In this essay I will be looking at the evaluation of my film extract that I have made in my group called 'Final Dreams' we looked at the fantasy genre and found that we gained inspiration from films like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and a darker film like ‘Donnie Darko’. I will look at the elements that help to provoke a response from the audience using the micro-elements. My role in this project was as the editor this role involves changing or ‘editing’ the shots to make them look better and also to rearranging them into the right order.
Our film extract covers the sub-genre of teen-fantasy, this changes the way that the story develops, the extract then fits into the familiar characteristics of its sub-genre. The micro-elements that this genre effects the most is the camerawork, mise-en-scene and editing. Starting with camerawork; this is effects the way that the director and cameraman may shoot the scene and which angles are taken for example using a shot like the shot below which uses the rule of thirds; this is used to make a better shot because you can divide the shot up (like the green lines)
Shot of 'Final Dreams'
The second element that is effected is mise-en-scene, what the characters wear; fantasy tends to have weird and abnormal clothing with unnatural backdrops, but with ours we started off in more normal clothing but as there is a transition near the end where our main character falls into another world and she goes from wearing coloured clothes to black and white clothing which works well because it make clear that something has happened between the two shots.
Being the editor made me take a big part in the narrative of the story because I was that put the final order of the story, which meant that I had control over that part. Probably the most effected of the elements is editing this is because you can use filters a lot more to show that something is happening. I achieved my editing using a program called 'Final Cut Express' which is a top quality program that is mainly used by amateur-pro filmers and is a great home editing software.
'Final Cut Express' Screenshot
The other members also had a big role in the development of the narrative take for example the sound; this sets a musical timeline that we then fitted the video to. So our sound man changed the narrative without really knowing it because as I edited I was fitting clip to the music which then changed the order of the footage. The soundtrack also helped to make sure that film fitted into the sub-genre by using the right soundtrack that held suspense while toying with the audience on what may happen next The cameraman developed the way that everything that was shot and so I could only make the extract with what I was given but I had a lot of footage to experiment with. I did work closely with our director to try and see if we could improve on what we had, this worked well because she gave me ideas and I then improved them with my own little twist.
Are group gave ourselves a very good and simple plan that we all followed to achieve our end target we tended to stick to what we were planning to do that lesson and there wasn't really any real problems that accord, because we worked quickly and were efficient so we finished ahead of the deadline.
I wanted the audience to want to get to know our main character and feel sorry for her at the end because she was lead into a different place where she is all alone, on all of the shots I upped the contrast; this gave a bold effect to the picture. And with our spirit character, I wanted the audience to see this person as strange and not really from this world so I added a higher contrast to the shots while darkening the brightness to make it different from our female character. I also added audio filters to the sounds, I added echo to make the movements of the male more unnatural.
The only feedback we got from the video so far was that some of our shots could have been in a different order, but we thought that they looked really good as they were but apart from this comment there wasn’t much to say about it apart from the fact it came off really well and fitted into the genre really well and left you wanting to know what happened.
Really my technical skill helped me to achieve a high standard of editing because I have worked on many other projects like this one I was able to take my knowledge from them and import that into this project. As a person I am really creative and I love to stretch my abilities and I found I could do the editing really easily there wasn’t any boundaries that I got stuck on either.
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.
Our film group consisted of 4 people, me (Adam Arnold), Lloyd, Tim and Vonnie. Each of our group had a different role: Sound – me Camera – Vonnie Director – Tim Editing – Lloyd
After getting our roles sorted out, we than found some examples of our given roles to post on the blog (U-19).
We spent the first few lessons deciding on the genre of our film; we eventually decided to do a fantasy film, very similar to Alice in Wonderland and Pan’s Labyrinth, which ended up as the basis for our film. I feel that this process went well compared to other groups.
After deciding what genre of film it would be, we set about designing a storyboard; the first step of this was to decide what scene of the film we would like to do, unanimously we had felt the “change world” scene was the one to do.
We than set about designing a storyboard, we decided to end our scene when she entered the new world, and start it just before the arrival of “the man in the hat”. This was than finished overnight by Vonnie, we spent the next lesson converting this into an animated video, we also had made a mood board, a mood board is a set of pictures that show us the mood of the movie we aimed to create, I made a piece of music to go with this as it gave me practice on garage band, this music was slow and eerie, as a basis for what I believed the piece to need, it worked well, but I had to see our film before I could decide on music.
Here came the biggest issue, finding the location.
We than discussed locations to go and shoot our film, and we decided to shoot just outside of Harston, down Button End, at about 2o’clock
Tim and I were lucky in this situation, because it was Tim’s house and general vicinity that we were shooting. I was lucky because my family grew up in that area and knew it well; therefore, it felt right to do it there.
Due to this being a slightly isolated location, Vonnie arrived 25 minutes late, this was caused by several factors, these included the location being difficult to find and the public transport running late, because Vonnie had managed to get the actors, but they had to come from far away.
We finally went out to start filming, this went well, we only had two different locations and they were close together and we had finished in a couple of hours, we seemed to work together perfectly fine.
