Film sequence evaluation. (without pictures)
For our neo-noir film, we decided to focus on the genre of Thriller/Mystery but we got a few ideas from the popular television series ‘Skins’ also. We didn’t specifically base our project on a particular film but we were inspired by films such as: ‘Mean Streets’ (Martin Scorsese 1973.) There is a scene in the film where the camera is continually focused on Harvey Kietel, using close up steady cam to follow his movements through the room; we took and developed this idea in our film when the protagonist is moving through the house bearing her surroundings.
As I took the role of Sound in our group, I felt I needed to create a creepy, un-nerving feel to go with the lost and confused girl wandering around. I started off with faded in music, (Aqualung - Good Times Gonna Come) staying quiet throughout her exploration of the house and dipping in volume when other sound effects came in such as the phone off its hook and the tap dripping. I thought the use of these odd sounds would coincide with the eerie feel that we were trying to portray as they are both quite unusual sounds and shots to have. The sound of the phone comes in when the camera angle switches to the girl at the hallway door, we then decided to have a single shot of the phone hanging loose, meanwhile the phone sound effect gets louder. The camera switches back to her and the phone noise quietens into the background. She then enters the kitchen and we get a shot of the tap dripping, which usually wouldn’t feel scary, but by putting in an echo effect and dimming the surrounding light made it much less homely and ordinary.
To create the echo effect of the tap dripping I used ‘Final Cut Express’ which I had never used or even heard of beforehand. I thought the echoing worked as it creates an unsettling and empty feeling, which goes well as she is essentially alone, apart from the unconscious people surrounding her. I carried on the tap sound as she stayed in the kitchen, and then switched it back to the phone as she walked back into the hallway, keeping the sound dimmed in the background, all the time the background music still playing quietly. From the shot of the girl putting on her shoes, all sound effects stop and it is just the non-diagetic music playing. Right from the beginning I had the idea of making the girl run away from something, but not explaining to the audience what from. I knew that I wanted to have quiet but effective music in the background, getting louder as she began to run. I am really pleased with the way this worked out, as I managed to get the timing of the music getting louder and more intense just as she begins to run, and then having it go back to normal volume when she slows her pace down again.
I had the problem of knowing what backing music to add in, as we weren’t allowed to use Copyrighted music and I could not find anything that sounded remotely like what I had planned. I came to the conclusion that I would edit one of my song choices, so I cut parts of the song which I felt were appropriate, using ‘Garageband.’ The piano sound which I used for the beginning and ending was only a very short part of the song and so I had to loop it, which took some effort and time as it never quite fit perfectly. I also had trouble making the louder part of the song fit in and so I spent a long time cutting and swapping parts around to make it sound how it does.
Some of our ideas for the film had to be changed, for example: Originally I was planning on using the song ‘Mt Eden – Sierra Leone’ for our soundtrack but when I came to cutting and editing it, it didn’t sound how I had hoped and so I changed the song to ‘Aqualung – Good times gonna come.’ Another problem we faced was that we didn’t film the whole thing in one go and the actress we used wasn’t available to film again so we had to improvise and use someone else. This caused us a lot of problems as we didn’t want to make it obvious the character had changed so we had to completely re-think the ending to our film. I previously had the idea of having her running and constantly looking behind her, but not letting the audience know what’s there. She’d then stop and curl in a ball and the camera would zoom in and focus on her eyes, and she’d look up frightened, then it would all go black. I thought this would be a very interesting and effective way of ending it, as it would link in to the beginning where it is focusing on her eyes when she wakes up. Obviously, because we couldn’t film the second actresses face we had to alter it. We also only had two people in our group, so had a lot more work to do, but I also think a smaller group has its advantages as we had less people to agree/disagree with about how it should look.
Overall, I think that despite the problems that occurred, I am very pleased with our finished film and I had a lot of fun making it.
Ashleigh Stevens. 918 words.
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