Evaluation

Editing to create meaning

Since the creation of editing in the very first simplistic films, directors have used editing in order to convey meaning to an audience. The use of editing can take control of a number of things include, meaning, tempo and genre.

If a director wants to create meaning do a number of things with the use of basic editing, for instace in a slasher if violence was to be represented you could have the face of someone, then flash back and forth between that frace and a knife being held by them. You could even show the potential victim by having it flash to a person as well you continued these jump cuts. By using simple edits such as these you can create meaning from seconds of clips.

Tempo using edits can create different settings and aid the realisation of genre. For instance the use of quick edits in an action film during a fight scene create a sense of speed during these shots, thereby creating an adrenaline filled ride for us the audience. Another example would be the use of simple and few edits during a naturalistic/historical film in order for the audience to notice as little of the editing as possible. By using a variety of styles to edit we can show this great variety in editing

Infection 2010 Finished Product

Please find below my finished Product, a short Film introduction to Infection 2010. This short horror piece is hopefully aimed to show the audience what the resulting film would be about and also to give them enough of a taster to wish to view the entire movie if it was made.

The Ring

The Ring was a psychological horror film produced in 2002  by Gore Verbinski. The main plot was based on a Japanese novel of a cursed videotape displaying a set of disturbing images, after the tape finishes the viewer would receive a mysterious phone call in which they would be told they would die in seven days.

The film starts off with an establishing shot of a suburban house, it slowly zooms in closer. This shows to the viewer that what is going to happen is going to be here. This is accompanied by the ambient sound of rain and the scene is of night, using this pathetic fallacy it foreshadows that themes of dark qualities are going to take place inside the house as it creates a negative atmosphere for the audience. While the camera is still zooming in on the house dialogue from unknown female character starts from the place the established shot was focusing on.

The next scene cuts to a two shot of two females, one sitting on the floor while the other laying on a bed. The mise-en-scene is of a bedroom, the audience can tell this because of the composition of objects, bed, bed side lamp, curtains etc. The two characters are dressed in black and white school uniform, suggesting that the film is aimed at a young adult audience as the age group is relevant to them. The brunette character is sitting on the floor holding a TV remote, which is where the only light comes from which is dim and dark keeping the audience tense from because of the brooding scene as the diagetic sound of rain is still in the background. The blonde character is given the remote, the shot cuts to the TV being turned of then quickly cuts back to her, this showing that the important events are about to start.

Dialogue is shown to be the most important thing taking place as the audience is being made to focus on the conversation of the unnamed characters. The audience knows this by change of camera shots, it changes to a close up of the brunette character so audience knows what she is saying is important as nothing else is going on in the scene. The shot then cuts to a point of view shot to show blonde characters distressed reaction and response, another method of keeping the audience tense, as well as now the rain in the background is more distinct adding to the dramatic impact on the audience foreshadowing the darkness of the topic of conversation.

The dialogue then begins to increase between both characters as it switches between close-up’s of the characters. The increase in pace makes the audience feel more anxious as they feel that a shocking event is more likely to happen at any more as the pace continues to climb. By the end of the 2 minutes the characters are still un-named, this suggests to the audience that these two characters are irrelevant to the main plot.

Film/ Editing progress

Having spent the last few days with the new footage I have been able to edit it the majority of it. The revised script was intentionally less labour intensive than the first idea that I had for the introduction film. However I still have to do some of the more complicated editing such as the gun shot and zombie reaction cuts. Overal I hpe to have it completely finished by thursday.

Dawn of the Dead (2004 Re-make)

Dawn of the Dead is a 2004 American horror remake of George A. Romero's 1978 film of the same name. The remake and original both depict a handful of human survivors living in a shopping mall surrounded by swarms of zombies, but the details differ significantly. Directed by Zack Snyder and his directorial debut, the film was produced by Strike Entertainment and was released by Universal Pictures and stars Ving Rhames, Sarah Polley and Jake Weber with cameos from original cast members Ken Foree, Scott.

The introduction scene is about 5 minutes long and uses lots of methods to quickly tell the audience who the main character is, what the situation is and from this create a near instant conflict which grabs the viewer’s interest immediately. In the first few second of the film we see a skull that is glowing a bright gold, this then fades discretely into an x-ray image being held by a doctor in an over the shoulder shot. This then changes to a long shot of the doctor and the main character (Ana) who is tentatively listening to the doctor who is talking to a friend on the phone about a social outing. Already within just over a minute of footage we know that something about the x-ray may be foreshadowing later events (he enquires as to why the patient has been x-rayed when he came into hospital about a bite), that at the moment everything is normal as the doctor is talking to his friend as if nothing in the world is bad. 

