Editors film sequence evaluation

For our film sequence I was in a group with Hannah, we chose to do a mystery/crime film, for research we watched the classic Alfred Hitchcock film, “Rope” (Hitchcock, 1948), afterwards I watched and studied the climax scene of “Insomnia” (Nolan, 2002). I personally felt that studying these two very different films has given me a very broad view of the genre, which I feel has helped me stay within the boundaries of the genre when it comes to editing as, despite being the same genre they had extremely different editing styles, “Rope” had a very interesting and unique style in which the film features 10 minute long shots, with half of the shot changes cleverly disguised by the camera being blocked by an object during these shot changes, this was because the film was based on a play and Hitchcock wanted to preserve the feeling of a play. Although I liked this editing technique, I chose not to use it when editing our sequence, this is because I felt that using the editing techniques of fast cuts to build tension from insomnia to be more relevant to the feeling I wanted from this sequence.

Before we went out with the camera in order to get our shots completed, Hannah and I did our best in order to make sure that we had studied most of our storyboard to make sure that we knew approximately what we wanted our final product to look like, after we had our first batch of sots, we put them together in a final cut and we re-drafted our storyboard to include more shots that we felt would improve the quality of the cinematography and the editing, then Hannah got the other shots and I began the rough edit, after I played around with the clips in final cut, I found an effective way of editing the shots together so that the camera was constantly switching from the detective to the suspect which I got the idea from the constant cutting between the three central characters in the end sequence of insomnia.

My film studies teacher said that my editing style was similar to that of the recent crime film “the girl with the dragoon tattoo” (Oplev, 2009).

When I looked at editing I chose to do a style more similar to that of insomnia over rope because of the feelings it produced, rope had a feeling of gentle tension and awkwardness which, although I liked I felt it was not the sort of feeling I wanted our sequence to have. Insomnia had an editing style that built up strong tension and concern among the audience as the characters fought. I decided that I wanted our sequence to give a feeling of tension and concern over the characters, for this reason I used short shots in the editing process and I made sure to cut up long shots with either alternative angles or sometimes views of the other party to build a fast pace and strong feeling of tension.

I am extremely pleased with my final short sequence as I feel that I have produced a quality piece of work and have learnt something about how editing in the film industry. Overall I am satisfied with my coursework.

Film Sequence Evaluation

Our film extract was filmed under the genre mystery. The sequence was for the opening of the film. During the opening, the audience are introduced to the two main characters, the detective and the suspect. The narrative of the sequence is that the suspect is unknowingly being observed by the detective, who is following her. This sequence is to set the scene of the film and allow the audience to begin connecting with the detective and allow them to become interested in who the suspect is and why the suspect is being followed. The microelement I focused on was cinematography.