, it wasn’t the most ideal cover up, but it increased the drama and created a tense atmosphere.

Creativity:

In order to stay original and to mirror the standard Thriller conventions, we ensured that at some point, our sequence included fast paced cuts and tense dramatic music which boiled up the audience to a point of panic and enigma, which was the dropping of the plate and the chase scene that followed not long afterwards. The tension build up is a crucial convention within Thriller films, as it supplies the suspense and tension that’s always found in this genre. We successfully balanced conventions to achieve a varied short film, by mirroring standard conventions and creating different conventions such as the iconography used with the wine prop, usually, wine connotes romance and cheeriness, but we used to it contrast with the Domestic Violence theme, in order to highlight the terror behind the situation. Also, we used restricted narration which isn’t always a standard convention, as usually we are shown the villain’s identity because the film positions the audience to directly hate this character. But in our short film, his identity is hidden and our hatred is postponed slightly due to the lack of closure the audience get towards the concealed identity. This method also highlights the sympathy that’s generated towards the female character and draws a lot of focus upon her. Another standard convention that we followed was the gloomy atmosphere, as Thriller’s usually cause sadness or terror. We did this by incorporating dull non-diegetic music that created this atmosphere, along with the passive facial expressions expressed by the female character, who’s also clearly made to be the victim, which is another standard convention of having the classic damsel in distress.

Research & Planning:

In order to achieve thorough research and planning, the internet was our main source. We searched for Thriller’s that also targeted the female demographic, and stumbled across a few that played around with the character’s and gave power to the female characters instead of the males. We recorded these findings on the blog by posting a picture of the film, and then explaining the reasons for this choice using text. However, it was suggested that we use Pearl and Dean to find similar films, but due to timing, we ran out of time to correct this error, but we still had a couple of films that we found elsewhere. In terms of my own research, I successfully analysed other Thriller films to gain ideas of what’s expected and what’s normal within a Thriller film. I kept my side of the blog fully updated with essay’s and pictures to provide evidence for my points which proved quite effective as I had a clear idea of what needs to be in my short film due to the amount of other short Thrillers that watched/analysed. The restricted narration idea came from ‘The Usual Suspects’ in which I fully analysed. I thought the restricted narration worked well in order to deliver the enigma, which is why I chose to use it in my short film.

Post Production:

Using Final Cut Pro, I edited the short film by frequently making use of the cutting tool which allowed me to join together certain shots, and to discard other shots that weren’t good enough or that weren’t necessarily needed in the sequence. However, I struggled with the fluency of the sequence due to some jolty cuts that were soon corrected and resolved by removing the shot, and re-adding it to the sequence which meant that whatever was causing the jolt had been discarded. We also came across several continuity issues such as the lighting being different in some of the shots, for example in the kitchen, the window showed a very bright light, but where the evening had progressed, the light in the next few shots differed a lot. We managed to resolve this by using the contrast and brightness tool which allowed us to select the chosen parts of the window to level out the lighting to match the lighting in the next few shots. We also used foley sounds to replace lost diegetic sound within the sequence, such as the car door shutting and the plate smashing. We also edited in non-diegetic music that amplified the tense atmosphere and we cleverly built the tension to the absolute maximum by abruptly stopping the non-diegetic music as the door is slammed after the chasing scene up the stairs. Individually, I developed the skill of adjusting mistakes within the sequence, such as the lighting error, but I’ve also improved the basic skill of adding shots together and making cuts in order to add fluency, or to perhaps follow on from a match on action. Next time, I think more attention needs to be paid to what’s being filmed and just the general knowledge of how the camera functions, as the mistake that a person in my group made of missing the actual smashing of the plate could possibly have cost us a few marks. Because of this, we had to edit in a fade to black which entered just as the plate was about to hit the floor.

Using Conventions from real Media texts:

I decided to use restricted narration because of the enigma that was created by it in ‘The Usual Suspects’. I fully analysed the short film and realised that it successfully emphasises the Thriller genre by abiding to the standard enigma convention. It also allows the audience to conjure up their own picture of what he looks like and at the same time makes them eager to find out the face to this body.