As preparation for the coursework, we filmed a two minute sequence from a detective film leading up to the murder. This was to prepare us for our coursework as we were concentrating on atmosphere and build up rather than the main event, which is key in opening sequences. This is the sequence and my evaluation.
Evaluation of murder scene
When we began this task, we started out by making a storyboard of how we wanted the story to start. We tried to think of the most creative way and shots to help get the idea of someone getting murdered across.
We thought that our storyboard was good, but we soon discovered when filming that some of ideas were hard to execute in an effective way, so we had to make changes. We hadn't really considered the practical side, just what we thought would look good. Also, due to lack of time to film all of our ideas we had to choose to cut some of them out. This has shown me that the storyboard needs to be practical as well as containing ideas that you would like in the ideal world.
When putting the shots together in a sequence, we also realised that it didn’t flow well and looked unprofessional because the continuity wasn't right. For that reason we had to change the order of our shots around which wasn’t the same as the storyboard. We have realised that we often storyboarded ideas with a post-it representing a whole series of shots rather than thinking them through individually. We need to break down our thinking much more.
If I were to do it again, I would seriously spend some more time on the planning and story board and think it through properly. This would save time and make it easier to film.
Although we knew what content had to be in each of the shot, whilst filming we had to decide what kind of angle and shot we wanted. We tried to work out what shot would be best to make the film most effective. We used close ups, canted anglse, mid shots and point of view shots mainly.
On some of the frames that we were shooting we weren’t too sure what kind of shot we should do so we just chose one and it wasn’t the most effective. If I had to do it again, I would make sure that I properly think it through to try and get the most out of each shot.
When we were editing, we decided to drop some shots and move some shots around to make the whole thing flow a little bit better. I think this was a good decision because otherwise the film may have looked unprofessional and it also may have taken away from the spooky atmosphere that we were trying to create with the film.
In some of the most important parts of the scene we used slow motion to create a sense of tension which I think was fairly effective.
Watching the finished film back I think that I would change the order around a little bit more to make it even more effective, maybe cross-cutting more with the scarier bits. Also the music that we put with it, I would make it louder and scarier at the most important points of the film to help highlight the tension.
Use of mise-en-scene
I was really happy with the location we chose for our murder scene. We chose the chapel because it seemed like somewhere that you wouldn’t expect a murder. Around the chapel also had really good places to be able to film like on the stairs. We used the stairs in the film for a point of view shot because it was up high looking down on the chapel. Something I would try and do differently when shooting in the future would be to film everything that we needed that was in one location first and then move to the next location. It would make it easier.
Although we didn’t really have any planned costume it worked quite well. The murderer was dressed in mainly black and the victim was in a white blouse. Even though this wasn’t planned it worked because it helped show who was the victim and who was the murderer.
The lighting in our film wasn’t great. We tried to have the lighting in the chapel as low as we could to make it seem more mysterious but because we were filming when it was bright sunshine outside we couldn’t keep the light from coming into the chapel.
We didn’t have any props in our film. If we had it may have made it more effective to help portray what was happening a bit clearer. We perhaps should have had a weapon that we could have had a close up of, or even a prayer book for the victim to be reading so it looked like her attention was away from everything going on around her.
I was very happy in the group I was in. I thought that we all worked very well together and all listened to each other’s ideas and took everything each other said into account. Even though some of the ideas that we ended up with were not exactly how everyone in the group thought it should be there were no disagreements and we all worked well with what we ended up with. Although we did listen to each other to help choose how we should do things, we didn’t really have an explanation for why we were doing it and chose it because we thought it could look good rather than an actual reason. I definitely learnt how to take into consideration everything everyone says to come up with the best final product possible.
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