SCENE 10 - ANALYSED

The final scene I believe is one of the pinnacle points in the film in which Jack is freed - emotionally and psychically. He escapes from the torturous terror of the basement and enters the light. I purposely attempted to create a harsh lighting effect when he emerges from the basement, transitioning from black to white.

Myself and Joel collaborated on creating a poignant atmosphere, to connote freedom and highlight Jack's emotions. The atmosphere would in-turn relax the audience until the striking/pivotal moment at which Jack takes his own life by slitting his throat. There were many takes of Jack walking through the fields however I believed in being strict with the edit, to not drag out the sequence longer than it needed to be.

The throat slit itself was difficult to cut, as the original takes were all very, very poor. The prosthetics on Jack's neck were clearly visible and the throat slit/blood pouring effect Amy created did not work as intended. I believe she should have tested this out before the crew ventured out to the week-long shoot on location, however perhaps due to the limited time available this was not possible. Because of this, I was forced to create a slit-second cut of Jack's slitting his throat and the blood spurting out.

I downloaded an 'Action Essentials' package that featured blood bursts with a black, blank background. This allowed me to easily overlay the footage and crop it to the correct size and place I wanted it to be. I then experimented with the contrast and saturation to create the rich, deep red effect that blood actually is. Afterwards, the director brought in an animation student to see if he could create a proper, more professional looking blood effect animation. However the results were not as good as we thought they'd be, the effect appeared 'cartoonish' and was clearly after-effects than real-time. The shot is displayed below and the decided effect used in the final film is at 11:47 (also shown below).

https://vimeo.com/97598894 (Last accessed 25/05/2014)

 We reverted back to the original cut/effect that the director and I created.



Home Away From Here from SHU Film & Media Production on Vimeo.



The final crane shot I believe was a satisfying shot to end on. Unfortunately the quality of the shot wasn't strong enough as the camera didn't pan out as heigh as I wanted it too, however faults aside I still believe ending on a shot of Jack was an effective way to bring the film to a close- a connection between the audience and the main protagonist is created.