Group 8 Commentary

Group 8 Director's Commentary

We chose black and white because we decided to go with the horror theme, how fitting, its the end of October/beginning of November.  It also helps with contrasting.  The beginning is the establishing shots, where it lets you know that this takes place at William T. Young Library.  It is showing you some of the characters such as the victims and the foot stabber who you don’t really get to see throughout the film.  We got the stabbers shadow, which was an interesting shot.  The shots of the stabber in the library lets the audience know that he’s walking around stalking people.
We used sequence shooting to show the stabber outside the library, then near the entrance, and finally inside where the rest of the action will take place.  For some of the shots we used the stabbers point of view to see how he creeps on people in the library.  We also used over the shoulder as to put him in the environment as if a regular person was watching this go on.  He fondles the books in one scene to show how creepy he actually can be going throughout the aisles in the library.  This scene is building up to all the creepy things that  the stabber is doing and what he will do by the films end.
The girl studying is oblivious to the stabbers presence and is just going on with her schoolwork as the stabber watches and plays tricks on her, showing how the stabbers character gets enjoyment out of what the stabber is doing.  We used a lot of suspense throughout the film and the music helped a lot with this as it builds up tension in various parts of the movie.  In the shot with the girl looking at her emails we showed an actual email from the university about the foot stabber to show factual evidence to make are film more realistic and all the more creepy/suspenseful.
The scene with the stabber walking around the aisles to reach the victim is one single shot to build up as much tension as possible which the music helped with.  We left the guy in the shot that walked out of the aisle in the final edited film because we felt it helped with the realness factor of the movie since the stabber is in a populated place.
Contrasting in many of the scenes was edited in Final Cut to put the stabber more in the dark as that character is a dark and mysterious figure and the girl needed to be more visible while studying.  The stabber is in the dark right on the other side of her without her knowing and the contrast helped establish each scene’s mood.
The music was built up to the climax scene where the victim’s foot is stabbed, actually poked.  In editing the stabber’s escape we used quick cuts of the stabber running which helped with showing the quickness of the scene and the action taking place.
We put in the reveal at the end of who the foot stabber actually is to get surprised reactions from the viewers.  Since the foot stabber is actually a real case and our silent movie is inspired from true events, the reveal at the end is to shock the audience into thinking who can actually be the foot stabber?
As the stabber walks away and waves at someone we used this in the final edited product for more of a realness factor.