Seminar 9

At the beginning of this weeks seminar we reviewed the editing in the car chase scene in the film Bullitt (1968) by Peter Yates.

The first thing we talked about was the use of music within the scene and how at the start when the two cars are just following one another there is a quite low tempo soundtrack that plays underneath that mimics the casualness of the scene. However, it also builds tension with the horn sound that plays in intervals throughout combined with the steady drum beat to let the audience know that something is about to happen. When the main character Frank loses his pursuers and begins to follow them, the music changes again to a more upbeat, cop style show track up until the men in the other car attempt to lose him and start to speed away. At this moment the music is cut out completely for the rest of the scene and is replaced with just the folley sounds of the car engines revving up and down. The superimposed sound of the cars is used here to make the audience in the illusion that the cars are moving a lot quicker than they actually are and also so they are really engaged and immersed with the chase by making them feel as though they are actually in the car with Frank Bullitt. The sound is helped by the constant use of PoV shots in the cars and behind the steering wheel as it increase audience empathy and connection with the characters by seeing it through their eyes. Finally, the fact that there is no dialogue what so ever within this 10 minute scene is very interesting as dialogue is commonly used to enhance audience engagement with the film as well as to develop plot or characters, however, this scene doesn't need it at all as the plot is straight forward and told through the use of geographical space around San Francisco and the movement of the cars, as well as by the performances of the actors and use of a variety of camera angles.

Next, we looked at John Madden's Shakespeare in Love (1998) and its opening title scene to analyse the way the narrative was constructed and edited. The scene follows two characters, Henslowe and Shakespeare, from Will's house through a crowded street and into a shop. First noticeable thing about the scene is that it is extremely dialogue heavy in order to move the narrative along, however, this is masked by the way in which it is delivered and where it takes place. The fact that the two characters have a conversation in a crowded street, where extras are constantly coming in and out of shot would seem on paper as being practically un-comprehendable to the audience as there is so much going on to distract them from the story. However, the way in which it is done in this scene is very effective as it shows the main character Will in the frame at almost all times and then Henslowe keep coming in and out of frame to show the relationship between the two characters as Will being in charge. The camera movement being constant and rarely static until near the end of the sequence also makes the understand the rush and context behind the characters situations and personal interests, Wills being to go to his therapist, and Henslowe needing Will for his business. After this interaction between the two characters ends and we see Will in with the therapist, the camera movement mimics the more relaxed atmosphere and allows the audience to get a sense of the character more easily by slowing the pace right down and allowing them to reflect on the dialogue more. The camera frequently cuts back to Shakespeare as well which subconsciously tells the audience that he is the character of importance within the scene, and he is the one we should be attempting to read, understand and empathise with.

Out of Date - Assembly

After being given the brief for Out of Date, I instantly started to transfer and import the files onto my hard drive and Media Composer so I could begin editing them as soon as possible.

Importing Footage.

Before I did this I looked through the different scenes from the rushes to decide which I would prefer to do and after looking through them all, I chose the second scene where Alf and Tony go to Alf's sisters house and discover her online dating website business. I chose this scene because it contained the least amount of continuity errors and was both well lit and well shot, with a range of takes and camera angles on all the characters.
After I imported all the footage from this scene, I started to label it all and separate it into the different shot styles so I could easily find the shot I wanted when progressing through the narrative.

Fully labelled scene.

Now unfortunately due to technical issues with my harddrive which I will talk about in a later post, I don't have any other screen grabs of the assembly process so I will just be describing what I did that I can remember and discussing any issues I had.
I started out be watching through the wide shot of the whole scene so I could get an understanding of the script as well as where the different punchlines came in and the characters reactions to one another. After making mental notes of this I put the whole take of the wide shot into the sequence, and started to put in close ups or mid shots of the characters when I thought it was necessary. As this was only an assembly, I wasn't worried about the sound overlapping or dialogue being out of sync as I was just testing out where reactions should go and when close ups should be used to create empathy with Alf and to show the relationships between the characters. I also wanted to keep in mind the importance of the dialogues pacing and how key this is especially in comedies to get the comedic timing just right.
When I got to the end of the scene applying these techniques I went back and watched through it again and began to remove the overlapping audio and almost all of the wide shots as I felt they made it harder to engage with the characters and made the scene less immersive and personal. The whole sequence is still very rough and needs a lot of touching up in terms of pacing and sound consistency, but overall I was happy with what I had done so far and was ready to start moving it to a rough cut as soon as possible.

