T-18 FILM EXTRACT: Melissa's Evaluation

Thursday 26 February 2009

Melissa's Evaluation

My part in our two minute sequence was as editor , I enjoyed being mainly responsible for the finishing touches and the way it turned out.
Our piece shows the begining of out Neo-noir style film in which a girl (main character) is walking home 'something she does every day' and finds a dead body, there is then a flash back to where she has seen this person before. 'Brick' being our main influence, as this was the only neo-noir film we studied in class, although we include some other typically noir style features in our piece taken from others we watched. Features we took from noir films included dark lighting, having a main character that the viewer can relate to in many ways, the theme of crime and using flash backs to piece together whats happened.
I deliberately slowed down the pace of the sequence by lengthening each of the shots, so that the plot was slowly revield- which is typical to noir films, such as 'The Big Sleep'. The slow pace of our piece was also to fit with the 'hard boiled' voice over that we recorded at the very end of our project and i then put it over our piece in the desired place, in order for our voice over to fit with the piece it had to be in a slow, confused pace. It took a while to get the voice over in the place we wanted, which is as i am walking home.
Another classic noir feature we followed was starting with the end which is always which is the problem (usualy a death) and the the rest of the sequence begins to unravel the reason why its happened.
I made the cutting a very important piece, as it was so the audience could establish the connection between the main character and the girl in the purple coat. I try to make the distance between the shots as evenly spaced as possible, to make it as easier for the audience to catch on that there is a relationship between the two characters.
I used colour corrector to make the footage darker, which I felt was necessary, as our film is a neo noir. I also wanted it to look grainy. i uesd footage from the surrounding (dark scary looking tree) of which the girl with the purple coat is laying dead, and added flashes of that into the footage of the main character walking. I did this so the audience can foresee that something bad is going to happen.
I structured the sequence with a flashback in it, the rest of the film would follow on as the flashback, occasionaly ficking back to the future, this is a very common asset in film noirs. this makes it easier to show the audience how the problem will unfold, as it just shows the true past.
In our flashback, which is showing how the main character recognises the girl in the puple coat (the dead body). As the girl in the purple coat pushes the double doors to look at the 'January time tale' i slowed down the shot a noticable amount. Again this was to make it clear to the audience that it was important to notice this character, it also gives the audience time to recognise the purple coat. Also in the flashback, when the main character walks out of the shot, i cut it before she completely goes out of sight, this is to add suspence to the piece and to show an unfinished situation, like you haven't seen the end of this character.
The shot in which you first see the dead character was filmed in the day time, as it is said in the voice over 'it was still day light, she was displayed for everyone to see' was very much so to my advantage, as it ment i didn't have to mess with the light and tone of the sequence, apart from using colour corrector to darken the whole piece to give it that noir feel. We only managed to use a short amount of close up footage of the girl in the purple coat under the tree as you could see her breathing slightly andher lip move as we were so close, so i hade to make sure i cut it before this happened. I also slowed down this piece of footage so it appeared longer.

posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 01:33

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