Prelim Part 2

This is our preliminary  task video. We filmed this video ourselves allocating a director, camera operator and two actors. We followed the story board given to us that is in my last post and the two actors were told by me, the director what sort of plot we were going for. I decided that we should just have Amr, one of our actors to come in through the door and be asking Mia to send a important message before he goes to war. Evidently I instructed Mia following the outline of the storyboard to refuse which created the amount of tension necessary for the scene plot we went with. I am over all happy with how it turned out as it was the first time I have worked with a camera and been a director and feel like i have learnt a lot.

Sound in a Thriller Analysis: The Departed Elevator Scene

The thriller scene I have chosen to analyse is from the film ‘The Departed’. I’ve chosen the elevator scene because this is one of my favourite scenes in any thriller, it’s very action packed and the sound used in it really adds to the atmosphere and brings the whole piece together. 

The scene begins with non-diegetic music featuring flowing orchestral sounds, which compliments the slow panoramic pan shots of the city. This music is used by the director in order to give a feeling

 of tension as well as a feeling of relaxation. These feelings do contrast each other and I think this is why the director chose this specific music. It’s a confu

sing time in the film with 4 characters coming together and clashing in blood and violence. The non-diegetic orchestral music is abruptly stopped when Leonardo Di Caprio , who plays Billy Costigan, slams the door to the roof of the building, possibly meant to shock the audience, as this is a direct contrast to the flowing music that was playing before, it is unexpected by the audience and the loud noise is mean to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. This diegetic slam brings a sense of urgency to the scene. The sound also lets the audience know that Matt Damon, who plays Colin Sullivan, is trapped on the roof of the building with nowhere else to go. This causes the audience to start panicking for the characters, a sign of a good thriller movie. The orchestral music from the start is then replaced with loud and frantic diegetic sounds of shouting from Damon and Di Caprio. The use of vulgar dialogue goes towards creating a hostile and tense environment in which the characters are situated. The shouting contrasts the music from the beginning. The diegetic sounds of birds (possibly seagulls) suggests that the actors are high up, this gives the audience a sense of isolation and therefore more tension for the audience. We also hear diegetic sounds of punching connoting a fight happening and also adding a sense of violence, these sounds were purposely put in by the director to make the audience flinch and worry for the character of Matt Damon, as well as keeping them interested in the scene. The diegetic sound of the cocking of the gun adds yet more tension to the scene as it means the audience is expecting a gun shot. The shouting dialogue between the actors connotes panic and anger in the scene. On the roof there are a few times in which silence is used by the director tactically in order to create a hostile and tense atmosphere. This is difficult to do correctly as sometimes it can just seem wrong, but in this it does work.

Once inside the building, the director uses echoes of the footsteps and doors slamming connote a large empty space in this case a building, again emphasising the isolation of the characters. Long periods of silence are used once again to build tension foreshadowing that something is going to happen in the plot. The long silence in the elevator almost brings a sense of awkwardness to the scene. The long silences toward the end of the scene lead up to the loud diegetic sound of the gun shot. This loud noise echoes around the building which again shows the emptiness of the building, also suggesting that the men are not meant to be there in the first place, reinforcing their ‘bad’ characters. This gun shot contrasts the silence in the building and cuts it sharply. The echoes resonate for quite a long time before the second and third gun shots. I think the silence is used by the director in order to emphasise the importance of the gunshots and to make them stand out more and therefore resonate with the audience for longer, this scene is meant to shock and upset the audience, and I think the sound really goes a long way towards achieving this. The diegetic sounds of panting from Matt Damon’s character suggests relief that the ordeal is over and also shock, as this is a common reaction to someone in shock (hyperventilating) however, this may also connote physical exertion as he has just been in a long struggle with Di Caprio’s character. The long silence at the end most likely signifies that what has happened is significant and shocking as well as brutal, leaving the audience almost speechless. The diegetic sounds of Damon’s character cleaning his fingerprints off the gun and leaving it on the ground break the painful silence. 

All in all the director uses a lot of silence, shouting and very little music in this scene in order to show anger, violence, tension and hostility. It is a very well directed film and I like the unconventional way that sound is used as it makes it far more interesting to the viewer.

Prelim task part 1

Last week my group took part in our preliminary task for media studies. To do this we were first given a pre-written storyboard with pre-set camera angles which we would have to shoot by Matt. We decided to come up with some ideas which we would adapt the script to follow. 

Some of the ideas included a fight between a husband and a wife, a mother and a son or what we decided on to be our idea, a fight between two friends.In the end we decided to go for the two friends idea as we thought it would be relatively easy to shoot still whilst still being effective.We didn't use any props as we thought we would concentrate on the message of just two friends being caught up in the moment a bit more.We used two people from the group as actors Amr an

d Mia.

It was really interesting to do this task as it was the first time we properly were allowed to use the cameras and do some directing as I was the director. I hope this new experience will help me when putting together the upcoming thriller shoot as we know to give the actors the script beforehand and also to consider locations and plan shoots before hand with a storyboard. I am looking forward to starting my thriller shooting very much.

Editing Lesson 1

Last Friday my media class had our first editing lesson in the editing suite with Matt. It was really educating for myself because I have only ever used iMovie the software for film editing that comes on a mac laptop, so to be introduced to Adobe premier it was incredibly interesting.Matt taught us that we could actually put all our shots into a single 'bin' named 'rus

hes'. We learnt that we should do this to keep all our original shots in the same place. This was so that we could keep up good organization in our sequence editing and wouldn't lose any files because we always have a backup.

We then created a second folder named 'Log Bin' in this we put all the shots we were definitely not going to use but we could always come back to just in case - the ones that we will be using to make the finished sequence. After naming the bins we started to learn how to do the actual editing. We learned about the 'i' and 'o' keys on the keyboard that are used for 'in' and 'out' which determines how much of the shot goes into the drag window. After doing that you can drag the clip into the window at the bottom and you can cut it more or lengthen it. We then continued to do that for every other clip and edited at one to fit in with the last.

I feel I learnt a lot from my first editing lesson with Matt and I learnt that there is a great deal of skill that goes into working software like Adobe Premiere. Also we were taught to make a smooth looking, clean and crisp sequence we should avoid jump cuts and we should always cut when a shot changes from one to another, one must cut to the next when there is movement in the first scene.This movement provides a distraction to the audience and makes the whole cut a lot more efficient and clean looking.