Rosie Andrews Evaluation

We had many ideas about the genre and making of our 3 minute film. I am quite happy with the way it has turned out after our research and experimentations. Our initial ideas were to base our clip on the effects of drugs, and psychosis which may be induced by this. We liked the idea of a psychological thriller which. However the outcome was a little different. Instead, we used the idea of the mental disorder schizophrenia, which made it easy for us to stick with out chosen genre. This change in ideas was due to the fact that we had no real storyline or way of placing the scene together to make a complete sequence. We wanted to film the beginning sequence or opening credits for a film because we liked the idea of making it look quite stylised and abstract. We could achieve this by using the effects available on the editing software. We watched a lot of clips and were mainly influenced by the trailer for the film Requiem for a dream (Daren Aronofsky, 2000) and the opening credits of, Se7en (David Fincher 1995). However with the footage we had show we decided it would be better to make an exposition sequence which would appear a third of the way through the film.
I took on the role of director in my group, which meant i was mainly responsible for things such as script, costume and blocking. One we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do, we drew out a story board with sketches of some of the shots we wanted to include in our sequence. This helped us plan the filming and made it clear and easier for the cinematographer to shoot. We faced many difficulties in the making of our clip, not just with directing but other things such as sound design and editing. One of the problems we faced was the recording of the dubs and sounds effects we wanted to use. We did all out filming on college grounds. This meant it was at times hard to find a silent place for us to do these recordings. They also didn’t always come out as clear as we wanted at times which meant we had to take more than one recording. The recourses which were available to us enabled us to add in the effects we wanted to make out film look stylised and creative. For example there is a part when one of our main characters fall over and hit their head, and as they get back up there is a blurred point of view shot of our female character, Jess. We experimented with many effects to see which one worked best to create the effect we were hoping for.
As director I had to put some consideration into our setting. We had considered a few locations to shoot our film. We had the idea or using a quiet abandoned area or woodland space. We wanted our clip to be slightly eerie at some points. Therefore we thought either of these would be the perfect place for us to set our film. We were considering the setting to be in Cottenham, but it was difficult for everyone in our group to arrange a time. In the end we decided that the woodland area around the college grounds would also be a perfect place for us to shoot. The costume design was kept casual and realistic. Our male character George is a normal teenager. Therefore we let our actor wear whatever clothes he decided. This turned out to be a normal pair of blue jeans and black coat. Similarly we wanted our female character Jess to be dark and mysterious. We decided to have an all black costume. Black jeans and coat with a hood, which is pulled up at some points to add to the mystery effect. Another aspect of our film i had to focus on was the script. As we said we wanted our piece to be eerie and abstract at times, we decided it would be good to keep dialogue to minimum. We only used around four short lines of script so it made it easier for the audience to understand the film as it’s only a short sequence.
We received some positive feedback from the other groups in the class which we were happy about. The effects went well and made it easy for the audience to understand why they were used. A criticism we received was the ending of out sequence could have been done a little better. We ended with George reading the definition of schizophrenia in the dictionary. However we realised this could have been done slightly better. We had many troubles filming and editing, however overall I think out film turned out to be a success.