Our analysis of a student thriller film

In pairs, we were asked to each look at a thriller opening film sequence by Long Road media students. We were each given a certain film to analyse, from groups of four. Mine and Matt's student film was the group R249 and was titled 'Enigma'.

http://49thrillerproject08.blogspot.com

We had to analyse the blogs and videos, identifying the good and bad aspects. We noticed they had only posted a total of 9 blogs between four of them, that is 2 each! in a month's long project, so therefore there could have been more work on the blog in terms of posts. The animatic storyboard they had made was effective and you could see they planned it well and did a good overview, but in he actual end opening film sequence you notice it had been modified a lot, and they did not explain why they modified it which i think would have lost them some marks. While reading through the blog, the title planning is effective and you can see they have actually thought through their ideas.

What also worked well was that they did an analysis of a title opening sequence which they liked, which was seven. This was a good base to start from and therefore shows that they have a starting point. However from the end video you can see they have copied some of the ideas from seven, e.g the newspaper cuttings out etc and it would have been more effective if they had used their own ideas and been creative. The props were well thought through aswell as the mise en scene of a thriller, and you notice they have researched the general ideas of a thriller all the four aspects, camerawork (for example use of angles, close ups), mise en scene (scissors, knife etc) sound (dramatic music) and editing (flickering, fast paced shots).

The filming and location ideas were planned really quite well, they planned to do filming in the janitors room because it was dark etc. Although there was the majority of all the different aspects planned, which was done well - there was not a lot of research at all or planning about these aspects, there was a little - but they would need more planning/research in order to get a higher grade. There is only 9 posts in total which is not that many at all for a group of 4 - there would need to be a lot more analysis for a higher mark on the research and planning and the blog.

The actual video was very effective, but the juttery titles were very hard to read, i know this was an effect they were trying to create due to a thriller and the stereotypical titles, but it did make the titles hard to read and this was quite agitating. Also, the shots were far too dark to see what was actually going on and perhaps they could be a bit lighter, in order to understand the films more. I know dark shots is also stereotypical of a thriller sequence but they could have been lighter. They planned the titles effectively, and thought about different ones, using words from the dictionary etc.

However overall i believe the video was a lot more effective than the planning part, and we were then asked to give grades for what we thought would be the appropriate grades. I believe the planning/research on the blog would recieve a 12 at the very most out of 20, as they did not post alot, although there were all the aspects covered, they were not covered enough to get a higher mark. I believe the video would recieve about 42 out of 60, as it was very effective, but it would have been better if they used their own ideas and not copied some of the ideas from Seven, and also with a few tweaks here and there i believe it could be better and recieve perhaps a 48 (A grade.)