Alex Stockley - Evaluation

Film Studies Evaluation – Group mR2 – 43

My Group consisted of myself and my fellow student Luke, from early on we had decided who would take what role, I took Cinematography and Directing and Luke was in charge of Editing and Sound. We both collectively decided to choose the genre Physiological Thriller, The main influence behind the script I wrote was Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) and this is our film extracts biggest weakness, if I had the chance to change anything and I genuinely believe that this is one of few faults in the extract is that it was commented as too like fight club, the film plot that I had planned (entire movie) would have been fairly different from fight club, sadly we could only make a 2-3 minute extract from the film so the extent of the story wasn’t shared fully although I am happy with the amount that got into the clip, I realised quickly with some help from Luke that the amount that I wanted to fit into the script wouldn’t have been portrayed well in a sequence as short as our extract was allowed to be so we cut down on the content level of the script.

The plot is based around a man (John) who can’t sleep, in fact the twist is he can sleep but chooses not to because when he does his alternate ego wakes up, John is aware of this however cannot stop it or control it. We used very little dialog in our film, a lot was the narrator explaining the story and the rest was either short clips of acting or plot devices such as a ringing mobile telephone (Your Alternate Ego)

The role I carried out as director and cinematographer had me writing the bulk of the script with some input from Luke, story boarding, setting up shots, placing actors in there correct places within shot, making sure that the footage I shot was good enough for Luke to be able to edit, Our filming took place over the course of a couple of hours, we started just after lunch and worked right the way until around 5 or 6 PM. From that one day of shooting we had almost all the footage, the only things I failed to shoot was an establishing shot of the bus pulling up (filmed later) and one of the doors opening, the end scene we couldn’t shoot on the same day due to the ground being too wet for our lead character to lie down on the floor (Costume was a suit) so we postponed it until a week later, the only problem that we faced with that was our only continuity error where if you look closely you can see johns costume change, from a suit to a jacket, I had no choice when I filmed this due to the suit being unavailable so we had to use what we had to the best of our ability. Written into the script was a scene involving coffee mugs being slammed onto a table, this scene was going to be the very opening, after filming it we watched it back and because I had chosen to use a white backdrop it didn’t come out how we had wanted it too, we found that the white background was too artificial to be used in our extract, this is something else I would improve on, although our planning worded it wasn’t detailed enough, we should have tried and experimented with things like the “coffee mug scene” that we ended up cutting.

The editing and sound was done by my fellow student Luke, during the editing process I was always by Lukes side making sure he understood notes I had made and how I wanted the story to link together, I have to say for Lukes contribution to the project I can’t fault him for as we appeared to have no problems what so ever with the editing and Luke understood what I was trying to active straight away and edited the extract together nicely, an example of me and Luke working together is in the scene where our lead character is getting onto a bus, the shots I shot were framed well and Lukes editing allowed us to create the quick snappy effect seen in the bus scene, Our inspiration for this was a clip for Shawn of the dead where a similar technique is used. Our only problem with sound was down to the noise of the bus engine changing rapidly between cuts, this wasn’t so bad in the dream sequence as it almost added to the effect but if we had more time it would have been nice to get a recording of a bus engine that we could place over the top of the current one

To conclude I believe that from this project I have learnt a lot, mainly the importance of story boarding and planning as it takes valuable time and effort to rehire a camera, travel to location, get the actors to come with you and then shoot it. Apart from the odd strange bus noise cut or costume change I was very pleased with the outcome of our project

My Evaluation

Film Studies Evaluation

My film’s genre was a psychological thriller and uses some of the aspects form this genre. Like keeping the audience guessing as to what is going to be happening next and constantly keeping them on their toes, along with the conventional use of thriller style lighting.
Looking back on my film product I have noticed certain things that I did not notice while I was making the film, my film was loosely based on the film Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) in the sense that I was a thriller film, even though it also contains other film genre aspects like crime drama and then utilised certain aspects from the film, for example the main character having insomnia. However after looking back on the film and getting feedback I now think that perhaps my film is a bit too much like Fight Club as most of the things about the film do echo the storyline of that specific film.

