Film Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media productions?

Opening sequences are created to establish characterisation, setting, narrative and genre. In our opening sequence we introduced three significant characters as well as portraying them as actual characters not just people. Using establishing shots we also developed a setting for the opening. By our use of characterisation, setting and character actions, we established a genre and narrative in our film opening. As we used some interesting shots while keeping them in black and white we showed the visual style of our film, and by having a character the audience can relate to, and by making him into ‘the good guy’ we have created an ideology. Our opening sequence challenges the conventions of existing British films as it is in black and white. This is an effect that is very rarely used in British films and we were unable to find another like it.

A still shot from the short film "The Trunk" and our own media "Jack Roller"

A still close up from the gun in "Dirty Harry" and "Jack Roller"

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film has three characters, a detective inspector, a hitman and a criminal boss. The way these characters are represented in many ways fits the classic film ideology. The hitman in the film very much sticks to the conventions of the character in Britain. He is large, white, middle aged, wears a lot of gold and sports tattoos. This is a typical representation of this type of character as used in the film ‘Snatch’. Although not all British hitmen would be that easy to recognise, when the audience would picture a hitman this would be the image that came to mind.

The character of the criminal boss is one explored in many films and is usually represented in one of two ways. The first is more smartly dressed in a suit and is more poker faced. The second is more normal in appearance and tends to be more of a troubled character, therefore more dangerous. The criminal boss in our film represents the latter, but to reinforce the theme of a British film wears clothes not uncommon from films such as ‘Greenstreet’ and ‘Football Factory’. Both known for their excessive violence and mentalists. Our character is in his thirties, white, average build, male with probable short hair.

In our film the detective inspector is portrayed as the good against the not so savoury characters in the film opening. In this way we as an audience relate much more to the detective inspector, as his age is closer to the age of the film’s demographic, as well as his attitude towards authority and his appearance. The opening sequence creates a juxtaposition between the good of the law and the deviant criminal organisation. This is how the film represents these social groups. Cultural signifiers of this character are his combed over hair, race, middle class appearance and smart clothes, although worn untidily.

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

We decided our film would be made in association with Film 4, as they have already created their own audience demographic for distributing our independant lower budget British films, compared to the high budgeted glossy Hollywood films. Following the success of films such as ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ and ‘This is England’, Film 4 make it possible for the smaller time film makers to have their work distributed and watched by an extremely large audience that never would have been able to be reached before. Due to our film following conventions of other extremely successful British and American films, the already established viewers and supporters of Film 4 would be interested in our film, especially as we ourselves were influenced and are fans of existing Film 4 productions.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our media product would be between ages of 16 and 25, this is based on language, character representation and audiences of similar films, as well as the existing viewer base of Film 4. Our film uses it’s chosen conventions to appeal to viewers of specific genres, these genres being crime thriller and action. Our film would be given a suggested UK certification of 15, this is to protect and guide younger persons from the use of language, moderate violence and themes unsuitable for a younger age group. This certification will make it illegal for anyone under the age of 15 to watch or buy our media. Having our film distributed by Film 4 will mean that it may also be played on other Channel 4 related channels. This means our film will be played to their already established audience, although after it’s initial TV premier other television channels may want to screen the film, then it would be played to their audience. In terms of controlling the audience watching our media in this way it is almost impossible, although the age rating and suggestions will be announced before the film is shown.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted the audience by using stylish visual effects as well as costume, setting and props. By casting the hero of the film as the same age as our projected audience we were able to address and attract them into following the film as they could relate in some way to the character, and therefore cared and were interested in what would happen next. We posted our opening sequence on Facebook to see the sort of age and if or not it would attract an audience who would potentially want to see the finished film. From our findings we found a majority of our positive comments were from the age group 16 to 19. This would mean that we have successfully estimated the audience in which to address as well as attracting them to the media.

We also collaborated a questionnaire for 20 of the film’s audience, as a whole the opening sequence gained extremely positive reviews, below are the questions asked and our results:

1. Did you enjoy the film?

18 of the 20 People asked did enjoy the film. The two who didn't said they did not enjoy the genre.