Seminar 8 - Introduction to Brief 3

At the start of this seminar, we looked through the last of the Night Journey fine cuts and gave feedback on them, and then we were introduced to the third and final brief.

Brief for comedy edit.

This brief was to edit a scene from a previous years final 3rd year project film which was a comedy called Out Of Date. We had around 7 scenes to choose from and we would have to select one and edit it down to a 2-3 minute long film. The learning outcomes and assessment criteria were much similar to previous briefs apart from with the addition of 'Develop your fine cutting skills'.
My initial thoughts on this brief are that it will be once again very interesting and challenging to edit just one scene from this 10-15 minute long film and compress that scene down to just 2-3 minutes. However, throughout this module, I have become accustomed to working with footage that I have never seen before and with narratives that aren't initially clear to me as an outside editor, so I believe that this brief will allow me to apply all the things I have learnt up to this point and create a really solid and tightly cut final piece. This is also the first chance I have had to cut a comedy and as a keen comedy enthusiast, I am relishing the opportunity to do so and apply all the knowledge that I have gained in comedic timing e.t.c.

Seminar 7

At the start of this seminar we discussed various editing techniques that may be useful for us in our other projects. First of all, I asked how you could mask something on Media Composer, for example a light or plug socket on a black background. To do this what you need to do is add an extra video layer and above the video you want to mask, create 2 add edits at the start and end of it (on the new video layer) and then drag the Spot Colour Effect under Effects- Image. Then use one of the shape tools to highlight the area you want covering, then turn down the contrast to you get the desired effect. You can also use this same tool to increase the brightness of a certain area by turning up the gamma under Luma Adjust/ Luma Range.

After looking at some useful techniques, we analysed the editing within a scene in The Servant where the characters Tony and Vera are in the kitchen surrounded by a lot of sexual tension.

As you can see there are clips in this montage from the kitchen scene with Tony and Vera.
The sound in this scene is very powerful as it is almost all silent apart from the movement of the characters, and an overlaying beat that mimics heart rate throughout. This starts off as being a constant drip from the tap that starts off quiet and slowly but then increases in volume and speed until an abrupt crescendo where it stops briefly, but is then carried on by the telephone. This use of sound is very effective at building up tension and making the audience empathise with the characters whilst getting drawn in to their emotions. The cuts in this scene are very slow which contrasts with the sound, this is because they are more focused on the performance that the individuals give and how they convey their emotions through their actions.
The second scene we analysed was from The English Patient (1996) where the character Hana is reading a book to Cout Laszlo de Almasy about 'Candaules tells Gyges...' a story from Herodotus.

The editing in this scene inter-cuts between two scenes, one from real-time and another from memory. This is shown by a long cross dissolve between the real life scene, into the memory as it shows the Count as being younger and not ill. This is an effective way in which you can transport a narrative between the past and the present with the use of voice over and with a split edit, where something from an incoming scene is on the outgoing one. The use of music within this scene is also very effective at building tension, as there is an impending sense of doom with a low humming sound throughout which is only broken half way through when one of the other characters in the memory scene tells a joke.

In the second half of the seminar, we looked at our Night Journey Fine Cuts. Myself and Jay went first as I had to continue editing for my groups narrative strand project. The feedback we received was for the most part positive, although there were some obvious errors which we hadn't addressed. Chris like the music we had chosen and how it built tension as well as how it released it, especially in accordance to the pacing of our voice over. The selection of our voice over was also very strong however, he said that we needed to find a clearer narrative, especially in the second half of the film, as what we had done made all the pacing and tension building up to that point seem pointless. The ebb and flow of some of the voice over needed some work as well, especially to build empathy with the character of the non-cannibal. That said, all in all he thought it was a good piece and especially liked the sound design we had done, and that overall so far, it would be a mid 2:1.
We have discussed Chris' feedback and we have decided that if it doesn't impend our progress with the next brief, we will apply it to our film and make the necessary changes to get the grade up to a first using the best of our abilities.

Night Journey - Fine Cut

In the last few days before the final viewing of our Night Journey films, we moved on to the Fine Cut stage in the editing process and began to put the finishing touches to it and make it a tight and solid film. After reviewing the Rough Cut over the past few days, we decided that the visuals we had put together worked well in conjunction with one another as well as the narration we had put under it, so in the Fine Cut we would focus mainly on cleaning up the audio and pacing, with only minor tweaks to the video to sync it with the sound. We started off by mixing the music together in a cross-fade to make the sound flow more smoothly and progress the narrative by building and releasing tension.

