Film evaluation part 1

Our film is a Supernatural Thriller and our editing does stick to the conventions of its genre. We remained conformative to our genre with the 180 degree rule and shot reverse shots techniques being used in our scenes containing conversations between characters. The lighting of our film is also conformative for the most part. We used dark, gloomy lighting for our opening shot where the drug deal takes place to set the dark tone of the film and with most thrillers tending to have some sort of dark or criminal entity being present, I think this sticks to conventions of the genre very well. Our effects on the other hand are different to the common effects present in this genre. Our special effects were bright and vibrant in the scene where Alex and Scotty are high on the drugs, which is a turn away from the dark tones usually seen in this genre. We also made the scenes where Alex is dead and in purgatory appear in black and white (which was a pastiche of the technique used in American History X) which to my knowledge hasn’t been applied to a film of this genre.

In terms of content our film is both conventional and unconventional. Our film centres around drugs and death, which is common ground for any thriller film to work with however we tried to make the characters in our film unconventional, with the use of clever mise en scene. We had Alex and Scotty wear normal clothes instead of having him wear the typical thuggish get-up usually seen worn by characters who take drugs in films. We also made Agnar look smart, and had him wear a mask to emphasise his mysterious yet intelligent demeanour. The location for our purgatory scene was also shot in and old 16^th century monastery instead of just a blank room, which I feel was fitting given that purgatory is a place only documented in religious texts. Our ending is also slightly unconventional because it is ambiguous. The film ends with Alex looking at Agnar’s mask which leaves the audience wondering if he actually did die or if it was just a very heavy drug trip. Ambiguous endings aren’t uncommon but films of this genre usually end up leaving the audience a plotline which is solid and certain, whereas our film makes the audience question if a certain sequence of events ever even took place.

There are three instances of pastiche in our film. The first example would be that we took influence from the character ‘V’ form V for Vendetta when creating Agnar. Like V, Agnar wears a mask and is very well spoken and charismatic. The second example of pastiche in our film is the use of black and white imagery on screen. This was taken from American History X, where Derek’s memories are shown in black and white to represent them being in the past. We used this technique in our film when Alex wakes up dead in purgatory, to signify to our audience that Alex is not in the normal world and in another realm. The third instance of pastiche would be that we took influences from the Chase scene in Point Break. We tried to re-create the tracking shot from this scene in our film.