LO4: Evaluation, Codes and Conventions

My short film, The Mercer Case is of the mystery genre. the conventions of the mystery genre are generally the consistent use of low key lighting and flashback sequences. Throughout a lot of popular mystery genre films, close-ups are used towards the beginning of the film with wide shots and medium close-ups towards the end of the film. This is a method used to connote the discovery of information throughout the narrative.

The use of low key lighting helps to connote that the audience and the 'detective character' doesn't have all of the information. It also helps to tell the audience that there is more to the plot than has been discovered so far.

In my film, I stuck to this convention by using the same low key lighting to show that there is still more information to uncover.

In mystery genre films, close up shots help to convey tension and to show the subtle facial expressions and 'tells' of the characters, helping the audience to learn the plot at the same rate as the detective. When used in a linear style with wide shots (lots of close ups at the beginning and lots of wide shots at the end), it can connote the uncovering of information within the narrative.

I had initially planned on following this convention by using lots of close ups and extreme close ups at the beginning of the film and medium close ups and full shots at the end of the film. However, I don't believe that I executed this as well in the production phase as I had envisioned in the pre-production phase. While I do think part of this was caused by the lenses I used not allowing for that high quality close ups, I also think that the time period I was trying to convey the narrative in didn't allow for as in-depth use of shot types and camera angles as I was ambitioning for. I did stick to the convention of using close ups to show the more subtle facial expressions and 'tells.'

Flashbacks in any film, but especially in mystery genre films is a way of filling in the narrative context by showing what a character is remembering throughout the scene.

I stuck quite closely to the conventions of flashback scenes in films by applying a desaturated effect to the footage. As is conventional in most mystery films, the intent of the flashback scenes in my film are to fill in the missing narrative detail as the detective figures more and more out.

I ended up making a lot of changes from what I had decided on in pre-production simply due to them being 'too ambitious' with regard to the equipment I had available to me (e.g. I had planned to have a dolly zoom shot). Throughout the production phase of the film production, I removed a lot of the camera movements as I found it was very difficult to get a moving shot to move smoothly, and thus it lowered the quality of the footage I was getting. More in terms of special effects, I had to drop the use of the gunshot flash special effect I was going to create using a photography flash light as the light flashed too quickly. So, instead of using the SFX I had planned to use, I applied a flash effect as VFX in post-production. I also ended up needing to change a lot of my plans for cinematography on one of the recording days as the room I had planned to use became unavailable due to the weather (the microphone was picking up the rain sounds). In post-production, I also made some creative editing choices that differed from my storyboards. The main reason for this was due to the footage I had planned on getting wasn't obtainable in production and me deciding that a different bit of footage suited to mood more than what I had planned.

My biggest self criticism about my short film is the unnatural dialogue. I believe that it sounds robotic. In future projects, I want to make sure I take more time to listen to the dialogue spoken out loud to ensure that it sounds natural and human. I could achieve this by running an initial script read where I pay special attention to the phrasing and nature of the dialogue and then work on amending any downfalls to form a new draft of the script. Moving on from this, I could run a second script read to ensure that the changes made were worthwhile. Despite the fact that have previously stated that my planning to use moving shots was ambitious, I believe that the use of moving shots can help to make the scenes feel more dynamic and engaging. This is something I would like to try and integrate into my future projects.

Something that helped me to get a grasp onto where my short film was being held back (especially in the editing process) was audience feedback. While editing, I tend to lose touch with which parts of my film look good and are engaging, and being able to present it to a group of people who haven't been working on the film allows me to gain a fresh perspective on the highs and lows of my short film. Furthermore, having non-media person suggestions on how I could bring a desired effect into a scene allowed me to consider new ideas and methods of creating that desired effect, perhaps in a way that I wouldn't have thought about without a prompt to do so. An example of this is the desaturation on the flashback scenes. While running a focus group, someone said that the flashback scenes weren't obvious enough, and this prompted someone else to suggest removing some of the colour from the scenes to suggest that it is a memory.