Student Film Analysis

Chosen Film: Innocent Until Proven Guilty

Genre - This film is of the genre action. This can be seen initially from the outfit the main character is wearing. All black combat clothes with a bulletproof vest, not the sort of thing you would wear to go to the pub. The second piece of evidence is during the phone call, where gunshots can clearly be heard. There is then the armed guard, who is dressed the same way the main character is. Then after that there is the fight scene, where the editors have made use of a fast-paced edit with lots of shots. 

Editing - The film starts off with a slow edit with lengthy shots. As the tension builds. When the fight scene starts, the edit becomes much more fast paced with lots of short shots. After the guard has been 'taken care of', the edit then slows back down. This is all good quality editing because it all fits with the scenes that are going on. 

Sound - This film, excluding the music, uses sound recorded especially for the film, they didn't download any sound effects. The sound was recordings of meat being punched so it would sound like the real thing. This adds a layer of realism that other films don't have that choose to emphasise the fight scenes with additional sound effects added for dramatic effect. An example of this dramatisation can be seen in the final fight scene in Hot Fuzz (if you don't like gore, don't watch past 1:36, unless you want to see Timothy Dalton get harpooned by a miniature church). One sound clip that does bug me is the first phone call. The way the person says "John, its a set-up!" just ruins it for me. I hate to nitpick but it's little details like that which wind me up. Something else that is of an annoyance is the speech when in what looks like a disused barn is echoing a lot and that lowers the quality of the piece. Although, this is something that is hard to avoid without using an external boom-mic.

Camera - This film has a good use of camera. The shots are kept very steady so as to not give it an amatuer feeling to what has been made. The focus is set just so to keep the characters and action in focus while blurring out the background during the close up shots. During the long tracking shot from 1:15 - 1:22, the camera remains very steady, meaning a dolly was most likely used. During the fight sequence, the camerawork is more likely handheld due to its shaky movements, but this adds to the action and makes it feel more intense and 'unplanned' since in the story, the fight was not planned. 

Mise - This film has one of the best uses of Mise in a student film i have come across. They haven't just made do with whatever, they have planned it carefully and not cut corners. Particularly the weapons. The weapons in question are obviously not genuine items, but the weapons they are using don't look like fakes, they are in fact excellent replicas. I'm not an expert on guns, so i could be completely wrong. But from my perspective, they do look realistic. 

Titles - The titles in this clip are done in a way that they do not distract the viewer from everything that is going on. There are also no titles during the fight sequence, again, not to distract the viewer from what is happening on screen. The titles are discrete because the font used is thin and the size is small. They also use white text which makes it easy to read, but not a distraction from the subject.