Using the quick transition tool to get audio cross-fade mix.

Executing this was relatively straight forward in that we only had to use the quick transition tool, however, because we wanted the one of the tracks to carry on subtly under the new one, we positioned to songs on different tracks and added a slow fade in on the new track as the other faded out naturally. This was to connote a change in the narrative and how the tension changes as the cannibal character loses control of the situation.
We kept our focus on finalising the music by next using multiple track audio keyframing to dip out both the music and folley sounds when narration came in so that you can still hear it underneath the voice over.

Audio keyframe layering to keep the mood consistent.

The reason behind doing this was firstly to make sure the audience can clearly hear the narration and not be overpowered by the volume of the folley and music, but also to keep both of these playing in the background faintly, so the immersion of the audience into the story isn't broken due to the voice-over being introduced.
Layering the audio correctly and effectively was also a big concern, due to the amount of different aspects going on within it.

Audio mixer showing different levels of each audio track.

We were taught to always have the dialogue tracks as audio tracks one and two, as well as to have each pair of tracks to contain the same audio on where possible (using stereo instead of mono). The organisation of our tracks mirrored this as you can see and we kept it as neat and simple as possible to make the edit less problematic and more efficient.
When all these different layers of sound are occurring at the same time, the noise can be too much for the audience to process as well as being technically incorrect by the levels peaking and distorting the sound. To combat this, we relied heavily on the Audio Mixer tool in the Fine Cut to constantly re-adjust the levels for each pair of audio tracks and make sure they didn't peak and distort the sound.

Multiple audio tracks playing to monitor the levels and adjust accordingly.

As you can see, the first two tracks are the loudest as they are the narration and we want this to be heard over all the rest of the sounds. If any sounds were too loud and made the narration difficult to understand, we would group the tracks that the sound was located on and turn the levels down (as you can see in tracks 3,4 and 5).
Finally, after doing all of this audio editing, we decided to go through the whole film one or two more times in order to review what we had just done, as well as spotting any errors or ways to improve anything. Near the middle of the sequence, when the male character goes into a small dream sequence, we thought that it wasn't entirely clear that it was a dream and that this ambiguity and assumption we made wouldn't be understood by the audience. To combat this, we moved the narration around slightly, as well as adding a flash cut from where the sequence starts and ends.

Dip to Colour transition effect used to mimic flash cut into a different space.

We also assisted this connotation by cutting the music out of the dream sequence completely and replacing it with folley atoms which we believed worked effectively at drawing the audience out of one space and location to another.
After viewing the whole film one final time, we decided that we were happy with what we had produced, minus a few small sections, and that we had thoroughly improved and advanced since the last project as well as massively improving the rough cut.

Final Fine Cut sequence.

We will show the final export in this weeks seminar tomorrow and get formative verbal feedback from both the tutor and our peers which we will reflect on and use to apply to the final brief.

Night Journey - Rough Cut

Over the course of this week we have been building on the assembly for the Night Journey brief to progress it into the rough cut stage. We started by reviewing the assembly we did and identifying bits that felt untidy or out of place. Near the start of the sequence when we are syncing the images to the audio, there was a gap in one of the beats which made the whole sequence seem a bit jagged and didn't flow smoothly. To get around this, we composited an image over the previous one in time with the music which worked effectively with the voiceover.

Using the Superimpose effect to composite images onto one another for music syncing.

After going through the whole sequence and doing these kinds of 'touch ups' on the video tracks as well as rearranging some voiceover, we started to move the music tracks around and fade them in and out to create dramatic tension and build on making the narration more powerful. To accomplish this successfully, we used audio keyframing to make the fades out more controlled, as well as allowing us to dip the music out slightly to hear the narration more clearly.

Using Audio Keyframes to hear narration more clearly.

Whilst looking at the audio, we also decided that it would be a good idea to sort out the levels of the narration as well as following Chris' advice when dealing with mono sound. This was to duplicate the mono track and using the Audio Mixer on Media Composer, have one track playing out fully in the left speaker, and the other playing out in the right speaker. This is to make the audio more clear and sound better from a surround sound/stereo mix.

Adjusting the narration tracks.

Next, we started to add in folley sounds from the Audio Rushes files we were given with the project brief, as well as adding in some of our own from copyright free websites. This made the film seem a lot more smooth and tight as there were no longer any pauses of just no sound or just simply music. This was also really key to the pacing within the film, as it allowed us to get away with having gaps in the narration and music to once again build up tension but also to release it as well.

Finding folley sounds online for Night Journey.

