AS Film Evaluation KIERON EDWARDS

In our group there were just two of us, which meant we had to theoretically split the four parts into two each . Although we did plan that I would cover cinematography and directing and Simon would cover sound and editing, we both contributed a lot to all four parts.
Firstly we had to roughly establish the genre of our film and we decided it would be a British Crime almost drama genre but it does touch on other genres, coming under the thriller category. For this we needed to pick the right destination and I chose the multiplex parking on Hills Road, where we could shoot us both meeting and partaking in the narrative yet still setting the scene for a British urban area that fitted our genre and narrative. The main reason for which I think this is that on the top floor of the parking (open roofed) we can see a building in the distance with graffiti on it and this also swayed my mind to further push this destination to be our main meeting for the proposed drug deal.
Although somewhere that looked more run down and vandalised would have been our first choice perhaps but we wanted originality with subtle hints of our genre being exposed through our setting. Another is how on the days of our shooting it would be less busy that at other times so no one could interfere with us. We could do it quicker and capture shots such as empty parking spaces on the top without cars obstructing our view of the building in the distance with the graffiti or the empty corridors leading to them and the lift.
As I wanted an urban looking male, I brought in my hat and jacket and I made Simon put a hat on and his hood over it to also show the urban look. I wanted to make it as gritty looking as possible that was available to us which I think we did.
I thought of the misé en scene of our characters and applied them. We had both decided that the main character was Jay, which I played and how this was his first “major” deal so this meant a lot to the character. We tried to apply the right soundtrack and editing to make this feel tense. . I made the character of Jay continuously almost paranoid and weary of the surroundings, Such as the first shot of Jay walking up the stairs getting into the elevator and having a quick peek around. Again, once Jay arrived, I tried to look around for other people, checking everywhere and then proceeding to the meeting point on the mid way point of the open car park . This set the character for jay being paranoid, always weary and I wanted this to be evident as soon as the sequence started. This would set the character for the whole sequence and I think the audience could try and relate to a character when he or she has specific aspects to their personality and within this storyline, paranoia I thought would fit the character well.
I wanted to use a variety of shots to capture the genre correctly, ranging from close ups, over the shoulder shots, trying to track different characters and long shots.
Firstly I wanted to capture the lift shot of me confirming the deal is on with the scene clearly being the lift in the background. I thought this would capture the gritty urban run down sort of look I was after. We meant this shot to be a sort of mid to close up just capturing my chest up but still including the phone in hand. I wanted to grab the audience and immediately set the scene for this urban look and using the metal plated lifts and my outfit I think captured this.

Another shot I wanted to use was the close up of the exchange of money. We chose this shot because this shot also included the lines of the car park floor and the metal mesh in the background also adding to that urban city effect. Again we tried to make this frame quite fast moving so the audience knows exactly what is going on as it is being shown, so the audience can get into it quite quickly. I wanted this frame in after clarification of how Simon wanted the deal.
One possible thing I have prepared more for was how I could have brought more money to shoot rather than just eight pounds in coins. It didn’t really suit the narrative of a high profile deal and it probably would have help the audience engage more within the film sequence.
Another area that could have been improved is my scene in the elevator. It looks like I was laughing a bit or some humour was being shown when actually, it is supposed to be a tense scene where this deal could make or break Jay’s career, so a bit more professional acting would have been better, as the audience would have taken the situation more seriously.
Perhaps another way in which we could have improved the sequence is by using more close ups and really capturing the characters emotion. Extra planning towards shots could really have made an extra difference and capturing the characters emotions more and actually seeing their facial expressions at some times could really have engaged the audience more and shown the true situation. As sometimes it just looks like we are happily going to meet each other when this is supposed to be a tense, risky deal where you can gain and lose everything.
I didn’t really take inspiration from other films cinematography and director wise but narrative wise perhaps sub consciously from films such as “Shifty” and “Kidulthood” and “Adulthood”, all coming under the similar British Grimey genre and settings.

In my film sequence called on the run I was in charge of sound and editing; and this was quite a challenge to do seeing as i had to cover two whole sections of the film making due to my group having only two members.

