T-13 FILM EXTRACT
 
T-13 FILM EXTRACT
Friday 6 March 2009
Homework


This is one of the fight sequences from the film 300. I think the music in this really helps adds tension to it and make the action work a lot better with the transition between slow motion and normal speed. The war cries of the Spartans make them sound very vicious where as the screams of the Persians make them seem very weak in comparison which I think is one of the reasons this film works, you get to see the massive amounts of difference that quality has over quantity. I feel the sound really helps to emphasise this through out the entire movie though especially in this scene.





This is from the film Tenacious D and the pick of destiny. The contrast of sound in this I feel work very well, with when he’s tripping and when he is in reality really works to make people laugh. The happy music in the dream land is also slightly childish which helps to show how jack reacts to it. The childish music also how easily entertained and how easily influenced he is and shows something about the personality of the character. It also really helps to make this film funny as with out music this scene wouldn’t be very amusing and it’d just be weird

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posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 08:04   0 comments
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   0 comments


This scene
posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 06:17   0 comments
Thursday 26 February 2009
Richard Balfour- Editing Evaluation
Our film project is called The Lockup. I took on the role of editing. It is about a lone hero who is surviving in a post apocalyptic Britain. Our extract takes place in the middle of the film where he has fought of some zombies and has found an abandoned room to make camp.

The genre we have been working in is horror. And this has definitely reflected in my editing work. In all horror films there is the calm before the storm, where something good has happened to the hero and the whole feel of the scene is a lot more slowly paced. In the beginning of the extract I tried to make the editing and the speed of the cuts quite subdued to show that our hero is safe in his new hideout but near the end where he hears the knock on the door the editing speeds up, perhaps with his heart rate.


Die Hard was an influence in terms of character type


As was 28 Days Later
The narrative of the film in our extract is driven primarily but the emergency radio broadcast. I tried to vary the shots during the announcement with a combination of close up and extreme close ups of the radio and over the shoulder shots of Alex. I did this because I didn’t want it to be visually boring during the talking but I understand that this wasn’t to everyone’s taste and they preferred the idea of a constant close up of the radio while the broadcast was playing.

My group worked closely to discuss and agree on an appropriate location and prop list for our chosen genre. My group used all the different micro elements to develop narrative and portray character and genre. Mise-en-scene was carefully used to show the characteristics of hero and his situation. The costume is a stereotypical tough man hero with a dirty tank top and a bandage, which implies he has previously been hurt without having to tell the audience of our extract what exactly happened. Also the location is very suitable for our narrative, it is a dark depressing place, symbolising our protagonist’s state of mind at this point in our story.

In the filming process we had many different ideas that sadly because of budget and technical capabilities we could not put into practise. One of them was the actually zombies being featured in the extract but because of fact we did not have any face paint, we agreed to never show the actual zombies in Jaws-esque style suspense. I feel that this has made our extract much more effective and thought provoking.

As editor, I wanted the audience respond to our sequence with these exact words, “Oh my god, this is the greatest piece of editing ever.” Unfortunately this was not the case. I received criticisms about the radio, which I mentioned earlier. But also I received a number of criticisms about the match on action shots not being entirely accurate. I don’t personally see it. I wanted my audience to feel pity for the hero but also feel some sense of what he is going through, when he is contemplating ending it all with suicide. I feel this that I managed this but other people who have seen our sequence beg to differ.

The Feedback we have received has informed us that our film extract was a relative success but it does have some minor flaws that I have mentioned before. I.e. The match on action shots and the shots of the radio during the emergency announcement. But apart from these insignificant failings, I believe that we have produced a compelling marvel of a film.

Our technical skills have defiantly enabled us to make the most of our creativity and imagination. As editor my technical skills comprised entirely of using the Apple Mac and staying well clear of the camera. I already had a strong grasp of using Final Cut and used it accordingly but I also learned a lot of new skills while completing this project. The only aspect I feel let us down was our point of view shot with the gun which did not turn out the way we envisioned it at the planning stage.

In my personal opinion, I feel that our film sequence was a success. All my group did well but I personally excelled in my field and made the film what it is, a triumph.


This is a screenshot from me editing out film sequence.

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posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 02:02   0 comments
Director - Evaluation - The Lock Up - Dan Dawson
I am Dan Dawson and this is my evaluation on our group 12T-13's film sequence of our post-apocalyptic Britain containing a lot of tension and suspense. Our two minute clip from the film show's our hero in a small dark room which reflects this feelings from his past which he has to live with for the rest of his life.

Our group came up with a few idea's which we decided were too hard to make a part of the film, we ended up agreeing on a zombie genre about Britain which we thought would be easier if we didn't show the zombies but we created the idea that they were on the other side of the door.
The genre we worked on was horror because it was based on an infected race destroying Britain and its population, it influenced us too find a convincing location and setting for the best possibility in our filming.


As director I feel I have effected the narrative by discussing thought's with the other people in my group, such as suggesting the location of filming and giving Alex idea's whilst he wrote up overall narrative, I think we came up with a good film idea and we worked well together and created a good film sequence.

