Editing.

We were given a task to create and film a narrative based around the idea of someone reading a newspaper. We were to use as many conventions of a thriller film as possible, as this is our topic genre and had to create a final piece which was around one minute long. Considering me and my fellow group member did not attend the previous lesson we had no contribution to the process of filming.

When I watched what my group had filmed I was a little unsure of how we could produce a plot. I was happy that they stuck to the idea of filming at a high angle (from the first floor). But also concerned of how limited the outcome of our plot was. They used basic shots such as mid shot to close-up shot, over the shoulder shot and a point of view shot. Unfortunately they filmed each shot in the same location and only actually managed to film a girl just reading a newspaper and nothing more. I found that the camera wasn't held steadily and was filmed slightly out of frame. But on the plus side they did a god job with the close up of her eyes scanning the newspaper. I felt this was most effective shot because you could see how she was reacting to the article and it also shows the audience that she is actually reading the newspaper.

When we moved on to begin editing we firstly uploaded the recorded film to the Mac, we split it and renamed each cut. We then trimmed it so we only saw what we felt was best for that particular shot. We then placed it on the timeline and continued to do this with accurate continuity. We had troubles with a particular shot that was necessary to add it but we felt it didn't work well because the continuity was poor. Someone came up with the idea to reverse the clip, so we did and it fitted in perfectly as though it was untouched.
We then added in music. It begins with something simple and leads to a dramatic finish. The music builds up and stops where we created a super fast zoom onto the headline. When the music stops you hear the sound of the fast zoom which was effective for the fact that the music took a sudden pause. It builds tension and is also unexpected.

I wouldn't say that my short film made sense but I wouldn't say it didn't make sense. The narrative isn't clear but you get the idea of it. You know that it is about a girl reading a newspaper but you don't know why and where. You gather from the end that there was a dramatic story about "Mortgages," which is a little confusing to the audience because the girl didn't react towards this, it was all presented in this manner through editing.

I learnt a lot about the mise en scene. In my short film it is clear that there is only one person within that area, this is part of the mise en scene which creates the feeling of loneliness. The empty chairs shown represents emptiness within the character. The newspaper as well as its headlines are part of mise en scene, this is what caused confusion. On the front of the newspaper we saw the headline "88 Dead People," whereas on the inside you see the headline "Mortgages" it sent out a confusing message to the audience, us as the directors were even unaware of the plot as it wasn't thought out about before filming.
The girls hair was tied back so we could see her face (close up expression) and she was wearing casual clothes to represent a casual character.

The only element of suspense created was when the girl looked around through what we could call a point of view shot. It looked as though she was being watched and she sensed it. It worked well with the build up of the non diegetic sound (soundtrack.) Another part of suspense was at the end with the sudden pause in the soundtrack which I have mentioned previously.

My group forgot to film an actual narrative including more then one thing happening for example, the character walking, running, talking on the phone etc... The same thing was shown in every shot but they did remember to film the extra 5 seconds before and after the shot.

I feel the only convention we used from the Thriller genre, was the thrilling music. There weren't enough footage to judge otherwise.

When we saw other pupils short films we were very disappointed in our own. We didn't get very good feedback as ours seemed very poor in comparison. We did get complimented on the music soundtrack though.

I felt that I was partly responsible for the poor footage. If myself and my fellow classmate had attended the filming lesson we would of had made sure that we had clear steady footage, a variety of camera shots and a clear narrative, this is because there would of been more of us to motivate each other more.