2. What genre would you say our film is?

Out of the 20 participants the majority of 13 thought it was crime thriller and four people thought it was action. This is good as it had aspects of both in it. Although 2 people thought it may be horror and t hought it would be a psycho thriller.

3. Did you think it had a good storyline?

All 20 of our sample said that it was a good storyline for the opening sequence

4. Do you think the characters cast suited their roles?

Again all 20 participants said the characters cast worked well with thier given parts

5. Were the characters roles clear?

1 out of the possible 20 participants did not understand the character of the criminal boss this may be because we took a risk by only showing half of his face and keeping him on the screen for such a short time.

Judging by the responses received not only did we successfully manage to target the audience we hoped to target, but we managed to attract them to our film and gain positive feedback.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

During pre and post production I was able to use a whole range of technologies that were new to me. During filming I was able to use the camera to create clear and attractive film as well as additional technology, such as the tripod to keep the camera level and the movements flowing and the SD memory card that allowed me to easily transfer, carry and save film effectively. From first hand experience I have learnt the best techniques when creating digital film, from filming, setting up the camera and writing the data on a device to share and edit. Another crucial piece of technology in pre production was the editing software, Sony Vegas 8. Yet again I had no prior experience with this or any other piece of editing software, but through persistence and patience I have learnt to smoothly edit together clips with effective transitions, as well as adding effects, music, credits and many other additional features.

For both post and pre production tracking my progress, sharing the video, researching and gaining images would not have been possible without the internet. Since the launch of sharing sites such as Facebook, Youtube and Blogger as well as many more, it has become increasingly easy to share films, text and other forms of media easily among friends or strangers. This meant that our evaluation of the film could be made more precisely by viewer feedback. This was immensely helpful in the production of the film for getting our media seen as well as many aspects of planning. The internet is also full of audio commentaries as well as dvd extras to guide us on our film.

Modern day communications such as email and mobile phones mean that the group could stay in contact through all aspects of the film production and work together even though we were all at some points in different places. Because of this I have learnt how to manage time and tasks effectively and send them to where they need to be with little hassle or fuss. Our mobile phones were also used for taking photos of possible locations to use in the location reports. As well as this we ended up using the back lights of our phones in the filming of our opening to light the car.

One of the editing technologiew we used was the 75% black and white filter this technology allowed s to use this stylish visual effect on standard clour film

Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Watching the preliminary back it is clear the group had an extremely limited capability when it came to using technologies such as the camera and editing software. For our opening scene we had a lot more experience and practice before shooting and editing the final film. This showed through the final piece and the whole film looked a lot more professional.

We have also learned that whether a film works or not is entirely down to the planning. This is why nearly all of our time schedule was used for planning. The more precise the planning aspects of the film are, the quicker and easier filming is and the less editing needs to be done. Good planning also adds to the consistency of the film and the authenticity.

Involving new technologies in the production of the film is a great way to get the most out of a vision as well as getting the end result seen and recognised. New technologies are also usually better and cheaper than existing products, with many great technologies such as Youtube, being free.

Using existing genres and conventions from existing films that inspire the media I have produced, has made it easier when thinking of the character representation, who will be distributing the product, the target audience and what would and wouldn’t be effective in aspects that were not fully thought out when devising the preliminary task.

By creating an opening sequence I have found that to create a clear narrative that works well over 2 minutes is much harder than one that is only 30 seconds. As our piece was around 2 minutes long there was much more that needed to be done when producing it to keep the story clear and the film still interesting.

Like in the preliminary we had to make sure that all the filming had contiuety this means that the characters and setting are the same in each frame. After the first attempt of filming we needed to do some more establishing shots so we had to wait for a day when the weather conditions were exactly the same as the first.

My name is Perry Lennon and this is my year 12 media blog my production team 'Insanely Good Productions' is made up of myself, Sam Jones, Lauren Matthews, and Georgia Mumby.


