Jack Barber's evaluation - sound

Film Sequence Evaluation

From watching the two minute film sequence that my group created, I am pleased with what we produced. We decided quite early on we wanted to do horror, around the same idea as ‘The Ring’ (Gore Verbinski) and ‘The Grudge’ (Takashi Shimizu). ‘The Grudge’ describes a curse that is born when someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage or extreme sorrow. The curse gathers in the place where that person died. Those who encounter this murderous supernatural force die and the curse is reborn repeatedly, passed from victim to victim in an endless, growing chain of horror. The following events are explained in their actual order (which differs from the order shown on film).

The micro-element I was responsible for was sound.

(Image of time line in Final Cut)

As we came up story, we found we need to look in more detail at the back-story of the antagonist to find the reason why she kills people. We came up with the story that she was abused when she was alive by her farther and her father’s friends until it pushes her to kill her self, but by ascendant her brother walks in who has nothing to do with her sister’s abuse. Sequence we have taken from the film is when we first see her. The major problem set before me was to create tension and I wanted the audience to be in confusion, should you be scared of this little girl? Or should you fell sorry for her? I found this was executed well in ‘Dark Water’ (Walter Salles) when they have a nursery rime sung by a little girl.

(Dark water Trailer)

I took this idea and used it but changed it to a music box that played when she

was close. To do this I used final cut to utter the volume so that the music box fades in and out at the right points. His helps build an understanding that the girl is just a chided which makes it scarier. Also, when you see the girl I used walkie-talkie static to help with the “Is she there” factor, this is used in ‘The Ring’ and I loved the idea of having static in the background to provide a super natural feel to the girl. Much like the music box I was able to fade it in and out smoothly when she appeared, on top of this I made the static loader when she was more in focus to emphasis on the supernatural element of the girl.

We had problems at one point getting the sound of the light switch, the sound didn’t come out right on the camera and there were no sound effects on final cut that works in the way I wanted, so I used a gunshot and cut it down (shown below)

Where the blue markers show where I cut the track, this was one of the smaller sounding gunshot so I cut the track down to that frame allowing for a sharp and jumpy light switch. The next step was to make sure I put the edited track in the right place where the lights go out to show the correlations between the sound and the visual effects.

The use of the rain and thunder rumble, gives it a classic horror film feel, hear a storm and you know something is going to happen. For this I layered the rain, thunder rumble and heavy wind to create the classic horror film setting. I wanted to put this in to create a close and damp setting. It also makes an isolated feel for the man working. It’s also dark outside which the sound track works so well with.

Also, I have used a heart beet for yet more tension, towards the end of the film this picks up towards the end of the film sequence to show how the character was reacting to what was going on. It’s used a lot in horror films and I think it’s a very good technique.

Though I am pleased with how the sounds track worked out. I still am not entirely happy with one scene. I tried to get a high pitched screech to make the audience realize that they are seeing something very shocking. What I ended up using was a subway train pulling into the station, the high pitched sound of the brakes; I speed up the track but 300% to make it sharper, but then the track became too small to fit over the scene, so I copied and pasted the track 3 times to fill the scene. Looking back I wish I had had more time to find the appropriate track to provide the feel I wanted.

To conclude I feel that the sound within our film extract was successful and built up tension, Feedback from viewers agree with this fact. I think Sound plays a key role in horror films, it builds up tension and helps portray to the advance that something bad is about to happen. I believe I was able to pull this off and would only change a few things which I have already discussed.

(full sound track layers)

Evaluation Final Draft Max Elgar Cinematographer

Evaluation – Max Elgar (Cinematographer) Film Studies AS

The extract begins with a medium long shot, framed on either side by the shadows of the barn door. This encourages feelings of detachment in the audience to begin with, setting them up to later become more empathetic towards the victim feeling his fear. The long shot is used at the beginning to allow for a feeling of the arrival at the scene, and a sense of something malevolent arriving at the scene. The shot is aesthetically pleasing, and the effect of the black barn doors was not a planned one, but once viewed on scene it was considered useful.


The second shot is a low angle shot of the victim climbing the ladder, this is to convey height and make the victim seem to have some power to begin with. This power is switched later in the scene with the antagonist.

The next shot shows the victim’s feet touch the floor. This shows that he has reached ground level and is therefore more vulnerable than he was at his elevated position previously. This is used to make him seem confident in his environment, yet more vulnerable.

The next shot is very different. As the music is heard, the camera is positioned close up on the victims eyes. This is very personal and helps the audience identify with the unease that the victim feels upon hearing a foreign noise in his environment. The close up allows for increased detail on the victims face also.


