U-19 FILM EXTRACT: Vonnie Pigott - Evaluation of short sequence
Sunday 1 March 2009
Vonnie Pigott - Evaluation of short sequence
Film evaluation ‘Final dreams’
Our extract from our film Final Dreams borrowed a lot of influences from surreal films such as Donnie Darko (Richard kelly, 2001) and Pans Labyrinth (Guillermo del toro, 2006). It was influences like these which were very helpful in my role as the camera person/cinematographer in our project.
Our film was a mix of fantasy and horror. As the camera person/cinematographer I took a few shots of the scenery in order to give an idea of where the main character was, however it was realized earlier that I had not taken enough footage of the surrounding area which is important to establishing the scene. I took a shot of some of the sheep in the background in order to establish a sense that this was a rural area.
Scene from Final Dreams
There was also a shot at the end, of the main character, after she had fallen from the ledge of the shed, in this shot I zoomed out slowly to help reveal slowly how much the scenery has changed. There was originally a shot which showed the main characters point of view, zooming out in a way that mirrors the previous shot but this shot was omitted because it looked too similar to the scenery from the previous scene which didn’t make sense. The final shot also used a HD camera and had crisper colour in order to mirror the style of The Wizard Of Oz (Victor Flemming, 1939) where Dorothy steps out from her black and white world into the colourful Oz.
Scene from The Wizard Of Oz
During our sequence there were a lot of shots of the two characters separately. Most of the shots of the main female character show her in profile whilst a lot of the shots of the male character are straight on. These shots were meant to show the contrast between the two characters, even though the shots are quite similar, both being close ups to show the connection between them, they positioning was different in order to show that there was still a clear difference between them. They are also shown separately to show the division between her world and his. There is only one shot that shows both of them together, without this shot the male character would’ve seemed more like a figment of her imagination as the audience would only have been seeing him through her view, but this shot of both of them is almost through someone else’s eyes.
It was scenes like this in Donnie Darko which were influences for the style of lighting and the use of camera work to help the narrative. This particular shot shows Donnie’s expression in an attempt to show his dazed expression as the next shot shows the large strange rabbit that he sees in the scene. Our extract showed a similar shot, extreme close up, of our main character looking at the camera with a dazed expression and then showing the strange person whom she now sees.
Scene from Donnie Darko
The other members in the group who were responsible for sound and editing were important in developing the narrative. The sound was important in showing the transition between the seemingly normal and the sudden strange events that start occuring as the music started around when she starts seeing the man. However the editing was key in showing the strangeness of the scene in the editing of the sound and colour as there were little effects in the camera work to show this change in the scene. The colour became brighter and the contrast was put up when the man in the hat was on screen. The lighting of the scene was effective as well in the way the man in the hat’s face is shadowed over in two of the shots, making him more mysterios and scary. The music used a simple piano tune, the tune was quite fast, and at certain points the music stopped in a dramatic way and this gave a good effect when she first fell into the new world and the music stopped suddenly giving it more emphasis.
The original plan for the film was to involve a shot of a children’s park, but because there was no children’s parks around it was decided that it wouldn’t make sense and would confuse the Audience. There was also the idea of using a top hat which we did not have so it was a normal hat, a lot of the costume ideas had to be omitted because the actors didn’t have the right clothes, the style of clothes at the end did however go as planned. The voices were originally going to be voiced over as well, but due to time restrictions it was made difficult, an attempt at a voice over for the humming noise at the beginning did not sound as good as the original track and so we chose to keep the original.
A lot of the feedback we received was based on the fact that there was an insufficient amount of shots taken during filming, although I thought it looked fine at the time it is an area that, if I could, would like to work on as it would have helped to have as much variety in the shot types as possible. Another piece of feedback was on the sound, the natural sound was quite grainy because of the background noises so it was suggested that a voiceover was used, although I like the natural sound I would’ve liked to have tried the voice over option over the entire script to see the difference. Some of our panning was also quite sloppy, it was shaky and odd at some parts, the music was also commented as being a bit linear, as it only used one simple piano tune mostly, in my opinion this was an effective part because the simplicity of the music made the scene creepier.
Because of the timing and restrictions on the filming we were unable to film enough footage to help establish the scene better, but this in itself has been a learning experience and helped me in my general camera skills, such as in other classes where another film I shot has worked very well.