Preliminary Task

Our preliminary task was to devise, shoot, and edit a short film showing two people exchanging dialogue over a table using the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot reverse shot.

The 180 degree rule

The 180 degree rule means that if you are shooting between two subjects or more the camera can only move between 180 degrees this is so it is clear who is looking at who and stops any confusion over what side of the screen the subjects appear adding to authenticity. On the diagram above the 180 degree semi circle shows the only place the camera can move to when filming has started from that side. The 180 degree rule does not just apply to over shoulder shots it is important for all filming. If you start to film from one position you can only cut to shots from within the 180 degrees. The 180 degree convention may be broken but only if the full camera movement is shown for example in the "Matrix" films, although if the full movement of the camera is not shown and shots are edited together from all 360 degrees this will create confusion among the audience.

Devising The Preliminary Task

To storm possible ideas for our short film we used a spider diagram to write down any thoughts we had on the genre, influence, characters, locations, camera shots, angles and scenes in the film. We decided to use an interrogation scene for the preliminary task as this would give us the chance to try a different filming style that usually we wouldn't necessarily have thought about or used before. The interrogation scene would also give us an easily controlled environment to work with that could be used any time of the day as we were not reliant completely on natural sunlight that may also cause a blue tint to the picture when used through windows for example. Inspiration for out task came from a variety of films, the interrogation idea came mainly from the film "Scarface" as it has an extremely well made, believable interrogation scene. To create the suspects character as a believable villain we studied sequences from "Dirty Harry" and "Usual Suspects" although mostly from the psychopath in the film "Seven".

Once we had agreed upon the syle of our fim we decided to start thinking about the characters we would cast.

Sam White is an actor who has starred in various ameture dramatics plays would play the police man interrogating the suspect. The character of the police man should be angry and frustrated by the lack of information given by the suspect on the murder of a young woman. The pysical appearance of the police man should be young and plain clothed to show his position in the police and so the audience can relate to him more as he is dressed normally and if they were to see him on the street he would be more approachable.

Ryan Hayes was cast as the villain in our production as he would play a disturbed man who is being questioned over the murder ofthe young woman his chracer did commit the murder but will not admit it or cooperate with the police officer played by Sam White. Ryans character knows he is frustrating the police but enjoys this. The physical appearance of this character is messy and untidy as he does not worry about his appearnce ortrying to fit into society.

As we needed pictures of a murdered girl for the interview Georgia from our own group volunteered for this part as it involved no acting and would take less organising if she was to play this part.

Storyboard

Now we had cast actors we devised a storyboard of the events of the production. The main considerations when doing the storyboard were the length or the film, limited budget, time and equipment.

Dialogue

When constructing dialogue for the scene we decided that the character of the psychopath did not need many lines to have presence and that in fact the less lines he had the more interesting he would be to the audience. The dialogue for Sam’s character is strong and and shows conviction this is important to get across the attitude of the character in the short time of the film.

Location Report

We chose to use an office to film the interrogation as we could effectively use lighting to make it dark and sinister easily. After assessing a few possible locations we used the old English office at our school the room was having some repair work so needed a tidy up before we were able to film but as it was not in use we could design the room how we wanted.

Lighting

Now we had chosen a suitable location to film we went about lighting it for this we decided to use artificial light this is anything apart from sunlight from outside. We drew the blind on a small window turned one light on and used a lamp this was to make the location look cut off and isolated but at the same time dull and dingy

Props

We did not use many props in the end for the film as the office was left with minimal furniture but we did set up a table and chair with some photographs of Georgia playing the victim this would recreate our understanding of police interview rooms from the T.V productions and films we have seen before.

After we had considered all of the following we were confident that if we filmed from the right angles and used the right movements all our considerations would come together to create effective “mise en scene”

Filming

As none of the group had made a media production before collectively we had little knowledge of the camera we were using but Sam seemed to get to grips with it more than the rest of us so the majority of the filming was done by him with creative and practical input from myself, Georgia and Lauren.

