Planning Preliminary Match Cut exercise with Storyboard

THE SIGN

This exercise was used to successfully create match cuts which were delusional to the human eye to make a simple situation become more suspicious and suspenseful. In this clip, we chose to use the idea of a teacher and pupil conversation to show this. By using match cuts in a thriller, it allows the audience to follow every step of each character in terms of expressions, emotions as well as in some cases, hear their opinion on a particular topic. This, therefore enables the audience to connect with the plot and engage with the character.

The clip begins with a woman typing on the computer taken from a high angle shot to position the audience with the setting followed by a close-up of her nails to reinforce this. A cut is used to display a pupil outside the door knocking for permision to be let in. From this scenes, the audience is aware that the woman is a teacher where the audience is left waiting to see what happens.

A match cut is used here to show the pupil knocking on the door to the audience being placed inside the classroom with a close-up of the door handle turning. This match cut is used to portray the statuses of the two characters, where in thrillers, this could display as suspense. A panning shot is used to show the pupil giving some note to the teacher, where this can be seen in full detail with a close-up of the teacher recieving it. From this, we can see the apprehension of the pupil giving the note which could suggest to the audience that something bad is going to happen. There are a series of match-cuts to address the conversation where the audience is able to see the overall mood and the feelings they have. At the end of the clip, we can hear the diegetic sound of a door knock where the audience is left wanting to see the teacher's reaction. This creates suspense as the door knock is placed in the same time as the teacher waits to hear a response. This idea could be used in thrillers to create tension where it leads the viewer to think that something is going to happen and could change the mood of the scene.

In general, I think 'The Sign' captured the match-cut shots carefully to where the clip has a gradual flow in terms of the feelings of the characters. It creates suspense and tension easily and allows the audience to grasp onto the storyline.