A Long Shot evaluation

Evaluation

Jack Reader

For our film project we chose to do an extract that is based on a American High school comedy. Our extract is based around the film ‘American Pie’ (1999) which sees a group of friends who aren’t really very good around girls try and loose their virginity before they leave High School. It is also a similar film to ‘Porky’s’, ‘American Grafitti’ and ‘Grease’. All these films are about young boys trying to reach man-hood before they leave high school. We filmed the opening sequence for the film, which gradually introduces the characters one by one.

My chosen microelement for our extract was Sound.

To create the feel of an American high school we spoke throughout the extract in American accents. We decided to introduce the three different characters Theodore, Melvin and Brandon in ways, which represented them. We also based our plot to be around the same as the films, which are similar to ours. We didn’t use any voice-overs in the sequence, as we wanted to create the feel that we were actually in an American high school. I feel that what we produced showed the narrative of our film in the way that we wanted to. We used a lot of diegetic sound throughout the extract to give the audience the atmosphere of a school. There are points in the extract where we used non-diegetic sound; this was done to cancel out the loud camera sounds from what we were filming. I could have built up more sound around some areas of the extract, as it would be easier to construct sound effects and then layer them up rather than adding one or two.

I think our group worked well to create our film extract and I fulfilled my responsibility in the group to create and work the sound into our extract. There were a few problems that we had to face whilst we were creating our extract. The first was a lack of continuity in one of our scenes. We had to go back and re-film a scene as the feedback we got from people who watched it made us realise there was some confusion. There was one point in the sequence, which has a good use of continuity with the sound. The scene where we are walking into the hall uses a lot of background sound and it then moves into the sound of people laughing which makes the audience think there are more people in the hall with us. There is also another scene of us walking down the corridor, which uses a lot of background sound, which then follows us walking up the stairs.

We also encountered some problems with adding in the titles for the film. We had to adapt to these problems and slowly work our way around them. We changed the idea of what sort of sound we were going to have whilst we progressed in the project. Our first thought was to base our soundtrack around that of some other films that inspired us such as ‘Superbad’ (2007). I started to research on different films soundtracks to gain inspiration. The soundtrack I created fits in very well with our film extract and also helps tell the story of our film as well. I developed the narrative well through my specific micro responsibility because the sound I produced helped create the right atmosphere and surroundings that we wanted to achieve. The use of not having voice-overs in our extract helped us explain our film in a better way through acting it out. There are some areas of the sound, which still need a little bit more work done on them before the final deadline just so everything sounds perfect. We tried not to use to much non-diegetic sound into our sequence as the audience would lose the feel of a school but we used it where we needed to use it appropriately. We used background laughter in the scene where we are talking. As a group this would be a good idea as it make the three boys seem secluded and outcasted by others. The area on which we filmed the scene makes the audience relate towards the characters as they don’t have any other friends and stay only with each other. We also tried to drown out any other background sound from the camera in this scene so we could add the sound affect of laughter. The main soundtrack had to be altered slightly earlier on throughout the project as one of the sounds didn’t really fit into what we were trying to create so it seemed out of place. We managed to deal with this problem quickly and efficiently so we didn’t get tied up in doing so later on. A lot of our shots we decided to shot would include mostly diegetic sound otherwise it would seem strange to the audience that the film was based in a school with no background sound. From looking back at the whole project my group worked well together and we all contributed to our areas, which we needed to. I think there were a couple of problems we had at the beginning about choosing what to do but I feel we managed to work around them and sort them out.

This is a grid of screenshots from our film. They are different parts from the extract. As you can see the pictures show each of the different characters throughout the opening title. From this you can see that Theodore who is the one in the middle is seen as the main guy and Brandon and Melvin are his two friends who are not as important as him.

To conclude I feel that the sound within the extract of our film was a success as we managed to full fill our idea. I am very pleased with the result of our film extract. I am also very pleased with the feedback that we received was good as people liked what we done with the sound and the soundtrack that had been created. However there are also still a couple of things that could be done to the sound to make it the best it can be and we could of also used some more non-diegetic sound where needed.