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Angel of Music made good use of its visuals to help enhance the tension. It had many handheld shots, a lot of which were extreme close-ups on the faces of the actors. It also kept the camera moving, which included some really nice tracking shots through a library and when Eric is visiting a cemetery. On occasion the handheld made me a little dizzy, as they sometimes moved a bit too much, but a moving camera is certainly far more interesting than a stationary one. (There are some good suggestions for making inexpensive steadying devices in The DV Rebel's Guide, which we reviewed last issue.)
The film's lighting was good during most of the "real life" shots, though when Eric attends Dr. Persing's lecture, the doctor's face is well-lit, but Eric's is completely in shadow. Whether it was an oversight or a choice made on account of an overhead projector that accompanied the lecture I couldn't tell, but Eric's dim lighting does look out of place. When the film switches into the "fantasy," the lighting dims and there are heavy shadows. It's not a bad choice, as it serves to make a delineation between the two, plus add to the tension of the scenes.
There was a really great scene where this technique was employed - Eric and Kristen had a fight and she walked into another room, slamming and locking the door in his face. There was then a great shot of both Eric and Kristen sitting with their backs to the same door, facing opposite directions. The scene then shifted to show both of them in period costume, where they recited a scene from Phantom. It was a really great and poignant scene.
Finally, there were several scenes in the film that were green-screened, especially those in the "rescue" scene, which in the world of the Phantom takes place in the dark caverns below the Opera House. I know that a lot of time and money was spent on the green-screening, but it did look rather fake. (We recently reviewed a book called GreenScreen Made Easy which has some great tips for greenscreen production and post. You can check out the review here as it might be helpful to give the book a once-over before tackling the big G again.)
I have to confess that I was hoping to hear some songs from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical because, let's face it, even if one doesn't like the story adaptation, the music is absolutely beautiful. Of course, it's also still under copyright, which explains why it didn't make an appearance here. But that doesn't mean that the film went without a soundtrack - in fact it has a really great one. It helped a lot to enhance the film's tension, and added a lot to the creepy factor. There was even a little bit of operatic score thrown in for good measure, but it still distinguishes itself from the musical.
The dialogue, however was not without its issues. I noticed that it often was at a lower volume than the music, and that I had to turn up the volume just to hear it. And when the volume level was all the way up, I noticed very loud ambient noise in the background, which was a bit distracting. (You can learn how to record the audio more cleanly and what level to mix it to in our intro to audio article.) Also, there was at least one bit of very obvious ADR that needed to be adjusted to be more believable. (We also have an article on doing ADR believably.)
Finally, though the filmmakers did stick to the original story by having a Phantom whose face was entirely covered, it made his dialogue almost impossible to hear. Believe me, I love to see it when movies stick close to the book, but in this case it might have been a good place to deviate.
That in conjunction with the low light made it almost impossible to even see the Phantom or his facial expressions. The only case where a full facial mask worked in film was the early silent movie incarnation during the masked ball scene in the 1925 version. (Which, incidentally, was one of the first uses of 2-strip Technicolor in interior sets.) But the difficulty with hearing dialogue - particularly in the days when ADR was much harder to match - was certainly the reasoning behind the popular half face-mask that is always seen on the Phantom. If one is bound and determined to stick with the proper interpretation, it might be better to record all of the Phantom's dialogue in post and muffle it slightly, since one wouldn't have to worry about matching facial movements. (But, back to the visible issue, his mask should be of a lighter color or the lighting should be a bit brighter to avoid making him nearly invisible.)
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