Animatic for film opening

Feedback comments

In class we played back the animatics and students in our class gave us feedback. Some of the comments made are listed below:

1. People said that we needed to make the title of the film clearer so it said "souldier" for a reason, instead of being spelt "soldier".

2. We needed to establish the genre better, so people know it is about a soldier, but it is not a war film.

Film Opening - Summary

In this task I am working with Jamie and Alice. The film treatment we have come up with is for a film we will call "Souldier" and is about a man who is in the British army and is sent to the Falklands during the war. Instead of staying and fighting during a battle, we see him separated from the rest of his battalion and running away. He gets shot and killed by an enemy sniper, however this doesn't mark the end of his life, but rather the start of death. He is now stuck in "limbo", and cant find a way to pass on into the next life. Invisible to the rest of the world, with no one to help, he is forced to deal with the situation he has found himself in, and learn why running away never solves life's problems. The genre of the film opening will be a supernatural thriller, and we want to combine the eeriness of films like "sixth sense" and "the happening" with the pace confrontation of "Saving Private Ryan" and "300". As these films have million dollar budgets, we are not expecting to have the same qualities, however we are aiming to use clever filming techniques and software to accurately convey the same effects and suspense of this films.

Our preliminary exercise video

I worked on the preliminary exercise with Jamie and William. The objective of the preliminary exercise was to demonstrate our knowledge of camera work and editing by capturing a short amount of footage where a character opens a door, walks through, and sits down at a table opposite another character to have a small conversation. It was essential that we showed a correct match on action when the door was opened, that there was shot reverse shot between the characters, and that we did not break the 180 degree rule.

Other aspects that we had to take into account when recording were the location, lighting, mise en scene, eye line matching, and the continuity of the shots. As we were restricted to the school to set the location, we chose the music studio as it gives very even lighting throughout the whole room. Because it was in a music studio, we had to match the dialogue to the surrounding, so we chose to have the characters arguing about the band they were in and ultimately one of the members of the band getting fired. This fitted in well with the mise en scene and is not confusing to the viewer. The eye line match was correct, however when editing I noticed a small continuity error with the door. When William walks through the door, he closes it just before he sits down, however in the rest of the shots after, the door is ever so slightly ajar. It isn't very noticeable, and I only picked up on it after watching it several times, however if I had extra time I would have re-shot the closing of the door to leave it slightly ajar so that the rest of the shots could still be used.

Another problem was the length of the clip. Our original edit was 1 minute 5 seconds, which is over double the suggested time of 30 seconds. We had to cut out a lot of footage, which included other good match on actions and filming techniques, however we still managed to keep the core conversation intact when we reduced the length.

During the clip, we tried to show a distinct power difference between the two characters. This is shown at the beginning with the extreme close up of Jamie, by showing his frustration. You can also see that there is a slight difference in camera angle between the shots of the two characters. Jamie's shots are from a slightly lower angle, showing him as the powerful subject, and William's shots are from a slightly higher angle, showing him as the less powerful subject. The differences are only subtle, but we didn't want it to look strange or confusing so I think we got the angles just right.

I think we fully met the criteria needed for this task, and I think as a whole our group succeeded well in working together.