Presentation

The following photos show the slides that compose the power point presentation that we used to accompany our expanation after showing the video to a year-10 class. We divided the talk among the three of us: Erdene talked about our research into films about drugs and how we used mise-en-scene in our video; I explained what we concluded from our genre research and which choices we had made about the production of our opening, as well as the use of some editing techniques; Inaki talked through the topic of camera shots and concluded the presentation explaining about the sounds used in the video.

Post Production Survey

Once completed our work we showed the opening to a class of 30 year-10 students, together with a presentation that explained many of our choices; afterwards we gave a post-production survey to ask what they thought about our video and explanation. Here are a couple of photos showing how some students responded to our questions:

Reading the answers on our surveys we found both positive and negative comments: as a general guideline they all liked our use of the editind (some people mentioned the quality of the stop-motion), but many of them thought that the non-diegetic sound could have been used in a better way; according to their opinion, the music was a bit too slow and repetitive and should have started at the beginning of the film.

About the use of camera shots almost everyone wrote positive comments, while the question on mise-en-scene generated different opinions, due to the fact that there are many different ways of expressing what we were trying to.

My opinion is that, from a neutral point of view, both positive comments and criticisms were fair, expecially the ones on sound: it took a long time of research to find a copyright-free source that could give us something acceptable and perhaps we could have found some better music by spending more time together on our work.

Sound

A considerable improvement in our editing abilities is due to the fact that, unlike in our preliminary task, we had to use non-diegetic as well as diegetic sounds.

Diegetic:
-We used the "real" sound of the video at the beginning of the opening to set an atmosphere of habitual life and routine;
-This kind of sound was also used in the most significative/crucial moments, like the scene where the boy hides into his house and the one where he takes the drugs.

Non-Diegetic:
-The supplementary sound that we decided to use is a calm and sorrowful music played only by a single guitar;
-The use of this kind of music stresses the fact that behind the carefree boy there are personal problems that result into an addiction to cocaine.

Editing

Our editing process took the greatest part of our working period: we decided to use the technique we had learnt in our preliminary task as well as some new ones which took a much bigger effort.

Match on Action: even though the prospective changes from outside to inside the house, the scene continues to flow (we had already practice using this technique in our previous fimling experience).

Match on Action n.2: the difference from the "ordinary" Match on Action is that we did not use a door but, while the character is going up the stairs, the perspective changes from a low-angle shot to a high-angle one.

Black Screens: since some scenes did not match/look good in sequence, we used some black screens containing credits to separate them.

Stop-Motion: this technique was one of the more challenging parts of our work; it basically consists in a quick shot transition where the subject is immobile.

Whitening Screen: at the end of the opening the character collapses on his chair and the screen becomes gradually white to connote the effect that drugs are having on him.

Mise en Scene

Here are some screens showing how we used Mise-en-Scene in our filming process i.e. how we presented the scene in terms of colour, lighting and connotation.

The main character is introduced as a teenager who walks away from school. Some of his actions, such as walking over the wall and kicking some litter on the ground, help giving the audience the impression of a youngster who tries to escape from reality.

The colours that the main character is wearing connote different aspects of his personality: a red hoodie (danger), a white scarf (innocence/drug addiction) and light blue trousers (simplicity/carefreeness).

 

A contrast is created between the darkness inside the house and the light coming from outside when the boy passes through the door, symbolizing the use of the house as a place to hide from the real world.

 

The Point-of-View shot is used to give the impression that the subject is looking for something hidden among his (black) socks: the use of a ladybug marker (red and black) on the sock he picked tells that it contains something dangerous.

 

After the Stop-motion the backgound becomes significantly darker, due to the fact that the “moment sought” has arrived: three zoom-ins (one for each line of coke) link a Wide Shot, a Mid Shot, a Medium Close-Up and a Close-Up.

Camera Shots

Here are some screens showing how we used camera-shots during our filming; since we had introduced only one character we focused on shots that show the subject and/or the background and avoided the use of two-people shots like double shots and over-the-shoulder shots.

Very Wide Shot: used to introduce the main character as well as the location where the story takes place;

Long Shot: the whole body of the subject occupies great part of the frame, becoming the most important element in the scene;

Point-of-View Shot: the audience sees the action from the point of view of the character, feeling closer to a realistic event;

Mid Shot: the subject is shown with great detail even though the surroundings are still visible.

Medium Close Up: the surroundings lose importance and are almost completely obscured by the subject, who gains primary importance in the frame;

Cut-In: one feature of the character is shown in detail, to emphasize the fact that it is going to have some relevance with what is going to happen next.

Indoor Scenes

The second part of our filming was more difficult and took plenty of time more than the outdoor part.
This was due to the fact that (as well as keeping the cat quiet) we had to control the lighting to make the subjects of the scenes visible to the camera; also, the acting and the movements that the cameraman had to perform to obtain the effects we were looking for became quite complicated and forced us to repeat every scene several times before we could manage to find a decent one.

The indoor filming started with the second half of the Match on Action i.e. the bit filmed from an inside-the-house prospective; here the scene became consistently darker, giving us some problems about which lights were to be used to make the subject visible to the camera.

The greatest part of our indoor filming took place in my bedroom: here the protagonist does not seem to be able to focus on his homework and starts looking for something more "interesting" in the drawer next to his desk.

The indoor filming ended with the scene where the boy has taken his drugs and collapses on his chair (we added the title in the top-left corner afterwards).

Outdoor Scenes

Our filming process was divided into two phases: outdoor and indoor filming.
The first one was much easier than the second, first of all because of the simplicity of the action (all the main character had to do was walking and opening a door) and secondly because we did not have to control the lighting of the scene (we only did it when filming inside the house).

The main purpose of the outdoor scenes was to introduce the character as a carefree teenager who walks away from school but also the environment where the boy lives his unsatisfactory life.

Since nothing relevant happens in this part we decided to use it to add most of the credits and practice shooting long distance camera-shots that give space to the locations as well as the character.

This phase went on from the very beginning of the filming to the first part of the Match on Action where Erdene opens the door to enter the house.