Ringu Directing project

This was a Project for my 2nd Year University directing class. If you don't want to sit through the entire film then please make sure you watch the last section as it has some special effects work that I am quite proud of! The brief was to re-make 5 minutes of a currently existing film. I chose to do Ringu as like other horror films the first sequence is a complete narrative within itself that can be condensed to 5 minutes. I don't fancy myself as a great cameraman, and as my shots were fairly bland I found myself having to make them more dramatic in the edit. A majority of the close ups and other such shots were created via editing as I couldn't reshoot with the actors. The only thing I shot after the initial night's filming was the POV shot going into the living room, and I used sound clips from the night's shooting to make it seem like the POV is from the girl's perspective. Based on the poor video quality from the camera and the bad lighting I decided to change the film into black and white so I could mess with the levels more freely in Premiere. These changes then deteriorated the picture so I embraced the bad quality by manufacturing video and sound glitches in the edit to tie into the theme of cursed videotapes that are present in the film. For the final shot where the face distorts (inspired by the American remake of the film) I edited each frame from the original footage and distorted it using Photoshop. I also manufactured the zoom using Premiere as it allowed me to do the zoom right through the eyeball. Looking at it now I could have eidted it a little tighter during the dialogue sequences, and sometimes the non-diegetic sound overlaps with the lines. I also made use of the actual image of Sadako from the haunted videotape on my television by exporting the image from a desktop wallpaper I found on the net onto a videotape! it was only when I shot the sequence that I realised that I had exported an ANIMATED picture of Sadako, and when it moved after I entered the room I nearly died of heart failure! The sounds were edited in Audacity, and as I had limited sound to work with they are a combination of mp3's that we're on the computer. The dramatic music near the beginning is an edited version of a DJ Shadow track, and the death noise is a combination of Feeder - Just a Day, some Marilyn Manson tracks, Raging Speedhorn tracks, and a bit from the Ringu soundtrack from the haunted videotape. The static noise was taken from the Just Blaze Remix of Ch-Check it out by the Beastie Boys. Thanks go to the actresses who starred in this for me, I hope you aren't embarrassed by this! And I sincerely apologise to Lucy for messing up her face at the end! Hope you enjoy!

Author: steparnicus
Keywords: Stephen Hart short film Ringu The Ring
Added: May 7, 2008