Evaluation #2 Planning

For the second evaluation question, I create a directors commentary of our final cut, which will allow me to explain our choices and how we presented certain groups of people in certain ways using the four media language areas: editing, sound, cinematography and mise en scene.

Evaluation #1 Planning

For my first evaluation question, I am going to create a eleven frame analysis for my opening sequence. During this, I will comment on the thriller conventions I used and whether the opening scene conformed or challenged these conventions. I will also compare our opening scene to other scenes from different films, and talk about the similarities and differences.

Final Cut Reflection

To conclude I believe that our media film went extremely well, as we have included all of the crucial features of a good media film, such as shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180 degree rule to demonstrate the extent of our media knowledge. We also used the four areas of media language to conform and to challenge media stereotypes.
Our time keeping was crucial to the production of our film, as were the first group to complete the planning and to film the movie. This allowed us to tweak and edit our footage to create the best film we could make. Filming our film as early as we did meant that we left enough time to re-shoot a few scenes, such as the chase scene, where a few shots were too dark to see, and this was very important in enabling us to create a film which I was proud of.

The process of creating our film went really well, however there are a few areas which we could have improved on in future. One of these being gender variation throughout our film. In a realistic movie, there would be both male and female characters, but as we could not find any suitable female actors, we kept our film male based. This did allow us however to meet the thriller stereotypes of males being the stronger gender, and stereotypically, males are the target audience of thriller films.

Final Cut

Our choice in title

Second Cut Feedback

Positives:
Good use of shot variation
Really liked the eye close up in the torture scene
The low angle of the protagonist in the present works really well
The use of soundtracks build the tension well
Mouth close ups are effective
Good use of cinematography.

 Negatives
The filter on our Puzzle Productions ident is too much
The soundtracks end too abruptly

Improvements
We need to fade in and out the soundtracks- We have faded in and out all of the soundtracks to help our product flow
Maybe add a voice over- We have since added a voice over during the flashback where the protagonist signs a contract and collects a parcel
Maybe rearrange the flashbacks- Since adding a voice over to one of the flashbacks, we have decided that we do not need to re arrange the shots to make them make sense. Also, as it is a thriller, our product needs to stimulate the audience into asking questions, so there needs to be some mystery in the product
Maybe use a soundtrack to the scenes in the present to make the present scenes clearer- We feel that having another soundtrack for the present scenes would be too much and may detract from the overall film

Editing Update 3