Adding folley sounds into the timeline.

After adding in these sounds throughout the whole sequence we had a respectable Rough Cut that we would show to Chris and the rest of the group in the next seminar.

Final Rough Cut sequence.

The project is going quite well so far and both of us are happy with our progress, however, we are still having trouble building up empathy for the male character that isn't the cannibal, and trying to find a very clear and concise narrative to show. This may be due to our focus on the sound and voice over too much and potentially over using these two things, but we will take on feedback given in the next seminar too help us get around these issues in our Fine Cut.

Game of Thrones Analysis

The TV series Game of Thrones is structured much like a sitcom, as it jumps from character to character following their story and how it intertwines with the rest. What it does more remarkably than others however, is the sheer amount of different characters it follows and yet still manages to address them frequently enough so the audience doesn't get bored or forgets all the different stories going on at the same time. This is helped out partly due to the length of each episode and each season, each episode being just shy of an hour long and the series containing 10 episodes, as well as the way it is all cut together. For example, I have chosen a short scene from episode 3 of season 2 around 26 minutes in where Tyrion Lannister is talking to 3 different characters in his office, all at separate times so they are being spoken to individually and aren't aware that the others have been spoken to either. Now normally, having these separate conversations would take some time to happen with arranging them to come in at separate times e.c.t., but this sequence is edited in a way to mask all these transitional periods and save time.

The scene starts on a wide shot of the room with both characters in the centre of the frame, this is to establish the location and the characters in the conversation. After a brief interaction, Tryion walks away to a table out of shot and the framing changes to show him at the table with the other character in soft focus over his shoulder.

It then cuts away to a close up of him pouring wine into a goblet and then, as he starts to walk away, it cuts back to the same wide shot at the start apart from with a different person in the chair.

This same technique is then repeated with Tyrion walking off screen from a wide and then back in when the other character changes.

This is a very effective and entertaining technique of editing as it not only saves time like I said previously, but it also wraps the audience into the narrative more by showing more interactions between characters, giving the audience a better view on what they are like and how they are important in the story. It also shows that the important character in the scene and narrative at this point is Tyrion, as he is the one who seemingly controls the pace of the scene and is always the one that is in shot. Finally it progresses the narrative in a clear but clever way as it is easy to follow as well as being aesthetically well done.
The reason I chose to analyse this scene is to use the convention it does of showing the most important character on screen at almost all times, and apply that to the Night Journey cut I'm doing at the moment. This is to create empathy as well as engagement with one of the characters and focus on what they are doing to allow the audience to understand what is actually occurring within the scene. As we are having problems with creating a clear narrative in our edit, hopefully this research will enable us to progress and create a better, clearer final film.

Seminar 6

This seminar focused heavily on the use of soundtracks within films with a focus on why and how they're used and how they effect the audiences engagement and emotional connection with characters or situations in the film.

The first film we analysed was American Graffiti (1973) by George Lucas, with focus on the scene near then end of the film that shows the drag race between Milner and Falfa, Falfa being the antagonist within the film and Milner being a heroic figure.

Throughout the film, music is sourced from radios within cars and in locations, and this scene is no exception as right from the beginning, the song pans in as the cars move up to the starting line. This technique really defines the film as having excellent attention to detail in terms of continuity, as well as showing the culture of the characters in the film as being youths who listen to this 'rebellious' radio station at all hours of the day. The song's style and genre also builds on this rebellious theme that is prominent throughout the film, and also starts to build tension through its pace. The music is drowned almost completely out as the characters exchange dialogue and the car engines start revving and getting louder and it is brought abruptly back in as Falfa's car crashes. This is so it doesn't distract the audience from the main action in the scene which is the race and crash, and the reason it's brought straight back in is to remind the audience that these characters are still teenagers and almost bring an element of nostalgia to the audience as they empathise with that age group and the 'stupid' things that they do.

The next scene we analysed was the final one in season 5 episode 8 of Mad Men, where the main character Don puts on a record at the request of his trophy wife, Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles, and this starts a slow cut montage sequence showing a number of different main characters in the series.

The music used here is very significant with the overall plot of the series, as it is used very strongly as connoting Don's struggle and refusal to change to a modernising society. This is shown because in the ending shot of the scene, we see him pull the needle off the record and which abruptly stops the track and he walks off screen. This connotes his refusal to change because he is listening to something new and strange that he doesn't like, so he walks away from it and almost refuses to accept it as a concept. The montage sequence that follows the music is also very effective as the fast paced and psychedelic genre of the song contrasts with the slow pans or slow cuts between the various characters and locations within the montage, allowing the audience to take in what they are seeing very easily, instead of being confused by the fast paced and erratic music.

