Critically Evaluating my Video Production By Matthew Helliwell

Continuity is an editing technique that has to be observed and measured at all times to avoid irregularity in the scene. We generally stuck to continuity to make the production flow from scene to scene an example is when Lucy moves from corridors into a classroom. If continuity isn’t observed in shots like these then we would get an irregular passage of movement. I edit to make sure we stuck to these parameters, but also added jump cuts to keep the viewer from getting bored. The benefits of this are to make a very long shot shorter like in the bathroom scene where Lucy is seen brushing her teeth I split the shot and took bits out so she darted around the bathroom. I hoped to create a rushed effect with these jump cuts but as our films final cut was too long by a substantial amount of time. I had to trim down shots that wern't necessary so I took a lot of shots out of the bathroom. But there are still examples of jump cuts creating a rushed effect throughout the beginning. You can see this clearly by looking at the frame by frame screenshots between the shots.

Here we can see Lucy Casken standing at her

wardrobe as she has just removed a jumper from it.

And in the next frame we can see Lucy Casken in a different location putting the jumper on.

And a few frames later we see her down the stairs.

And then in the kitchen getting breakfast.

This scene purposely breaches basic continuity laws by using jump cuts to rush Lucy's morning routine. It also stops camera shots dragging out and possibly boring the viewer. I like jump cuts and I use them frequently in our film. I got the idea for including jump cuts by doing research into films that use them, such as Notting Hill. I also analyzed a short film produced by other A level students called "The Wrong Turn." This film included jump cuts throughout. Which made me feel confident in using them, because if other A level students could use them and make them work well using I movie editing software. Our group certainly could make it work using Final Cut Express.

If we had to categorise our film to a certain genre I think psychological thriller would be adequate enough as our films themes relate to other films in that category. A major theme of psychological thrillers are characters trying to find out what is real and what’s not which poses a strong connection with the character Emily-Jayne. With Lucy Caskan trying to find out who she really is kind of like how David Fincher tries to make the narrator from Fight Club find out who he is. Which I reference in my film ever so slightly. As the camera pans left to right and shows the bullies speaking about Lucy there is a slight flash of Emily-Jayne Hart stood there next to Lucy Caskan. This idea was brought upon by Brad Pitts emergence to the narrators life in Fight Club. You can see sharp quick flashes of Brad Pitt at the beginning of the film as The Narrator deals with psychological problems. An example of this is in this video taken from youtube you can see the quick flash around the 17 second mark. [Tyler Durden Flash]

Blink and you miss it. You can see it clearly in these screenshots.

This is the workplace around the 16 second mark.

And now we can clearly see Tyler Durden stood in the workplace. This is to show the narrators mentally fragile state of mind. Which I wanted to show in our film.

I love the film and liked the idea of using ideas that stemmed from it. Also in the film especially towards the end there are a lot of brightness sweeps. I got this idea from the TV show Prison Break although they tend to invert the colours I still got the idea from there. The editing I hope provides some kind of enjoyment for the audience. The editing I think keeps the film moving and avoids it from getting a little bit slow. Other than editing techniques I think using actresses who act regularly helps make the film more appealing and real. Anyone with a love for films such as Fight Club, Se7en, the Uninvited and other thrillers would appeal to our film as it contains attributes of typical thrillers as well as attributes that may not often be associated with thrillers. Its always good to have something new and to keep the viewers guessing, like in Se7en. I don’t think we achieved this as well as I would’ve hoped to in our film. In places I am very disappointed with the film, but from the camera shots I got I think I managed to edit it to the best it could be. In the dining scene where Lucy buys two coffees and they sit down and have a conversation that was very awkward to edit and get something decent as members of the group had just filmed one shot throughout the whole conversation which was a substantial amount of time. So to ensure the viewer did not get bored I had to adjust the wire frame of the shot and stretch it so that it did a close up onto Lilly’s face. I think I got the best possible out of that situation because it would’ve been terrible to leave it as one long shot. I also went back and filmed a little bit more which wasn’t filmed with the only available actress and tried to make the scene as good as it could be. As for transitions I don’t really like using them because I think they look tacky. So I just dimmed the contrast to fade out at the key frames I wanted. I did this because I could make it more personalised than a set transition. Editing is a way of making things personal, I made the most of Fast cutting, slow cutting, continuity editing, intentional jump cuts and effects that were available to me. I used a lot of blurs and motion blur to put across the main characters confused state of mind. In the flashback we also see a colour change so the viewer knows it is a flashback. From an audio perspective I added an alarm tone for when the alarm goes off. An equalisation filter also helped me get around a problem of hubbub in the cafeteria. Although I couldn't reduce it fully I took most of the bass out and it did make a positive difference. I also added audio effects such as reverberation and delay on some audio tracks I found it very effective on voice to create a sense of confusion.

