Our film extract was about a girl who was discovering her gift of being able to hear people’s thoughts and the genre was a psychological thriller. This influenced the decisions we made because with a psychological thriller, you have to be careful with what type of sound you use. We used digetic sound in the form of people’s voices, but we also used non-digetic sound as the music playing over what was happening. We had to be careful with what non-digetic sound we used, as we didn’t want the music to sound too upbeat, and we wanted it to help create the tense atmosphere and help build up the tension. The genre also effected how we used the camera as well. We thought it would be more affective if we didn’t always have the camera in one steady position so we decided to, when appropriate, use different ways of using the camera. An example of this would be when Sarah picks up her phone, and we turn the camera upside down, this is because Sarah was turning upside down so we thought it would be good for the camera to do this as she did it.
In this project I was responsible for the cinematography. I developed the narrative through this by using different camera angles, and also using a range of ways to film the narrative for example moving the camera in ways that are suitable to the mood, like in the shot of all the people walking down the street, and the camera is moving frantically. This would help the audience understand the mood that the main character is feeling and create tension; this is the effect with the audience i was hoping for with the use of the cinematography in our sequence.
To get to the narrative that we decided in our group, we all came up with different suggestions of what we could genre we could do and what the narrative of it would involve. We all agreed on doing a psychological thriller as we all thought we could do this at a good standard better than something like a comedy genre. As we carried out the film extract we didn’t change our plans of what the narrative of it was, we made some changed as we went along when filming, for example what places we would film at or the camera angle we used, but nothing that made a big change to what we were doing.
The feedback we received on our extract gives the impression that the things we did well included the use of sound, and the use of camera angles and good editing. However it shows that we needed to pay more attention to the details, such as cutting out things out of the picture that made it look a bit messy. Also possibly more attention should of been paid to the steadiness of the camera when shooting. I think these little details could have made a big difference to the overall appearance of it and would have made it look a lot neater.
I learnt a lot in technical skills in this project. However I wouldn’t say that they hindered being able to make the creative choices i wanted to because i had other people in my group who knew a bit more than me, so they could teach me and I learnt new things which enabled me to make more of the creative choices I wanted.
A clip that particularly inspired me was the Spiderman clip shown in our blog where he gets his powers. This inspired me because as I was working with the cinematography aspect, I found that this clip showed a really good range of camera angles and I feel that it uses the camera really well to create the mood for the audience that is intended for this clip. I also feel that this clip has good non-digetic sound and the music when he realises he may have some sort of gift really helps the audience understand what he might be feeling. This clip also helped me get ideas of what sort of sound might sound good with our extract and how important it was that the music fit in with the mood of the main character with the particular scene that was being carried out.
I did struggle with some camera angles. We wanted to use the vertigo effect in our extract, but when we tried to do it it didn’t come out as we planned and looked messy because we didn’t have the right equipment to carry it out effectively so we didn’t use it. When Mel and Sarah are on the phone I thought that a good camera angle to use was to close up on Sarah when she realises Mel might be able to hear her thoughts. I think that this helped the audience realise the tension. We also decided to use quite a lot of close ups of the eyes in our extract. We decided
Our film extract categorises under the genre of Supernatural drama and subgenre’s under adventure and thriller . With these mixed subgenres this made some of our pre planning decisions both hard and easy to make, for us to create the final look for our project. Our film extract relates back to movies such as Spiderman, Wanted, Twilight, What Lies Beneath, Jumper, and The Sixth Sense .
These are a range of different genres and stories, but all deal with the same aspects of supernatural or superpowers. This is were the main protagonist have a special gift (or a sixth sense) that they discover they have and learn how to work and control it. Our extract we have chosen is at the beginning of a film, but not the opening, before the synopsis unfolds into an adventure or thriller. With such an open and imaginative genre we were influenced to be as creative and as weird as could. With such a mysterious and supernatural genre you can have unrealistic circumstances and bizarre shot types. Taking on the role of director I was able to direct my other team members to explore the ideas I gave them as far as they wanted to come up with a visually good final cut. One example of this would be the 380 degree turning shot of the main character on the bench and the zip pan shot in amongst the crowd to get the overwhelming feel of the many voices pouring into her head.
These shots aren’t shots you’d find in your typical romantic or children films, they are very non naturalistic. Our genre influenced us to try out shots we wouldn’t immediately choose in normal filming. Another shot we took was agaion very abstract but has been seen in classice for example Rebel Without a cause -
By taking on the role of director, one of the things I needed to do was develop and explore the main character and her character. In our group we went through how the main character’s “gift” affects her mentally and physically and how we can show this in our film making. We did some research with films like what lies beneath, where Michelle Pfeiffer’s character grows more and more distressed due to the problem of no one believing her“Gift”. We concentrated on showing this distress in our main character by shots of her eyes and hands becoming more fidgety and worried.
There is a clip in the spiderman movie of Peter Parkers eyes a her survays his new powers and how they effect his senses and sight.
