Personal Evaluation

This video brief excited me a great deal due to the early on investigation of our amazing location High Royd’s mental asylum on SecretLeeds and Flickr.com, this showed that research is extremely important early on in the project as if it wasn’t for our extensive research we would not have come across such an ideal shooting location.
I thoroughly enjoyed working in a group as we all had similar ideas which meant we could help and develop each others suggestions to produce the best possible outcomes. Working in a group of 3 was an ideal number as we were all able to communicate and work very closely. It also meant that we could all contribute our knowledge and skill of film. As a group we are pleased with our final video and feel that we have successfully conveyed the feeling and atmosphere we wanted to create. We feel we have achieved this by carefully choosing the ideal location, props, actors and costume etc.
The idea to use a gas mask as our main prop is a result of researching Floria Sigismondi, we came across some stills of hers which involved people wearing big mask like object on their heads. I feel that the gas mask suggests isolation in the mental asylum and also being trapped and unable to escape, it may also suggest the loss of identiy; in a mental asylum the size of High Royd’s you would be seen as just another number. Another important factor in creating the feel and atmosphere is the white dress our actress is wearing, it is innocent, pure and childlike which creates an unsettleing contrast to it’s surroundings. Our choice to use only one person in our film also adds to the notion of loneliness, emptiness and isolation.
Due to us not having permission to enter the location, we felt that in case we needed to make a quick exit from the premises (which we did later on!) we wouldn’t use the large tripod. However in some aspects this became a positive as I feel that the unsteadiness of the frame occasionally adds to the unnerving feel to the video, it also allowed us to have more varied angles. However, next time we feel it would be essential to get permission because it would mean we could have had more access to the other buildings which would mean more varied footage which could improve our film. Also If we had more time I feel it would have been nice to venture to other locations such as the moore land- this could not only suggest a contrast to being trapped in the building but could also reinforce the notion of isolation.
Editing proved more difficult than expected, as we all obviously had slightly different ideas of how the final piece would look. Therefore the editing process involved a lot of playing around and experimenting, I personally have very limited knowledge about final cut and so I enjoyed learning about different editing tools and what the programme was capable of creating. Problems we encountered while editing consisted of issues such as clips being too short to fade which meant we had to solve this manually rather than using the final cut tools. It was also difficult to decide on transitions between clips as we wanted our footage to flow, but also have an awkward feel about them to make it slightly unsettling to the audience. We achieved this by using different editing techniques such as altering speeds, for example when she is walking up and down the corridor-it seems surreal. We also reversed some footage when the girl is playing marbles (which again relates to the idea of innocence and youth). The reversing of the footage is seemingly un noticeable until the marbles fly in impossible directions- this is quite unnerving for the audience.
Our choice of music -An Ending by Brian Eno, is featured in the film 28 days later, it appealed to us because it is eerie and creates an atmosphere that suggests isolation and detachment, and its calmness is also disturbing and unstettleing against the sometimes disturbing and difficult to comprehend visuals. I feel our decision to add a voice over adds a lot of emotion to our video, especially due to it being a childs voice the audiences reaction is to instantly worry and feel for the child-it pulls emotion from the audience to make the viewing experience a whole lot more real. We used Sarah Vo’s 7 year old cousin for this effect, which wasn’t ideal because this meant recording her via the phone which meant she was unable to understand the context. Therefore it took a while for us to get the audio ideal. The voice over adds a slight narrative to the piece which if we had more time I feel we could have expanded on such as telling a life story, but for now it adds an extremely chilling atmosphere to the piece.
During the actual filming process the only real problems we encountered were our restrictions in the building. Also we could have been slightly more organized with props etc because on our first attempt at filming we discovered that we had not brought any tapes with us and so had to go back and get some which was time consuming considering the bus journey was approximately 30 minutes. Time management was also a slight issue as it was difficult to find times where the whole group were free to work together effectively. Although I feel our planning was satisfactory, we were unable to produce an in depth story board due to us having a very slight narrative and so we pieced together our footage in a way that was pleasing to the eye- a piece of video art.