Alice and I had designed and filmed a scene from a fictional film about two uni students living together in a small house and their difficulties with each other.
During the making of this scene, we experienced several problems. Most of these problems occurred during editing due to a lack of shots and a lack of appropriate planning. Towards the middle of the film, there are several missing shots, mainly due to the fact that any shots displaying this part of the scene where either not good enough or weren’t even filmed. Again, this was mainly due to lack of appropriate planning. This also made editing footage that we actually did have very difficult and the outcome was very fast, confusing and unprofessional looking when it could have been a lot better.
However, there were certain things that did go well, mainly sound. Some Diegetic sound was added in during editing, however, a lot of the Diegetic sound recorded while filming was of good enough quality so most of it was used and emphasized by raising the volume in certain places. Diegetic as well as non-Diegetic sound was added during editing and this also worked very well. We used pre-recorded sound effects to add emphasis on the footsteps walking towards the house and dogs barking with other background sounds when my character is walking down the road.
Having said this, when our scene was viewed by others, most people said similar things that where all related to the lack of light in the shots. Many suggested to us was that if we where to film this scene again, another light should be switched on whether it be the landing light, the hall light or the front door light, it would have added more light to the shot making the image a lot brighter. However, this was touched upon during editing and almost every shot was made a lot brighter and a pink tint was added to all outside shots to emphasize the traffic lights and streetlights.
We chose to make our film a teenage drama, similar to skins, as we realized that this is currently a very popular market as proved by the success of skins. This being the case, we chose to deal with the issues of immaturity being linked with a sense of freedom. We decided that this was a wise topic to choose as we could focus more on getting camera angles and styles right rather than trying too hard to explain to much of the story in a small amount of time.
One thing that I was quite adamant that the film displayed was mainly handheld shots to add a more uncertain feel to the scene. However, the finished product did not display this as much as I would’ve liked it to. Instead, several short duration and steady shots where used giving the scene a much more stiff and jarring feel rather than a set of fluid and flowing shots. This could have worked to our advantage have it not of been for the lack of certain crucial shots.
We also looked at scenes from other teen dramas and tried to mimic the use of many over shoulder shots and close up handheld shots. However this was not displayed as well as it should have been.
As well as this, I felt that most of the dialogue and movements could have been dragged out to give the scene a slower feel.
However, again, this could’ve worked to our advantage to give the scene a more edgy feel and make the scene more uncomfortable but it didn’t in a way that looked good enough to have worked well. Instead, it made the scene feel very amateur and poorly made. Another factor against us was the fact that we did not have the actors that were capable of displaying the tension or emotion of the scene and unfortunately, this scene does heavily rely on the actors capability to keep the audience feeling involved and connected to each of the characters individually.
In conclusion, many things that we were counting on to work to our advantage, e.g. the rough and edgy style of camera work and darker lighting did not in fact work in the ways that we had planned they would. Unfortunately this lead to a roughly made scene that was very confusing and uncomfortable to watch and I was not entirely satisfied with the outcome as I know I can do a lot better.
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