Evaluation
I set out to create a short film about
contrasting effects of drug and how they are perceived by the user and the
effects in the real world. To begin with I got into group with 4 other people
from my class to begin work on the project. I was focused on the micro elements
of mise en scene and editing.
Firstly, we reckied locations for the shooting
of the film including a few locations that were then whittled to one location.
After we had decided on a location we then cast actors for the roles required
in our short film, a difficulty that arose during this process however was on
one of days of filming the main actor we had cast didn’t turn up to the shoot
so we were forced to improvise and use a member of our team of our team as the
main actor.
While in the process of organizing the mise
en scene of the film I realized this may
not be enough of a micro element to specialize on due to the nature of the film
and only requiring a handful of costumes and props etc. In light of this I also
performed some of the editing duties in my group for the final piece of the
film which involved editing out unwanted extra parts of the film and selecting
the best parts to make the final clip. I also decided which cuts to use from
shot to shot such as a fade shot from one scene to the next or whatever best
fit the part. The editing micro element also involved deciding the sequence of
the film and which order they should go in as some clips didn’t need to be
sequenced so it was important they were placed correctly and in a manner that
made sense to the plot of the film.
The target
audience for our film was a younger demographic of around 15-25. The demands of
this target audience were met to a certain degree such as a storyline that is
relatable to a youth target audience. The mise en scene also reflected this by
showing the main character wearing clothes such as tracksuit bottoms which are
popular amongst a younger audience and thus pleases the demands of this
audience by offering a sense of comfortable re assurance to the viewer of
things they would expect to find in a film targeted at their age range.
However in some
ways I feel the needs of our target audience were not met with the content of
the film in ways such as a soundtrack that maybe not as suitable for our age
demographic. A more suitable soundtrack perhaps could’ve been something
slightly more ‘psychedelic’ to better fit the story arc of the film and better
target the needs of our target audience by keeping them engaged into the story
line through a comfortable re assurance of a sound track that well fits the
story line and is a generic signifier of genres including drugs.
Another criticism
of the performance could be my organization and execution of the re recording
of dialogue, looking back at this part of the film I feel I could’ve spent more
time on perfecting the script and making sure the voiceover timing was slightly
more accurate than it was in reality for example, making the timings fit the
actual movements of the mouth on screen.
However something
I feel that was performed well was the contrast in clothing for the main
character which was linked to the mise en scene, this contrast provided a clear
distinction between the “reality scenes”
and “high scenes” which makes it easier for a potential audience to both
follow the storyline and to see the clear contrast between the 2 parallel
storylines in the film. This was important to the flow of the film as without
two clear polar opposites it would become difficult to tell the two sequences
apart, thus causing confusion for the viewer and making a worse viewing experience
for them.
