AS Film Reflective Analysis
We decided to create a sequence from a sci-fi drama film. It is targeted at adults, around 16-40 years old, due to its scary nature. We created a victim and an antagonist, and an atmosphere of loneliness, fear and action as the sequence developed. I took responsibility for editing.
The initial narrative began with no montage at the start, for the girl to simply shoot the mutant from a distance. We decided that this was too short, did not establish the premise of the narrative, and had limited conventions of drama due to lack of tension-building. The addition of the diegetic moaning shows conventions of classic sic fi genre films by dehumanising the figure. The shot where the mutant looks downwards as he presses the barrel to his head shows where we emphasised the dramatic side of the genre. I felt the character choice was appropriate because a young girl would typically create more sympathy in an apocalyptic situation than someone older or a boy. Audiences feeling sympathy for a character was one of the key aspects of the initial ideas and we feel we accomplished this. An improvement would have been to concentrate more on the narrative, as the narrative screen time was equal to montage.
The opening montage consisted of a variety of shots depicting the environment and the nature of the protagonist. I used ambient continuous music to illustrate the loneliness and bleakness of the situation. This relates to the title sequence of the film '28 Days Later' which shows a montage of media and events that establish the premise of the film and gentle piano music to build the tension. Initially I had the music very quiet so you could still hear the diegetic sound, but I felt that this did not illustrate the fact that it was a montage, and made the music sound unnecessarily diegetic. Previously, I had cut all view of the protagonists face until the last minute, and although it worked well to create tension and mystery, it did not conform to the genre conventions we were aiming for; drama and sci-fi; creating tension/mystery by hiding the protagonists face would have drawn attention from the dramatic aspects of the young girl who has to euthanise (here’s the sci-fi convention) mutants. I made the two characters appear completely different by manipulating the view of each one. I stabilised all shots with the girl in, and kept the sound neutral, with no effects. Whereas the mutant has a darker hue in its frames, and an ambient growl in the background as diegetic sound to represent him as chaotic. I felt that this effectively portrayed to the audience that this mutant was a threat to this girl, and evoked sympathy and worry in order to achieve more conventions of drama (surprise/tragedy/betrayal). By using the hues and greenish tint, I showed conventions of decay and death, which relate to the post-apocalyptic and sic fi genre. The main inspiration for these conventions was the intro to 'The Road'. A montage of long duration establishing shots in a wasteland, with green hues and dark tints, and light echoey piano music in the background. All of these are huge conventions of loneliness and desolation which I used in my editing.
I feel the montage was effective in setting the scene as a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I stopped the non-diegetic music, but with a slight echo on the end so as to sustain the convention of seclusion. By stopping the music it becomes clear that the narrative is beginning. Although the opening long shots were filmed at different times, I managed to trim them and edit the brightness to make them similar, using continuity editing to make them all smoothly fit together, however I should have used a clip to put between the first two shots of the narrative, so that the girl doesn’t suddenly appear on the other side of the area. The part where the mutant is running towards the girl was important to make as smooth as possible, because it had to be made obvious that it was gradually picking up the pace. To do this I cut from long shots of the girl, then close up of the mutant, until they reach each other and combined cut in/cut away to give the audience a more personal (gradually closer) experience of the mutant. I felt that making these shots short in duration increased the pace of the narrative, following this with the much longer drawn out contemplation period was effective in putting the audience in the perspective of the protagonist. By slowing down the clip of the mutant pushing the gun to his head, combines conventions of both sci-fi and drama. I used elliptical editing to not show the actual killing, as a convention of drama. This relates to 'World War Z'. In a scene where hordes of zombies are attacking people, no blood or gore is shown, and the terror is shown through cinematography. By not showing the mutant going down I allowed the viewer to become more involved, and assume the worst.
