Master Editing Technique Project

Contrast

In the video, we utilized contrast to juxtapose Ethan's happy, outgoing personality, with Garrett's sad and downtrodden personality. This is mainly shown through the use of music. When Ethan is on screen, we are greeted with upbeat stock music to show that Ethan is bubbly and personable. This is further emphasized by his social behaviour when walking down the hallway. On the other hand, when Garrett is on screen all we can hear is a melancholic guitar riff. This illustrates that Garrett is sad and walled off from people, which is reinforced by his reaction towards people in the hallway. 

In short, the scene is built around the juxtaposition of two opposite personalities, and is expressed through the music and the characters' behaviour.

Parallelism

For parallelism, we chose to film two nearly identical scenes for each character. The scenes, both inter-cut with each other, show the character's walking down the hallway, opening their lockers, and then beginning to walk down the hallway past their friends. The parallelism between the two characters' actions is meant to emphasize the contrast between them by making the scene easy to understand together, almost as if the independent variables of the scenes are the characters, while everything else is kept the same.

Symbolism

In the film, we utilized symbolism to accentuate Garrett's isolation. Unlike Ethan, Garrett is listening to his music through his headphones. This further establishes how Garrett is blocked off from his peers, and cannot hear them trying to say hello and cheer him up. The headphones symbolize how he is walled off from happiness.

Simultaneity 

To demonstrate simultaneity, we synced up the scenes of Ethan and Garrett walking to be taking place at the same time. To achieve this, we filmed two nearly identical scenes for each character to display their own personalities. Then, we cut them together in the editing process to make it seem like they were concurrent, with the scene ending in a collision between the two characters.

Leit Motif

We decided to go heavy handed with the use of leit motif in the film, choosing to signify the character's presence with music. Even if the character's faces are not being shown, we know who the shot will focus on in relation to the music that is playing. Ethan is signified by upbeat stock music, while Garrett is signified by melancholic guitar music.

Once again, these are used as motifs to let us know who the shot is focused on.

Halloween: Opening Analysis

          In the opening scene of John Carpenter’s Halloween, we are immediately thrown into the first person point of view of an unknown character. The choice to open with a first person point of view shot without establishing a character evokes a feeling of uneasiness and anxiety. Point of view shots are meant to put us into the mind of a specific character so we can literally see the scene through their perspective, but when we have no familiarity with the character, we are unsure as to what we ought to be feeling and thinking like.This allows our minds to wander, perhaps to a dark, dark place.

          The character is outside a commonplace suburban home, which they then wander around the side to look into the living room window to reveal a teenage couple kissing each other on the couch. The first person point of view makes it feel as if we are spying on the couple, which causes the audience to feel uneasy.
           We then see the couple rush up the stairs, presumably to have sex. The home, the first floor now empty, is entered by the character through the kitchen. A high pitched synth lead kicks in as we see the character brandish a large kitchen knife. We then see the boyfriend come downstairs and leave the house after saying goodbye. This leads into a low angle point of view shot of the character ascending a staircase. The low angle coupled with the ascension of the stairs evokes a feeling of power, almost as if this figure has the high ground. Literally.
          After the character reaches the top of the stairs, the character adorns a clown mask, which reduces the frame to two eyeholes. This obscured perspective not only serves the purpose of making the audience uncomfortably claustrophobic, but lets us know that whoever this character is, their view of life isn’t right. It’s skewed. They aren’t seeing the whole picture.
        We see him cross down a hallway into a bedroom, which houses a teenage girl in nothing but her underwear, looking at herself in a mirror. The girl exclaims “Michael!,’ before the character stabs her to death with the kitchen knife. The character, now established as Michael, clearly had a relationship with these people. That didn’t stop him from killing them in cold blood.
          We then see Michael, still from the point of view of his clown mask, run down the stairs and out of the house and into the driveway. Concurrently, a car pulls up. A man and a woman in formal attire exit the vehicle and approach the character. At this point we see that the two other characters are much taller than Michael is.
          The man presses Michael and proceeds to remove the mask from his face. The scene then cuts for the first time to a mid shot of a child in a clown costume, no more than eight years old, covered in blood. The couple, presumably his parents, stare at him in horror as the camera pans out into a master shot that includes the house, the neighborhood, and the driveway. He has just murdered his sister.

This scene is powerful because it utilizes an experimental version of the first person point of view shot to establish Michael Myers' sociopathic world view, and contrasts it with the common life of American suburbia.

        

      

Ethan Gets Murked: Shot Analysis

ETHAN GETS MURKED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6vfZ8r9dnM

First Shot: Establishing of the school. This establishes the bleak setting of the school, and sets the tone for the rest of the short.

Second shot: Long shot of lockers. This shot establishes the internal setting, and sets up the next shot of Ethan

Third shot: over the shoulder. Zooms out of PoV into an over the shoulder of Ethan opening his locker

Fourth shot: Single of Ethan from inside the locker. Shows the setting from the perspective of inside the locker

Fifth shot: Long shot of Ethan and Garrett walking to gym. It helps make a simple quick and easy visual transition that documents the characters moving from point A to point B

Sixth shot: Low angle of Ethan and Garrett fighting. Low angles help show the importance of the scene while imposing a sense of miniscule-ness in the audience 

Seventh shot: Garrett knocks camera from low angle into a dutch angle. Unique transition into next shot, shows that characters have a 4th wall effect and makes the audience apart of the action

Eighth shot: High Angle of Ethan at the bathroom sink. It gives the audience a clearer view of the setting while making the focused character

Ninth shot: Close up of Ethan, he has a black eye. Humanizes character that’s being focused on while conveying strong emotions in the audience depending on what the mood is at the moment

Tenth shot: zoom out from the close up to a long shot. Wraps up the character story by transitioning to a close up to a long angle, it also frames the character giving all the focus to that specific character