This shot is followed by an edited sequence of the barn doors and the antagonist. The shots are framed to suggest at the view of the victim (mid shot, in order to create a feeling of being advanced upon) and then to show his emotion (close up of shoulders/head)

The next shot is similar to the opening shot. It shows the barn doors on either side to make the victim seem smaller. This shot is used to suggest at the view of an outside intruder, and to show the intrusive darkness outside (personified in the antagonist). The doors are revealed as mundane when the victim produces a torch, this is a major device in the extract as it is used like a weapon to dispel the darkness. The torch is then shone on the doors and into the camera. This gives the audience a brief sense of relief as the darkness is dispelled and the camera is "dazzled", shedding light on the scene.

A stark contrast to this is generated when the barn lights go off. This shot is briefly visible in its entirety due to the lights being on, but whilst the victim is visible, his back is seen, making him seem vulnerable and suggesting the antagonist is already in the barn. When the lights go out a torch is visible, again portraying it as a weapon. The mid shot (closer than the previous) gives a sense of closing in on the victim.


The next shot is a close up of a hand slowly retracting from the light switch, generating a sense of ethereality, but also reality. This makes the audience fearful as the victim is in the dark with something ghostly, malevolent and real enough to be dangerous to him. The close up of the what the torch reveals shows what the victim would see in more detail for the audience, implying he did not see it properly and giving a sense of tension and fear as the victim may be ignorant of the danger.


The next shot is a tracking shot of the victim walking through the dark barn, the torch outstretched as a weapon, searching for light, or a source of the music. This suggests at the antagonist watching the victim. Very importantly it is at a high angle, making the victim seem very weak in comparison to the dangerous antagonist (the light could have been improved in this scene; this was done later through editing).



The next shot shows the victims feet in the background walking past the camera, and the antagonist's respectively, in the foreground, stalking the victim. This creates tension in the audience as it is made clear that the antagonist is closing in on the victim.


The following shot shows torch rising, again weapon-like. This shows the fear of the victim, and creates suspense. The showing of only the victims arm creates disembodiment.

The next sequence is a shock sequence at the moment the antagonist is first seen in her entirety. The close-ups of her face and eyes especially create fear and horror in the audience. The lighting on her face contrasted with the background, making her seem ghostly.


A sense of identification with the victim and therefore fear is generated in the audience following the shock sequence with a POV shot of the victim and a whip shot. This creates a sense of terror and a desire to run in the audience, realised in the victim’s actions.
(Whip Shot)


As the door closes, the POV shot switches to one of the antagonist's. This helps to create horror as the antagonist is not seen, nor her actions towards the victim. Her shadow is seen looming over the victim as the camera races towards him (a flaw being that the shadow was recognisably myself holding a camera if looked at closely).




Peer reactions:
The cinematography worked well to create the desired effects was “genuinely creepy”. The camera angles were smooth and didn’t over complicate or seem too forced.

Areas for improvement could include lighting and shot variety. As well as more detailed study of the footage on scene to correct any errors.

The technique of antagonist P.O.V shots is used in 28 days later to create shock, similarly to the extract:
7.00-7.05

In the Grudge similar techniques to ours are used, for example at 0.17 the antagonists hand is seen, as with our light switch shot. Also at the climax of this scene, the victim is unable to open a door, in a trapped feeling similar to ours.

Evaluation - Mollie Parker

My role in the making of this film was the director, meaning my main job during the making of it was to make sure the actors and mise en scene were all in the right place and doing what they were meant to be doing in order to achieve the desired final effect of the project.

The film genre our

group decided on was horror, a classic type of story line in which a supernatural, young girl antagonist is out to get people because of a dark history that surrounds the place at which she was killed. Films that I thought related to the type of idea that we had for our films included Poltergeist, The Grudge and Amytiville Horror. All three of these films had some kind of elements that I wanted to take and use within out film. Amytiville Horror was the one that struck me as the most similar to out film. The character “Jodie” in this fil

m (shown in the photo here) is not dissimilar to our girl antagonist in our one. I think that the look of this character in our short extract was a fairly important aspect of the filming part and as director I made sure that the girl who played our “Girl” had appropriate make-up, hair and costume so that she looked the part because when filming, one of the most important parts is to make what you’re filming believable to the audience.

So, firstly, our scene was all based in one location, a barn, which is believable as the victim in our film is a farmer. Because we were lucky that we had an actual working barn to use, there was plenty of equipment in the barn which added to the mise en scene and makes the whole scene much more believable. We also filmed at night, which wasn’t necessarily intentional, but because it was filmed on an afternoon in winter, this was fairly inevitable. However, I think this was only a good thing as it makes the scene work much better and gives the eerie, more cautious feel that this genre requires to work its best.