Camera Angles

Our short clip starts with both characters framed at mid shot but as the characters unveil the camera angles start to move to low angle shots to show the position and feeling of the psychopathic killer then to high angle to show the perspective of the police interviewer. This technique makes the killer look small and cornered but creates a juxter position as the interrogated looks big, great and powerful.

Camera Movement and Future Suggestions
As we were not quite used to the camera or tripod and the location was very small there is very little camera movement although we did on a few attempts try panning horizontally but these pans were not held for long enough this was a mistake we did not need to repeat in the final piece. Another mistake we made with camera movements is my using the zoom on the camera while filming this was a bad decision on all of our parts and the camera was just not up to this movement. In our final piece we definitely need to work on camera movements.

Shot types

As mentioned with camera angles mid shots were used at the start of the piece as both characters came together for the first time this placed them in the eyes of the audience as equals. The clip ended with a close up of the killers hand on the photo of the victims face this shot links the two characters and effectively confirms to the audience that this man is the killer when used with the killers disturbing speech. An establishing shot was used right near the title of the sequence from a low angle this was to make the building look bigger and greater than it actually was as the viewer would assume the camera was eye level.

As it was an interrogation it was a shame we did not include one of the “two shot” interview techniques the first being the point of view shot this is shot from the point of view of the character, the second being the over shoulder shot this is a shot taken over the shoulder of the character this would also have been a good way of showing understanding of the 180 degree rule.

Directors Comentory on Se7en

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfstw5efP4I&feature=related

By listening to the directors commentory we were able to see how it is possible to portray a troubled psychopathic charactor like the one in our film effectively in the little time he is on the screen for.

Editing

The last thing we needed to do to our film was edit it this is the part I found most interesting although hard to get to grips with at the start even though we used Song Vegas 8 which is supposed to be one of the easier editing programmes. The edits used for the conversation were fairly slow this was to draw more attention the characters and dialogue of the scenes. Using fast edits would have created a faster pace, jumpy film that we didn’t want or vision at the start when planning. The transitions between different clips are fairly standard although longer than most with the fade style throughout the film reinforcing the slow pace. Towards the end of the film we edited three bits of film together to create confusion this is deliberate as it shows the mindset of the killer is not quite right this is only done once as we did not want to overstate but keep this idea subtle.
After we were all agreed upon the final edit I typed up the credits and unfortunately I forgot to type my own name and did not notice till the film had been rendered saved and the project had been re-wrote this is certainly not a mistake I will make again.

The Final Cut

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiplgWmatmM

Evaluation

Although I was pleased with the end result of the film our inexperience in this field definitely shows from our lack of camera movement, carelessness when rendering and shaking camera shots. Rather than letting this hold us back we will need to concentrate on this more when planning our final piece we will do this by thoroughly planning all aspects, realising our limitations, and remembering all techniques we have learned from out tutors and experience. The sinister side of the film in my opinion worked well and would definitely be something worth exploring for the final piece. As far as our objective is concerned we did successfully use the 180 degree rule and the conversation although lacked ideas we would have ideally used worked well and the audience would never think anything is missing.

New York

As an extra curricular activity the school took a group of us to New York, where we were taken on a tour of the city to look at famous film sets, we looked at why the locations where chosen, how films were shot and how things like lighting, sound and camera shots were used to create authentic and effective scenes. We also took part in a New York Film Academy master class where we starred in, shot, and edited our own 2 minute films. The trip was extremely benficial to my understanding of media not just as in the film industry but als in still photos, advertising, television, text and more as culturally New York is so much diferent to London or Peterborough.

Opening Sequence

Our main task was to film an opening sequence of our choice about two minutes long. The film would be produced for film four.

