T-13 FILM EXTRACT: Evaluation

Monday 2 March 2009

Evaluation

Project review

The film my group and I produced was a 2 minute piece that was set in a near future where zombies have overrun society, the few remaining survivors are scattered and disorganised, the military has fled and there’s no recognisable government. Our extract follows one survivor who has just been forced to kill the one person he loved, his daughter after a zombie bit her. He’s about to give up hope himself when he hears a radio broadcast telling him there’s a way to survive and so he heads off to where he’s directed by the broadcast in the hope of getting out. However there’s a problem, there’s only a few places left on the ships and so survivors are attacking and killing each other in order to ensure places on the ship

We decided early on that we wanted to make a survival/action film, we then decided to base the hero on the god of action characters, Bruce Willis i.e. tank top, pistol and a bandage somewhere from a previous wound that’s ridiculously painful yet the hero continues on unconcerned just because he’s that hench. We thought that a zombie film would be interesting, with many different opportunities and ideas presenting them selves. We decided not to include any shots of zombies in out piece as we thought it would be scarier that was, personally I think it worked well as it added an air mystery and suspense.

I was in charge of sound for our group, which meant I had to write dialogue and music. I also had to take care of diagetic sound and in our piece that was what I did the most of. For the most part I had to remove noises that weren’t meant to be there. Unfortunately we had to shoot ours in a recording studio which meant we there was some music in the background.

The feedback I got from people who had watched out film said that the radio broadcast. I had however done this on purpose as it would have ruined the verisimilitude if the tiny speaker on our radio had produced a loud voice. I feel that some elements of the sound worked well, I wasn’t happy with the lack of music in it though. I think it really could of benefited with a good sound track. Unfortunately this was one of my first time using garage band and so I wasn’t unable to come with a decent sound track, I then decided too not include one in the video because I thought no sound track would be better than a bad one. Originally I wanted to have a soundtrack comprising of string instruments, however when we had recorded and edited our piece I decided that a more techno sound track would be better. The music in a film like jaws really helps create the sense of atmosphere and sometimes just the music can cause fear for the audience. In Japan they go for a completely opposite approach and only use diagetic sound this can be particularly scary for western audiences as they’re used too the music to let them know what’s going to happen next and so when something unexpected does happen they get scared.

I feel that I could definitely made this a lot better if I possessed more knowledge on how too make and edit sound clips.

Some of the effects on the voice I really like though, I feel they made it sound a lot more authentic, I think if the audience had been able to hear it better they would have responded more positively.

posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 06:38

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