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!

The story board

About our chosen genre.

For our main task we have chosen do do a Thriller. We felt this was a good one to chose because it is quite a broad genre therefore our storyline would not be too limited. Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, we have chosen to do this but also have some slow paced takes to build up tension and create binary opposition between our two characters (in which one is a male the other female). We have also chosen to add a cliffhanger in at the end of our two minutes to conform to the genre.

We have had influences from some Thriller films such as Psycho. For example we have a small shower scene. In Psycho this was the film's pivotal scene, and one of the most famous scenes in cinema history. All though this is not a huge part of our film opening and is not pivotal, it still demonstrates the genre we are conforming to.
Our film also includes quite a stereotypical follwing scene which appears in many thrillers.

Film Pitch

This is a short pitch in order to sell our film and an audience.

Pitch:
This feature length thriller, set in the streets of Oxford, tells us of Max Furtado and his wild, obsessive grieving for Claudia Jones, the woman he once loved and killed. Will he be able to face the trials of murder, or will he hide forever, planning his next victim?

Film synopsis

Lizzy and I have chosen to do do the first two minutes of a thriller for our final task. Together we have written a synopsis on what the whole film would be if we were to make it...

Synopsis:
Max Furtado is a 31-year-old publicist living the simple life, but wishing he had more…

When Max meets uptown girl Claudia Jones he is devastated that she will not return his love. He decides if he can’t have her, no one will. So one dark December night he murders her, only to instantly find himself thrown into a mad state of denial and regret.

He finds himself walking the streets looking for anyone that looks like her, only to find this is not a cure for grieve, it makes him madder by the day and he is soon labelled Oxford’s modern day ‘Jack the Ripper’. As his psychotic murders increase, more and more police are out looking for him. Every woman is in fear of her life; no mother daughter or sister is safe.

Chief Samuel is made head of the case; if he doesn’t manage to find Max his job could be at stake. And when his wife goes missing, it gets personal. Samuel works day and night in his search for Max but he starts to struggle to look after his scared 3-year-old boy as well as juggle the case.

One night he gets a mysterious phone call. A deep voice tells him to meet him at a shadowed remote alley way a couple of miles away. Samuel jumps into the car and races down the streets at full speed, he gets there in 5 minutes and jumps out of car. He finds him self face to face with Max and, behind him, tied up to a lamppost, is his wife covered in blood.

Max demands that if he lets Samuel have his wife back then Samuel should let him go free. Chief Samuel is torn, for he wants his wife home and safe but he needs Max caught, When Samuel runs to set his wife free, Max pulls out a knife on him. They get into a rough fight full of blood and gore, but soon Max loses strength.

Samuel releases his wife and quickly drives home with her back to his son who has been left alone. He calls his fellow policemen to get to the scene of crime where Max is lying powerless. But when all the policemen get there Max is no where to be seen, but as they walk back through the grave yard they see him laid over Claudia Jones’s grave with a knife through his heart.

Evalutation of our preliminary task.

Evaluation of Preliminary task

Before we do our official AS task we have had to do a preliminary exercise. This was a continuity task involving filming and editing, it had to demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse/shot and the 180-degree rule.

Together, Lizzy Morey, Sam Johnson and Kate Roby and I put together a filmed a short film of:
· A character opening a door.
· Crossing the room.
· Sitting down on a chair opposite another character.
· The characters exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue.

We filmed this in the school with Sam and me as the actors. We then uploaded it onto the Apple Macs and used the imovie software for editing. The sound effects and end credits were all off imovie too.

There were positives on our filming for example it went well and we managed to get it done quite quickly in one lesson, this meant filming wasn’t disrupted by waiting for the next lesson.

We also had good light to do the filming in, therefore the light balance wasn’t disrupted when we were filming our match on action (hand on door handle), shot reverse shot (line exchanges) and keeping the 180 degree rule.

But there were some negatives too. For example we were new to the apple macs, therefore it took us quite a long time to upload the video and it was quite difficult to use the software. Although in the end we got through this by practicing with the software.

Also our last shot had to be cut quite short because our filming was not completely straight, therefore we cut that out. Also though this is not a huge problem, it is quite noticeable