Evaluation
Planning and Storyboard
As a group, Shannen, Leah, Lizzie and I decided to do a serious murder scene. However, when we got to filming, our location was compromised by an unscheduled lesson taking place in the Hall when it was supposed to be free, and we had to create the murder scene on the spot in a different location. I still feel we managed to work well and completed the task successfully as we had structured planning in storyboard format. This has made me realise that even if you plan all the details, things can still go wrong and you have to be prepared to be flexible.
Acting
We only had three actors but only two with dialogue because the murderer (I) was only shot with mid shots. This helped create a sense of mystery and hopefully made it scarier because the viewer never sees my face. Shannen was surprisingly good at acting; she had a very clear voice and a range of facial expressions. Leah made a good attempt except for a few mistakes such as looking into the camera and laughing; despite this I still feel she was very good.
Selecting Shots and Angles
We started the scene with a two person shot of Leah and Shannen; however, with hindsight it probably would have been better using an over-the-shoulder shot as that would have helped the audience feel more comfortable because this is what we see when talking normally. Knowing our mistake, next shot we did use an over-the-shoulder shot over Leah’s shoulder watching Shannen storm off. Next shot was a close-up of Leah’s face after Shannen, her drama teacher, storms off because Leah had disappointed her. We used this shot because we wanted to show the emotion on her face and using a close-up helped because all you can see is her face and nothing else. We only used mid shots for the murderer and this helped create mystery and tension because you never see my face. We also had a slight canted angle and close-up of my feet walking up to Leah showing that something bad was about to happen. The next effective shot was the around-the-tree shot where I held the camera and looked out from the tree from a POV of the murderer. This is scary for the audience because they know it’s the murderer looking straight at his victim. For our final shot, we had the murderer lift up a weapon behind Leah and just as Leah turns her head, we used an over-the-shoulder shot of the murderer on her face. This was good because you could not see my face but could see Leah and the weapon.
Editing Decisions
Watching the film back, Shannen and I had to move and edit a lot of scenes to make it perfect. Also, being outside we had a lot of ambient sound that we didn’t want such as the school bell which we edited out. Also, Shannen and I decided to add in some non-diegetic sound and to make it more sinister we added a creepy orchestra and dark scary tune when the killer kills Leah. This help to add tension to the scene. This has made me realise that editing is key to a good piece - you can make the whole thing look completely different with good editing.
Use of Mise-En-Scene
I was not particularly happy with our scene at first because it was to our first choice but towards the end I felt better about it. We used the trees and dead leaves on the floor effectively as the sound they created helped to increase the scary ambience we were trying to create. However, if I was going to do it again, I would ensure our original choice was available as we had some effective ideas for that.
Use of Sound
We added a creepy non-diegetic track from the samples provided and this helped to make the scene more tense. The last thing we added was a scary thumping of drums before the murder scene and this made it much more dramatic and really helped the murder scene from potentially being funny to serious. Sound is going to be very important to establish the right atmosphere in our real piece.
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