Solitude Evaluation

Solitude has proved to be a great success, even though there were a few hiccups along the way. I had planned out two full scenes and during scene 1; it was the detective and the D.C. talking about the situation, getting ready to investigate. On the day that I was planning to film that, I was unwell and was unable to start scene one. To overcome this, I used a voiceover whilst D.C. Brocklesby was searching the woodland area and I personally think this was more effective as it created suspense for the audience and it enabled them to reflect on the current situation. Scene two was also changed in parts, due to the unavailability on some locations on the site that I used. I was planning on using a large building/storage area, so that D.C. Brocklesby could search the building and then come across the missing person, however on the day, the building was unavailable, so I had to change the plans slightly. I included a blue Peugeot 207, however that was parked outside the building that I was originally using, yet it doesn’t work, therefore I was unable to move it and use it in scene 2, so that also changed my plans. Instead of using the large building, I used a store cupboard, which worked well as their was a metal cover it, which implied that something could be behind it that is important and only the key holder can get it. When D.C. Brocklesby came across it, he found that it was open and he lifted off the cover and entered, finding the missing female. This also worked better as it more realistic in terms of having the door covered with something.

As this task was a continuity task, I made sure that I included most parts of it including: 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and constant mise en scene, such as the clothing etc.

Whilst filming the SRS, I didn’t realise that I’d done in the wrong way round to what is normally done, however after watching some soaps such as Coronation Street, it shows that it can be done in different ways. When you show the back of someone’s head and then the front of another person, the person who has the back of the head to the camera can be talking, like I used in my video, however normally the person with their face to the camera usually talks. It is also used in the Coronation Street clip that I gave an example of on my blog. It all depends on how the director wants to show the characters emotions and after looking at my video, it fits in well as you can see the intent emotion on the D.C.’s face as the female is talking to him.

Some other problems that occurred during filming/editing were the lighting. When I was filming the scene inside the storage cupboard, the lighting seemed fine on the camera, however when I transferred the footage onto my laptop, I couldn’t see people’s faces, which was a problem as the emotion was therefore unidentifiable by the audience. In conclusion to this, I used a effect called Raster and I changed the brightness of each individual clip.    

Another problem, which occurred, was the sound. During scene 2 in the dialogue part, the voices were extremely quiet on the actual computer, so I had to turn each dialogue clips volume up to as high as it would go, thus allowing the voices/dialogue to be heard. As I did this, the rest of the clip therefore got louder, and the part where D.C. Brocklesby turns around you can hear his footsteps extremely clearly, however they’re very loud. I tried to turn part of the clip down, so that the footsteps were quiet, however that wasn’t possible, so I then cut the dialogue out from the footstep part and just made it start afterwards. Now thinking about it, I could actually split the clip and then turn the sound down in the clip with the footsteps and then just turn up the other clip – GENIOUS!

I am extremely pleased with the finished product and I personally think that it is a very professional video, apart from the few minor lighting problems etc, however I think that an audience would enjoy watching it as the music and sound effects give it more realistic and enjoyable effect.