Twilight Zone: Film Screening

1. Fated? 

Bernd, Chris C., Kaia, Henry

Storytelling

From my understanding, the plot of this film is 'Fate' chasing main character Jake and he keeps revisiting the times when 'Fate took his family's lives away (?) - signifying how we cannot control our fate. I was confused about the ending of the film as Ian returns to the first scene again but in a different costume, but when I rewatched the film, I realised that there was a narration in the beginning of the film saying "For the 32nd time" and in the end before the first scene repeats again, the narrator says "For the 33rd time". I think the narrations sounded a bit muffled and hence they were hard for me to notice and made the film difficult to understand at first. There seems to be some minor editing errors, as the flashback sequence suddenly went black. I think that the pace of the story could be faster by using more cuts in the scene where Jake confronts Fate in the corridor to heighten the atmosphere, accompanied with faster-paced music. There was also a change of costume in the film, which made it confusing for the audience. 

Cinematography

I really like the use of dutch angle shots in this film. They really help portray Fate's superiority and enhance the tension between him and Jake:

I also like the shot where you could see Fate in the mirror and the camera pans to Jake and his mother:

However, throughout the film, the camera is quite shaky as there were many panning shots and it does not seem like a fig-rig was used. 

There is some inconsistency in the lighting - in the 'hospital' scene, the color of the lighting suddenly changed from cold to warm, and then back to cold again:

Sound

One of the major issues with sound in this film is that Fate's dialogue can't be heard clearly because he was wearing a mask. The group tried to portray the idea that Fate should not have an identity by giving the character a mask, but the prop evidently lowered the quality of the audio. I think the audio quality could've been improved by doing voiceovers with Fate during post-production, which should not be difficult because the mask covers the character's mouth and so the voiceover doesn't have to match with the video. There was a voiceover in the opening scene (0:49) that did not blend in with the rest of the audio very well because you could hear the ambience. In addition, the music was sometimes too loud and the audience would focus more on the music rather than the actual dialogue.

2. Mayday 

Tess, Candace, Charlotte (My Group)

Storytelling

Our film matches the characteristics of a Twilight Zone film - we challenge what's real and what's imagination with portals and by keeping the film quite vague and open to interpretation. Twilight Zone films are usually social critiques as well, and as the scriptwriter, my intention was to show how teenagers are very vulnerable to stress and struggle to cope with it (control their 'evil' side). I was worried that the plot might be unclear to the audience, because there were some details that weren't portrayed clearly, such as the shot of Evil Charlotte holding the pack of cigarettes which was meant to help convey how Charlotte is stressed out. However, in the end, the audience was able to understood the concept of the film, because there was a close up shot of the cigarettes and the drugs. I think my team did a great job modifying the script to make the audience understand that the second character is the evil version of the first character. Originally, there was not much verbal interaction between Charlotte and Evil Charlotte, so it was unclear what their relationship was. Adding in the dialogue "Don't you see, Charlotte, I'm just trying to help you. After all, I am you." helped clarified Evil Charlotte's identity. Overall, I am glad that we are able to portray the script the way we envisioned it. 

Cinematography / Editing

The lighting of our film is quite cold, which helps convey the theme of the story, but unfortunately, because a lot of the shots were filmed in dim settings, the shots eg. in the bathroom scene were blurry.

The use of the flashes to show that the characters teleported was inconsistent, because when Evil Charlotte teleported, there were no flashes, but when Good Charlotte did, there were:

We wanted to portray the passage of time with the shots of the clock in the beginning / the end, but I realised that it is actually very hard to see the time and that the audience would probably not notice such minor details. The running scenes were too long, and the audience felt nauseous. They suggested that we should use jump cuts in the running scene to keep the pace going and show how frantic it was, or shoot from different shooting the entire scene in one shot because it would bore the audience. The ending was quite ambiguous, which was our intention, but is also too abrupt. The start of the film was much stronger. 

