T-16 FILM EXTRACT: February 2009

Thursday 26 February 2009

Rupert's Scene Analysis

As director of our film, I had to incorporate effective themes and relevant Mise en Scène to convey a certain feel to the scene to ultimately create a captivating zombie film extract. Using influences from various zombie horror films I had previously seen such as 28 Days Later, Dawn of The Dead and R.E.C, I tried to design and shoot effectively a collaboration of existing zombie films. We also attempted to involve elements of film Noir in our scene to represent the psychological battle our main character is going through.

We decided to shoot the scene at my home because we felt that as a house built in the Georgian period, it had the right style to offer a dark, eerie setting that would evoke the desired emotion of our audience. Throughout the scene, we tried to convey a Noir style to represent the panic and despair our character is experiencing. Film Noirs such as Double Indemnity and Brighton Rock were our main influence in regard to the use of darkness as a tool of emotion.

Our scene begins with the main character Martin, ably performed by Aris Sahin asleep in his bed whilst a critical alert message is audible from the television in the background. In this first shot, Aris is wearing all of his clothes in bed, so our suspicions are initially raised as to why this could be. At this point, the audience cannot see the television, but is aware of the root of the sound because the flashing images from the television are reflected on Aris' face. This effect was chosen in an attempt to familiarize itself with a scene from Robert Siodmak’s The Killers where Burt Lancaster is stooped against a window whilst raindrops running down the glass are reflected on his face and resemble tears. Although our version is evidently less poetic, the concept
stands.

In our scene, we wanted to involve the idea of character psychology, similarly to Jim’s mental battle in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. In our scene, the girl Martin loves has miraculously vanished and when he wakes he is understandably in a state of confusion. If the scene had been well lit with daylight pouring through the curtains, the audience would naturally feel differently about the character’s lurid predicament. It was important to shoot the scene at night because not only does the darkness evoke more fear towards the threat of the undead, it helps the audience understand the character’s psychological instability.

The segment of the scene of which I am most proud is the reverse P.O.V of Aris whilst he runs frantically downstairs in an attempt to rescue the girl. Instead of using a relatively mundane long shot of our character running through the house, we chose a slightly more adrenaline rushed sequence that boosts the audience’s excitement and strengthens the overall suspense. Accompanying the segment is a powerful piece of music we composed on Garage Band that conveys Aris’ sudden surge of adrenaline and expectation of potential danger. When our character hurriedly exits the house the music ceases; nothing but silence is heard. The camera then cuts from reverse P.O.V to Aris’ P.O.V as he studies the streets in search of the girl.

Due to our lack of professional make-up artists, we decided not to have any zombies traipsing around outside unconvincingly groaning in search of human flesh. Instead we decided to use a P.O.V shot of the zombie outside the house, with only its hands visible in hope of suspending the illusion that the undead had in fact risen.

Overall, I believe that we designed and shot a relatively impressive zombie horror scene using various re-occurring themes from a variety of classic horror and Noir style films. A considerable lack of budget restricted us to a lower scale version of what we had previously story-boarded, but the lighting and visual representation we used were hopefully as effective as originally intended.

Labels: Rupert Andrews

posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 01:53 0 comments

Wednesday 25 February 2009

T-16 Zombie Film Feedback

Mise en Scene

The house setting is erie and fits the genre well; it creates a good atmosphere to the scene.

The radio is effective and makes the scene believable.

Cinematography

The close-up of the character's face works well.

A good variety of camera angles and shots.

The hand-held camera action scene is very good and creates a lot of suspense.

Editing

Lots of good cuts.

Believable continuity with the darkness.

Fast and snappy editing.

The editing matched the action.

Sound

Sound of the radio, television and woman screaming all worked well.

The action music created suspense and tension.

Good cuts of music - in particular, when the body is discovered.

posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 03:55 0 comments