Evaluation

Guy, Mica, Sam and Shanel

Inspiration

Our main task was inspired by the massacre at Columbine High School in America where two teenage boys entered their school with semi-automatic weapons and grenades. They killed ten students and one teacher. Many more were badly injured. To further help us with the task we watched Bowling for Columbine in order to see what should be included in our opening sequence.

Applying the Inspiration

• By adding in real footage of the Columbine massacre, it made our opening seem very distressing and almost real. A characteristic that we wanted to be prevalent in our project.

• To continue with making the massacre seem more real we added in recorded distressed sounds of the ‘victims’ in our opening.

• As our film does not have the Columbine massacre running throughout we have improvised a few details such as using a handgun and replacing the two youths with a hit man type character.

• Many of our camera shots have been taken as CCTV style shots with the camera at a high angle with the contrast a black and white and a frame bordering the screen just like a CCTV camera.

Originality

We believe that our film has complexity in

the story as there is a theme of not only

violence but also romance, action and we

have taken the main ‘hit man’ type

psychopathic character from film noir. His

appearance is as a cool, calculated hit

man, but is psychopathic in his behavior.

What technologies have we learnt?

Whilst making this movie we used various different technologies such as Final Cut Express and Live Type.We used Final Cut Express for editing camera shots and adding music into the movie. We used Live Type to create our title sequences of the actors, producer, director and the name of the film. By using these programmes, it has increased our overall knowledge on how to edit films and how to create title sequences for a movie.

Lighting and Smoke Machine

During the process of making the openingto the movie we have learnt how to set upand use the lights during a lightingworkshop.We have also learnt how to use thesmoke machine to create a more sinisteratmosphere for our movie.

Progressive learning

• Since the making of out preliminary task we feel that although we have deviated a lot from our original plans, we have learnt a lot along the way. The changes that we have made have been for the better in order to create a more realistic opening.

• Our storyboard was originally rather simple. Whist attempting to follow the storyboard shot for shot we realised that to create a more obtrusive film with characteristics from the Columbine Massacre, a larger variety of shots needed to be included in order to make the speed of the editing synchronous with the scared and panicky mood.

Progressive learning

Progressive learning

• The decision to add in ‘victim’ voices over the top with a voice recorder was made quite late in the filming process. This decision lead us to rethink our opening and decide to add a psychotic theme to out thriller instead of the Hitman orientated theme.

• In order to achieve the desired effect for the audience we added in a lot of montage to actively engage the audience.

• The music selection for our opening was a lengthy process, but we learnt how to effectively edit our footage to run parallel with the song.

Progressive learning from the preliminary task

• Our preliminary task only encompassed one style and was based on film noir. In our main task we progressed to a thriller film.

• Mrs. Jones contains violence, romance, psychosis in a fast paced Montage of footage, sound and editing. It was a combination that took us a long time to come to but we are happy with the result and feel that our film is well balanced and has met our requirements.

Problem Solving• Our story at one point was not accurate in the sense that

our shots did not follow on kinetically and looked very amateurish. We solved this by re- thinking of film idea, redoing our storyboard and creating a montage within the opening to bring together the meaning of the film.

• The shots that were put into our film were largely static (e.g. CCTV shots) and did not fit in conjunction with our film with fast paced editing. In order to solve this we cut up some of the footage in order to make the pace faster. We the filmed some POV shots to make the audience feel more involved and show the commotion the occurs in a shootout.

Problem Solving

• Our opening needed to be filmed during school times so that extras were available and so that there was natural light. This meant that there were students and teachers roaming the corridor with lesson on whilst we were filming. It was therefore difficult to clear the corridors and school classrooms so that we could film our opening as most of the footage was taken in school.

• We had many problems with our files that we saved not easily transferring to other computers whilst we were uploading and editing.

• In our preliminary task we could not use the location that we wanted, so using three point lighting for a film noir style shot was very difficult but worked quite well in the end.

In The End…

• If we were to do this project again I think that we should come up with a more concrete idea with a storyboard that contains enough shots to cover the pace of editing.

• Although the simplicity of our opening worked effectively because we wanted to keep things quite raw for effect, next time I would make the range or shots larger.

Props

• BB Gun• Staple gun• Patient file• Computer• YouTube video• Lab coat• Stamp• Books and paper• Mobile phone

Students in the school

Main Characters

Victim Murderer

Locations