Ana then walks out of the hospital to notice a pair of legs sticking out of an ambulance. In this segment the camera has been tilted to make her look as if she is still in a state of power. The use of costume really helps to add this mise-en-scene of her being still powerful and safe. She then approaches the legs to reveal that it’s just an ambulance driver sleeping in the job, this is then followed by an aerial view of her driving home with the song "Have a Nice Day”. These two parts of the scene are very clever. The reason for this is that when Ana investigate the ambulance non diagetic music starts to play which makes us the viewer feel as if something is wrong with the legs sticking out of the ambulance, but as previously stated its all fine. I think the Director was once again referencing the zombie scenes in which a survivor finds a recently deceased person only for them to reanimate into a zombie. The next clip is a complete juxtaposition as the music is calmed and relaxed, we have an aerial camera view that I believe references how she's in a built up area and most probably safe and even the fact that the music is diagetic shows the clear contrasts in clips. I think this exists in the film to communicate to the audience that something bad is going to happen but for now we know that every things fine and dandy.

Later on we meet Ana husband lying on their bed, he says how someone they know has gone missing (zombie foreshadowing) and they then proceed to have a shower together. In this segment we as an audience form a form a bond with the husband and so when he dies and is reanimated the director successfully scares us psychologically. Also the use of focus changing conveys to the audience that the couple (Ana and her husband) are unaware of the Emergency broadcast playing in the foreground on the television. This change in focus also helps us the viewer to realise this so that we know something is important to plot is soon to happen. The last minute or so consists of the husband waking up to find a zombie girl in their room, assuming she's just and injured girl he wakes Ana up and picks the child up only to be bitten. He then turns into a zombie and then proceeds to chase Ana who flees into her car, the intro ends after she crashes into some trees. The use of on-scene-effects like the husbands bleeding neck, explosion from the car crashes and decomposing zombies create a repulsive and shocking mise-en-scene that creates panic in the viewers mind, also the fact that there is such a large amount of blood within such a short amount of time also adds to the shock value. Finally the last segment in which Ana is driving away uses a camera or dolly that is attached to the car which creates the effect that we the audience are in her situation, also from these clips it changes to an aerial view of the chaos in the area which helps to create a juxtaposition from the first aerial view we saw.

So in conclusion The director frequently foreshadows his zombie pandemic to create suspense before it begins, he does this with the camera, actors and even the music. By using blood, on-scene-effects and fast pace he also creates a sense of fear in the audience. The director also uses camera angles to communicate certain things like basic plot line to the audience.                              

                                         

I am going to look at the intro of Aliens to analyse for our project. This will help us with out own intro for a film that we will be creating with our own editing, acting…etc. Looking at different films will help inspire us for our own film and help give us ideas about how to put the music together and put the clips together. It will help us to create a successful intro to a film. 

Aliens was released as a sequel to the famous Alien film. Aliens was released in 1986 and was a big hit. It was directed by James Cameron who also helped to write it. This film is a sci-fi horror so that means its set in the future (which is where the sci-fi comes in) and is a bit jumpy with aliens (the horror part). It does contain a bit of gore, which adds to the horror genre. The film was rated an 18 so it was defiantly aimed towards the adult sci-fi fans who were also into a bit of horror. 

The intro of the film starts right away with scary music to build up tension. At the moment are titles slowly fading in and out over the music. This must resemble the slow build up the film has until you see a creature (in this case the Aliens). Then you can see in the back some blurred shapes which then slowly fades into the title of the film Aliens. The music is getting louder and tenser. Suddenly the I gets brighter and slowly, then quickly turns the whole screen white. This must resemble the whole film. It slowly builds up the tense until it scares you. 

We are now in space tilting towards a distant space ship. The space consists of a blue colour just like the titles did. This is a cold colour which shows how space is a scary place, meaning the Aliens. The music is now quieter after the bright screen from earlier. The ship is just floating in the distance making space out to be enormous and the ship really small. This resembles power, humans aren’t as powerful as they think they are because there are loads of other creatures out in space that are more powerful. The intro has lasted 2 minutes with scary music and with a lot of titles over the space background. The only types of shots used were a long shot and a zoom in on to the ship. This was taking us to the ship to change setting for the next scene.

This introduction contains some very important points to making a scary intro for a horror film. Mainly the music, which is noticeably scary through out the whole 2 minutes. Colour meanings just to add to the effect. And also different camera  techniques to show different forms of power in the film. This helps to give different characters status.