Another area I worked on with my other group members to develop was the Narrative. Together we came up with an overall synopsis to help us come up with our extract narrative and then the genre –
“Our basic plot for our film is based on a 17 year old girl who begins to read the thoughts of everyone around her. An unknown man contacts the girl by every means of communication possible but never in person, he seems to know everything about her and her gift. She begins to think she is insane and attempts to find the unknown man to find out more about her gift and why he knows so much about it. While trying to track him down she overhears the thoughts of stranger whose thoughts disturb her leading to her attempts to help and save them. This leads to a disastrous conclusion.”
We adapted and changed a few things as we went along due to improvised filming of certain crowd scenes and close ups. As well as director, with my other group members we all contributed to the editing. After shooting a good 15 minuets worth of footage, we realised we would need a lot of editing to make everything sync in time and look like she was hearing voices in her head. Another thing I came across in editing was with filming the voice overs of people we had to mix and match between the voices and images to suit the right on screen character. One major thing we decided to change was to add a non diagetic soundtrack to our extract. We had decided not to add this, but myself and the sound editor played around with some ideas, I as director came up with the conclusion that it needed music to add a more intense feel. Our overall feedback was very good; one thing that was questioned was why we added the static sound effect. After analysing our piece as director I wanted to add this effect to represent how the main character has always heard the thoughts of people around her but not clear enough to make it out or understand Them. By adding the static it showed that at this point of her life she was finally tuning into it like a radio. This suggested that we didn’t make this decision to add it very clear, but also that it is an under analysis that needs to be thought about. We got good response to the use of sound, for creating the “hearing voices part”, this worked well with my decision to edit it like this.
The use of Micro elements in our piece helped a great deal to develop the narrative and embrace the audience’s response to our sequence. For example the use bizarre of camera shots, the tempo of the editing and the sound effects of the diagetic and non diagetic sound. Gives the audience the feel they are experiencing it from the characters point of view. As the Director, I was responsible for overseeing the creative aspects of the film, developing the vision and carrying it out, directing what tone it should have on the audience, organising the crew/cast and approving the other micro elements carried out my other group members. Directing can be seen as a kind of storytelling, I developed this to help and enable the choices made in our film extract and create a successful visual narrative.
For our short film we chose the genre of a psychological thriller, it is based on a girl who has been given the gift of reading peoples minds, but she doesn’t really take it as a gift ,as she soon finds out what people including her close friends truly think of her. The filming was done in Cambridge city centre, and then a bit was filmed in an average family home, this made the film more realistic, as it was filmed in everyday places, that we could all relate too. The opening scene is black, then there are some crackling sounds in the background, and a tape sounds like its rewinding, then the girl says, “I always new there was something wrong with me” referring to her so called ‘gift’ then the first actual shot you see is of her face, just looking directly into the camera., this was a good opening shot because its concentrating solely on her face, so its like getting an insight into her mind, instead of doing a full body shot, and not really concentrating on anything specific..
This is a good facial shot because your thoughts are concentrated on his face and his expression and what he may be thinking, as you can see one of the shots from our film is practically identical.
Near to the beginning of the film the girl is sitting on a bench, in the background people are just walking past... she is looking around everywhere, then there is a 360 shot of her, but the shot blurs. As if it’s in the mind of the girl and it seems very messed and jumbled, much like the shot itself. This particular shot is very effective I think because of how its makes it seem so busy with all her thoughts. When filming the scenes where the girl was reading people’s minds, the people were filmed in secret, so they had no idea that they were actually on camera, so they just acted natural, they were completely oblivious to the camera which made it more effective. And it made it easier to add voice over’s to all of the people, because of all the blank expressions you could say anything. The scene of the busy street is very effective, because of the movement of the camera is darting around everywhere; it gives the illusion that she is very stressed and panicky because she can read everybody’s thoughts. With all the voice over’s all merged into one and all jumbled up works well with the camera shots, because it darts frantically everywhere, concentrating on the public.. It is sped up to make it seem like the public are in a rush, and its all just one big blur... This photo is like the clip in the film where the camera is darting around on a busy street blurring the people, this is effective, because its such a busy shot, there’s not much space for anything, much like in the characters mind, she cant think of anything other than other peoples thoughts.
I would edit the next scene because the phone dialling doesn’t fit in with the clip, because you will notice that the girl is typing slower than the noise effect. The next scene of the girl’s friend on the bed is very effective because as she flips over on her bed, the camera moves round with her, making this a better shot because she is always the right way up with the camera, because of the flipping of it. I think the feedback we got from the rest of our class was very positive, the majority of it was good comments, for example “liked the busy street shots and the storyline.” Some of the negative comments were “shaky camera movement,” we could of used a stand., but one it is inconvenient in such a busy city centre, and two the shaky camera movements adds to the effect of her messed up “shaky” thoughts. The storyline was actually quite a simple but effective one, it is sort of like the film “What women want” with Mel Gibson, who also hears the thoughts of others around him, but instead of seeing it as a gift he sees it as a curse, much like our character, but What women want is a romantic comedy instead of a psychological thriller, but it still uses the same concept of being able to read minds.
This is a picture from the scene of the phone call where the camera rotates round with the girl, it is much like the shot with a different girl.
