Evaluation- 4 hour film (Doors)

In a group of 3 I was given the challenge to plan, film and edit a film in 4 hours; whatever we create must include a door and a pull focus. With this being the criteria myself and my group set off brainstorming a narrative, we decided to set the film in the horror genre as we felt we could create suspense and mystery with a locked door. Shortly after deciding a brief outline for the narrative we set off to start filming as we were very conscious of the time limit. This is where we should have decided on a time limit for filming because, on reflection, we spent too long filming leaving not enough time to edit. While shooting I feel that we shot more unnecessary footage and not enough with purpose, we tended to take the quantity over quality route thinking that as long as we met requested length of 1-2mins long then it wouldn't matter. This was a flaw in our planing and I feel that if more time was spent focusing on what needed to be shot in order to move the narrative further then the quality of our finished project would have been better. Another flaw I found while reflecting on our process was that because we were filming in low key lighting it was more difficult to see if the camera was focussed correctly meaning that the footage we ended up with was not of a great quality. However a positive aspect of the lighting which we used was a flashing effect on our phones which created a disorientated atmosphere and depict panic within the main character as she struggled to escape through the locked door.

During the editing process we created quick and snappy cuts between shots that also helped the enhance the panic and tension, this was also done to the same pace of the music. After showing this to an audience they agreed that it was an effective editing technique however it was used too often and so lost impact. If we had only used this once or twice and contrasted it with longer, slower shots then tension would have been kept. Our audience also found that our ending shot of the pull focus was executed very well and was effective in rounding the film off, however it was cut too quickly at the end of the clip. They suggested that lingering on the shot and fading it out with the non diegetic eerie music would have had a much smoother and mysterious finish. Overall I think that our film was a good effort and had a few very effective shots that really captured the creepy vibe we wanted however it could have been a lot smoother and meaningful simply by spending more time on the planning and editing.