Evaluation of Max Kill

Critically evaluating video production

Together Lizzy Morey and I filmed the first two minutes of a thriller film. The film involves a young woman and man getting ready to go out. It teases the audience into thinking that the pair of the them are going out on a date, but as the film goes on the audience comes to realise that the plot is in fact very different. The man stalks the woman down the street and at the end we see the glint of the knife he is holding behind her.

Initially we had influences from films such as Legally blonde, this seems unusual, (because our genre was a thriller) but it really helped with ideas for the clips where the character Claudia was getting ready, such as pulling up the dress and putting lip stick on. We also had influences from plenty of actual thrillers. For example we have used a stereotypical following scene, to create tension and suspense in the audience. By using this type of scene it lets the audience know what genre we were conforming to. We also used this technique again when we added a small shower scene, although this scene is only to show Claudia’s process of getting ready, it also denotes a sense of danger. This is because in the thriller Psycho, a shower scene the film's pivotal scene, and one of the most famous scenes in cinema history, because it shows a woman being brutally stabbed and murdered. By adding a small association to this film within ours, it foreshadows what is going to happen to the character Claudia in the film.

We wanted to represent Claudia as a classy ‘uptown’ girl; therefore to show this we had her dressed in a black dress and heels with a smart black coat. She wore red lipstick, which symbolised a lot of things in the film. For example not only did it show that she had sex appeal and was desirable to the opposite sex, but the red colour also denoted danger. The characters represented in the film are middle class and living in Oxford. The character Max is a publicist and wears a standard suit to show he is a smart, hard working person; nothing about his outfit is special as he is ‘living the simple life’.

We tried to construct realism as well as we could by filming everything in real settings, therefore our mise en scene was as believable as possible. We filmed real houses and real streets to give an authentic effect. As well as this, everything was filmed in Oxford, which is where the film is set, thus increasing the realism even more. The clothes and props were made to fit the characters social class and personality; this backed up the plot and all in all gave the film verisimilitude.

We used music to portray two very contrasting types of ambience to our audience. The first piece of music we used was a slow jazz piece to relax them. It showed the two characters getting ready; the parallel editing we used linked the two of them together, tricking the audience into thinking that the two of them are getting ready for a date with each other. It went well with the laid back atmosphere we were trying to create and the realism of it was backed up by the shots of the record player turning. But once the Claudia stepped out the door the music drastically changed to an eyrie piece of music, with build up in suspense and tension as it went on. This fitted perfectly because as the music built up more and more apprehension it showed how Claudia was in more and more danger because Max was actually following her. The contrasting pieces of music helped symbolise that inside the houses it was a safe and relaxing environment but the streets were a place of risk.

The use of music demonstrated our theme of binary oppositions, such as male and female, safety and danger and, in particular, handbag and knife. The shots of Claudia putting her possessions into her handbag and Max putting a knife into his pocket were parallel to each other, thus creating juxtaposition. It is also quite a pivotal part of the opening because it when the audience get an enigma that something is not right.

We chose to use still camera shots most of the time; we think this gave a profession and clean-cut look. We worried that a POV and unsteady shots might be unclear to the audience, so we chose keep the camera relatively still most of the time. We did film a couple of tracking shots, but the dolly we used rocked too much, making the camerawork look messy and unprofessional.

The camera we used was quite basic and did cause a couple of problems during filming, for example it was very dark when we were filming out side, and although this was partly our fault for filming so late, it didn’t pick up things very well in the dark. The filming we did also came out quite grainy in the camera, this may have been a lighting issue too, but it was hard to get around at the time of filming, due to deadlines etc. Therefore, to get past both of these problems we took the saturation down to make it black and white. This made the lighting like equal and took some of the graininess away. It also made our film look more authentic.

We stuck to our storyboard quite well throughout the process but there were times when we had to move away from it because of problems with lighting or continuity. For example we had to cut a shot of just Claudia’s feet walking down the path because there was so little light in that you couldn’t see her feet at all. But it was ok because we shot a full body shot of her walking down the path, in which she showed up fine and over all, looks better in the film, keeping the continuity.

We also had to cut out the shot of Max saying ‘wait’ to Claudia, because when we put it onto the Mac computers the sound for this shot had gone, therefore we had to import an audio clip of some one saying the dialogue. But this didn’t solve the problem as it just seemed out of place in the film and didn’t sound right to our audience when we trialled the film with them. Cutting this out didn’t hinder the continuity in any way, and the audience were still able to understand what was going on.

After trialling an unfinished version of our film to an audience, the response was good. We were complimented for our range of shots and techniques but were told to pay a little more attention to some of our transitions. After receiving this feedback we then went and altered some of the transitions slightly and found that the continuity increased dramatically.

I think we attract our audience well because leave them with the feeling that they want to know what happens next. For a start, the loud bang at the beginning instantly captures the audience’s attention, creating antithesis with the relaxed music that follows. The faces of the characters are never shown properly till the end, and even then it is very dark so there is little detail. This was to create a sense of curiosity about who the characters were and make the audience want to carry on watching to find out. We also decided to complete the opening by leaving it on a cliffhanger; where Claudia is turning round to face Max who is holding a glinting knife. After watching this hopefully it hooks the audience into watching the rest of the film.

Looking back at my preliminary task I feel that I have learnt a lot in the progression from it to the main task. I have learnt about shot types and how they portray things to the audience. I have also learnt how to create tension and suspense; compared to the preliminary where we just went straight into it, with out any establishing shots or creating a suitable atmosphere for the audience to feed off. We have improved in our filming techniques and all in all produced a better quality film than we had before.

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The final film!