Although I obviously directed the whole of the film extract, there are a couple of shots that were slightly more problematic or important than others. Firstly, the close up shots of the victim’s face were particularly important to direct to a good standard, this is because there is very little else in the frame other than the actor’s face, the audiences attention is all on the facial expression and so it ha

s to be perfectly believable. There were several close up shots of the victims face, the first one was an extreme close up of just his eyes, this was fairly easy to direct, he just had look in another direction. The second close up of the victim was a confused expression which although w

as still not too challenging it was slightly more difficult hat just the turn of the eyes. However, later on in filming, the victim had to do a scared/shocked face after seeing the antagonist, this was much more difficult for both the actor and myself; because of this we had to shoot this close up several times to get an expression suitable for the film. To make the actor get into character, I tried to make him feel uncomfortable and scared while filming to give a more realistic effect and I think that this shows in the final outcome. Sometimes the look wasn’t strong enough to make it obvious what the victim was feeling and in other takes the look was far too extreme which gave the complete wrong impression and made it look more comical than seriously frightened. The final shot that we ended up using is the best one I think that we got, even though it is acceptable and works in the extract but I wouldn’t say that I am one hundred percent happy with it still because I don’t think that it looks that believable, the expression is slightly too extreme, if I were able to film more footage, this is definitely a shot that I’d liked to have worked on more.

Overall with the whole of the film extract, I am fairly pleased with the outcome of the final outcome, it’s got the look that I expected it to have that works well for the horror genre which like I have previously said is important to give the audience the right impression. I am pleased with the acting, the whole mise en scene of the film and am happy with how our whole group have worked within their roles to achieve the best results that we could have done.

Evaluation - William Johnson - Editor

My role within my group was to be the editor. This role meant that I would have to take the footage off of the camera, and then cut it up into individual clips, and then place them into an order to make sure that the narrative makes sense, and too make sure it flows easily. I also had to add effects to the shot to make the final product look more presentable. In this project I had too work closely with the cinematographer so i knew the order he intended the shots to go in. Filming over 10 minutes of footage and only having to use 2 minutes worth of it meant that my editing had to be very precise. Although the majority of the footage was test shots, or shots that did not go to plan, it took a long time to cut. I cut every clip so that if there were more than one version of the shot, as a group we could decide on the shot, and delete the old shots. Then with shots I had left I would either look at the story board, or talk to the cinematographer about the order of the shots. Then i would edit the clips, taking off a few seconds from a shot so it would flow smoothly. The speed and fluency of the clip would develop tension because it is more realistic so you forget that its just a film and think that your in the film. Then I would add in the effects. This meant changing the colour slightly to give the shot a certain effect, or just to make it easier to view. For Example the shot of the little girls face, we made the colour whiter, so she looked more paler. Another example of doing it too make it easier too view is when the man walks though the barn, the shot came out too dark, so I changed the colour to make the shot brighter.

The other thing was too make the antagonist fade in and out. We got this idea from the Ring. Samara the little girl fades in and out so she looks as if she is a spirit or something else supernatural.

I did this by filming the shot twice, on with her in and once without her, we planned all this before we did it. When it came to editing we would layer the clip. The one with her in on top and the clip with out her in underneath. We then made the clip with her in fade in and out, this

meant she would go come on and off the screen.

When she was on the screen we never put the levels up so you could see her fully, we made sure she remained translucent. This idea was used to scare the audience and make her seem more ghost like. If she remained solid, our film would look amateur. One problem we did encounter was that the two different shots were framed slightly different, this was probably due to the camera being nudged. This meant when both of the shots were visible you could see every object twice. I overcome this by changing the positioning of the frame. Another problem we encountered was when we wanted a "shot reverse shot", but did not have enough footage. We had two choices, either to copy the footage and play it again, or cut some of the footage in half and used the second half. We chose the second one because the only clip we could use the protagonist was making an action, and it would look bad if we used it twice. The idea of a "shot reverse shot" we used twice. The Second time we used it for suspense. The first time we used it too reveal the antagonist and build tension. We got this idea from "The Devil's Backbone". In the film the camera is looking at a door and see's a little boy, then the camera looks at the protagonist, and then back at the door, and he is gone. We used this idea within our film.

The genre we were filming for was horror. Within convention of a horror filming the more suspenseful the clip, the longer the editing, the scarier the faster the editing. I followed these conventions. For example when the protagonist was walking through the barn the shots were longer, and when it got scarier towards the end the editing was fast paced. We received a good audience reaction. We were told that people actually found it scary, which was the aim of the film. The feedback i got about the editing said that, the fading effect on the girl was very good and worked well. The shots flow well, and they work well along with the sound, and the cutting back and forth of the close ups build tension well. Overall I was pleased with the final product. After looking back at the product, I realised one clip I would like to chance. towards the end there is a scene when the protagonist is shining his torch of the antagonist is staring at him, and the feel that the shot goes on too long, and ruins the atmosphere. I could have solved this buy cutting off a second of the clip. This project has enhanced my skills as an editor and also has enhanced my capabilities on Final Cut Express.