After analysing these scenes we started looking at peoples Night Journey assemblies/rough cuts and discussing what technical aspects of them could be improved. The majority of what came up was about audio use in Media Composer, and what could be done to improve the overall quality and professionalism of it and here is a brief outline of what we were told. When using music in films, as an editor you always have to make sure it is in stereo format instead of mono. This goes for almost any form of sound as well apart from those which you want to use panning on, and this is because it gives a richer, more equal sound in both left and right speakers, instead of just half volume in both. We also learnt the correct way to order and organise your audio tracks, by always putting sync sound (dialogue) on track one (and two if duplicating mono), then on tracks 3-4 putting on folley and sound effects, whilst on the final tracks put the music/soundtrack. When importing music, always adjust the levels to prevent clipping as almost all music tracks are exported to be very loud when played back, and are not optimised for films. So straight after importing them, you should adjust the levels to be around 0 to +8db so they don't clip and distort when exporting.

Night Journey Assembly

This week we have began the assembly for the Night Journey brief by importing and labelling the films rushes. As the film is relatively old and is filmed in standard definition, we had to create a project in a slightly different way than we have previously had to, being in PAL 4:3 standard definition instead of the usual HDV 1080p 16:9.

Setting up the project with the right settings.

The raw footage we were given to edit came in 5 main clips which ranged in length from around 20 minutes to 5 minutes. This was because the footage was shot on film so between each shot there was a flash cut instead of a new clip being created like on digital films. This meant we had to subclip each one of these rushes and label each shot separately. To do this on Media Composer, you have to select an in and out point around the first and last frame of the clip (in-between the flash cuts) and then select the small movie reel icon next to the name of the clip in the preview screen, and drag it into the bin you want the subclip to be created in.

Creating Sub-clips in Media Composer.

The start of the labelling process.

As there are over 100 different clips that make up the 5 sets of rushes we've been given, dragging and dropping every separate subclip into a bin started becoming a nightmare, so we decided to use the command pallet to add a keyboard short-cut for sub-clipping to speed up the process.

Creating keyboard commands.

After a long time labelling all the different video clips and organising them into subsequent bins, we finished the rushes and started moving onto the narration.

Final labels of rushes.

For the narration, we decided to transcribe what was said and the time it was said at to make the labelling process for that much easier.

Transcription for whole narration.

Timings written next to transcription for easy labelling.

After we did this we started to put the narration on the time-line first and the fit the video around that to create a narrative. We decided it was best to put the narration on first as it would give us an easier time creating a story and structure the narrative clearly without complicating it with the visual side.

After we had agreed on the general layout for the audio, we started putting the video, linking corresponding shots to the audio and came up with a rough outline for the film.

First Assembly.

Music in Films Analysis 2

This week, we started the seminar with Daryl and Emma talking about the pieces of music in films that they chose to analysis and share with us why they thought they were effective in the film.
Daryl went first and actually chose a TV series instead of a film which was an episode from The Wire (2002-2008) being the final episode of the final series right near the end has The Blind Boys of Alabama - Way Down The Hole played.

The reason Daryl said he chose this specific piece of music from a very long TV series is because it is the opening song for episodes in the first series which makes it iconic already as the audience will realise this and feel an element of nostalgia causing them to reminisce to the first series. The fact that this is played over a visual montage of around 30 different characters and locations that have appeared in previous episodes shows the intention to take the audience on this journey through all the episodes and act as a summary to the series as a whole by ending as it began.
My thoughts on this song in the context of the montage (bearing in mind I have never seen an episode of The Wire) were that it fit a montage sequence very well, with the tempo being not too fast but still repetitively rhythmic with pauses and a variety of intensity in different parts that really corresponded to the way the montage was edited. Finally I thought that the genre of the song was very fitting to the context of some of the montage, a very soulful and almost religious style of song marking the end of the series making it even more iconic.

After this, Emma showed us two pieces of music from Inception by Hans Zimmer; these were Dream Within A Dream and Time.

Firstly she talked about Dream Within A Dream and said that in the context of the film when this is played, the main characters have just completed their 'mission' just in the nick of time, and are all waking up from the layers of dreams in which they are asleep, just before the dream collapses.

