For my practical production I worked with Ellie Watson in
order to produce a short film; we both had joint responsibility over camera,
lighting, editing, sound and mise-en-scene. The genre of our film is horror
combined with thriller. The film is about a school girl who is being stalked.
To convey the genre we used micro elements such as sound, cinematography and
mise-en-scene, we used the micro elements to communicate meaning and provoke
audience response.
One aspect of mise-en-scene is setting. The main setting we
used for our clip is a typical family home. We purposely did this as a family
home is usually seen as a place of comfort and safety. However, our film
challenges these expectations as a girl(Faye) is getting stalked and is killed
within the family home. This puts the audience on edge as it is an everyday
setting implying that it could happen to anyone at anytime. A further setting
which is focused upon within the family home is the bath. The bath is usually a
place to relax which juxtaposes with the death of Faye which occurs in the bath
in our film. A further aspect of mise-en-scene which is used in our film is performance. Faye uses different facial expressions at different points in the film which convey to the audience how she is feeling. An example of this is when she receives a mysterious text message, she looks around confused which suggests to the audience something is not right. The use of facial expressions in our film allows the audience to understand how Faye is feeling throughout the clip.
The sound in our film is key in building suspense and creating
a sense of mystery for the audience. Water is a reoccurring sound which is
purposely used throughout our film. One example of this is when Faye makes a
drink, the water coming out of the tap and into the kettle is heightened
followed by the sound of the water pouring out of the kettle into her cup. The
diegetic sound is exaggerated which introduces the idea of the theme of water
which continues through our film. The significance of the water creates a sense
of mystery for the audience and acts as an enigma as the audience will begin to
question its importance. Faye runs a bath, which again adds to the sense of
mystery. The sound of the bath running is the prominent sound in this part of
our clip as we enhanced the volume so it was louder than any of the other
sounds in the clip. The final significant diegetic sound of water is when the
bath tap is dripping at the end of our film. We put in slow dripping water as
this meant the pauses in between each drip built tension provoking an audience
response. Overall the reoccurring theme of water throughout our film acts as a
subliminal message as it pre warns the audience and builds up to Faye’s death
in the bath.
A further significant sound used in our clip is the sound of
notifications from phones such as text messages being received and the sound of
messages being typed. These are important aspects of our film as we never see
the stalker however through the communication on the phones, we know that Faye
is getting stalked. This builds tension as everytime the sound of a phone is
heard, the audience presume it is the stalker. Overall the sound of
notifications from phones is highly significant as it allows the audience to
understand that although they can’t see the stalker, he is still present.
One aspect of cinematography which is key in our film is
lighting. At the beginning of the film Faye is walking home from school on a
naturally bright, sunny day. Once she gets inside the house everything is much
darker as we purposely made it this way when editing. The lighting in the film gets darker as it goes on, finishing with a pitch black scene towards the end. We did this because it
lowers the mood and shows the progress of events getting slowly worse for Faye
as she gets inside the house. A further aspect of cinematography is camerawork
which is again a key feature of our film. When the stalker is watching Faye from
outside the kitchen window, the camera zooms in through the window in order to
show Faye from the stalkers perspective. This is effective as it allows the
audience to feel as though they are almost seeing through the stalkers eyes.
This slowly creates tension for the audience as the camera zooms closer and
closer to Faye.
In conclusion, I believe that the micro elements used in our film are successful in creating an atmosphere of tension and suspense for the audience as well as portraying the generic conventions of a horror combined with thriller film. The micro elements we used gradually increase the mystery throughout the film and imply to the audience that something bad is going to happen towards the end.