My job within mine and Alex’s group was editor and sound director, from my point of view I think that I did a good job utilising editing skills like graphic match, fades and transitions. I also think that the film that we made was well structured and flowed well with the narrative structure. I achieved this by cutting the film into nicely sized segments as well as adding effects to them to give them more of a dark feel. I thought that it was overall cut together well. However I also thought that there were some things within the film that did suffer because of certain things within the editing part of the project, one of these was that the editing had no specific style and although I originally thought this was a good thing after receiving feedback I realised that by having a style to use it can help the film flow and work better. Another thing that could have been done to help the film out would have been changing one of the scenes where one of the shots where it has bad continuity to the rest of the film due to the fact that at the end of the film after a shot change the actor was wearing different clothing to what he was originally wearing in the previous shot.
For sound I feel that the mood was set well due to the sound as it fitted well with the cinematography and scenery, the dialogue was also recorded well and fitted within the scene along with the sound effects that were later put into the film to add emphasis to the scene. However there were problems with the noise on the bus due to it’s engine as we cut up the footage as it caused the noise form the engine to sound jumpy and incoherent, but on the other hand this jumping noise when combined with the footage sounded good and complemented our work as it made it sound a lot more surreal and confusing. Another problem that we came across from sound was the mumbling of one of the actors within his scene, originally we had planned to give him lines as we faded out of the scene but decided in the end not to that as we were just going to be putting a voice-over it so in the end told him just to mumble, but after this we couldn’t completely cover the noise up or make it so that it sounded like quietened talking and after watching the film and getting feedback decided that we could have done it better.

Alex directed the film and I feel that he did a good job in doing so, the characters were all well placed and obvious to see who was who so there was no confusion, he also set up the scenes well and made sure that the rooms and areas that we used were secure so that we had limited or no unnecessary background noise. We used a variety of them in order to give the film a more realistic feel. So overall I would say that Alex did a good job of directing the film with only a few things that I would comment on.
Alex was also the cinematographer for the product and in this job Alex also did a good job, utilising good camera angles and lighting within the shots. Especially during one of the opening shots where we used a combination of starting off within the dark and then suddenly turning the light on giving a dramatic effect to scene due to the effect of it being dark and then the scene suddenly bursting into light.
Overall I feel that our film was good but could have been better if we ad made minor adjustments within certain shots and clips.

grid of images

The shots that we used within this grid of nine screen shots were: 4 close-ups, 2 establishing shots, 1 over the shoulder shot, a mid-shot and a long shot. Placing the shots in this specific order within the grid means that the story of our project is still coherent and understandable.

Filming

We have finished filming as we now have the footage we require and have begun editing the footage in order to cut into what we need, rough cut is almost complete just need to add voice over for the main character.

Coffee... Coffeeee... COFFEEEEEEEEE!

Script - 50 Ways To Make Coffee

*lots of fast cuts of different kinds of coffee as described in plot overview*
*After coffee sequence there is 3 seconds of blank white screen before our main character fades in...*
John *Looking emptily at a computer screen*
John: (Narrator): With insomnia nothings real... Well, not insomnia.... wait... let me go from the start... My name is john... im 22 working in a dead end job for a dead end company... i cant sleep, cant let myself... when i do, i wake up in different places... life is hell... God i could do with another coffee...
*Continues to look blankly into screen with no emotion....*
*Manager walks in, distant shouts of "John.... John....!* as the manager comes into focus...*
Manager: John!!! (Shouts)
Manager: John, this is the third time this week that you have *Fades into mumble*
John: (Narrator) Why doesnt he/she ever stop moaning, blah... blah... blah... Yeah that sounds good... hows about you get me a god damn coffee
*Managers voice fades back in as narrator stops*
Manager: John... Just go home... get some sleep... sort your life out. Dont come back until you have...
*Manager leaves*
*Door Slams and John is standing at a bus stop holding another cup of coffee*
John: (Narrator) Nothing to report... mind again going blank... must not sleep... must not sleep
*Bus pulls up...* Doors open, John steps on*

*Getting on bus scene*

*John sitting alone starts to fall asleep*

*John falls asleep*

*Dream sequence starts*

*In dream john receives a phone call marked "Your alternate-ego" and answers it*

*Screen goes blank for 3 seconds*

*John wakes up in woods*

John: Oh.... FUCK

-- END --

Locations

The locations of our project will be:
Starbucks Coffee inside the Grand Arcade
A Stagecoach Bus
Alex's Workplace as main character's office
Forest for the final scene.