The soundtrack here is very well used as it has a very upbeat tempo which fits with the action occurring within the visuals as well as building up the tension and suspense due to the repetitive and fast use of the strings. The heaviness of the drums and almost foghorn like sound adds to the gravity of the scene and really draws the audience in through the building of this dread and fear that the characters won't make it. This combined with the strings creates a menacing contrast between the two different pitches of the instruments which makes the scene more chaotic and powerful at keeping the audience on the edge of their seats.
The second score was Time which is used right at the very end of the film when all the characters are seemingly O.K and have finished the mission.

This is a slow but emotive piece of music which gradually but constantly builds as the scene progresses to add more layers of instruments to it which once again adds depth and texture to the scene as well as building emotions in the audience of relief, happiness and success, as the main character is finally home and happy. The crescendo at the end just as he sees his children puts a twist on the song as it abruptly stops these feelings of relief and makes the audience wonder why the music has faded out, and replaces it with suspense and almost shock as we see the totem wobble but not fall over as the film quickly cuts to black. This ambiguity is really helped by the audio as it doesn't give any indication as to what the ending actually is and allows the audience to make up their own mind which is a very effective way of manipulating the audience to make them feel incharge and increase the audience engagement.

Seminar 5

Due to our new brief of editing Night Journey using no sync sound and carefully considered use of voice over, this seminar focused heavily on appropriate and effective use of voice over in films. We started by looking at the opening sequence in 'The Third Man' (1949) by Carol Reed.

The use of voice over in this opening sequence is very effective at informing the audience of the context of the film and introducing the character as well as the main narrative for the film. It does well because the voice over leads the images on the screen by every time something is mentioned, a corresponding image is shown to the audience so they can visualise what the voice over is telling them, without any effort. The voice over itself is very casual and conversational which is strange especially in the period of the film where voice overs tended to be more formal and more of the voice of authority. This conversational manner makes the audience instantly feel more submerged in the film and narrative, instead of being aware they are being told just a list of facts off a script. The use of the light hearted music in the background contrasts with the subject matter that the V.O is dealing with (e.g. the body floating in the river) and makes the audience be less shocked by the images and makes the subject matter more naturalistic and empathise with the person speaking. Finally, linking with the underlying soundtrack, the way it cuts out and back in between dialogue punctuates the meaning of it and invites the audience to question what was just said more carefully which drives the narrative.

The second film we looked at was the first 8 minutes of Amelie (2001) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet where we are introduced to Amelie and her parents as well as the narrative for the film.

The very opening sequence shows the voice over once again drive the visuals by showing corresponding images to what is being said by the narrator which allows the audience to almost forget that there is a voice over and that they're just directing the visuals themselves through what they're being told. The V.O in this film is a lot more informative and less conversational as it is almost a list of descriptions of what is happening, however this works very effectively as a method of introducing main characters as well as narrative elements due to the straight forward, self-aware way in which this information is communicated through the narrative. The second part after the title sequence introduces her upbringing as well as her parents but unfortunately I cannot find an English subtitled version so the voice over is less meaningful, but you can still tell that it drives the visuals by being very commanding and 'matter-of-fact'.

In this sequence the V.O drives the camera movement, as well as the acting to allow the film to flow very smoothly and still engage with the audience, even thought they are essentially just being told the narrative of the film instead of working it out for themselves which can be quite boring/problematic. The self-aware narration also works well with the content of the film as it is quite hyper-realistic which links in with the mindset of the main character Amelie.

The final film we watched was the opening sequence of Election (1999) by Alexander Payne. Unfortunately there isn't a clip I can show here but the context is that we have just been introduced to the main character, a teacher called Mr. McAllister, who is the most popular teacher at school and enjoys his job. However, he has to teach a goodie-two-shoes and keen student, Tracy Flick, who we find out is running for high school president. This opening sequence combines the two characters voice overs as they express their opinions for one another in the past tense and sets up a plot as well as character profiles of both of them.

Source: http://ch2289.wordpress.com/tag/reese-witherspoon/

The sequence involves the use of freeze frames combining with voice over which makes the audience see that what ever is being said is important, as the film has physically stopped for something to be said. Also the timing of the freeze frames also allows us to see Mr. McAllister's view of Tracy as both are very unflattering and slightly amusing, used just as Tracy is in the middle of a sentence. This makes the audience instantly empathise with Mr.M over Tracy as we are getting more opinions from his side than hers. The use of music in this sequence is also very effective as when we hear Tracy's V.O, the music turns more sinister and sets up a question leading onto a potential plot point "why did he have to meddle". This reaffirms the audiences siding with the characters and makes us like Mr.M more.