Review of my AS Production

Review of my AS Production

Synopsis
Mine and Yasmin's AS production was about a young woman with supernatural schizophrenia; she has a split-personality - when she is her usual self she is happy and goes to work (she is stereotypically normal), however when she changes to her other-self she kills people. In our film opening sequence our protagonist wakes up in a field - with no sign of civilisation - with her hands covered in blood and mud clutching someone's named lanyard that is also covered in blood (this lanyard belongs to the person she has killed - a work colleague - this would be explained further on in the film). Our protagonist does not speak - there is a voice-over, some supernatural event (that the audience does not yet know of) has caused her two personalities to merge, causing her sane self to be trapped in the thoughts of her body which is being controlled by her sinister and murderous counter-part. My production shows our lead character figuring out that she has killed someone without knowing it. (Her good self does not remember what she does when she is her other self - she didn't know of her other self until the events of the film unravelled).

Successes of the piece

• Sound - Compared to our AS Preliminary Task our AS Main Task includes a variety of sound. In 'Indominus' we merged one large track of sound together overlapping certain sounds to make the piece more engaging and believable. For example, we overlapped the violins at the beginning of the piece with a voice-over and some bird song - the bird song then stopped suddenly before the title of the film was said; 'Indominus. The sounds we included were: music - the electric violin piece; bird song - to emphasise the naturalistic setting; a voice-over to add context and a character's voice to the piece; a rising heart beat sound effect - to build tension,; a rustling sound effect - to add realism; Foley sound - e.g. when our main character moves the lanyard in her hands - this again adds realism; a scream sound effect - to add horror and suspense; a boom - to again add suspense when the title appears; and a high-pitch frequency shriek to enhance the piece's theme of horror and to make the audience uncomfortable and realise that something is wrong. 
• Camera Shots, Angles, Compositions and Movements - We used a variety of camera shots in our piece, for example, establishing shots at the beginning to show the isolated setting and then a variety of close-ups on the lead character's unconscious body to present her as the protagonist and to create a sense of uncertainty in the audience, and evoke the question; is she dead or alive? Our camera composition was also good; for example I lay down on the ground to shoot one of the big close-ups of our protagonist's face in order to be at the same level as her - this particular shot was also at a dutch angle, meaning that it as slanted on the ground reflecting the fall that the character had obviously taken. There are also many tilts, pans and even a spinning shot in our piece to show camera movements; for example when our lead character is standing and is confused about here she is and why she is there there is a point of view shot that spins in a 360-degree rotation in order to metaphorically show her confusion and muddled mental state. 
• Mise-en-scene - The mise-en-scene of 'Indominus' was also successful. We used natural lighting because we were outside and so waited for a sunny afternoon to film, we also created a costume that was styled like a woman's work -outfit in order to make it clear that our lead actress was playing a working young woman. We paid attention detail, when filming Saskia (our lead actress) wore; a blouse, a pencil skirt, a blazer, some black tights, and some little black heels - these things made our lead appear like an independent young woman which defies the stereotype of a helpless damsel in distress, however our lead is both the victim and the perpetrator of the film and so this same stereotype is followed and broken within one film. The confused and frightened expressions of our main character shows her as the victim of some 'indominus' event however the voice heard inside her head (the voiceover) suggests that she is also the perpetrator. In addition, we used make up to make bruises on her face to show where she attacked someone and where she hit the ground, and we used red lip-liner and mud on her hands to signify mud and blood and to present her as a killer. Our setting for the film was rural - no urban areas or people are seen in any of the shots; this shows our character's isolation and the wild-nature of her split-personality. 
• Editing - The editing in our AS Main Task; 'Indominus', is good: it successfully continual. In addition, we added titles to the piece - all coloured and off-white, in the font 'Viner Hand' with both in and out animations. These things make the titles on the screen appear to phase on fast and the blur away- like a ghost, therefore it is sinister and so compliments the horror genre of the piece. Our opening sequence is supernatural and so the style is not naturalistic but it is a psychological horror so it is still made to be believable. Another way in which we presented horror as our genre is through the shot treatments - we made them dimmer and raised the shadow intensity and saturation, however, the shots that were seen from our lead character's perspective, had a 'diffused glow' treatment added to them to give them and uneven smudgy appearance; this is relevant because our character is confused and has only just woken-up. The voice-over and sound was also all edited-in in the post-production process, the sound effect for the sinister voice in our character's head is actually played by me but I recorded it with our Musical Director, Steve White, and adjusted my voice to make it sound low and ominous.The narration of the piece is done, in parts, through voiceover.

Areas of the piece in need of improvement

Timing and organisation and longer film. To improve our piece for next time we will make sure that we sort out a production schedule on time, and stick to it because we were a bit behind in filming our piece. We also need to be more organised because the batteries in the camera we were using kept running out of charge too fast; we kept forgetting to check that they were fully charged. Our film was a bit short as well (1 minute and 39 seconds) we should have thought of  longer story-line for our opening sequence; perhaps we could have given more incite into the person she killed and not decided to (if we were making a whole film) put it later in the film.

Purpose of the Production
The purpose of 'Indominus' is to let people zone-in to an original story and allow them to engage with the lead character, and build tension, excite and frighten people in order to give them a good horror film experience.

Audience Response
Successful. We got several people to watch the film, including both of mine and Yasmin's families, our friends and our teachers - they all found that the film was exciting in the way that it built tension and sinister due to the murderous undertones of the opening sequence that would surely be revealed in the whole film. However, my Mum said that she did not understand who the bloodied lanyard belonged to; it is meant to belong to the person who our lead character killed - however this is not meant to be known until further on in the film; this should have been made more understandable. The feedback we received about our work told us that the genre/theme of horror was successfully conveyed.

We rated the film is suitable for ages twelve and over due to it's mild violent and horror elements.

Our AS Production: Indominus