The Swift End + Short Film Evaluation

I extremely enjoyed the processes of creating and making the final film this year and in my opinion it has given me an opportunity to improve my skills on camera. As a group, we are very proud and pleased with the way our final Film Noir short film turned out, I enjoy the fact that we kept with our original first idea to create Film Noir with a more modern twist to the genre. Our group dynamic also worked well in order to get the film finished, even when we encountered some large, almost impossible, hurdles regarding character availability as one of our characters was on holiday and wasn't back till after our coursework had to be handed in,  however we were able to go back to the storyboard and use our imaginations to come up with some more ideas, in order to make up for the character loss. On the other hand, even though we are pleased with our final cut, there are definitely areas where we could have improved on.

What we did well was the use of camera angles in our production. Throughout our project, we used a large variety of camera angles, some of which we consider to be unique. An example would be in the scene where Clive Swift has first knocked on the door of the Roper Household, where we see Mrs Roper walking down the stairs. The camera angle used is a tracking shot, focusing in the lower body of Mrs Roper, leading to a build up of suspense for the audience as all we see is her lower half, jet black knee high boots on contrast to the pure white banister. One more example would be the over the shoulder/pan shot at the beginning of the scene involving Clive and detective Nigel Montjoy, in the quiet park where Clive is sitting down on a bench lower down in the distance, whilst Nigel looks down upon him. We felt this shot represented a convention of film noir, where often the 'hero' looks upon his 'prey'.

An area of criticism for our project would be the scene at the very start. In this scene, Mr Ropers and Clive Swifts heads are cut out of the top of the scene, when Mr Roper stands up to greet Clive. We could improve this scene by when the heads get cut out of the shot that we insert a new high shot camera angle that can fill that section, then cut back to the other clip. However it is difficult to keep cutting camera angles, as Film Noir conventionally has long takes.

Another thing I have noticed is that between some of the shots in our short film are very sudden and sharp transitions. For example, the scene between where Mrs Roper is attempting to seduce Clive, and the one where he phones her back changing his mind. They suddenly cut between the two without no suspense etc. One way we could have improved this is by adding in a fade transition, and in the background apply some slow jazz music, to add more suspense and split the scenes up a little more.

Finally, the last thing I would change is the final scene. This is where Clive Swift is shot, outside on the graveyard. However there is no explanation and it leaves the audience baffled. This scene is different due to the character unavailability. We could include some minor detail of a narration, or name in the book to take away the confusion and questions, however it can be a good thing to leave it on a cliff hangar.

Overall however despite these minor flaws of the project. I feel like we did the best we could do within the time limit, also with the hurdles we faced in order to complete the project.