Sound

As the sound designer, I think that the music I found on Audioblocks fits the film quite well, but the music in the end might have been too fast and did not match the pace of running. I was unaware of how loud the music and the ambience was that it drowned out the dialogue because I only watched the film on my laptop with in-ear headphones. When I rewatched it with over-ear headphones, I realised how loud the music was. The voiceovers eg. the one on the beach when Evil Charlotte said "Do you really believe what they say?" and the one on the rooftop when she says "No, no, I can't go down that road again" were a bit too soft. Next time, I should edit with over-ear headphones to assess whether the audio levels are appropriate. The sound in the ocean scene was difficult to control because the waves were so loud and sounded different in each shot (because sometimes we were closer to / further away from the ocean), but I managed to make the ambience sound consistent by putting another track of ambience under all the clips from the ocean scene. The audio can be improved by lowering the volume of the ambience and the music, so that the voiceovers can be heard clearly, and to also choose a piece of music that matches the pace of running in the street scene. 

3. Dimensions

Chris B, Arif, Derik, Raghav

Storytelling

I really like the plot of this story - it's very simple and easy to understand, but at the same time very intriguing. The audience is able to understand what happened to Raghav in the story despite having very little dialogue. There were some parts that were inconsistent - for example, in the beach scene, Arif gets out of the water, but his clothes suddenly turn dry, which may have been an editing error:

                    

Cinematography & Sound

This film is the best out of all four films in terms of cinematography, in my opinion. The flashes between scenes seemed unnecessary at first, but after understanding that the group had to use the effects as transitions because the framing and the lighting between the shots were inconsistent, I think that the scenes were actually matched up very well. However, it was still obvious that there were some issues with the colour balance as it fluctuates from location to location. For example, in the elevator scene, when he enters the lift the color is warm, but when he exits, the color is cold: 

                  

 This may have been because white balance was not done properly. At the end of the film, I really like how they used their lights very effectively and made it seem like there was a car in front of Arif: 

                                     

I also like the extreme close up shots of Arif and Raghav in the end, paired with the sound of a heart beat in the background:

                  

There were some issues with the sound in the rooftop scene as the ambience suddenly disappeared. The group said that it was because it was too windy at the time, but they could have recreated the audio with foley. 

I really like this bird's eye view shot - it looks very pleasing because of the spiral staircase.

4. I'm not dead, I'm Mark

Isaac Y., Isaac U., Wing Kwan, Alex

Storytelling

The plot of this film is very unclear due to the lack of dialogue. The title of the film was able to give us the idea that there's something to do with the character being dead, but the ending is quite ambiguous as the main character just lies on the bed and closes his eyes. The group tries to make up for the lack of dialogue by adding in visual effects, but it makes the story even more confusing. It would be a good idea to have the actor narrate his thoughts throughout the film, which could be easily done in post-production. From this film, we learnt that problem solving is a much better idea than changing the script and the idea.

Cinematography

I really like the transitions between the shots, especially from the swimming pool scene to the beach scene. I like how they were able to film the actor underwater: 

                                              

However, the camera seems a bit shaky at times, and the use of effects was a bit excessive. They used three different effects within the first minute of the film - the rainbow effect, the black and white effect, and the blur:

                                               

                                               

                                               

The shakiness of the camera plus the use of so many effects made me very nauseous. The group's intention was to represent Tavis' mind, but I think they were just very random and that they could have just used one effect throughout the film. 

Sound

The group said that the microphone did not work, hence they changed the film to something more experimental, because they would prefer having no audio rather than bad quality audio. However, I think they could've still filmed the sound with the camera's internal microphone, or use multiple iPhones as suggested by Ms. Ward, and later on in post production do a lot of foley and voiceovers. The volume of the foley in the film was inconsistent. It was too loud and did not sound realistic. Ms. Ward advised us that it is better to make the sound subtle, otherwise it would be very obvious that it is added in. However, I really like the idea of muting the music when the actor jumps into the pool to let the audience experience what he is experiencing. Putting the sound of the heartbeat when the actor tries to escape is also a good idea, but it was a bit too loud.

Throughout this unit, I have definitely grown as an IB learner. The biggest improvement is in my communication skills, as I now feel more confident when sharing my ideas.