Monday 21 March 2011

Class feedback

After receiving our class feedback, we found that the positive aspects of our film were mainly:

  • The use of black and white lighting whilst showing the body
  • Effective soundtrack fitting well with the atmosphere
  • Good production company logo
  • Good use of micro elements such as cinematography 
  • Good experimentation with credits 
  • Good use of costume to fit in with the narrative and location
The majority of our negative feedback were points like:

  • Could improve on titles to fit the thriller conventions 
  • Shaky Camera at certain points 

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Monday 14 March 2011

Final Thriller Film

Our thriller film is now finished. In order to complete the film from it's last stage, we took on board the comments that our fellow peers put to us. They said that we needed to make our title sequences longer and also we needed to make the lighting in our clips darker in order to provide a more eery feel so that it would add to the thriller conventions. We also had to change the music so that the beat kicked it when the girls body is displayed on the screen. Another constructive criticism that we got was that the title clip for our fill, Rake, was in the wrong position and that the colour and font weren't appropriate. We then researched some better, more effective fonts and changed the background colour to black and the font colour to white. This made the title page stand out and look more like a thriller film. After changing these minor problems, our film was complete.

Thursday 10 March 2011

Plan of action

Taking points from our feedback, to improve our opening sequence we could:
  • Make our credits longer
  • Change the order of the shots to make it more chronological
  • Vary the lighting used to create more of an atmosphere
  • Make our music fit our images precisely 

Feedback for our roughcut

EDITING:
  • Smooth editing
  • Effective use of black and white and flickering motions.
  • Could be slightly more chronological
SOUND:
  • Very good use of sound effects on the production logo
  • The drums could create more effect if they came in when the first shot of the girl is shown
CAMERAWORK:
  • Point of view shots of characters
  • Canted angle created sense of distortion
  • Good use of varied shots and techniques eg panning, and used effectively creating mystery of characters and themes
MISE-EN-SCENE:
  • Location, props and clothes all link together.
  • No shot showing us the location before hand
  • Male character seemed to have no understanding of why he was using his prop
  • Lighting was all one tone, could have varied this a bit more to create more of a mood and atmosphere
TITLES
  • Credits were good, great use of font and effects
  • Could of lasted longer
THRILLER CONVENTIONS:
  • Based around a murder which fits well with a thriller 

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Sound Analysis

Look at a clip from the Descent on youtube.

1. watch it without the sound:
How does it make you feel/ what effect do the images have?
The clip without sound doesn't really have a profound effect on us, the images in the clip made us feel slightly on edge. We felt it was not as enticing as a clip would be with sound, even though the images were disturbing it was not clear when the real climax's were as this is usually highlighted by a climax in the music.

2. Watch the clip with the sound, what is the effect now? how different is it?
The clip with sound had a much bigger impact on us, the sound enabled us the opportunity to realise when the climax was about to happen i.e. the scary shots where the crawlers appeared due to the build up of the sound, it built-up tension leading up to the scary moments which put us on the edge of our seats.

3. Now you have seen the effect the sound has, how important do you think sound is? What type of feelings will you try and create through sound?
Now that we have seen the two clips with and without sound, we realise that sound is vital in building up a desired atmosphere i.e. scary. In our own thriller film we will incorporate sound to accompany our different images. For example, when the farmers follow the dogs to the dead girl in the field, the music will climax so that the audience are aware that something scary is going to happen.