Artefact 3 Evaluation

This third artefact was loosely based around the Kuleshov effect and looked to reveal how editing could change the audiences emotions when piecing together seemingly unrelated footage in a montage sequence and try to create different meanings for different people.

The artefact contained four separate parts, each of these parts contained a five second clip at the beginning of an actor’s emotionless face, at the end of each part was a clip of the actors ‘reaction’. Placed in the between these two clips was an unrelated clip, but the artefact looked to find if it would still have an emotional reaction from the audience.

The research into this artefact followed the same structure as the previous two and again was done with an internet questionnaire. Overall the research showed that there was a difference in opinion between people thoughts, some people thought that the images did not go together and said they did not see a change in the actors emotions. On the other hand many people believed that the actor’s emotion changed throughout the four parts, with some of the emotions being cited as “hungry”, “tempted”, “aroused” and “happy”. The research proved that although footage may not be related, it can still be edited in such a way that the audience makes up perceptions in their own mind when in reality there is no link between what they are seeing.

In my next artefact I will try to focus on how colour and lighting can both effect the audience’s perception of genre, this will be done through testing out various colour and lighting combinations on a singular short piece of film footage. Hopefully this will enable to find out if it also has any impact on the audience’s perception of genre.

Artefact 2 Evaluation

My second artefacts are two clips from the films Hot Fuzz (2007) and Gladiator (2000). The clip from Hot Fuzz was slowed down (to 90%) and is accompanied by music taken from Terminator 2 (1991), whilst the clip from Gladiator is sped up (to 200%) and is accompanied by the theme music from The Benny Hill Show (1969). The aim of these artefacts was to see the effect that changing the speed had upon the genre.

This artefact was researched into in the same way as the first artefact, this was with questionnaires both online and offline. I chose to research in this way as I found it was a good method from the previous artefact and enable me to get good answers. The research led to the conclusion that when giving a film an increase in speed the genre can change from whatever it may be, in this case an action drama, and turn it into a comedy. Similarly I found decreasing the speed also had an impact on genre, changing it from a comedy into an action drama film. This led me to the conclusion that just like the first artefact the recognition of the genre by the audience is shaped by factors such as how fast or slow a scene is, as well as this music plays a massive role in shaping genre because it has a huge impact on the audiences emotions and can produce a scene in the genre that the editor or director is looking to achieve.

My next artefact will focus on the way that positioning shots in a certain order can have an effect on genre and how certain shots can influence a genre by being place next to each other.

Artefact 1 Evaluation

My first artefact is a recut trailer for the film Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and was produced with Adobe Premiere. The aim of this artefact was to turn the films genre from a family comedy into a horror/thriller with the premise that Robin William’s character is a man who is infatuated with children.

The research into this artefact was done with questionnaires both on the internet and through hand outs. The research led to the conclusion that with the use of the editing process, the trailer had successfully managed to change theappearance and genre of the film, with all the people who completed the questionnaire putting the genre of the trailer as horror/thriller. Various conclusions can be drawn from this research, one of them being that the role of the editor holds a great amount of power because the editing process contains a vast amount of techniques that can allow the change in appearance of any given footage. The editing process happens at the end of the filming process and therefore the audience are presented with the end result of how the films footage has been processed, one editor’s version of a film can turn out a lot different from another editor’s version even though they have the same footage to work with.

This artefact will lead onto show how an editing technique, such as changing speed, can also affect the audiences perception of genre and can reveal which speed creates which genres. This artefact will enable me to begin to focus on how a technique of editing can shape footage, as opposed to the current artefact which was viewing the editing process as a whole and illustrated its power when positioning different parts of a film and combining it with sound to change its outlook.