Seeing Our School in Two Different Ways...

We were set the task of videoing our school and creating two short films that would display the school in a positive light and then a negative light. We used different camera angles and movements to create different effects, for example: We used multiple panning shots of the empty school with litter blowing across the fields and playground which created a very sad, lonely effect that worked perfectly for the negative film. In contrast we used close ups on bright flowers and nature that helped to fill the frame with bright happy colours that worked brilliantly for our positive film. In some cases, I used the same shot in each of my films to show how editing can create different moods, it also showed that filters have a big impact on the mood and so does the music. This task really helped to broaden my knowledge and experience of using the camera to set the mood and to create different effects. The task also helped me to learn more about what editing can do to change the mood of a film and why choosing the right music and filters is so important in cinematography. With the negative film I chose to use much longer transitions like cross fades and fades to black. This made the film seem a lot slower and sad which really matched the music and was very effective. With the positive film I used much shorter transitions like straight cuts, shorter cross fades and the Gaussian fade (found in final cut) this again matched the more upbeat soundtrack and presented a much snappier, quicker joyful film which is exactly what I wanted.

In my positive film I used the settings in final cut pro to brighten the images and to increase the exposure making them all much happier and colourful to add to the effect of the positive film. This was really effective as it showed all of the clips in a bright and happy way rather than a dark and miserable one. In the positive film I chose to include a lot of people talking, smiling, doing productive activities like reading or practicing an instrument as these are all very positive things that are seen as good. For the positive view of the school we used brighter filters and lighting to really show how the school in a brighter more welcoming light that really made the positive atmosphere of the school stand out as much as possible. I feel that the positive film was enhanced even more because of the light, upbeat music which really affected the mood of the film only adding even more to the positivity of the bright shots and the happy subjects within the shots. In contrast, the negative film contains no colour whatsoever which I feel helps to make the film look a lot darker and emotional rather than bright and happy. I also chose to increase the contrast and exposure on all of the footage in the negative film which helped to sharpen the images as not all of the clips were the best quality. I always made all of the transitions between clips either fades or cross dissolves which made the clip come across as a lot slower and thoughtful rather than snappy and happy like in the positive film.

This project really helped me to develop my camera and editing skills and learn even more about using the camera and editing techniques to my advantage to change the mood of footage. This skill will be extremely useful when it comes to filming and editing my final film noir for my coursework.