Genre

We started the planning stages by sitting as a group and discussing the genre we wanted to explore. We agreed that we wanted to explore the genres of crime and action but in the conventions of low budget, British, gritty films. By using these conventions we will be appealing to the existing demographic film four has from successful British low budget gritty films such as “This is England” a personal favourite of myself as an English teenage who can relate to the films characters especially with still very current topics today like racism, the national front, Britain at war and growing up in the U.K.
Research Into Existing Ideas
We studied clips from the films Harry Brown, Snatch, Dirty Harry, Clover Field and Se7en to find effective uses of camera, sound, editing, and lighting that could be incorporated with our own ideas to give us direction.

Devising a plot

With the conventions and Genre agreed upon we started to discuss plots and effective scenes. We decided that each individual in the group would write down on a piece of A3 paper ideas for characters, plots and scenes, they didn't have to be in order or be complete but they did need to be written without any breaks this was to help ideas flow. When the A3 paper was full we discussed the ideas on the paper and put them together in an effective sequence where everyone’s ideas were incorporated and were then put in a storyboard. The main plot came from Georgia but a different twist was put in at the end as well as other ideas from other group members.

The General Plot

The plot includes a car journey with a hit man driving and a kidnapped man in the boot, the car drives to an isolated place where the kidnapped man escapes. The kidnapped man is shot at twice but is unharmed the camera then follows this character on his escape route through the country terrain. As the kidnapped man stops for a break he dropped his wallet as he picks it up we see his badge. He is a police inspector this is the twist in the film to entice the viewer. A phone conversation is then filmed with the only dialogue in the film the speech is minimal to portray the Hitman and mystery caller n the conversation as cold and unlike able unlike the police inspector. This plot creates mystery, excitement, juxter positions with the good and bad characters, exploration but still leaves aspects of the full film cloudy to make the viewer interested in the rest of the film.


Planning The Production

To plan the production we made a spider diagram as we found this successful in the preliminary task. On the diagram we considered aspects of the camera, sound, lighting, characters, props, our inspiration and location this would work like a tick sheet of things we needed to thing about before filming.

Location

By using Google Maps, our existing knowledge of local areas, advice from other groups producing films and other locations locally that have already been used for films such as Stibbington and Stamford we put a list together of possible locations and made location reports. The final location we chose from the location reports was just a short walk from our school below is an example of the location report.

Location Report

Location: North fen road, Glinton
Access: Good car access in most places although some parts are fenced off and require access by foot. All the locations we need here are open to the public.
Dangers: Shallow streams and rivers, uneven ground in some fields, roads.
Extra information: The area is quite and there is little chance of capturing unwanted members of the public in the background.
Map:

Location Risk Assesment

We all would also take a copy of the risk assesment to the filming locatio with us with possible dangers and contact numbers.

Characters

The character we devised as the police inspector wears plain clothes not uniform this shows progression through his career and ambition. The type of clothes worn by his character would be smart as in trousers and shirt but to show his rebellious side the shirts would not be buttoned all the way up, sleeves may be rolled up or the shirt may be un-tucked. This character would be dark and good looking but behave as a loveable rouge like Dirty Harry. The audience should be attached and relate to this character as the hero. The actor we chose for this part was Anthony Dinatale as he is naturally tanned with dark hair and could easily be made into the image we want for this character.

The character of the hit man should be cold and unlike able he should wear trousers, shirt and a smart jacket preferably mainly in black and white. The hitmans lines should be delivered calmly with a slight bit of anger. Following the British gangster stereotype this character would wear a lot of gold and tattoos but be middle aged to show experience. The part of the hit man was given to Clive Lennon as compared to films like “Snatch” he was the most “Pikey” looking.

The mystery man on the phone would wear clothes very much in the British street style with Fred Perry polo shirts and Ben Sherman jackets as a deliberate choice to create mystery we will only see this character from his upper body to mouth this is what will make the viewer want to see the rest of the film to found out the identity of this man. This part was given to Jack Taylor As he has a very universal British accent and is good at acting unlikely villains.