As a finished product. Our film poster, radio trailer and film itself produce an all together spooky, confusion filled experience. Which I think we all wanted that effect. First of all our poster is very dark, featuring eerie colours such as blacks and greys with speckles of light. This is sure to give a spooky, eerie feel to anyone who looks at the poster. The tag line which I created ‘Chasing her ghost,’ also gives a spooky sense, it is duplicated on the background to make it stand out yet still come second to the title and actors names. I think this is a very effective poster in applying a theme of confusion to the film.


The radio trailer also does this but I think it was more difficult to portray these themes just through sound. The eerie delicate piano piece underlying the speech is used to draw the listener in. As a package the radio trailer and poster both match the prospects of the film, an eerie psychological thriller. My poster draws resemblance to the poster from the film A Beautiful Mind, as it has Emily Jayne Hart stood in the background slightly faded out, whereas A Beautiful Minds poster has a series of blurred colours and then a silhouette of a person in the background. This was a good idea and I’m glad I stumbled across the poster and took ideas from it.

In filming I was sure to film scenes in two emotional moods so when I came to edit I could choose which looked best. So we made the actresses go through some lines in a sad mood and an angry mood. You can see this at the end when Lucy shouts at the teacher ‘She was my friend I knew her,’ later on there is a flashback and she says the same words in a sad tone. From this I tried to get the view that in her own head she sounds different and she feels different so that the viewer could feel her confusion. But I think fast editing in the flashback scene stops the viewer noticing this as much as I’d like the viewer to. To try and get the most out of the film and portray the characters to the audience I spent time planning before filming, trying to work out a way to build a love able character that people get attached to, I found this hard to do in just a few minutes but tried as it is very important. In the end I think it depends upon the audiences willingness to accept a new character. I tried using sympathy to try and make Lucy connect with the audience through her bullying as bullying is a trouble a lot of teenagers go through. Trying to make teenagers sympathise was a good choice as our target audience is mainly teenagers going onto older adults who like psychological thrillers or thrillers in general.

After taking part in our audience feedback which can be viewed here.
[The Lost Hart Audience Feedback]
We were able to find out what other people thought of the film and we could see if we succeeded in getting across our themes to the audience. At the time we let people watch the film to judge, It was only half way through, we did this so that we could retrieve criticism and then change the film accordingly.
In our audience feedback we got praise for using real actors we also got a lot of praise for editing techniques like the brightness and contrast flashes, one viewer said it made the film interesting and another said that was how the twist was shown. From criticism we found out that we needed more music in parts where there were little or no dialogue. So I got a song off garage band to use as a song off the radio in the car. Other songs in the film were cut from a song that my friends band wrote and i thought it fit the themes well. The statistics of the audience feedback suggest that we had particularly good reviews with 3 out of 5 stars a 4 and a 4.5, we were very impressed with that.

During research and planning the vital piece of technology was the internet and mainly the blog we created. This allowed us to all share everything we had together in our group. It solved a great deal of problems including when I forgot the script one day, we were able to print it off as it was on the internet and accessible to everyone. The most important piece of technology for me personally was using the editing software Final Cut express.I found it easy to use and just brilliant. A lot more flexible with cuts and effects. Plus having multiple video and audio tracks helped the creativeness of the film and allowed us to experiment more than last year where we used I-movie. As well as Final Cut I used garage band for audio samples like the alarm clock which was very useful. To record sound for radio trailer we used a zoom H4 recorder which is very simple and easy to use. To record video, we used a Sony HDV 1000. I found that the camera was very good but pulling focus and setting a shallow focus was rather difficult. This was a disappointing feature as it is commonly used in all films.


Technology at the most of the times was very helpful and reliable although we did have certain problems. A few times we got a camera out and the battery wasn’t charged which was a big problem when we were filming exterior locations. As well as battery problems we got the camera out and when we filmed the shots were not use able due to something not being cleaned correctly. The only problem I had with any other technology was the editing software final cut closing unexpectedly and I lost hours worth of work because of that which was devastating.

To conclude we thought it was best to stick to certain rules and obligations and not stray too far from the genre themes. This makes it easier for the audience to understand our film. Which from our audience feedback they mostly did. Which is a plus. Technology helped us greatly as personally I didn’t fancy splicing film tape to edit each shot. I think we made the film the right way.