Reflective Analysis
My role in the creation of this short film was the filming
process. My intention was to capture a short section of film around 4-5 minutes
long using approximately 25 different shots. My film is a hybrid of genres as
it can be categorised as horror as well as the thriller genre as the film
contains conventions of both. I hoped to create a film that would cause the audience to feel fear and panic, to do this I chose a realistic everyday setting and characters. I mainly concentrated on the themes and conventions
of a psychological thriller which is a sub-genre for a thriller. One of the
main problems I came across with the filming of the film was the lighting.
Typical conventions of the horror genre is low key lighting. I was unable to
film this during the night time meaning that the lighting was too high key.
This did add to the aspect of it being a realistic setting. I was able to
overcome this problem with the use of editing. I was able to lower the
intensity of the lighting to make it appear more gloomy and low key. This was to help it to fit in more
with the conventions of the horror genre.
My film contained mainly Non-Diegetic sound which I included to show the fear of the victim and build up the suspense. to scare the audience. However there was some diegetic sound captured in the filming which created more of a realistic sound such as feet running on leaves. The non-diegetic music which was used was one of the soundtracks from a similar psychological thriller, 'The Killing'. Low pitch thump sounds were edited in to the cross scene to create a false scare for the audience. The non-diegetic sound from the Arc shot of the victim was taken from 'Twilight, New Moon' as the music fitted well with the mood we wanted to set.
What I could have improved on with the filming would be to have been more stable with some of the shots. For two or three of the shots I was unable to hold the camera steady enough due to the angles at which I was filming. As I was filming these shots at high and low angles I was unable to use the tripod causing these shots to look unstable. As the film Is called 'Run', I used low angle mid shot of the victims feet when running. A low angle mid shot was also used to show the victim tripping over. This was to show how much the victim was panicking and to build up the suspense. To show the victim in in position of weakness I used a high angle tracking shot. To find out if the intended audience would be able to understand the story line and what message I was trying to get across, I had some other classmates watch my film as I was putting it together during the editing. They were able to tell me that the thriller genre was presented clearly and the storyline of the short sequence was well structured.
The plot of my film 'Run' is that the victim, 'the girl in
the woods' is running in a panic away from her mysterious killer. In the short sequence there is no clear shot of the killer, to make it appear more personal to the killer, I used handheld Point of View (POV) shots. To show the human consciousness from the teenage girl antagonist I used an Arc shot. The use of point of view shots gives the element of a psychological
thriller to the film. To show that the victim has been killed there is a cross
in the woods with 'the girl in the woods R.I.P' written across it. By not
showing the killer or the death of the victim it gave the aspect of
thriller to the sequence.
The initial idea I had for my short film is completely different to what I created. I was originally going to create a short sequence of a war tragedy, but I changed this idea as I thought it would be better to create a horror as I knew of a better setting I could use for the horror genre. Once it was decided to create the horror genre I were able to plan out the different camera angles and shots, the mise-en-scene and which sounds we could edit into each shot.
The miss-en-scene of the outfits for the victim was a black
dress with a grey cardigan. This was to portray her as an everyday, ordinary, innocent
girl. Whereas the miss-en-scene for the killer wore a black oversized parka
coat to cover his face to make him appear more mysterious to the audience.My film contained mainly Non-Diegetic sound which I included to show the fear of the victim and build up the suspense. to scare the audience. However there was some diegetic sound captured in the filming which created more of a realistic sound such as feet running on leaves. The non-diegetic music which was used was one of the soundtracks from a similar psychological thriller, 'The Killing'. Low pitch thump sounds were edited in to the cross scene to create a false scare for the audience. The non-diegetic sound from the Arc shot of the victim was taken from 'Twilight, New Moon' as the music fitted well with the mood we wanted to set.
What I could have improved on with the filming would be to have been more stable with some of the shots. For two or three of the shots I was unable to hold the camera steady enough due to the angles at which I was filming. As I was filming these shots at high and low angles I was unable to use the tripod causing these shots to look unstable. As the film Is called 'Run', I used low angle mid shot of the victims feet when running. A low angle mid shot was also used to show the victim tripping over. This was to show how much the victim was panicking and to build up the suspense. To show the victim in in position of weakness I used a high angle tracking shot. To find out if the intended audience would be able to understand the story line and what message I was trying to get across, I had some other classmates watch my film as I was putting it together during the editing. They were able to tell me that the thriller genre was presented clearly and the storyline of the short sequence was well structured.
