U-20 FILM EXTRACT: Reflective Analysis on our Film

Monday 2 March 2009

Reflective Analysis on our Film

For our group film I took on the role as director. As director you take on the responsibility of the general making of the film. A good director listens to the other members of the group and takes on board their views and constructive criticism. I felt I coped with this micro element well and I made a positive impact on the rest of the group. When being director you sometimes can find yourself taking charge of everything as you feel that is what is expected of you. However I thought it was important that the entire group felt they could have just as much say in the film as I did as it is a group coursework project, not just mine. My actions in the role of director were substantial enough to get the film finished yet I was disappointed with the outcome of the film. If I were given a second chance in this role I believe I should be a lot more forceful with my group. We should have gone out again to re-shoot but because I didn’t pressure the group into doing so we never did. The role I played didn’t stop after we had shot the film, I had to make further decisions when we were editing. I did however make sure that Bella, Esther and Alice had an equal choice in what we edit/ change etc. Another job in my role was to make sure that we all worked as a team throughout the coursework. I think above anything we did this extremely well. Every person in the group was eager and enthusiastic throughout the film.

The genre of our film was decided almost immediately. The whole group felt that the most rewarding film would be a horror film. Firstly we thought it would benefit us if we put our ideas onto paper. There were many good ideas collected on paper but some of they would be too hard to develop into a film as we didn’t have sufficient enough money/ resources to make it. We decided upon a short sequence that would be a penultimate scene in the film. It shows three girls being abducted by a serial rapist in the middle of the night. One by one they go missing without a trace. The audience never actually sees the killer and this is intentional. It makes the sequence mysterious and the killer unique from the rest of the characters. We also wanted the killer to be unidentifiable. The aim of our sequence was to give a brief example to the audience what this particular killer was all about. This scene would have been taken from the part in the film just before he gets caught by the police. The audience may have been repulsed by the killer’s actions. Our aim was that they felt disturbed and this would then lead them to be terrified. With the genre we chose we you may expect some blood and gore, however we didn’t want to show this as the killers actions after he had kidnapped the girls were supposed to be secretive.

Throughout our filming and editing we encountered many problems such as finding a suitable time when would all be free to film and finding the best place to film. However these were just minor problems. One of the biggest problems we were faced with was casting. We had cast the roles weeks in advance to filming so that everyone knew what to wear and say etc. but unfortunately on the day of filming one of the cast members was unable to participate in the filming which meant we had to find someone else last minute. This effected us greatly as the only person we able to get was male, meaning that Alice, who was the camerawoman, had to then take on the female role that was missing. This had an impact on the whole group and film itself. The film was then shot in a way we didn’t particularly want it to be but we had no other option. After we ironed over this problem we hit another. Due to the fact our film was a horror film we thought to make it even scarier we would film it in the dark. We thought we were equipped enough with a large torch but we underestimated the strength of it. We started to shoot and found that the ending was just too dark and we were not able to see anything that we shot. This was a huge disappointment as we knew we only had one day left until the deadline, which meant we were unable to re-shoot. So we kept filming that night and just hoped that when we returned to college the following day it would be suitable. It was still dark when uploaded to the Mac but lighter than we thought it would be.

Being director i had to decide what I thought people should be wearing. I decided we should all wear the lightest colours we could if we were going to be filming at night so they would show up on camera. This turned out to be the best plan as had we of worn any darker colours we would not have bneen caught on camera at all! All three girl roles wore stilletto heels. This was a very
successful idea, as when we ran away from the killer the camera picked up the sound from the heels. This made the whole scene alot more effective and realistic. The audience can then picture themselves with the girls.

I have included some clips of our sequence that i felt were whether good or bad.

Clip 1

I have chosen to show this clip as it is a perfect highlight of how blurred/distorted the camerawork was. We found this throughout the whole film and this if anything is the best clip of the film in terms of quality. The only light we had was the light coming from the cars and street lamps. In some respect this was effective and made it look more realistic. But we were annoyed that we were unable to get better quality footage. The other reason that this part of the sequence is dissapointing is because the person who filmied this part was not someone in our group, meaning they didnt really understand what we were aiming to acheive.

Clip 2

This clip is still blurred but it helps make this clip more effective and mysterious. I like the contrast of the white coat and the black background. We thought that it would be better if we all wore light coloured clothes, such as white and yellow so they would stand out in the black night. This clip shows the first og the three girls getting snatched from the rest of the group, she is further behind than them making it easier for the kidnapper to capture her. This particular part of the scene was filmed well and did look very effective. The lighting was an issue but we used this disadvantage to our advantage.

Labels: aliss

posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 03:54

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