Learning with Film

Room for Improvement.

 In the thriller film, props was definitely the biggest issue that we faced collectively as we couldn't get a hold of a Identical drip prop or a gun. Due to this I personally feel it ruins the scenes as it loses that seriousness and tension that is necessary in a thriller film. the IV drip looks custom made and childish and the gun has holes at the side (at which point was shown in a close-up) which didn't look realistic at all. So to improve this, my group and I would need to close down on finding props that looked effective and appropriate for the film and if not, be aware of the faults and avoid displaying the fault by focusing on it like we did with the close up of the gun. 

 Knowing what is in the background is very important and wasn't considered enough in my film. The idea was that the hostage was taken to an abandoned warehouse, however a car could be seen behind the protagonist. As was a road which doesn't connote the location as being abandoned. And lastly, in the opening credits the idea of the gun and photos was that the two shown were targets but in reality it just looked out of place with a gun placed on a fairly well kept table. This did not create the effect of it being intense that I wanted. 

Moreover, it's worth noting that although handheld shots can be effective as it showed a dazed effect quite well in this scene, it is very easy for the actor to look directly at the camera which makes the scenario a little less believable as the audience can tell it's staged. When it comes to filming, no scene should be rushed. 

One thing that does bother me immensely about the sound is the overlapping tracks playing in this scene. It seems poorly timed despite it being made like that on purpose. The idea behind this scene was that the narrator was speaking during the events of the film by which at this point, the protagonist gets abducted whilst reading this note. But listening now, it doesn't sound right and is confusing to follow. With this, I found that sometimes it's best to keep the sound as simple as possible, especially when it comes to dialogue. A well written and performed script is also necessary to which ours was rushed. 

One thing that I also have to be aware of in sound is common sense,  what I mean by this is that a road is going to carry some ambient sound which will be difficult to deal with. Further planning should be made to deal with these problems.  

 Lighting is also vital to create a certain atmosphere, which is key to a film of any genre. Where a horror film may be extremely dark and a comedy will be light, the tone the scene has to be thought out thoroughly. I personally feel that in this piece of work, my group and I failed in this as for a thriller film. Stereotypically a thriller film is a dark and intense film, therefore our lighting was too bright (even after editing) so tension was lost. A clear example of the film losing tension is the climax where the hostage is revealed, but as you can in the screenshot to the left, the light is completely shrouding the antagonist. This should have been redone as, firstly, the visuals are fairly poor so the audience can't see exactly what is going on well. And secondly, light connotes goodness to which doesn't suit the shot. The binary opposites are suggesting that the antagonist is actually good and the protagonist is actually bad which simply doesn't make sense. These things have to be considered more in my work.