Limbo Evaluation

Limbo Evaluation

"Limbo"

Film Poster

Behold!

This was taken on a road towards Upper Heyford. I decided that if I was to use a road I could give the feel of there is a long almost never ending journey in trying to escape out of Limbo. The feet belong to Corban who joined me in location scouting. He was wearing shorts so everythings ok! I decided he should go bare foot to make him look out of place. If he was in shoes then the audience would just think it was a lone traveller but I needed that feel of being out of place. It also gives a feel of isolation and more importantly it makes him look lost...

"Limbo"

A brief overview of the finished product before I upload the video to show you.

The trailer is around 1:40 mins long and shows the scene with Corban waking up in the car. There are cuts at certain points to add text and give the audience a vague idea of what this trailer is about. This is a general convention of trailers which I decided to add. I'm challenging the conventions a little bit by having a lot of the first scene of the potential film showing with other cuts and parts of the film around it. The extra clips are to give an idea of what will follow but we're following a short opening to almost pull the audience in and push them back out at the end, making them want to watch the final product.

Locations are the Upper Heyford abandoned supermarket car park and the centre of Woodstock

Corban Wishart acts as the lonely character stuck in Limbo

The track used is "Thistle and Weeds" by Mumford and Sons

The editing software used was Final Cut Express used on the Mac books

Music/Soundtrack

There has been one track I've thought would fit the mood so well was the track Thistle and Weeds by Mumford and Sons.

(All rights go to them, I use the song for a non-profit making A2 trailer, I do not own the song)

The track is about 6 minutes long and has a lot of variety I think. It has a mysterious feel to it due to its lone guitar and eerie melody and lyrics. The piece gradually builds a crescendo with slow drums and a low almost honky tonk piano which really adds to the feel.

The reason I love this song is for the section around 4 minutes in when the piece dramatically changes. The tempo rises, the drums quicken and the piano starts to stand out a lot more. It really gives you a sense of panic, almost a claustrophobic panic. Its brilliant and sounds like it would make the perfect track for a film and, if edited well, a trailer. I use the slower paced sections for the first minute to give a mysterious feel. Later the music cuts out and I have silence with sudden thunder claps to open new shots, a convention of trailers, and finally when it looks like Corban is looking at someone I use the sound of a plane flying over to give that rising panic feeling. The screen blacks out and then cuts straight to Corban running away in panic with the music at the most epic part, in my oppinion, playing. Again another convention of being able to just catch someone off guard. I have edited it also to have the track finish at the right time then then fade out to the title showing "Limbo". Spoiler for the title right there... More to come

Sound (Part 1)

I'm doing a fair few of these posts in parts but who knows I may end up merging them together at the end of this project.

There was an issue I had on my AS Production which was that all the audio had to be taken out, even the dialogue, because of continuity with the background noises as we were filming. The same thing has happened for this project but all that means is that the sound has to be all artificial. Its not so much of a problem in this one because there isn't any dialogue to worry about but because of that, the sounds and how much of an effect they make is really important.

To start with the openings I decided to go for a fairly cliched but effective sound of howling wind to suggest a feeling of isolation and I think that really fitted with where the shot was taken. For the first few cuts I try to make it seem a little bit like different security cameras from different angles were watching the character in the car, zooming in on every cut. I threw in a short electrical buzz on each cut to really give that effect and I think it worked. After the first few shots we come to a shot which slowly zooms in on Corban in the car and as its zooming Corban suddenly jolts up from his ("sleep/blackout/unconsciousness", the audience will decide this) the camera stops as soon as Corban awakes so I needed a sound that would gradually build up and stop, almost like that sound effect used in war films when the character of importance is in the war scene and all the sounds are muffled out until eventually the character comes back down to earth and the sound has made its crescendo and just stopped and his hearing is back to normal. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find the exact sound that I wanted but instead I've used the sound of a plane flying over head which, luckily, cut at the right time doesn't sound like a plane at all and its been able to give the effect I've wanted.

Actors

This will be a short post, but that's mostly because my cast list is tiny. There are only 2 Actors but I thought I should give a run down of the two:

Corban Wishart as an Unnamed character stuck in this alternate reality. I decided to use Corban for the film because he was able to show the emotion I needed, seeing as I wasn't using any dialogue. And also I used him because its fairly convenient to pick him up and get some shots done in the day.

Henry Frater as the busker found in the town. Henry can play the guitar and sing which was what i needed for this shot (wouldn't be the most helpful thing if my actor for this role couldn't play or sing) I plan to give him a rather scruffy and homeless look to help with the role. He does however act very well too and will be able to give off that sinister look needed for the role.

If this was a real project, at least less money would be going to the actors seeing as there's less of them...