Thursday, 23 April 2015

"The Survivor" - Reflective Analysis by Michael Higgins

Our film sequence is called “The Survivor” and the genre we chose this film to be is an apocalyptic horror. We thought this choice of genre was good because of the research we had done into a similar film called “28 Days Later”, this meant we understood the conventions that we would have to include in our sequence. My role for the task was mainly as the editor but I did help produce the sequence as I edited the sound for the sequence. The overall plot for our film is about a group of survivors of this zombie apocalypse that has struck the UK all find each other in the woods, they travel and live together in order to stay safe but slowly they get picked off. The sequence shows the end of the film as the last survivor gets attacked by a lone zombie.

The overall aim of our sequence was to place the audience into the chase with the survivor and make the audience feel like they are running with the zombie and survivor, we also wanted to make the atmosphere quite unnerving using simple sounds and cinematography. A storyboard was used in order to organise and plan which camera shots were going to be used and when in order to create a certain audience response, we were also able to plan what sounds and music we would use to unnerve the audience and make them feel like they are in the scene. An example of how to do this could be using a point of view shot during a chase scene. The location of our film, an area of woodland, was chosen because it allows us to use the conventions of horror for our film as woodland is a common place for horror films.

Our main micro-feature was camerawork, this is because it is how we provoked major responses from the audience. From the feedback to our film sequence we gathered that our use of shots, such as point of view, long shot and a tracking camera, managed to make the audience feel as if they were in the scene and moving and running with the main character. This was wanted we had intended from the start of the project, we wanted the audience to feel connected to the film so that they are much more interested in it by making them feel as if they are a character themselves. The main way we accomplished this was through multiple point of view shots, which were very effective. However, the chase point of view shot was very shaky as the character is running. It made it very hard to tell what was going on, but this did make the chase look a lot more frantic, you could see the fear just from that one shot, which wasn’t intentional. Actors played their parts well which helped the overall feel of the film as the emotions that characters were feeling and so the audience should be feeling were conveyed much stronger.

We decided that the moment our last survivor gets attacked should be a flash back, this meant adding a white flash transition in order to convey to the audience in a way that they will understand that it’s a flashback. Also, fades to back were used a couple times in order to show a change in time, or to show that the time period has changed when entering or exiting a flashback. A good use of sound effects whenever needed also kept the audience up to speed as to what was happening in the sequence despite the use of a black screen in order to create enigmas for the audience. From the feedback we got the audience thought that the editing has continuity as so the entire sequence was understandable. The credits sequence rolls at the end as this sequence is meant to be the last one of the film, so this is where the credits would start after all the survivors are dead as there would be no more main characters. The ambience of a woodland is the only background music throughout as just hearing the diegetic sound makes you similar to the characters in the fact you hear what they do and see from similar angles to what they do, the near silence unnerves the audience.


Overall, I was pleased with the final outcome of the film sequence that we produced and the audience seemed to enjoy it as well, this is because we managed to achieve our aims to place the audience in the scene and make them feel on edge which we did. The editing, camerawork and sound all combined to create these feelings and emotions within the audience. In the future I would improve the quality of our sound effects so they sound more professional and get a bigger cast as a group of zombies is scarier than just one.

Word Count: 816

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