4 Hour Film Challenges

Obsession Film Task

I along with my peers were assigned a theme to make a short film about. I was assigned Obsession, so I wanted to create a feeling evoked by romance and rom-com films but made sinister similar to films like Voices (2014). So I will want to use high key lighting and male gaze lingering perspective, but I will need to do this with few actors due to the small number of peers available to act within it.

Evaluation

Overall this short film succeeds to create an atmosphere/tone I wanted as I used dream sequences with high key lighting and zooms into reaction shots similar to that of the romance genre along with the love song of "I'm on Fire" by Bruce Springsteen (1984) playing in the background but corrupted it with troupes from the horror genre as I created low key lighting around the subject. Because of this, I would say I succeeded in creating a short that mimicked the feeling of obsession with the lingering hypnotizing effect of the mask and the man. In order to improve it, however, I would polish the edit as some of the cuts are a bit jarring and can feel disorientating especially the P.O.V from the perspective of the mask.

Id, Ego and Superego Film Task

I was given a task along with my peers to demonstrate Freud's theory of the self in a short film. I decided to use the split-screen editing technique to have the same actor portray the Id, Ego and Super-Ego that Freud stated was the three aspects of each person's humanity.

Evaluation

My use of costume and performance in combination with my use of editing with split-screen successfully demonstrated Freud's theory of the self. The sequence following how each of them would consume the apple, the Superego being hesitant and wary, the Id being filled with feral hunger and the ego acting as the neutral normal. While I think the editing is effective, it is basic and could use improvements, as unfortunately the lighting of each of the separately merging scenes created continuity error and made the effect more visible than I would have liked.

How This Will Effect My Future Work

Overall, I think this leads me to the realisation to use the conventions and tropes of the genre to enhance my work in the future as it helps define a tone and atmosphere for your work. This also taught me the importance of preparation when shooting, if I had better prepared my lighting for my Id, Ego and Superego short. The effect I used would have been more effective as I should have made sure the separate scene could have been combined/overlayed flawlessly. These two projects have taught me the importance of pre-production and post-production as a whole as despite being a 4-hour film shoot pre/post are the main bulk of your time when creating a project.

Reference List:

Voices (2014) Directed by Marjane Satrapi

I'm on Fire (1984) by Bruce Springsteen