DepicT! Short Evaluation

As of today the short film we are asked to make has been completed and is embedded below.

Introduction: in this task we were asked to make a short movie that was 90 seconds or less, the movie could be any genre as long as it was no longer than 90 seconds. The film we decided to create was a horror/drama which follows the story of a father who goes in to his daughters room and asks if 'the monsters' are bothering her again, later in the film we reveal the daughter is in fact dead and the father is keeping her killer captive.

Cinematography: for this film we used basic cinematographic techniques such as tracking shots and close ups. One of the shots we used was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' which was a worms eye view shot of the protagonist leaning against the wall.

Mise-en-scene: We used minimal props in this movie because we did not feel the need to use any for fear of further confusion in each scene. The father's costume was simply shirt and jeans and the prisoners was similar.

Lighting: For this short we had a small budget so we could not afford any special kind of lighting so we simply used natural lighting throughout the movie with the exception of the last shot which uses a candle as a motivated source of light.

Sound: In our short film almost all of the sound we used was recorded on the day of filming using a zoom microphone, but in the editing stages we noticed inconsistencies in the levels of the audio and chose to use the audio from the camera instead this caused a noticeable change in quality but removed any difference in audio levels. The music we used in our short film was an extract from the music box used in the movie 'Pan's Labyrinth' we could not find the audio file anywhere besides YouTube so we had to use an audio converter to convert it to a MP3 file. The sound effects we used where all gathered from freesound.org meaning it is copyright and royalty free.

Editing: We used incredibly basic editing techniques for this short for two reasons one being that no one in our group was experienced with the editing software we used (Adobe Premiere Pro CC) and the second reason being we did not want the film to seem too quick so we did not use to many cuts, to keep the pace of the movie consistent.

Original concept: Throughout this film we tried as hard as possible to stick to the original idea we had, and we mostly did, with the exception of a few shots, on being the first shot originally it was supposed to be a wide shot of the whole corridor but due to the location we used we had to bring the shot closer to a medium shot. Another one of the shots we used did not look as good as we had anticipated so we shot a new piece of footage and replaced it, the original shot was of the main character staring at his daughters empty bed as the sounds of banging got louder in the background, the shot proved to be confusing for the people who watched it so we changed it to the perspective of the hostage banging on the wall. Other than the shots mentioned I believe we accurately re-created the original concept.

Continuity: we had one stand out continuity error within the shot I mentioned earlier of the hostage banging on the wall, the wall the hostage is knocking on is brick but the sound file we used for the knocking was on wood so we had to remove the sound effect and replace it with the audio from the new shot creating a noticeable difference in sound effects.

Conclusion: In conclusion I believe that we re-created our original idea with a high level of accuracy, with minimal changes to the shot list, script and the storyboard.

Feedback: In today's lesson we watched the whole classes' DepicT! entries and gave constructive criticism. The criticism aimed at our video was mainly based on the story many people found it too confusing and said it lacked depth and exposition but they liked the concept but felt more time was needed to tell it. Other criticisms pointed out that the video should have been set at night the voice acting could have been improved as well as using actors and costumes that look right for the roles.