"Seclusion"
Our AS opening sequence was a psycological thriller about a normal boy stumbling across a radioactive bio-hazard in an unlikely place and setting it off, the film would be about the surrounding area being quarentined.
On this blog post I will be analysing my AS portfolio so at the end of this year I can compare the two and see how far I have come.
Overall I am extremely happy with the way our opening sequence turned out. I think it was a success because myself Dave and Andrew had a lot of ideas about what we wanted to do and the final product was exactly what we pictured it to be like. We thought of as many ideas as we could so that if one would not work we would always have another option.
I think the strongest point to our film is the use of foley sound. We said right at the start after watching a foley sound video on Lord of the Rings that we really wanted to use it. As we had all the equipment to be able to do it we thought why not exploit this technique and we think it added real depth to our film. We recorded every single sound seperately by watching the video and creating sounds that fit. Then it was just a case of editing the sounds into Serif Movie Plus and matching them up with the video.
I think another strong point of our production was the use of camera shots, from the start we picked up on different camera shots we were shown in class by Mr. Buckmaster. When we saw a shot we liked from looking at other opening sequences or films we thought how we could incorperate them into our opening sequence. But we also thought of alot of camera shots on the spot and a few of the shots used were improvised on the spot and some turned out to be better than the storyboarded ones because on the day we had a better idea of the location/weather/character etc.
Here's a few examples of shots we used...
The first shot is a birds eye view shot, looking down on the character, introducing him and setting the scene.
- The shot at 0:29 were the camera moves out the window, following the characters actions.
- At 0:42 where he pulls his shoes from underneath the bed and the shot is in the perspective of the shoes.
- At 1:07 where the camera tracks him through his house without going inside.
- At 2:20 where the camera pans down diagonally thorough the bush to follow the character.
Another thing I am happy with was the editing techniques used. Although we were on Serif, we were able to use a lot of editing effects to give our piece the effect we wanted. For example, the interference seen at 0:22, 2:08 and 2:29 was done by using a filter effect and by adding an mp3 sound effect over the top. We also used techniques such as overlapping shots to get a fading effect (e.g. 2:14 where he disappears across the field)
One thing I would have liked to do differently is to use a proper colour treatment to give it the overall finish it needed as the colours do seem a bit bland. I think the right colour treatment could have given it an eerie, washed away feeling.
Another thing I think we could have done better is planning, although it turned out alright, our planning was pretty poor and I think in the next year, if we want to improve upon our final piece, we need to plan a lot more efficiently and maybe do a bit more research into similar products and audience.
Overall, I think I have come quite far since the start of the year, comparing our final piece to our preliminary task, we have improved greatly on our camera techniques, making match on action look realistic, improved continuity and been more abstract and adventurous in the ways we can represent our character and whats going to happen by using a variety of shots. I hope to further improve my understanding, knowledge and techniques in the year to come.
