Evaluation of my post production

1) In our piece we decided that the most effective way to portray Elizabeth’s and her feelings in the scene would be through a one shot sequence. This meant loads of planning as we were constantly having to come up with different ideas on how we were going to be able to keep the audience gripped through one shot lasting two minutes. This meant we needed to find interesting objects that we could track the camera along which would keep the audience thinking. On the day of the shoot we spent the whole morning trying to make this work without actually shooting the piece. One we thought we had set the set up and the tracks up properly we tried to film the shot, only to find that everything was set up to high on the wall and so we had to start over, moving every single prop down the walls and the tracks further back.

2) We decided that because we wanted to do a one shot piece we needed to make the shot slow paced. This was to create as feeling of suspense and horror for the audience. This was one of the main reasons that we spent so mush time on the set, as we needed the mise-en-scene to keep the audiences attention, and create the feelings of suspense and horror which are pre-requisites for the genre and our target audience. However, this made the editing stage easier for us as we only needed to choose the best shot and then add the sounds to this. This made the post production element of non-diegetic sounds a vitally important component.

3) Because we only decided to do one shot, the most important element of the post production was the sound stage. We took all of our sounds from the sound track pro application. We wanted to use the sound to build up the suspense in the scene and use the sound to work off the mise-en-scene, to create the horror aspect. This took a long time as we wanted to time everything together. An example of this is in Jaws, with the way that they repeat the two notes becoming louder and faster as the shark is approaching. In this the music builds the tension and we wanted to re-create this in our scene. Another source of sound that we used were the ambient sounds that we took on the day in the studio. However these sounds were not too effective as they had a fuzzy noise which appeared when we put them into Final Cut Pro. Because of this we couldn’t use the ambient sounds, so we used the non-diagetic sounds from sound track pro.

4) We decided that we wanted to keep the titles and the graphics to a minimum. This was because we wanted to keep the audiences attention on the mise-en-scene rather than distracting them to look at the credits. Because of this we only had credits for the production company and the directors name. We kept these credits as simple as possible, using a plain font with white writing over a black screen. We then faded the credits in and out using the opacity option. The final credit was the title card. We spent lots of time on this as we wanted the scene to end on a high, and this was the last thing that the audience would see. To do the title card, we made a basic outline of 'Elizabeth’s Diary' on Photoshop and then imprinted some of the pictures from the diary into the letters. This really caught the feelings already created by the scene.

5) From the feedback I have received, the choices we have made were very effective. Most of the feedback I have received has said that they enjoyed the parts with the more disturbing images, for example. From this I feel that we could have put in even more disturbing images, and gory moments to create an even more horrific scene. We also received positive feedback about the pace of the scene, however I do not feel that we could slow the pace down any more, otherwise the audience may lose attention and the scene could become boring. This tells me that the piece appealed to the audience, as I haven’t received any negative feedback. Overall I feel the decision that I made were a good success.