Practise Film Sequence

We were asked to film a sequence from a murder mystery film, ending in the murder. We did this so we had a chance to look at creating an atmosphere and building up to a key moment which will be key elements of our coursework. We also got to practise our storyboarding and editing skills. We planned and filmed this sequence in two lessons, which was a short time, and then we looked at what we need to improve on when we begin our real coursework:

To start off with, we planned out our murder scene with a story board in our group. We used this as a guideline for our filming. Our story board went pretty much to plan, apart from a few adjustments. What we planned out on our story board which we thought would look effective, didn’t look  as effective when we used it in camera, therefore our film wasn’t as scary and didn’t create as much of a mysterious atmosphere as we would have liked. this has taught us that we shouldn't think too much about other films we have seen when planning our piece. We need to think really carefully about what we can actually achieve with limited equipment.

Out of the four people in our group, only two of us had a role. This was effective as for the audience having to only concentrate on two people helped them to really focus on the characters and the atmosphere. If we had introduced too many characters, we would have risked leaving the audiene confused in the short time we had available.

When it came to the build up to the murder scene, I, as the murderer, had to wash my hands before hand. As I had a manicure on my nails, this did not help portray a murder scene, so Megan had to step in to help with the hand scene. When it came to me and Hanisha having to act out a fight scene, it was hard to try and look like I was hurting her without actually hurting her and without it looked unrealistic. Therefore due to this, it took a long time and a few takes to get that scene perfect. I was very pleased with the acting and I thought Hanisha and I went for it, not worrying about being embarrassed which I think is very important.

When using the camera we came across a few problems. We were not perfectly sure how to use the play function on the camera ourselves so therefore we did not know how to find our filming at the beginning so it was hard to see if we had produced a good enough shot as it took so long to find it, as we found it hard rewinding and fast forwarding it. This sounds easy, but the cameras we are using respond very slowly and we didn't realise this at first. This lost a lot of filming time for us which my group and I were not very happy about so therefore we did not get to finish editing. Also for one of the shots, we had to do a POV shot from a window, so to get a perfect shot the person using the camera had to stick the camera out of the window. This was not safe for the camera or the person hanging out of the window so therefore we did not get the best shot. This has taught us that for out final task that we should fully understand how to use the camera before filming and that we need to think of ways round tricky shots.

My personal point of view was that our editing skills were not up to scratch and we did not fully understand how to edit our film. Our murder scene was meant to be intimating but I do not believe our editing helped us portray this. We did not have enough time to add in music so I also think this affected our murder scene as the music would have helped to build up tension which we did not have. What I did think was good about our editing was that we were good at cutting and putting together shots so that the whole piece kept good continuity.  We were also good at using slow motion so that this caused tension. When we come to do this again, I would like to spend more time on editing so that our scene could look the best it could be.

I was quite happy with our location and setting. As we did not just use one location, I think this helped build up tension as you do not know where the actor will go next. I also liked that some of the filming was done from a high up window looking down at the murder so it was like someone was looking over at them, so I liked how that made the film feel also creepy.  We did not use a lot of props in our scene. When it comes to our final task I will seriously consider using costumes and props so that it helps set a scene for the audience and help the scene seem scarier. Also we didn’t really think of lighting as we filmed most of it outside. When we do the inside shots next time, I will consider dimming the lights more to give a better effect for a murder scene.

Shauna