Practical Task - Inserting the CCTV Security Filter

Practical Task - Inserting the CCTV Security Filter

The storyline for our film opening involves a young girl being watched by a stalker/murderer. Therefore we decided that we needed to include an element that would make it clear to the audience that she was being watched. After looking at all our possible options we decided to include a CCTV effect on some of the clips where it would fit with the scene and the shot used. For example we wouldn't add the CCTV effect to a low angle shot because we know that this wouldn't look correct as CCTV cameras are always situated high up and we wanted to make our opening as realistic as possible.

After we found the CCTV effect we decided to insert it into two separate clips. The first was when the young girl first discovers and enters the abandoned shack and the second is when she discovered the dead body in the back shack. We thought the CCTV filter would be effective on these clips because they involve a lot of suspense and tension and we thought by adding the thought that she was being watched would increase these feelings for the audience which would in turn emphasise our horror genre.

I then came across the issue of changing the time and date on the CCTV effect so it fit in better with the time of day that our film opening was filmed. To do this I had to go into the individual components of the effect and change the time from 6pm to 5.07pm. Another thing I decided to change was the names of the camera. I changed the name of the camera from 'Main Camera' to 'Back Cam' to make it different from the name of the camera used in the first clip. When editing the times I also put a small delay in time between the two clips to make it seem like time had passed making it more realistic.

Evaluation
I think the CCTV filter is very effective because it makes it look like the killer is watching the girl as if she is her next victim. I inserted it into a clip at the beginning to foreshadow the events to come as it is also used at the end. The most difficult element of this editing technique was deciding what clips to add the CCTV effect to because I didn't want to add it to too many as this would make it very repetitive and the angles used to film most of the clips would not fit well with the common high angle shot used for CCTV footage. Overall I believe the choice to use the CCTV effect at different points throughout our film opening was a good decision because it emphasises our storyline and also makes it easier to follow and understand for the audience.