Ashley Radford Assignment

Our group decided to re-create forty seconds of 'Pendant', which was a Horror Film created by previous Media Students.

'Pendant' is a Psychological Horror, and this is what we plan to make we film our final Horror Film. Unfortunately, due to no fault of my own, I was absent when filming, so a lot more pressure was on the other members in my group to film with only two people as I had sorted out the actors. As I was unable to film, I have re-edited the clip to show my skills and prove that I have had a part to do with the preliminary exercise.

Use of the Camera

As I didn't film, the skills I will talk about are the skills of the other members in my group.

They used a variety of different shot types in appropriate places which I felt worked well and with good effect. The shots were very steady and looked good. There is one scene that I edited where the screen does shake in an 'earthquake' effect, but I feel this works well.

The shots we framed appropriately as there is enough lead room for the actor to walk into, but I feel on some of the shots there is a little bit too much head room, but only by a fraction. There is plenty of film to work with, which was a great help when editing as there were numerous takes on certain clips, so that I could chose the best one to edit. There was good used of composition techniques as the 'golden mean' was obviously thought about and was stuck to throughout when necessary.

Use of Editing

I tried to apply the rules of continuity editing as much as possible when I editing the footage. As the footage had no continuity errors, this made my job a lot easier. For example the '180 degree' rule was stuck to. As said above, there was a lot of footage, so there was a larger amount to deal with, which made getting a good shot was easier. In the final edit, most of the shots did flow together, but I feel I could have edited them a bit better so they did look more professional.

I didn't use any transitions as I felt that there were no appropriate places in the film where they were needed. There is limited number of transitions that work well with Horror Films and none of them fitted into out film without them looking out of place.

Selection of Content

In this small film we have not really used any costumes that would be associated with Horror film. But as ours is a Psychological horror, with no real ‘blood and gore’ then we feel that the costumes that we have used are appropriate as in the original ‘Pendant’ the clothes the actor is wearing and everyday clothes. The film was shot in college, which isn’t ideal, but because we all live so far apart and had little time to film it, our schedule didn’t permit us to film on a possible better location. I do feel that under the circumstances the location does work reasonably well as all the props we needed e.g. a bench and bushes were there already. I had sorted out the actors and gave them a rough idea of what was going to happen, but as I was not there, the other member’s of my group had to improvise and Mart starred in it himself. This wasn’t a major issue, but would help if we had proper actors they the whole group could be behind the camera putting all our views together

Self-Assessment

We all had a lot to do the pre-filming preparation e.g. storyboarding so we can all be pleased with that stage of film making. As I was unable to film, I did edit the whole film again myself as well as the clip edited by James and Mart. I feel their edited clip is slightly better than the version I edited myself as they had two people to edit it, combining their ideas together. Obviously if we filmed again I would like to be there so I could put my input into the filming.

When we do our final coursework, none of us will be acting, so all of us can be behind the camera and directing our actors so that they know what we are looking for.