Monday 6 April 2009

Main Task- Analysis

Our finished main task contains a soundtrack which resembles the time ticking away and the pace of the protagonist with the fast beat. This creates an atmosphere of action and suspense, where the audience would be unaware of what is to happen. The soundtrack fits in sync with the action on screen, for example when the titles come into the show the music slows down with the action. This gives the audience a chance to focus on the names of actors/actresses, to establish them with a specific character throughout the film.

As a group we struggled with sound the most as it caused some conflicts and for a long period we could not find the sounds that we were looking for. Some of the sounds we originally wished for could not be put into our finished piece, e.g the bell sounds for the church, however this was cleverly replaced with the ticking sound.

Another issue with our sound was the voice overs because they were difficult to complete in lessons with background noise and one of the voices is still slightly quiet however this could show the mysteriousness of our dark character.

The first sound of the birds sets a quiet scene, suddenly a thunder clap comes in as the protagonist runs which grabs the audience's attention and gets them straight into the action, creating suspense from the beginning. A strong beat is then introduced as the action speeds up with some diegetic ambient sounds in the background to create a sense of realism. As the protagonist heads nearer to the Church the pace of the non diegetic sound speeds up; building up the suspense. As the protagonist reaches his destination all non diegetic sound ends so that the speech can be heard clearly and set the scene from the rest of the film.

This is the first time I have seen everything together in perfect sync and the sound really fits the drama in this opening.

-Charlotte


Main Task Completed

We have now completely finished editing our main task; which can be viewed here.

You can also view a higher quality version from our skydrive; here.

Analysis
As detailed in the editing sections of our blog we kept in mind that at all times during our production certain rules had to be adhered to. We have already mentioned how we twice broke the 180 degree rule - both times deliberately - in order to create a sense of disorientation in the first instance and to demonstrate to the audience the vastness of the church and the Christianity it symbolised in the second.

We also consciously chose to produce the entire thing in wide screen in order to add to the cinematic and filmic qualities of the production and draw the audience's eyes and attention close in on the action. Additionally, we chose to create a black and white production as we felt that this effect would deliberately create a sense of tension and intrigue (not only into the reason for black and white film but also to the general plot of the film) as few films are shot in black and white nowadays and thus the our film would immediately stand out from the crowd to hopefully appeal to our target audience.

We also thought we should ensure that editing through the shots of the main character running should be fast paced and varied in order to keep the audience's attention for any length of time and create a sense of speed, excitement and confusion whilst conveying the character's adrenaline rush.

Evaluation

During the editing process we encountered both technical difficulties as well as having to deal with disagreements within the group but we feel that overall we have created a good main production piece and hope that our target audience will feel the same way as we do.

Over the coming weeks we'll be posting an analysis of questionnaire results as well as a full evaluation of our entire group activity and how we felt it went as well as an analysis of our final product.

- Rory

Why we chose to make our film opening black and white:

As well as the reasons Rory has stated above as to why the film is in black and white we also chose to do it because this opening sequence isn't actually chronologically the start of the film. It is a flash forward in time and we felt that by showing the opening in black and white, it would sub-consciously connote to the audience that this sequence isn't actually the start of the film. So if we were to have gone on filming, the rest of our film after this opening would have been in colour to show that this is now present time.

-Kim