Obsession

Evaluation Questions

http://donnella16.wix.com/asmedia-obsession#!question-7/c1uol

Hi and Bye Examiner

Hi Examiner,

I hope you have enjoyed my journey in media studies this year as much as I have and I hope you can see and appreciate everything I have learnt in the last few months as much I have. I have enjoyed this course and i hope some of the knowledge I have gained will be passed to you (even though you probably know more than me haha). Thanks for looking at my blog hope you enjoyed it ....

Bye Bye 

Improvements I would make

I was in charge of Locations, Props, Camera work and I helped with the Sound and if I was too re-evaluate Obsession i found there would be a lot of aspects that I would change and make better to improve the piece even further with my team.

LOCATION

I believe the location of the pier which I found was perfect for our film since it is quite ambiguous and achieved a sense of reality and had a great affect on our piece i believe.

• The long pier made it very good to track
• the imagery of water and all the buildings is not a common view to find in a city place
• it seems quite rural since there is no traffic and not a lot of noise
• the muddy and dirty surroundings adds to the thriller effect of a crime scene
• the open view of estates and building creating quite an outsiders perspective showing the protagonists way of viewing society as well (from a distance)

However, I found that while our actors Artan's bedroom was a good setting it could have been better 

• The room was not that good because one it is bright blue which would not be typical of a grown man of 40 to have a bright blue room 
• the curtains as well would not be considered something a 40 year old man would perhaps do 
• The room was too well lit as well showing us that his room is supposed to be a dark space 
• I understand the below image is not clear but something like that is what I envisioned but because we could not find a place in time and we wanted to stick to the shooting schedule but this room is what I would have preferred to find but I'm afraid i just couldn't find it in time.

PROPS

I was also in charge of the props and costumes which I believe was a grave aspect to the thriller, I liked the color's  of the costumes on the pier scene I told the actors to bring their own black jackets so that they can be seen as quite dark and sinister for the films but I would have changed one thing looking back on it now...

• I would have liked to find this kind of long, black detectives coat for John and a beige version for Jack to show the old and new and dark and light but they were so hard to find after even when i did try to find them it was impossible but i think this would have made a difference to the piece and made it more relevant.

CAMERA WORK

The camera work was of good standard with the shot reverse shot and the track but looking through the video that was the only shots visible and made in the clip apart from one pan.

• If I was to improve it I would perhaps create some more establishing shots of his house or surroundings
• I would have used focus to change the scene dramatically to perhaps focus more on his obsession than just him to make the story more clear
• We could use zoom to emphasize a certain aspect of John perhaps by creating the impression that he is really smoking by perhaps focusing more on the smoke to convey mystery.

SOUND

The music towards the end was very good and built tension as we intended it too but...

• Some improvements could have been that when they were at the pier there could have been some diagetic sound to connote the mystery that needs to be solved

But i still believe that silence was very relevance to our piece since it built suspense but not as much as we allowed because it therefore made it quite boring for the viewer since there is no clear action taking place or information being given.

Obsession - Final Cut

Concluding Obsession

In conclusion, I believed Obsession was a success in the sense that it did draw in our target audience and was successful in filling out the conventions of a thriller movie.

However, looking back on it it wasn't at all the way I envisioned it to be since the cast could have done without all the swearing and cursing. If we had stuck to the script maybe our thriller would have had quite a different feel. Also, certain aspects were taken out of the original idea (such as the voices) which would have been really effective but we did not include them since the equipment that was available to us was not good at all since it sounded quite amateur and unprofessional.

Furthermore, If we had had more equipment like more camera's and more devices for the voice perhaps the sound quality would have been better along with the visual quality if we had better quality camera's and sound equipment.

All in all I think the opening sequence was good but i think with the right equipment and finance it could have been a lot better. But i still believe that me and my team did a very good job and they have been a pleasure to work with.

Thanks Shanae Chisholm  and Reginald Kensah :)

Did everything go as we planned?

I believe that that our film worked out in the end. However, we didn't tend to stick to our shooting schedule or our script since different things went on which meant certain dates were changed and we had to do different things on different days.

We didn't end up really following the script since when we started filming we realized that our script was not accurate enough and contained to much detail for such a short amount of time we could have went with the script but I don’t think it would have worked out the same way and I think with the time we had we couldn't fit everything we had in the script into 3 minutes which a was a shame.