Film analysis

Film production analysis.

My roles in the group were to edit and direct our film project, while my partner took care of the cinematography and mise en scene. As the editor it was my job to look through all of our recorded footage and decide what we we're going to use and what we wasn’t, once I had gotten rid of the clips we couldn’t use, it was time to piece them together and edit them to make our film.

Our film features a lot of straight cuts simply because of the lack of change of setting, and the use of dialogue. The straight cuts were used to jump from character to character when they interacted with each other, and also during intense scenes where the characters where in danger or being chased. During the shots from the zombies/infected point of view, i have placed a special effect on which over lays the shot with a red filter, I think this effect makes it easier to achieve the desired image that we intended to use. the use of this effect clearly shows the audience that we're looking through the eyes of something that isn't human, another point to make is that because i have chosen to use red over any other colour, this is because it is symbolic of blood, the thing that the zombies/infected are there for. Some shots are purposefully sped up, mainly the chases and the zombies/infected point of views, this was done to increase tension as it keeps going back between normal and sped up shots so the audience don’t know what’s going to happen, it also makes the zombies/infected seem dangerous and unstable. Contrasting editing was used, as the focus tends to go from being on the humans to the zombies/infected then back to the humans again, this was done to increases tension as the audience are aware of the danger the survivors are in. Wipes were used to make shots flow better into one another via character direction, particularly when the characters are walking through the field, for example the characters exit from left side of the screen and enter on the right in the next shot, the wipes make it so it shows a slight progression in time. Similarly, a zoom edit effect was used effectively with a Extreme Long Shot of the characters to show an overall shot of the surrounding area and establish the setting, this edit was used because the shot was very difficult to edit together with the clips around it smoothly because of the extreme change in distance, in comparison to all of our other shots. Another point to talk about would be the use of fade ins and outs to emphasise separation from the humans to the zombies/infected, this was done to add variety and flow within out film, but also to make sure the audience clearly understand that we have two different groups of people in the film.

My role as director was to over see everything, and make sure everyone knew what they’re roles were. For example, regarding the actors, I made sure they knew what was required of them by telling them how to react, an example of this can be seen as one of the characters starts to get frustrated because she wants to be somewhere else, which is safe, warm and comfortable. This in turn progresses the storyline as they decide to stop for a break, which then leads to them being killed off. Another example is the relationship between Jack and Louise, the interaction between them causes the audience to wonder if they’re going to get together or not and helps build up the relationships between them and the other characters as they react to each other. Another one of my roles as the director was deciding how to make the clear distinction between the zombies and the humans, I did this by making us see through the zombies point of view, and showing that they see the world differently than normal people, this was done by the coloured tints on some shots. This also helped us as we didn’t need to film that many body shots when shooting the chase scene near the end, which relieved us from having to find more actors and make suitable clothing and make up adjustments.

In some ways our film was successful because I believe we achieved a certain build up of tension through our camera shots and editing, we also aimed for our audience to be mainly teenagers, both male and female, aged 16-24. I believe our film does suit both male and females because we have content for the boys, i.e. the zombie/infected chases but also group interaction and a slight possibility of a love relationship between two of our characters, and because of the content it fits the age group we aimed for. A good thing I believe we achieved was the way the shots from the point of view of the zombies/infected looked, we didn’t want them to be slow and docile like the conventional zombies are, we wanted to make them fast and unstable to heighten the sense of danger that the characters, we were influenced by ’28 days later’ and how the zombies on there react and move. However, aside from a few jumpy zombie shots, we failed to really capture the element of fear in our film, I believe if we had used more conventions we may have achieved this. We could have created a film which was longer, to help show the relationship between the characters better so that we could reach the desired affect from them dying, or to show the background of the zombies/infected better, so the audience had a better understanding. If I had to perform this task again, there would various things that I would change, for example I would add different settings to the film to show variation. Another thing I would do differently would be the music, I believe we need more backing music and intense chase music to help create the mood and add to the atmosphere, in creating a gloomy post apocalyptic horror.




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