ANALYSING A SIMILAR FILM

ANALYSIS OF PETE'S DRAGON OPENING SCENE

During the process of my film opening, my teacher mentioned how our plot is somewhat similar to the film "Pete's Dragon".

The opening of Pete's Dragon starts off with an establishing bird's eye view shot of a car driving along a single road through the forest. This already gives a sense of isolation which may foreshadow the main character (Pete) as a lonely isolated boy.

The use of diegetic sound, including birds chirping, and the wind gives more life to the scene. By adding a calming track emphasises the isolated the location where there are less people and therefore little help as well.



This short siding shot gives the screen a large room for the antagonist to "creep up" behind the protagonist who is usually unaware of the situation except the audience. This is an example of dramatic irony within the film. This type of shot also conveys a sense of isolation which in this case is the whole theme of our film opening.

UNUSED ROUGH-CUT

As I have decided to change the music into a less dramatic tune, I re-edited some parts in order for the edits (scenes, cuts) to merge with the music. In this newly edited rough-cut, I focused on small areas such as the entrance of the sound effects (chalk, whispers etc.) so that the whole film itself sounds natural. I did this by adjusting the volume at different stages and also by using the fade effect to give everything a smooth blend.

This is the version that I edited with the change of music to a piece called "Wasted Wonderland" by Myuu. (As mentioned in the previous blog post)

           

However, due to tight schedule and the impending deadline, we decided to go with Enid's edit as she was also in charge of creating the texts of the credit sequence.

CHANGE OF MUSIC

 

After watching our rough cut multiple times, we came to a conclusion of changing the music. This decision was made because we thought the music was too dramatic and is not suitable for our opening. This decision was also encouraged by our peers.

A good friend of mine suggested a music composer on youtube who composes "Dark music". 

I looked through his channel and listened to some of his songs until I found a song called "Wasted Wonderland" which caught my attention. I tried playing it along with my rough cut and it was a great match. This song gives a more children-like feel to the opening which can be linked to the boy. At the same time, the music itself also gives a mysterious mood which can be linked to the fact that the boy is in a mysterious world of his own.

FILMING DAY 2 (FRIDAY 3RD 2017)

We went back to the abandoned house to film missing footages and to record diegetic sounds to add into our rough cut for improvement.

           

As planned in the previous Blog post (Plan for filming day 2), we covered all of the to do lists quite quickly. This was because we prepared well for this.

For the sound, in order to capture the best audio quality, we borrowed a RODE microphone from a senior who is also taking A level media studies. This was a success because the background noise was cancelled so the audio was focused on the sound of the brick rubbing against the floor. 

IMPROVED ROUGHCUT

After receiving the feedbacks from our peers, we decided to re edit our film using the same footages from the previous shoot. We tried to improve on areas with negative comments.

WHAT I DID:

Firstly, I added diegetic sound of the boy's footsteps/ panting as he runs up the stairs in the first scene. This creates a more lively atmosphere, which makes the audience feel as if they are part of the film, which also means that they will become more engaged with the character and the film in general.

Furthermore, I also included whispering sound effects that I found on youtube in order to highlight the fact that his 'friend' is there with him. By locating the whispering audio right before the boy looks into the camera helps the audience understand that the whispers may represent the imaginary friend calling/ talking to the boy.

Other than that, I also added the sound of when the boy scrapes the brick against the wall. This also gives a more realistic sense of atmosphere

However we came to face the problem of having the diegetic sound effects sounding a bit fake (?) This refers to how the sound suddenly appears out of nowhere and disappears. This ruins the mood of the film as it sounds less professional. To prevent this, we will add other diegetic sounds (wind, birds chirping etc.). This may help soothe the entry of the sounds allowing it to merge in with the overall audio.

I also colour graded the drone footage so that the colour is the same throughout the film and does not ru