AS Film Extract Evaluation Ali Westwood

I took the role of editor on our group and after completing the final edit of our film, with a few things I’d change about it, I can say that I am overall pleased with our final edit. Films such as ‘Trainspotting’ and ‘This is England’ influenced us, as they are both successful low budget gritty British films. Our film was based around a lonely and isolated teenage boy called ‘Wally’.

In the extract of our film ‘Chump’, Wally encounters two other teenage boys, who are seen as thugs and unfortunately gets mugged by the two.
By being influenced by films such as ‘Kidadulthood’ and ‘This is England’ we took the idea of loneliness from the character Shaun from ‘This is England’ and wanted to make it as much like as modern day Britain as we could. This influenced our costumes and the dialogue of our film. The costume’s we used for the two thugs (who mug main character Wally) are stereotypical costumes of thuggish modern day teenage boys, such as the trainers, trackies and hoods. This helped the modern day audience to determine that they were the dangerous characters when they first appear on screen.
To develop the narrative in our film, I tried to use smoother cuts when the character Wally is at home and in his comfort zone to keep the start of the extract relaxed and then build the tension from there. I used longer cuts in the home scene in attempt to create this effect of a more relaxed state on the audience. The further he gets through his morning routine I used shorter cuts to start building up the tension as it gets closer to the scene where he is being mugged. However, there is one cut in where Wally is walking down a road in where it is far to long – as you can see from the screenshot taken from final cut, you can see that the shot goes on for longer than 10 seconds; and because of this it loses its tension building effect on the audience.

Looking back on that cut, if I were to edit it again I would split the shot down into three cuts fading in and out as he is walking down the road to keep the tension building and the audience interested. After receiving feedback on my microelement (Editing), The criticism from people who watched the extract also picked up on the long cut and commented that it ruined the tension. I managed to use an editing technique which was inspired by watching ‘The Matrix’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arcJksDgCOU&feature=related) which gave the shot a smooth cut of the character Wally walking down the hall.
Looking back on my micro element Editing, I had to do a lot of cutting down on the shots as once we first finished our rough edit it was pushing 5minutes which exceeded the 2-3minute limit we were given. There are a few little mistakes and changes I have noticed and would like to have changed after completion of the film. There are things such as the shot where we have the character Wally putting on his shoes and walking out the door, that at the time of filming the shot the character Wally didn’t properly shut the door, which if was shut properly would have had a nice effect with the juxataposition of the fridge door shutting in the previous shot and would of gave the scene a nice effect.

There is also a mistake we noticed due to the feedback from Jake Wynne who directs and edits short films (www.jakewynne.com) who pointed out how Wally leaves where he was sitting and turns left, however the next shot we see him walking in the opposite direction. He also pointed out how we had a POV shot of Wally spraying anti persperant and it spoilt the build up as he commented that it made it humourous. As this wasn’t the effect we wanted it to have on the audience, due to his feedback on it, I decided to cut the first part of the POV shot in order to try and keep the flow and build of the narrative.

To conclude, despite being unhappy with a few cuts which should have been better, I am overally pleased with seeing our completed film extract.