AS Film Sequence Evaluation

Our group for the Film Studies project consisted of myself, James, Chloe and Becky and we decided to base our sequence on the horror/thriller genre. The sequence is about a girl named Chelsey, who is drugged at a party and wakes up in a dark room, where she is then confronted by her kidnapper. Before deciding on our plot, we looked at other horror and thriller movies that would relate in some way to our original plan. We looked at Pierre Morel’s 2008 movie ‘Taken’, where a young girl goes on vacation with her friend, were both girls are kidnapped. Her father then sets out to find her, using his skill as a formal spy. The similarity between ‘Taken’ and our sequence is the kidnapping.

I was the cinematographer for our sequence. This was an important role because we used many different camera angles in our sequence to keep the viewer close to the character, what she is going through and her emotions as well. Because our genre is horror/thriller, the camera work had to be carefully considered for the audience to be entirely focused on the main character’s ordeal and not anything else. For instance at the party scene, close ups were used to focus on Chelsey when she was unknowingly drinking a spiked drink.

The camerawork was particularly important in developing the narrative because it was my job to ensure that the only things in the shot were things that were meant to be there so that the audience wouldn’t be distracted from the story while focusing on something that wasn’t supposed to be there. For example, while filming the part where Chelsey wakes up in a dark room, there was a single beam of light illuminating the spot where she was laying. After filming a few seconds of the shot, I realized the shadow of the camera and tripod were in the way of the lighting, which was essential for the audience to see Chelsey go through her emotions. It required a reposition of the shot to avoid the shadow.

As a group, we worked for quite a while to develop the narrative. For a while, we had considered creating a chase scene, but found that it would be difficult to do that and keep the camera steady, rather than shaking with the run. We had then chose to do our drugged scene in a bar cellar where Chloe works, however due to circumstances, we were unable to meet there, therefore we changed to using the college Media Studio for the dark room, as the windows were blocked with black paper, which also allowed us to create the beam of light on Chelsey. The character of Chelsey was touch to create. We couldn’t find any female extras willing to play the part for us, so we decided to use Becky, who agreed to take the role as she had done Drama at GCSE. The character was important in our development of the genre, because the audience needed to see her fear, which was done by Becky’s acting.

Our plans were changed quite a bit in the making of this sequence. As mentioned, we were unable to use a bar for the cellar scene, so we moved to the Media Studio. Likewise, we all lived too far apart to meet at a house for the party, so we recreated the party scene in a white room using extras in the background, including Chloe as Chelsey’s friend who she dances with. We had originally planned for there to be a lot more involvement with the kidnapper in the party scene, however we found that we couldn’t make it work, so we used flashbacks to involve the kidnapper instead, for instance in one flashback, after Chelsey passes out from the drugs, a mysterious man offers to take her home. While filming, we found that some of the camera angles we had planned didn’t quite work, so we had to slightly adjust the angles and focus point of the shots.

Within the camerawork, the intended response was for the audience to feel involved in what Chelsey is going through by keeping her in main focus, using close ups in the party scene and by having her alone for most of the dark room scene, until the murderer appeared. By keeping her in the main focus, the audience could see her emotions clearly, and see exactly what she was going through, rather than being distracted by anything in the background of the shot that didn’t need to be considered.

In conclusion, I feel that my individual input as the cinematographer helped the keep the sequence in the horror/thriller genre by keeping the focus where it is meant to be. My knowledge of Photography aided me in my input because it helped me to make decisions regarding the angles of the shots, and when appropriate to use close ups, mid shots, and over the shoulder shots too.

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