LO3: Applying Appropriate Visual Effects & Transitions (Jacob)

When creating the white room, we attempted to create meaning through the use of visual effects during production as well as post-production. An example of this can be seen during the opening scene of our film. The opening cuts between the protagonist and the antagonists from frame to frame so we tried to shoot al the scenes featuring the protagonist in a warm light and all the scenes with the antagonist in a dark light. We did this to give the audience an introduction to the roles of the characters. The use of colour filters added in post-production helped reinforce this.

We continued to use this technique throughout the film, particularly in the scenes showing dialogue between characters with similar connotations. The cafe scene where Christopher is talking with Andrew is shot in a warm light whereas the scene shot in the kidnapper's house where Aaron is talking with Wayne as they sit around a table is shot in a cold light. A blue tint was also added to the latter scene to really portray a sense of masculinity and seriousness (these are connotations of the colour blue).

We did this to portray Christopher and Andrew as friendlier characters to the audience so as to clearly establish who are the protagonists and who are the antagonists. To achieve this we had to experiment with different types of lighting in order to make the scenes look how we wanted them to. We filmed the cafe scene at dusk and used the interior lights of the cafe to give the warm effect whereas the dialogue scene with Aaron and Wayne was filmed in the morning using only natural light from the large window on set.


The most obvious use of transitions is arguably in the introduction of our film. We used quick cuts to jump from the protagonist to the antogonist and vice-versa. We tried to synchronise the cuts with the music we used in the background as this is a common technique used at the begining of films like "V for Vendetta" for example.