I have decided to analyse a short film directed by Jamie Maddox, I found his short film on You Tube, this short film was made for his A2 course work so there was little or no money put towards it. Jamie Maddox decided to go for a horror genre, but there was something’s that was counter typical of this genre, as in his film most of the killings happened in broad daylight and Jamie Maddox doesn’t show or tell the audience that the characters have no way of contacting people or help, this is because we are never told that they have ran out of credit, lost batteries to their phones or didn’t bring their phones with them, which is critical for the audience to know especially in a slasher type horror film. However, there is another part of the film that makes it a typical horror film as the setting is in a remote area.
Jamie Maddox’s group didn’t make much of a storyline as there are a group of boys just going to camp in some woods, where there have been some people reported missing just recently. There is no obvious reason that the audience would know why the killer is there in the first place and why he is killing them. We can tell the film is targeted for an audience between 16 and 24 as there are young actors, as these are the age group where inspirers would most likely be because in between this age group the teens and young adults would be trying to impress their mates by keeping their status up, like the character does in the short film when he’s about to attack his mate, this would give the audience something to relate to, we can also tell that this is aimed towards the young adults and teens as one of the characters talks slang which would relate to their target audience, most of them would be male as they typically would watch horror films that would make them jump, they would be some female audience as some would come to watch the actors they fancy but the other females would just come to see the film it self.
Jamie Maddox didn’t use many shoots or any interesting camera angles. The most interesting shots Jamie uses is point of view shots, a low angle shot and a high angle shot but these are all through point of view, the way Jamie Maddox films his short film makes it look like someone there is filming for a hand held camera as he uses a lot of unnecessary zooming in. during the chase scene Jamie uses well placed shots building tension to the chase, he has cameras in different angles and heights which makes the chase all the more thrilling, as the different tilts in the camera give it the more out of the ordinary feeling to the film. There are sometimes the odd cut which makes the audience think ‘why was that added in?’, as we see a fade to black for no obvious reason and by doing this it breaks continuity to the film. The lack of different shots suggest that Jamie couldn’t be bothered with his film, as he could have easily added in close ups of the characters faces to show the reaction when they are being killed, but again the acting was amateur like as we can see some of the characters with blank expressions on there faces when they have just been stabbed or being choked to death, again this would break continuity. There are very little effects that Jamie uses, as it looks like he just used the footage as it is, when he does use effects they make no sense why they are there, the mise-en-scene is not well done as the killers mask doesn’t look well thought out, they didn’t think much of the lighting when filming as in typical horror films the killer strikes at night making it more jumpy and spooky, but the location was well planned as just like a typical horror film where the killings take place is in a remote area where little or no people come through suggesting there’s no help. Jamie also doesn’t use build up in the editing as when the killer is trying to kill some one there’s no fast pace editing to build up the tension, and because there’s no build up the kills don’t seem as good as it could be.
In my opinion I think that Jamie Maddox didn’t give much effort to his film, it had the potential to have been a good short film but it seemed rushed and not well planned out. I think that the acting let them down massively and the lack of shots, the only good part of the film was during the chase scene as Jamie made fast pace edits and cuts to different camera angles to build up the tension and suspense. It also should have been filmed at night to make it more typical of a horror genre. There wasn’t a wide variety of shots in this film which makes the audience lose interest as we can’t see the reaction shots of them about to die, there are no shot reverse shots, no match on action, everything seems to be in a long take. From their mistakes I think I could improve on my film as I have seen what the out come is if when there is lack of shots and amateur actors as I would like to aim at a higher standard than what Jamie Maddox has achieved.