Next lesson we than started piecing the clips together to make our rough cut, I believe this went well, but cannot be sure because at the time, me and Lloyd were starting on the music for the piece, this had to be a slow and simple. After some consideration we had decided that we needed extra footage, so Tim spent that night getting some extra footage. (the following is in the words of Tim, taken directly from the blog) that consisted mainly of footage, walking up to the roof top, the scenery around that particular roof. I took an estimated five minute of footage there. As well as that we choose that should also go down to the fields, to where we shot the last few scenes in our rough cut where the girl falls to. I was too shoot some scenes where you could see the surrounding area, so that we could incorporate it into the final rough cut. I spent another five minutes taking footage of that surrounding area. On my way back from collecting this footage, I heard some very clear and loud early morning birds, so I put my camera to record outside my house, for about two minutes to gain some good clear wildlife sound, the actual imagery that I recorded, would not be of use to the group as it does not work with anything else that we had caught on tape.
The sound of the piece was a simple, linear piece, this consisted of only a few instruments, mainly being Piano and Harp, this music was portrayed to make the scene creepier, and on this shot the music works well, the harps have just come in the tune with the piano, and this causes an eerie feel to the film,this point is also the "start of the change of worlds" and the music was supposed to emphasize this.
We than spent the next lesson converting and uploading the footage to use in the rough cut, but due to the size of the footage only managed to upload the bird noise footage that lesson, but the footage did fit quite nicely into our cut.
We than made a second rough cut that never managed to get posted on the blog; this had a few changes made to it, such as less shaky shots and again we agreed that there were still several improvements to be made.
Our next task was to come up with a name for our piece, some of our examples were:
Rabbit The crack in the line Final Dreams
Eventually we agreed on Final Dreams as the title for our piece, because it has a deep meaning, and has more to do with the film than we revealed.
We got to work on our final piece and finished that only just in time, we had to leave the lesson whilst the film was uploading, and it didn’t upload to the blog properly.
I feel that this went well overall, owing to having good, willing, hardworking members of the group and certain amounts of luck.
Below are some screenshots of the music in development
Timothy Pearson's evaluation of short film sequence:
Our sequence is set near the beginning of the film where our main character interacts with a character from the fantasy type world, and then the clip ends as she falls into the fantasy world.
Genre/sub genre has influenced the decisions we have made by giving us an insight into how our genre (fantasy) has been used in other films, so that we learned the best way to portray ours, for example our clip from our film is based on an 'Alice in wonderland' type world but a sort of 'Pan's Labyrinth' type plot. An example of this is where you get the part where the man in the hat appears, he is a kind of representation of the 'mad Hatter' from 'Alice in Wonderland'.
As the director I have developed the narrative by listening to everyone in the group, as well as contributing my own ideas. I have aimed to make everything run smoothly so that we would not be set back by anything, as the group decided to do the shooting in my village, I had to make sure that they all knew where my house was, how to get there and what time to be there. This was quite effective as we all knew where we were going to shoot, we had all the equipment with us, and everything ran smoothly with the shooting. The only real problem was was, that each member of the group arrived at different times.
I worked with the editor to help him, when using the editing software keep to the storyboard, but also to change anything that we realized doesn't work as effectively, an example of this was the shots where you get the girl looking over the edge of the roof, at first it was quite plain that she looked over the edge however it was not the most stable of shots, we placed a second clip of the same view on top, so that it looked as though in the girls point of view shot she was seeing double image, I worked with the sound man, as we created the sound track to fit the actual clip by contributing my own audio files, as well as helping in the recording of a voice over. Lastly I helped the person behind the camera by scouting for locations we could use for filming, and by supplying a HD camera for good quality footage.
As we completed the our set task, we change our plans in many forms for example, when it came to shooting the footage, we changed our locations so that we would all be able to get there, we decided to use a better quality camera shot for certain shots to stand out. When it came to editing this footage we decided we did not have enough so we went back to re shoot certain aspects of clip.
Lastly when we had all the footage and when editing we had make some changes to what was going on in the storyboard, to create a better, visual image.
I wanted to the audience to respond positively to the Directing of the sequence and locations, with the use of Mise-en scene, as they both show the required specifications for the scenes and they work well with the actors, in portraying the story.
The props we used also shows the audience the type of film that it as it gives a strange sense to the film, having something peculiar in an average place. The costumes also emphasize to the audience positive directing as the costumes help portray the scene. for example the clothes that the man wears, are weird, having a large brimmed hat and a waist coat. The performance all together, shows good directing because it holds everything together making the audience understand what type of film this is.
The feedback that we received told us that the editing and sound were well done and did what was expected. Viewers commented on how they recognized that it had an 'Alice in wonderland' type theme. However, some people said that the music was to based on the piano and needed more variety of instruments, we received comment on how the camera work was rough in places and could be improved. These comments have told me that we edited our clip quite successfully to produce a good and understanding storyline, however there are some aspects that could be improved.
I think my technical skills have enable me to make the creative choices, as I have used my camera to take extra footage for our group so that we would not have to repeat the day shooting the majority of our shots, this put our group at an advantage of having lots of footage giving us a lot of options to go by. In class we needed an audio dub, the room wasn't quiet, so that we couldn't record. Luckily I had my laptop and the required software so that we could record the dub somewhere quieter, without any interruptions.
To conclude I believe that we have as a group worked hard at producing our final clip to high standards. Thinking about what it is about and what we where trying to achieve to give it a weird 'Alice in Wonderland' type feel, in which I think we have accomplished this in not only the visual aspects of the clip but in the sound as well.
Good use of angles sloppy panning good use of close up
Mise-en-scene
good when she changes clothes guy was well dressed and mysterious not noticeable that she fell into a new world good use of setting and shots good costumes
Editing good panning mental people? very good editing liked double vision
Sound
Trippy soundtrack good use of dreany voice filter nice use of Diagetic sound (birds) little bit linear (only piano tunes)