Doing the sound was a very tricky part but it ended up being very good; Because we filmed in a car park there was a lot of wind which meant the sound quality was poor and the voices were muffled and the atmospheric sound changed a lot because of the amount of wind in each shot. So what i had to do was level out the sound in each shot to make the atmospheric sound not look bad which meant I had to lower the sound of the roof scenes in order to not make a massive atmospheric sound jump. And a good example of where this happened is near the end of the film clip where Sean walks out of the car park elevator and onto the open top roof of the car park; and because the car park had a open top roof this meant all the wind came straight past the top floor of the car park which meant the atmospheric sound raised greatly in a single shot without meaning too and ruined the continuity of the film clip and in response to this I had to go onto final cut express which was my editing tool and I had to lower the sound for all the rooftop clips in order not to make a big sound jump. The shot that I did this too was :

Another sound problem that I occurred was trying to find suitable sound effects that matched my film sequence and it took a long time trying to find a useful sound of a car but after my teacher put a list of sound effects on the computer this turned into a easy job because it had a good sound of a car, helicopter, a dog barking and a door opening which helped make the film piece sound better.

Another difficult sound problem I had that I had to fix was the bad timing of the synchronized sound matching with the video, and this happened because we had to delete a part of the video which was not needed and it left me with a out of time soundtrack and this meant i had to carefully use the snatch tool and cut the sound that was out of time in order to make the soundtrack not sound out of time. The soundtrack I made was one similar to a soundtrack in the film called 'Harry Brown' and I thought the soundtracks in that film were very good and that is what inspired me to make a soundtrack for my film 'on the run'

The sound that I did put into the film clip was a soundtrack that was made in garageband, I made the soundtrack a deep fast paced soundtrack that made it get faster up until the deal starts to get made; and I did this in order to build up tension leading into the drug deal and this is used with more sounds being added the further in the clip goes and I think this is very effective in setting the genre of a thriller.

I feel that I worked well with Kieron because he used his directing skills in order to get some good shots of the drug deal taking place and this helped out the sound part that I did because the shots were fairly straight forward and they showed the two people going to meet each other which left me with an easy task of finding some easy soundtracks to match the shots.

I feel that I adapted very well to the plans of the sound as I went along because at first the drug deal sounded quite good but when we took it back and examined it in the media studies room it sounded awful due to the dirty sound caused by the wind. But what I did do in order to make the clip sound better was I lowered the sound of the scene of the heavy wind in order to keep a same level of atmospheric sound which would keep the continuity going.

Overall I feel that I learnt quite a lot about sound being used as a creative tool because it allowed me to completely change what was happening in the film clip by adding so many sound effects such as cars, door and even dogs barking and it also allowed me to be creative by fixing continuity by lowering the atmospheric sound rather the re shooting the clip again. And I think this film called Harry Brown was a big inspiration to me because it showed how sound can be used to create a thriller

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

The editing in my film clip was also a very hard thing to do because it is a very important micro element that can determine what the narrative of the film is and because the narrative was a thrilling drug deal the editing had to be spot on in order to make the audience know this is happening and that is why I put in a lot of quick cuts in order to build tension and this is especially when Sean ( second drug dealer ) goes to meet his seller and there is a fast paced quick series of shots which is used to build tension for the audience and I did this by editing together all of the shots of Sean walking towards the door by linking them up to make the shots have continuity and to increase the amount of tension being made. The shot of this happening is like this shot where Jay just gets into the elevator and there is a lot of quick cuts

There was a few problems that I occurred while doing editing and one was the whole importing part of editing; when I imported the film clip I didn't know how long the duration was so I did it for sections of 1 minute, which lead to me being confused about which parts are what and there was quite a few errors that I made during this like I lost one section but thankfully I uploaded the footage again and took the part I needed and I made the editing look a whole lot better.

What I thought was also quite hard to do was the whole job of using editing to determine what genre of film this was going to be and this is because if it was a happy romantic film it would be a more slow moving film but because this is a thriller I had to use fast paced shots and quick duration shots too in order to give the sense that the film is a thriller to the audience

I also received feedback which was to make it so both people walk into the car park at the same time but I thought this wouldn't work because I would need more shots first of all of the drug dealers seeing each other before they get to the car park

And I feel that a big inspiration to my editing was James Cameron’s terminator 2 and this was useful because it shows quick duration shots when the woman is shooting the gun to increase the thrill of the film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qseIKHvh4M&feature=related

HIYA

Essay draft

In my film sequence called on the run i was in charge of sound and editing; and this was two very hard tasks to do seeing as i had to cover two whole sections of the film making due to my group having only two members.

Doing the sound was a very tricky part but it ended up being very good; Because we filmed in a car park there was a lot of wind which meant the sound quality was poor and the voices were muffled and the atmospheric sound changed a lot because of the amount of wind in each shot. So what i had to do was level out the sound in each shot to make the atmospheric sound not look bad which meant I had to lower the sound of the roof scenes in order to not make a massive atmospheric sound jump.