As a group we all sat round the table and talked about what are overall idea and character details such as Alex wearing a tank top and a bandage to create the lone hero image which worked well with the sequence as one of the last survivors in Britain.
Once we came up with the idea of our film sequence and after we made the shot list we didn't change anything apart from getting different angle shot's of the shot lists too add more dimention to our film showing the whole 3-D view of the entire room.

As director im not sure how the audience would respond to my micro aspect apart from them complimenting all the other micro aspect's which i helped in the process of making and editing the film sequence.
The feedback i received was on Mise-en-scene which said "The empty room had a good effect, made you focus on the raido," and "Typical dress of a hero - tank top and bandagae added to this effect." On Mise-en-scene we got no negative feedback but one thing i would of improved on was possibly moving the fan which was in the camera shot for roughly two seconds which we didn't move.


I think as me and Richard both take film and media we were able too bring that little bit more out of our final piece which has helped but Alex and Will did a lot of work too make it the best it could possibly be.

I directed pretty well I feel, I made sure we finished our filming in one shoot because of the distance some group members had too travel and so Matthew James didn't have too rent us out another room at a later date.
I was told I was taking control of the work too much but thats what directors have to do making sure everyone is happy and the filming and editing is the best it can be which is what happened in the end so they shuddn't be complaining.

At the end of all of this I am happy how the film sequence has come out and i wouldn't chance anything major in it only little details which dont really matter at the end of the day because we weren't skilled enough too for example blend Will's voice over in with the back ground sound too well or get the volume of it just write but I think it is really good and would enjoy watching it if i would see it.

Dan Dawson

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posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 01:44   0 comments
Wednesday 25 February 2009
William Kitchin, Cinematographer, Evaluation

Whilst making our short film extract from the middle of our whole film there were many difficult and challenging things about the shooting of the scene that our group had decided to do as we were slightly ambitious with some aspects of our film and the location we were filming in had quite a few problems with it/things inside which we couldn’t really move so we ended up having to work with half of a room which was quite a small area.

Even though there were many problems with the room and the way we were going to film some parts of the 2 minute extract it was still an enjoyable thing to do and I personally think paid off.

I have already mentioned that the room was quite a small area and that we were only using half of it which meant that I was slightly more restricted with the things that I could do with the camera however we still went for all of the shots that I wanted to do and that the director thought was a good idea to film in such a way.

The first part of the extract is shot in dark to give that part of the film an eerie effect and to make it so that there is a lot of mystery about what is going on and where the character is at or what has happened to him however this could have gone wrong as if I had jogged the camera whilst the light was off and the camera was recording then I would have missed this however it was quite a simple scene to do so it would have been simple to re-shoot the scene this was also good due to the fact that the light of the zippo was enough to light Alex Tomkins face without being so bright that it didn’t make the area look like it was a run down place or as if there was nothing strange or even remotely scary about it.

Another shot within the scene that I think that went well or the best is the shot where you can only see half of his face as the other half is away from the light and completely in shadow which helps to symbolise that he is at the point where he doesn’t know whether he should carry on and if he does what will happen when he finally diverts his eyes over to the shadow which suggests that he Is giving up with the running and aiming to survive through the apocalyptic Britain.

Although I believe most of it went well there is one where I don’t think it went all that well as it was a moving shot and the only thing that I had to keep it steady was my arms which aren’t trained to stay still especially not whilst moving forwards towards something although I don’t believe that it went all that well it appears to have worked well in our film extract.

So even though it was hard to do it was worth the effort of attempting to do it. Another factor that made this shot so hard was that I hadn’t ever done anything like this before but as seen as the director basically left the shots down to me and so if it didn’t look o good then it was my fault which I believe made me work harder to go and do the best that I could do and then impress the director and come back with something that was actually worth the effort.

As I was the cinematographer I was working very closely with the director so that we can get towards what is mainly the directors vision or maybe even improve upon it by him telling both me and the actor what is going to happen in the shot and then I was able to setup the shot how it was that I thought would work well and then told the actor to do where to do what he had to do and where to look at to make it look good and to make it work properly.

I am not the only person who thought this as other members of different groups thought that this shot was effective and looked good.

Some of the feedback that I got back from other groups about the cinematography and I got some good comments such as “the shot with the lighter being the source of light is effective”.

However a less positive one was “the shot of the radio wobbles” however this was not easy to help as there was a part of the tripod that was loose and so the camera was at an angle or slightly wobbly in places.

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posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 13:18   0 comments
Mise-en-scene
  • Good gun use
  • The empty room had a good effect made you focus on the radio
  • typical dress of a hero - tank top and bandage added to this effect
Cinematography
  • lots of different shots, good mixture
  • good close up shots
  • point of view shot of gun should of been more in the middle
  • shot of radio wobbles
  • nice point of view shop
  • nice shot of lighter being the source of light
Editing
  • match on action shots not acurate
  • radio shot, jumps, should be continuous shot
Sound

  • couldn't hear what was said on radio, to muffled
  • we couldn't under stand eithert
  • good use of diagetic sound on the radio, however it's unclear

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posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 03:50   0 comments
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