William Johnson (editor)

I am taking the role of editor. My role within the group is to cut the footage to the sections we need and put it together within a coherent order. I will need to work close with the cinematographer, so that i can understand what message he is trying to portray to the audience, and then make sure, that the message comes across well.

The scene i have embedded is the final scene from the film "28 days later" (Boyle, 2002). This scene is highly edited, and is why i have chosen it for and example. The speed of the editing helps the audience feel disorientated, and scared.

Cinematography (Max Elgar)

I will be taking the role of cinematographer, which focuses on the effect of camera angles and different types of camera shot. In the particular Genre of horror, Camera angles are very useful for creating tension and horror in the audience. For example; point of view shots help to create tension when used from the perspective of a stalking antagonist, or to create fear when shown from the perspective of a stalked protagonist, catching small glimpses of what haunts him. One such example of this is is a scene in 28 days later which shows a POV shot from the view of an infected individual who is attacking the house with jim inside.

Other types of shots i will be using to create dramatic effect include high and low angled shots. I use these in order to create a feeling of vulnerability for the victim as well as for the audience, as well as showing a position of power for the antagonist, despite her diminutive size.

Effects

Within the scene we have uploaded, it shows samara (the little girl) coming out of the TV and killing Noah. When the little girl walks across the room she goes from translucent to glowing. We plan on using this effect. We are going to do this by shooting the clip twice, once without the little girl in and then, again with her in, we then will put the two clips together and then fade one of them in and out creating the effect.

Scene from the devils backbone

There is a clip with the film "The Devils Backbone" (directed by Del Toro) which we thought would be useful for our film. The clip is 00:40 seconds into the video we have uploaded, where the little boy sees a figure standing in a door way, and then the camera moves to a close up of the the boy that sees the figure within the door way, and then the camera moves back to the door way and the figure is gone. This scene will need to be well edited, and shot well on the camera. We intend to shoot this shot, when the father's friend is walking though the field and hears a little girls giggle and then turns to look at the barn and sees the little girl standing in the doorway of the barn. We then will shoot a close up of the friends face for a few seconds, and then we cut back to the barn and the girl is gone.

Scene

The scene we are filming is that of the first killing. This is a relatively minor character, and one of the Fathers friends (one who does not yet realize the daughter has died), who hears a noise in the Barn, investigates, and is toyed with and killed by the antagonist.

Antagonist

For our antagonist we had the idea of a little girl (much like in the ring and the grudge). The image shows the character Samara Morgan from the film the ring. The idea of a little girl with long black hair, wearing a long, torn dress is an idea that we have chosen to follow. The paleness of her skin and her dress contrast with her hair. With such a contrast we are drawn to her hair, noticing how long it is, this shows how long she has been there. Furthermore the hair covers her face, de-humanizing her and making her face, when revealed, even more shocking. We are following european archetypes in the sense that the girl s portrayed as as much of a victim as those she kills, even more so at times. However we follow american conventions in the sense that we have a protagonist who is innocent and pure, who escapes from the antagonist.

Story

We have decided to focus the story around a very young female antagonist, with a complicated backstory involving her death and her revenge. This follows both european and american horror archetypes. For example Guillermo del Toro's The devils backbone, focuses much backstory around the seemingly antagonistic ghost. Whereas the revengeful aspect of the story will agree with American horror archetypes and japanese archetypes of a young girl taking revenge for a savage death or wrongdoing (e.g.. The grudge, The ring). We follow american horror archetypes in the sense that there is typically only one antagonist, contrasting with British Horror, in which antagonists are regularly numerous (e.g.. 28 days later, Dog soldiers, Eden Lake).

Backstory

The backstory is that of a young girl who was abused by her father and his friends, this drives her to commit suicide by hanging herself in a barn outside the house. The Father chooses not to report this to the police, and so the truth is never uncovered. Justice is left undone. The girl is then brought back to a demonic half life similar to that of the grudge, and takes revenge on the father and his 4 friends, however in her rage she also targets her older brother, who was not present during the abuse, but returned home when she died, not realizing the truth and supporting his father. As a result she taunts and stalks the father, his friends, and her brother throughout the story, killing them off one by one until upon the climax of the film, she takes full form, attacking the Brother and father simultaneously. The Resolution is that the brother escapes after an emotional scene battling the demon, coming to the realization that it is not his sister, merely her last revengeful thoughts given form. He leaves the Farm on which they lived, leaving his fathers screams behind him...

Genre

The genre we have chosen is horror, more specifically european horror, focusing on artful portrayal and backstory as well as horror itself, as well as some aspects of British and American horror conventions. Examples of directors we will be taking ideas from include Guillermo del toro, Danny Boyle, Neil Marshall and others.