Another sound problem that I occurred was trying to find suitable sound effects that matched my film sequence and it took a long time trying to find a useful sound of a car but after my teacher put a list of sound effects on the computer this turned into a easy job because it had a good sound of a car, helicopter, a dog barking and a door opening which helped make the film piece sound better.

Another difficult sound problem I had that I had to fix was the bad timing of the synchronized sound matching with the video, and this happened because we had to delete a part of the video which was not needed and it left me with a out of time soundtrack and this meant i had to carefully use the snatch tool and cut the sound that was out of time in order to make the soundtrack not sound out of time. The soundtrack I made was one similar to a soundtrack in the film called 'Harry Brown' and I thought the soundtracks in that film were very good and that is what inspired me to make a soundtrack for my film 'on the run'

The sound that I did put into the film clip was a soundtrack that was made in garageband, I made the soundtrack a deep fast paced soundtrack that made it get faster up until the deal starts to get made; and I did this in order to build up tension leading into the drug deal and this is used with more sounds being added the further in the clip goes and I think this is very effective in setting the genre of a thriller.

I feel that I worked well with Kieron because he used his directing skills in order to get some good shots of the drug deal taking place and this helped out the sound part that I did because the shots were fairly straight forward and they showed the two people going to meet each other which left me with an easy task of finding some easy soundtracks to match the shots.

I feel that I adapted very well to the plans of the sound as I went along because at first the drug deal sounded quite good but when we took it back and examined it in the media studies room it sounded awful due to the dirty sound caused by the wind. But what I did do in order to make the clip sound better was I lowered the sound of the scene of the heavy wind in order to keep a same level of atmospheric sound which would keep the continuity going.

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

The editing in my film clip was also a very hard thing to do because it is a very important micro element that can determine what the narative of the film is and because the narrative was a thrilling drug deal the editing had to be spot on in order to make the audience know this is happeneing and that is why I put in a lot of quick cuts in order to build tension and this is especially when sean ( second drug dealer ) goes to meet his seller and there is a fast paced quick series of shots which is used to build tension for the audience.

There was a few problems that I occured while doing editing and one was the whole importing part of editing; when I imported the film clip i didnt know how long the duration was so I did it for sections of 1 minute, which lead to me being confused about which parts are what and there was quite a few errors that I made during this like I lost one section but thankfully I uploaded the footage again and took the part I needed and I made the editing look a whole lot better.

I also recieved feedback which was to make it so both people walk into the car park at the same time but I thought this wouldn't work because I would need more shots first of all of the drug dealers seeing each other before they get to the car park and i thought it would look a bit odd if they already meet before they get to the rooftop to do the drug deal because there would be no point on meeting there.

I aimed to do my editing like James Cameron's terminator 2 ending scene where there is a lot of fast paced action shots to build up tension and there is some slow short cuts too which is exactly the same in my film piece

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEMICfWLOig&feature=fvst

Our film sequence

We have decided that the short sequence that we are going to film is going to be part of a film based around drug dealing. The plot of the film will be that a man will have to try and make a living off drug dealing however there is police/fbi watching him and the part of this we are going to film is near the start where the main character called Jay goes for his first major drug deal and on the way there is a voiceover and it makes him sound nervous, the camerawork and mise en scene will allow jay to look nervous too and once he meets the customer and it goes successfully but another person is watching him at the end in the background and it ends on that note.

we will use a blocking shot to shoot the drug deal and have alot of shots from different angles.

The editing we will use will be both of us walking through to the exchange point but keep switching back to the different shots while we are walking and keep doing that until they meet at the exchange point. We will edit a voiceover too on top and we will do this after we have filmed, the voiceover will be used for the start of the clip.

The sound that we are going to use will of course be the voiceover and we will get sound from garageband and create a thrilling piece of music so we will have diagetic and non diagetic sound in the film clip. We have also found some good songs to make it sound like a drug related film and we will try represent this with a song in garageband.

The cinematography that will be used will be that there will be alot of close up shots of jay walkinf to the exchange which will show how nervous he is and there will be a vary of shots in the drug deal to give a different view, and the 180 degree rule will be remembered when we do this too and the lighting we will use will be a general indoor and outdoor lighting because we will be filming around town. The exact location will be around the grand arcade and we will film on the rooftop when we do film and this will be the main priority in our shots

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