Lighting

As we were filming outside we would rely mainly on natural sunlight, but as we learned how to use them in the New York film academy we made and used a light board. A light board is a piece of cardboard with something reflective like foil on one side and something to reflect white light like white paper on the other side, a light board can be used to reflect and focus natural light. For filming in the car the interior light made the film yellow and a torch would be too bright so we decided we would use the back lights on our mobile phones these were not bright individually but together lit the car effectively.

Sound

As the film would contain so little dialogue our choice of both diogetic and non-diogetic sounds would be extremely important to the success of the film.

Non- diagetic- The largest piece of sound we used was the music played throughout the film this was a huge part of the film as it set scenes and emotion. The music we used was the first minute of the song “the sadness will never end” by the band Bring Me The Horizon who have spent years on the underground British metal scene. We took the first minute of the song and decided we would edit it to fit the final cut of our film. The gunshot needed for the film was also sourced and added in after as it was decided that firing a real shot would be dangerous.

Diogetic- The dialogue of the phone conversation was captured so well in Jack’s contribution that we used the sound the camera had recorded although for Clives speech it was windy so we recorded it again later and added it in.

Props

Our props included the clothes we chose for the characters, the police badge we made and the wallet it was put in for Anthony’s character, the phones used for the conversation, the gun for the hitman, and the biggest was the car that was borrowed from Clive. Our choice of car was a Jaguar the reason for choosing a Jaguar was because it was big enough to film in and was again British and not something as common somewhere else like Japan or America.

Shooting Script

Our shooting script will involve;

1) First walking the location to get some good establishing shots sing the tripod.

2) Filming from the back of the car capturing the front of the car, over shoulder shot of the driver, and drivers eyes in the mirror.

3) Film the car at the crossroad location with tripod, film Clive getting out of the car, film Anthony getting out of the boot, film gun shot in close up, film Clive getting into the car and car driving away.

4) When car is parked film Anthony in the boot with boot open to capture light.

5) film the chase scenes with different shot types and camera movements.

6) Film the dropping of police badge.

7) finally film in a separate location the mystery boss on the phone.

Filming

We studied weather forecasts and chose a light dry day to film after school, filming started at four to give us plenty of time. The filming went a lot quicker than we had imagined and only took around two to three hours. During filming we played around with effects on the camera as well as uninstalling auto focus but decided against these effects. One problem we had with the actors is that we found they were trying to give us advice on what they thought would be a good film so we had to remind them that we had already planned the film and they needed to act as we directed. We found it hard to watch back clips after we had filmed them as the camera screen was small and looked too dark in the sun so after we had filmed we went back to Anthony’s house as he lived close to the location to watch the clips. We were surprised about how little film we had captured as we only had around 4 minutes so we wouldn’t be able to cut too much out when editing. The easiest filming was when we filmed Jack on the phone he was professional in his attitude and the environment was easily controlled so we ended up with a clear piece of film.

Unplanned Productions Name Change

Due to growing concerns about the name of the productions team “insanely good productions” we decided to change the name. Our main concern was the name sounded too arrogant and had no significants to us as people. We changed the name to “Waffle productions” based on an old joke within the group and because we could create a logo recognisable with the production team easier.

Editing

As I had been chosen to do the majority of the editing we decided to use Sony Vegas 8 again as we already had some experience with this program from our preliminary. Most of the scenes we had on film had been captured twice so the first job was to pick the best ones then all the film that couldn’t be used was cut. By cutting all the film we wouldn’t use we were left with good material to use clearly displayed. Before adding sound, effects or anything else we put the film in order as it was in the story board and as a group made sure we had enough film and that it made sense. When the order of scenes had been agreed on i went about cutting scenes down and choosing transitions when this had all been agreed upon we added the finishing touches. We used the soundtrack we had already chosen and edited it to fit the film we then took most of the sound out of the film to make the soundtrack stand out. Finally we decided to choose a stylish effect for the film the effect we agreed upon was 75% black and white contrast this made the film look a lot more attractive to the eye and resembled the brilliant film Schindler’s List.

Finished Product

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg457FbvA7A