Low budget film making

I have recently watched The Blair Witch Project which had a very low budget to film with which could be seen by the lack of props and actors. The only props they had were a tent, sleeping bags, map, compass and one car. They didn’t even have any food.

In the Blair Witch Project, they didn’t have any lighting and when they did have lighting it was just the natural lighting from the day light as most of the film was shot in the open, outside and during the day. In the night scenes the screen was an unnatural green but if they had a bigger budget for lighting they could have developed the night scenes which would have made it more realistic: you didn’t see any clue to what had happened. How they dealt with this was that the incident was suggested by a scream and the actors running from something.

They did not have enough money to hire real actors they had to play themselves in the film. Also they didn’t have other extra characters because they didn’t have anyone to act them. They did not need to pay for costumes as they just wore ordinary clothes. Also they did the filming themselves. They didn’t need a scriptwriter as they improvised their lines.

Also the cameras they had used were not too good: very old, hand held and had no special features. This was because of the lack of money or funds they had to film with.

In The Blair Witch Project, they shot most of the film in one place, which was in the middle of the woods in a tent and walking around in the wood very close to where they set up camp for the film. They couldn’t afford expensive locations. There wasn’t a soundtrack either.

The publicity, usually an extreme expense, was via viral marketing.

This all could have been why it was presented in a documentary style because in real life you would not have special equipment or lighting. This actually made it more frightening because it was ‘really happening’. Also, the characters were young adults like the audience so the audience could imagine they were there or it could happen to them and their friends.

 In parts it made you jump because as there was no music it was so quiet and this made you jumpy. There was no fast or tense music to let you know when bad things were about to happen.

evaluation

My analysis for my video The Package

by Fabian, Kurt, Bailey and Ren

In my video there are some great parts and some bad points to the video which I will comment on in the order that they appear in the video. Firstly, the good parts would be at the very start Ren slowly walks into the shot and walks over to the bench and sits down. This builds up a great tension because it is dramatic as the pace of Ren is quite slow. As so during the video no one looks at the camera which make the hole video look more realistic and make it’s as if there is no camera filming them and because of this it doesn’t look like it had been planned.

However, the are some very terrible parts which is in places in the video it jumps from scene to scene and due to this the video just doesn’t flow as nice as it should. But in some places in the video there is poor continuity because in one part Ren is facing one way then in the next part is facing the other way and has moved places a little bit.  Also when Ren is sitting on the bench in the video it zooms right in on her face which was to quick and far to close then a couple of seconds later it zooms out only half on the zoomed in.  This doesn’t look very good and make the video look funny. But also there is poor continuity because during the video the sun is in one place then in the next scene of the video it’s in a different place which can clearly be shown by the shadows. Also the props and actors had moved a bit so the video doesn’t flow like it was supposed to. And the camera moves angle quite often which means the video couldn’t flow very well.

 But there is also more good point about this video which are; camera chase Ren and Kurt are running through the woods and the camera man bailey runs through the woods with them this is great because it creates a sense of speed and movement which worked great. But during the video Ren is shot and ends up laying on the floor and for the rest of the video she doesn’t seem to have moved and remains in the same position on the ground but also how the scenes are shot you don’t get to see her breathing which makes it look like she was dead. 

The Package

Photo Connotation Task