Cinematography and Editing

We chose to use a long panning shot right at the start as it identifies the setting straight away. We then go straight into a high angle, from an cross dissolve transition, so to make the transition appear more subtle, as it identifies the character and what she is doing. We then go into a medium shot of her so we can still see what she is doing and also get to see her facial expressions which is key as she looks up and her face changes once she sees someone in the distance. From high angle to the medium shot there is also another, but slower overlap transition, as we found without it the transition looked quite sharp and the overlap softened it. We were going to do a low angle here but we thought firstly this would give off the wrong message if deconstructing it. In this point in the film she is not suppose to look strong and in control, she is just about to receive some terrible news and also a low angle wouldn’t give us a strong enough view of her facial expressions. We had to reshoot the medium shot as on the first shot we didn’t film that shot on a tripod so it was shaky. 

In the Medium shot when she stands up, she drops the book which emphasizes that something is wrong.We then went to a medium shot of a man, an army officer holding the letter, we were going to have a long shot but unfortunately we couldn’t find any 1940's style trousers so we could only film him from the waist up. We then go to an OTS shot from the man’s shoulder to see the woman walking towards him and we get the writing on his uniform in the shoot which helps symbolises his role, then quickly into a medium/close up of her face to see her facial expression. We used this as it was suppose to be from the man's perspective and also to get the doorstep in the shot as it will be used later.We then have a medium-long shot from behind the woman to identify that it’s 'her story' and it’s in her eyes again and also to see more of the army officer. It then goes into a close up of their hands, him passing her the letter, we chose it has a close up to signify that what is in the letter is important. We then went to an OTS shot again to see the woman’s expression once she has got the letter which is key to the film as it sets the mood for the film.We then go to a medium-long shot of her walking back up the garden path to the doorstep which we realised we had to put in after filming the first time. It then goes to a medium shot of her sitting on the doorstep and then an OTS shot of her looking at a photo which we weren’t going to have originally but we found the photo at last minute. We then go into a close up of the photo so the audience have a clearer view of what she’s seeing. When she strokes the photo this symbolises that it is very important to her and that the person in the photo is someone she loves. We then go out again to a medium shot to identify that she is now opening the letter then to a close up panning of the letter. We also edited in a voice over, dialogue of the letter so it’s easier for the audience to understand and creates a dramatic effect.It then goes into a close up of her face so the audience can read her facial expressions which create a reaction with the audience. It then goes into a medium-long shot of her getting up and walking out of the shot. We ended it like this because if we were doing the whole film then it would of leapt ahead into the future and leaving it just a still image with no-one in it is dramatic and signifies that she is now alone.We managed to put a lot of old objects so our mise-en-scene is fairly strong. For example the Book, and photo are both very old and we made the letter look old by staining it with a teabag.