Overall I am very happy with the outcome of the film, if I were to change anything, it wouldn’t be anything major, just small things like the dialling of the phone, and maybe the music, but I am very pleased with it, and I think it has been portrayed in a very effective way. The group seemed to work well together, and I have picked up more skills and understandings of good camera angles from this. This is a good picture of eyes; much like one of the shots in the film, by concentrating on the eyes it makes you think that the person is deep in thought or concentrating on something themselves.
The genre of our film extract was based on a psychological thriller, as a groupwe decided to use this genre as you can use a range of camera angles and sound effects to fit this genre. Before filming we came up with a number of camera shots that we would want to use whilst filming, we looked at various clips from films where they used point of view shots, this was so when the protagonist in our extract was looking around we would use a point of view shot. We looked at a scene from Spiderman in which they used this,
We, in our extract then took ideas from this shot and used it in our extract when the main character first realised her gift for reading minds.
We also looked at a scene from Spiderman where the main character first develops his powers, in this scene we looked at the close up of his eyes.
We wanted to recreate this in our extract as it would show the audience how the character is feeling at that point in the film.
As i was the sound editor, i looked at soundtracksfrom different genres of films but mainly thrillers, i looked at the opening to 'Halloween', this uses a range of different sound effects to build up a soundtrack. Originally, we wanted to use non diegetic sounds to build sounds in the protagonists head rather tan using a soundtrack, which would have created the effect of her tuning her mind into reading peoples thoughts. We looked at a clip from 'Twilight' where the character reads minds, we did this as we didn't no how we were going to portray the protagonist hearing the thoughts of others. In the clip we looked at, the character says the thoughts of the people around him out loud, whereas we wanted to portray the character hearing the thoughts in her head rather than saying them.
After we filmed our extract and had edited it, we looked at using non diegetic sounds such as radio tuning and walkie talkie tuning to create the effect that the character could feel her head being tuned into the thoughts of others around her. After doing this i realised that by putting a soundtrack onto the extract would enhance the tension throughout the clip, i used a range of sounds and effects on top of each other which built tension but also showed how her mind was not the same as a normal persons.
I created the soundtrack by using non diegetic sounds from 'Garageband', by overlapping sound effects and also using instrumental music, this showed how the extract was building up to the end of the scene and also what the main character could hear in her head.
When using the point of view shot we quickened up the music, this was to show the character becoming more alarmed at her gift, we also wanted to create the effect of her hearing lots voices at the same time to create confusion, we used diegetic sounds to create this, we recorded various people saying different things, we then overlapped them to show that she was hearing all of the thoughts of the people around her.
Overall, our film extract had everything we intended, we have used a good range of camera shots and music, and have edited the extract well so it all fits together, we used some clips twice to create the effect of repitition, we did this so it would create confusion as this is what the character would be feeling in the scene. We also built up non diegetic and diegetic sounds to create different illusions of what was going to happen, so the audience wouldnt know what would happen next. If we were able to use any shot we could, we could have used a vertigo shot, we tried to create this effect while filming with the camera but it didn't work that well. If we could have used any equipment we could have used a more varied range of sound effects and used different effects with the camera. However, the extract worked well.
Our basic plot for our film is based on a 17 year old girl who begins to read the thoughts of everyone around her. An unknown man contacts the girl by every means of communication possible but never in person. He seems to know everything about her and her gift, she begins to think she is becoming insane and attempts to find the unknown man to find out more about her gift and why he knows so much about it.Whilst trying to track him down she overhears the thoughts of a stranger whos thoughts disturb her, this leads to attempts to help and save him, a disasterous conclusion follows...
Our extract - Where the main character realises and tests her "gift", this is the beginning/middle of a film.
Feedback
1) Actors unbelievable- members of public Busy street shot-very good. Liked the speeding up effect Liked the hearing thoughts of members of the public Didn't like how it slowed down after the public scenes.Would have been better to put the titles between the fast paced bit and the slow paced bit.
2) Overall story line is good Good variety of camera shots 360 shot of lisette was a good idea but could have been better Editing was good throughout And music works well with the clip.
3) Good shot types and variety of angles Busy street shot very effective Start of the phone call camera shot was good Zooming in to faces and hearing thoughts very effective "Hot dog" was only the bun
4) Good use of sound effects Liked town scene and special effects Storyline- interesting Shakey camera work during bedroom scenes Could of cut shots of computer to make everything a bit tidier Good locations.
5) Love the fast camera shots/movement/editing Music fits brilliantly with fast shots Loved the crackly sound Turning of the camera when she turns over on the bed-clever Liked the voices of others around her.
We have just finished our editing for our film extract and our very happy with our transitions. we had the challenge of making our opening clips for the extract look slightly bizarre and trippy, and we tried many different things to create this. One example of this would be the 360 degree shot of sophie, we edited this to make it look more weird by overlapping the same clip. this was effective as it gave the idea that she is overwhelmed with the voices and that they are coming from every angle with her in the middle.
Another major piece of editing we created was the zip Pan shot of a crowed high street, and focussing on the people. We did this pretty much just from filming but the
