In 7th September, the last day before I left, when the last time I have a tutorial with nick. After he saw my works, he expressed his praise of my work, and helps me find a good title for this film: “J”. “J” means jealous & it is abbreviated form of my heroine’s name. For this film which is the first one I produced independently, basically, I was satisfied with it. And I found there still has lots of things which I ca get some improvements. Such as the transition part, the sound part, these gave me a lot of valuable experience from this producing. During the past one year, my tutor nick & Ken gave me a lot of helps in the professional part. I am from an unfamiliar of the media production to the todays a student who can complete their own independent production of a film. This year gave me lots of benefits; I sincerely thank the tutors & classmates who helped me and the difficulties which I have been encountered. I was very happy for this year in the UK; I think this will be the wealth for my life.
Archive for September, 2009
It is an enormously important role that well-composed music and striking sound effects play in creating a complete and truly frightening horror film experience. I have a great interest in background sound & music. “Music in horror films is probably more powerful than in any other genre, so it is good for a composer to do them because he can be very influential on the action. For example, watch a horror movie without music and it is not frightening, though it may be gruesome. But add the music and you add tension.” In my film I mainly want to use the music and sounds to express the bizarre atmosphere & suffocating feelings. So I decided to use some Japanese & Korean horror film music, coz I thought these genre of music will be fit the feelings of the performance of my film. Then, I started to listening lots of soundtracks from the Japanese & Korean movies. I found some soundtrack in those films, such as A.Rang, Celle, A.Brighter.Summer.Day, Ringu, and Ringu.2. And I thought there are just few soundtracks matched my requirements. I need some very simple & slow music which played by piano to fit my images. The sounds cape in films usually consists of three separate, yet closely related aspects: Music, sound effects and speech. Both the music and the sound effects are directly linked to the visuals of the film. Music works by accompanying the events in the film to create or adjust a certain mood or atmosphere. Sound effects are usually tied even more closely to the events in the film and in most cases are applied to intensify and mark direct actions such as movements and impacts. These sounds are usually exaggerated (especially in horror films), and a classic example of an exaggerated sound effect is punches (and other impacts), which often sound like whip lashes when normally they would produce a barely audible. Although “amplifications” of this kind in some cases negatively affect the realism of certain events in a film, they do serve to increase the power and intensity of movements, impacts and other actions, which is very important especially in horror films aiming to create an audio-visual experience. “A sound’s origin is not as important as the listener’s expectations of how something should sound. In films and television, many natural sounds do not meet everyone’s expectations. When this happens, they are either replaced with more suitable sounds or the natural sound is layered (other sounds are added) to make it more desirable”. It is also interesting to note that horror films tend to highlight sounds that we would normally not pay attention to, such as a beating heart or someone breathing. The purpose of this might be to draw the audience into the scene, to make it part of the action and put it in the situation of the victim and it works well.
For the detailed cutting, I have a few steps to work: first, add scary and scratchy, eerily atmosphere music for it. Second, make something completely ordinary of the drama (suitcase). Third, have a plot twist. Forth, add some good effects, for my film, I chose the ghosting effects and some slow motion & reverse fast motion for it. Finally, make sure I use good effects. Never change the originals ending, it will confuse the audience and will cause non-originality. And sometimes, a quick ending, possible can have an effect. Avoid using music that already in some familiar movies & find unique soundtracks.
At the very beginning of my first editing, I cut each part of my film according to the initial ideas, due to I filmed some different views of the same lenses, so I have some different choices when I did editing. At the part of drugging & locking, because the editing is according to the timeline so I just need to connect each action and make it smoothly. Then, I decided to do a separate screen at the part of when the younger sister struggling and shouting in the suitcase & the elder sister is smoking at the bathroom. At first, the camera is moving from the door to the bathroom, and the elder sister is sitting in the toilet. (I made the cutting matched the rhythms with the background music) then I used the separate screen when the younger sister opened her eyes & gave the close-up for the elder sister’s smoking. In the separate screen I used the 50:50 proportions of the framework for each part, when the younger one is struggling & the elder one is smoking in calm. Then I used a 10-second shot to do a transition, this empty shot which I filmed the outside from night to dawn. The next part is two different emotion of the twin sisters, for the part of elder sister, I used lenses of she is sitting in a chair and rotating connected to she is doing some leisure things, such as grinding nails (dynamic lenses), watching a book, smearing mascara, drinking a cup of wine, smearing lipstick, smoking in the bathroom (3-4 different angles). The other side, the younger sister slowly closed her eyes, she recalled the memories of them: leaves is shaking, they are holding the candy gloss which flying under the sun, the features on the ground is shaking in their shadow, the younger sister feed her to eat candy gloss, the elder sister walk in front of her sister, and the younger one to pull her sister’s hand. After the transition, the elder sister opened the suitcase & the younger fall out of the suitcase and dead. Then the time starts to back, I used the ghosting effects to present & the photos to describe the reason why she is killing her sister: she is jealous her sister have many friends, and she thought her sister just can belong to herself. She doesn’t want her sister talk & have a fun with other persons. At the last part of my film, the elder sister was holding the younger sister’s dead body & the dead body is looking at the camera.
