Film Studies Evaluation.

In my group I have been working as the cinematographer, in our crime thriller, we decided to give it a crime thriller genre as the idea we had of a murder taking place, is a crime. We didn’t have a specific film that had inspired us to do this genre/style of clip, but we did get further ideas, from such films as, Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ we looked at the shower scene, and used the tension building idea’s as it kept us engaged and thought this would work well in our extract. Our clip is in the middle of the film just after the dilemma has happened. The clip is after a man has killed his wife, we don’t yet know he has killed his wife, but the flashback within the clip shows he may have the clip, the clip begins with a car driving up a backtrack in dark lighting this builds anticipation as we don’t know what is approaching us, to make it look eerie , next is a shot of the man, which is introducing the character at this time we think he is a normal man. then the clip leads to a shot of the boot, and we don’t know what is in the boot, or what’s going to come next, then the man drags a body around the car,
this has clarified to us that the man is about to do something with the body, and also suggests to us that he has murdered the person in the bag, making the audience watch on and see what happens, also it creates the fear of the unknown. It then leads on to the man digging a hole, and then putting the body in the hole, and then has a flashback, which adds in extra narrative, giving the audience more of a understanding about what the man is doing in. Also in the kitchen scene, we felt using a woman would make the audience feel for her more, putting the woman in peril, as this strange looking man is standing behind her with a angry looking expression on his face, making the audience think he may of murdered her and she is the body in the bag.



We put a lot into our sound, we deleted all original sounds off the clip and added in other sound effects we wanted to make the sound much more intense because we had no dialogue we wanted to sound to be great, our sound doesn’t sound out of the ordinary but it has made a lot of difference to our clip. Below are just some of the 30 layers that we added on, I think deleting the sound was a very good idea, because we were outside there was a lot of unwanted background noise, and tapping of the camera, and very unprofessional noises, so replacing the sound made it sound much better, and also we could add in things that were necessary to a thriller, like a very quiet “ghostly roll” which gives it a very sinister freaky feel.
If I had a chance to do this again, we would of recorded far more shot types, because most of them were mid/long shots, but the few close up shots we did were very effective and made the clip less boring, as it was just a very slow tension building clip, so maybe adding in some more close up shots, to show the emotions on the man’s face would be good.



We didn’t really get any influence off any films about our clip, we just thought of some conventions of a thriller, and used them to make our clip, some of the conventions we took were the dark lighting, tension building, seeing the woman character in “peril”, eerie locations, a fear of the unknown. These all helped with the construction of our clip.
The lighting we used, was natural lighting from the car that was in the background of the shot, the car that we saw approaching us in the start of the clip, we felt this gave it a very sinister dark look, which adds in with the dark lighting convention, the only problem with this lighting is in some shots we couldn’t see what was going on, so we had to cut them out, but other than that this lighting decision was a very good one.

Evaluation - Rachael Humphrey

Our film is in the sub genre of a Crime Thriller. The conventions of a thriller are fear of the unknown; shadowy lighting; flashback; crime; outside the law; mystery; death and an eerie location.
At the beginning of our film we showed a van coming from far away in the night as it helps the audience start to feel anticipation. When the van reaches us, we see a shot of the main character reaching for something in the boot, but as the audience are not shown what was taken out it is unclear what he is doing, creating the aspect of fear of the unknown until it shows him dragging the body bag through a woodland. We used a flashback to further the narrative and show the audience how the main character got into this situation. We felt the kitchen scene during the flashback should show the main character and a female character in the front of the shot so that when the abrupt looking man comes out behind her she is unaware, leading the audience to believe he killed her however we decided not to show him killing her to give a sense of mystery as to whether or not she is in the body bag and the audience is left to make an assumption about their relationship.
Van coming from far away.

I was the Editor in my group which involved me using editing style; techniques; and I played an important role adding the sounds to fit the shots. It was important to make sure the film was continuous and flowed in order to make the narrative further on as our film was from the middle of a Crime Thriller. We used video transitions like fade in/fade out to show a change in time which helps show the narrative is moving on. The video transitions meant I could put in jump cuts between the digging scenes in the woodland so the film could jump between a mid shot of the man digging to a close up of the spade going into the ground, this was an important learning development as it meant using the transition not only showed a change in time, but we were shown in detail the main characters actions and using single source lighting which created an eerie mood.

Showing the single source lighting from car lights.

We worked to further the narrative, character and genre we decided a flashback would be a good idea in between the digging scenes to show an insight of how the main character came to digging a grave in the woodland. We developed the character using no dialogue, which meant there was more emphasis on his actions and the genre of Crime Thriller. We developed our genre as we decided to use some of the typical conventions of thrillers which helped show the extent of the crime.

Flashback scene, showing abrupt looking man.

There were certain shots we wanted to use such as close ups, pan, long shots, mid shots, over the shoulder shots, track forward and an establishing shot. We changed our plans slightly on which shot type to use to focus on what was happening in the scene but kept to most of our plan. We changed having no non-diegetic sound and added a small electronic sound to the flashback to add eeriness and it was subtle in between the diegetic kitchen sounds we added.

Close up showing detail of digging scenes.

Close up of man in car, to identify main character.

I wanted the transitions to signify a change in time showing the narrative had moved on. I wanted to show the characters state of mind when he is digging, so placing the flashback in an important place shows the audience not only what happened to the female character but suggests his thoughts and feelings are being shown.


Close up allowing audience to see his emotions before the flashback scene occurs.

The feedback we received showed us the decisions we chose, made our film quite successful. Some feedback told us the pan shot when the man is walking from the woods to the van then continuing from the van to the woods with a spade was very good. When the man comes close to the camera then goes into a long shot was a very good technique that worked well. A criticism of our sequence was some of the sounds were not in sync with the film showing me the importance of technical skills and I worked on making the sound fit with the action so it held the audiences suspension of disbelief.

Man walking from woods to van and back in a pan movement.
The skills involved in creating our film helped us develop the choices we wanted to make. From editing I was able to cut unwanted scenes and choose scenes suitable for the film, to give it the suspicious atmosphere that can occur in crime thrillers. Using film transitions to create a change of narrative and got rid of all original sound then added any sound that resembles the action from using different parts of a sound clip; like in the digging scene it shows the sound is not on a loop and creates a realistic effect as the digging sounds vary.

Screen Grab of Timeline

This is our time line for our film project, in total we have added 30 layers of sound to the film all of it being not the original sounds.

Screen Grabs of Our Project

Planning - Dates and Locations

We booked our camera for two over nights during the week in January, we filmed in the location of Ely. We used and orchard in Ely to film our digging scene in the film, this was behind Abby's house in Ely. We left college around 2 to be able to get to Ely so that it was dark enough for the outside scene, but also so that we could film the kitchen scene in natural light and some other inside lighting like lamps. We filmed the kitchen scene in Abbys house in Ely, which was good as it meant that we did not have to go far to get to our two locations making it easier for use to film and also meant we could spend more time filming rather than travelling to the location.

Psycho -Shower Scene

In Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock, the shower scene builds up suspense and fear of the unknown when the female is in the shower and a person with a weapon appears at the shower curtain, this is similar to how we wanted to get our flashback scene to look like. As in our flashback with have the female character washing up which is normal and the kitchen is a very public place as it is somewhere that everyone can relate to, then when the main male character steps into the room behind her who is also unaware like the woman in the shower in psycho, it creates that suspense for the audience as to what the person in the background is going to do.

Location Report

This is our location in Ely where we shot our entire film. In the small black circle on the left of the picture above of the orchard this is where the digging scenes in our film was shot, and to the left of that is that track where the van drove down to get there in the opening sequence.