During production for the short film Angst, I needed to consider all my shot types for when my main character Marouf is in thought or having a conversation with someone. Many close-ups were used to show the expression of Marouf during his voice-over where we can hear his thoughts and see what he is feeling. In the film, Maruf is the main focus and we go through what his life is like so shots types like a POV shot and Medium shots and close-ups are used to portray his life. I used a POV shot in the film to put the viewer in the eyes of Marouf so that the viewers can visualise what it’s like being Marouf. The shot types go well with the non-diegetic audio which in this case is his voice over only the viewers and Marouf can listen to his thoughts however others around him don’t understand what he’s thinking and going through. During the production, I thought about what shot types could work well with the voice over so I picked locations and shot types that showed him to be by himself in a quite isolated location so that we can see he spends his time alone with just him and his thoughts. For the parts where Marouf is by himself I’ve used a medium shot to establish that he is alone and his surroundings and then a medium close up or a medium close up will be used to show what he is doing or his facial expression to show to the viewer what he is thinking. At the start, B roll is used to describe the comparison of Maroufs village back home in Bangladesh compared to him living in the UK. The shot types in the B roll are wide shots to capture the full scenery and to give Marouf’s viewpoint on the UK. Also at the start of the film, a top-down shot is used for Marouf laying down the photographs of his past and showing the viewer what Marouf has been through so far and you get some backstory on his life before entering the UK. During conversations between characters, a side shot at an angle is always used to mainly focus on Marouf and the other character. B roll is used through the film in order to further develop the story and to give the viewer knowledge of what is happening currently at that time this works well with the voice over as we hear what is happening and the B roll supporting what is happening. During the production, I had a problem with Marouf being in his room scene as I did not know whether to create a time-lapse of Marouf pacing around his room and him deep in thought or for Marouf to fade in different places of his room. I create both shots for the scene however I preferred Marouf fading in different parts compared to the time-lapse as the footage looked very grainy in low lighting even when bumping up the iso so I picked Marouf fading in different places in his room instead. Some of the shots from the shot lists were not used either because we found out that they were not needed and found a better shot type on the set of the location or the shot type could not be made because of some disturbances on set. I had some disturbances on set like people talking loudly around us or people constantly walking past and much more to combat this we either did the shot at a quieter time or found a better spot to film around the location. We knew we were going to face issues so on set we quickly adapted fast because we were short on time in some cases.
For mise en scene in my film I used the green lighting in Maroufs room to represent a sense of calmness and relaxation and to contrast this I used Maroufs actions and voice over in the film to contrast this to really show that he was stressed and had anxiety instead to fool the viewer in creating a calm environment however the character is the complete opposite of that he the worrying of his impression on others and is worried he’s doing something wrong. At the end of the film we see Marouf transitioning from Black and dull clothing to colourful bright colours to show that he has adapted from his shy and nervous individual to someone who is positive and happier after talking and playing with Haroon. Before Marouf’s clothing changes we see that Haroon is constantly wearing bright clothing demonstrating he is someone that is happy with himself in the film and has no need to be worried compared to Marouf who worries something bad will happen if he does not do everything perfectly. My film is a social realism film meaning that the events in the film can be based on reality or loosely be based on reality. So in my film, it was based around a person immigrating to a new country and him trying to adapt socially to his new environment. The film was created to portray loosely as what some foreigners go through coming to a new country and I say loosely because I think I could never do justice to create a film that demonstrates what immigrants go through coming to a new country. Codes and conventions of my film are Social adaptations my character has to go through in order to fit in with the people around him and for him to have friends and how Marouf needs to change from his old self in order to make new friends and to appear normal in this foreign land to him.
As for audio in the film, I had problems with this for the film. For the sound on set, all the audio is captured from the camera unfortunately and we were not able to rent out mics we could attach to the camera so the audio quality is poor for the scenes where there is a conversation between characters on set. Next time I will fix this for my next film and make sure I can secure Mics and other audio equipment for audio on set. However, what I think I did well is the voice-over which sounds good and better than the camera audio as I used a Dedicated Mic I have to do the voice over on my computer. To make the audio as high quality as I could I used a program called Audacity to record my voice over where we did many takes of the voice-over lines. In audacity, we used Noise suppression to cut out all the background noise such as a clock ticking and buzzing sounds. We also used Loudness normalisation to cut out the peaking of the audio and then we created a macro of compressor, Normalise Graphic EQ and limiter to make the voice-over audio more cleaner and less muffled at times to get rid of any other weird sounds and noises in the audio and then export it into WAV file format and put it into the premiere project and match it up to the clips in premiere pro.
A problem I had with audio was music when you watch the film you can see there is a lack of music because many of the royalty-free website’s music didn’t have what I was looking for unfortunately I was only able to get non-copyrighted music for the ending so next time for music I will spend more time and effort searching for the music I want in my film. Without the music, my film does not have the emotional impact I would like it to have so on my next project I will make sure the music used in my films is better. The voice-over in the film is non Diagetic only so only the viewer and Marouf are able to hear his thoughts. The viewer being able to hear his thoughts allow us to understand Marouf more and what his character is like in the film. The voice-over of his thoughts is non-diagetic because the characters around him can’t hear his thoughts. If I were to also put in music to the film it would be non-diagetic as I did not plan any scenes where the characters would be listening to music on set. Without music, in my film my film feels kind of flat so I will consider that on my next project.
During the editing process, I went through renaming all the clips we filmed in the folders so that I knew what scenes were usable and what scenes were just bloopers which took me 30 mins cause a lot of footage was recorded. Once all the clips were named and I knew what I could and could not use I placed different clips in different bins in premiere pro for what scenes in the film so that I could work faster in creating and putting together the scene. An editing effect I like in films is the VHS effect which gives that old and grainy effect like your watching on VHS and I thought that it would be perfect on my scene where I have a scene of Marouf placing down his photos of his family and I thought it would be perfect to use that effect as Marouf is retelling his past so I did that effect on that scene. In order to create the effect, I duplicated the photographed scene 3 times and put on the RBG effect on all clips and changed the colour and position of the 3 clips and then put on wave warp to give the VHS effect of the line streak across the screen going down. Also, the noise effect was put on the effect to put on some grain to make it look more digital. Then I put in the text of the date and time relative to when all the pictures were taken during that time. Also during the editing process, I tried making the camera audio better in premiere pro however not much was working and it would tamper the voice of the characters so I could not do too much there other than try and lower the background noise. As for exporting the video, I used the h264 format to export my video in 1080p for my film. My project had a couple of different versions however we settled on this version and thought this version. My film was exported like this because you can see the film is its quality in 1080p and on any device because its is a mp4 file format and that it can be uploaded youtube and retain its quality.
