Evaluation Activity 7

After finally completing the opening two minutes, we can now look back on the progression from the preliminary task to the finished opening two minutes. Naturally, many changes in the choice of camera angles and changes in the style of editing have occurred after much research into other films. The biggest issue with the preliminary task was the lack of flow, it was very choppy and didn't look professional at all. Another major issue with the preliminary task was the changing colour between shots, this was caused by changing light outside, one shot looked very yellow and sunny, then the next shot looked dark grey and cloudy, even though it was filmed all at the same time. We have learnt from these mistakes and have made as much effort as possible to make sure that the final opening two minutes contains non of these.

Preliminary task:

Opening 2 Minutes:

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Although there are many major differences between the preliminary task and the final opening 2 minutes, i would like to start of by mentioning a few similarities. These two shots are remarkably similar, this is because I liked the shot from the preliminary task and decided it would look good in the final opening 2 minutes, which it did. This is a very generic shot type and is used in a lot of movies; therefore, using it in our film gives it a professional look.

Colour changes/improvements:

Preliminary task

Opening 2 minutes

As you can see from these two screen shots look very different in terms of colour. The preliminary task had not colour correction applied to it; this made it look very bland and un-cinematic, the colour correct however adds to not only the look of the video, but also makes it look much more cinematic. The colours after the colour correction look much better, even though some areas are a little over exposed, but this was a small sacrifice we had to make in order to get much darker blacks by raising the contrast. The colour correction also brings out much more detail in the shot, making it more pleasing to the eye.

Another major improvement that the opening 2 minutes has over the preliminary task is the sound/audio. The sound on the preliminary task is just dead awful. After learning from my mistakes, I made sure to put each audio track in a separate channel; as can be seen on the technology post (Evaluation task 6), this allowed me to make sure that the volumes of all the tracks is the same, making sure that the audio does not fluctuate wildly like in the preliminary task. I also added cross fades to the beginning and the ends of each track, this meant that the different audio tracks merge perfectly.

Another impr

 

Movement that the opening two minutes had over the preliminary task was the location. The location for the preliminary task was very boring; the opening two minutes had a much better location, the location for the opening two minutes was far better and suited the genre of the film nicely.

 

Props were used in the opening two minutes, whereas no props were used in the preliminary task. This gave the film a much better feel, making it look more like a Hollywood blockbuster, which is what we were aiming for. The props look like they belong on the film and not out of place; they blend nicely into the film without the viewer really noticing that they are there, but noticing them just enough to take notice.

Match on action was improved in the opening two minutes, even though the match on action in the preliminary task was actually quite good. The match on action in the opening 2 minutes was much more extensive than the preliminary task. The fight sequence is what I am most pleased with, the action matching is almost perfect and flows very well, there is plenty of match on action elsewhere, but the fight sequence has accurate match on action in rapid succession. In regards to the 180 degree rule, after watching the final edit of the opening 2 minutes, I am certain that we did not break the 180 degree rule, which is important as to not confuse the audience. After looking back over the preliminary task I only saw one incident of the rule being broken, but once is one time to many, so for the opening two minutes I made sure that the rule would not be broken.

Evaluation Activity 3

Evaluation Activity 6

This is the camera that we used to film our opening 2 minutes It is a Panasonic HC-V500 Full HD camera with features such as anti shake, which will stop any camera shake when recording by hand, however it was not needed as we were using a tripod. The camera also features a stereo microphone which is good as it helped to give our film a more professional feel. One major problem with the camera though was the inability to manually control the focus, which meant we could not experiment with different with different depth of fields but it did a good job overall and produced good quality images.




This is the tripod used during the filming. It is just a simple £20 tripod but has the ability to go to a height of 5 ft, which is good for getting those eye level shots. The tripod also helped to keep the shot completely still, as does any tripod. It also provided a way of setting down the camera without putting it on the floor, which was convenient.





This was the PC in which the opening two minutes was edited on. It features dual monitors, the wide screen monitor on the right displays the editing program (Adobe Premiere Pro) and the 4:3 monitor on the left displays the video in full screen in real time. Having two monitors really came in handy when performing colour correction, as having two different monitors allows for two different references of how the video will look, this meant the video could be colour corrected to look good on both monitors, rather than just one and will hopefully look good on all monitors and TV's. Headphones and speakers were also used during the editing, again for the same reason as having two monitors; to get to different references to make the audio sound as good as the video looks.





This is the recorder which was used to record the music for our opening two minutes. It is a hand held recorder the uses an SD card to store the recorded data on. We used this to record the acoustic guitar for the sound track. It has great quality, almost studio quality, so it was perfect for us to use. It was easy to set up and took very little time to record the music, which was a big time saver on the production of the opening two minutes.




This is a screen shot of the main editing program used during the production of our opening 2 minutes (Adobe Premiere Pro). I think that this was the perfect choice of editing software, it has a simple interface making it very user friendly and easy to spent long periods of time editing on. It also features plenty of video effects; such as colour correction, and transitions such as cross fade and wipe. It also has a very effective title creating system allowing for custom fonts to be used, which we did. It also features a good audio mixer, making the audio editing easy. Even with all the features found on this software, some elements of our opening two minutes could not be done on this software.





This is the second piece of video editing software (Adobe After Effects). This software is used to add the special effects to the film such as the gun shot, blood and fire. This software is not as simple to use as Premiere Pro therefor took a lot longer to get the hang of using and it took many attempts to get the special effects looking acceptable, however in the end, they turned out good; not pro standard but OK. After effects features motion tracking which was very important for the blood effect, without it, the blood effect would not have been possible. After Effects was used in conjunction with Video CoPilot's action essential; which provided the blood burs, muzzle flair and the fire effects, as well as the sound effects for the punches, gun shots, reloading, shell bounce and fire sounds.






Audacity was used to edit the sound track to the film, it is simple and easy to use and features the effects that we needed such as delay and reverb. It would not be used by professionals but it was perfectly fine for us and to add its free

Evaluation Activity 5

I think that the unique selling point for our film is that it is something a little different to your everyday blockbuster film. A lot of gangster films are very cinematic, something which we are aiming to do with our film, but not go overboard with. We want our film to be a gritty gangster story with realistic characters and events, something that is hard to accomplish but something that will pay off in the end. There are very few films that have the same feel that we are trying to achieve with our film, therefore we based our film of the ones that we could find, analysed them and tried to achieve the same feel that they had.

Evaluation 4

Our target audience was young adults age 18 and above; as the film would be rated an 18, but we were aiming to attract an audience of between 18 and 30 year old's.

The film would be rated an 18 because of the violence and some of the content and themes of the film

The type of person that would go and see a movie of a similar style to our film or even our film is in an era where the media over glorifies blood and violence, so therefor adding lots of graphic content and violence would help to attract our target audience. I also feel the our film would attract a slightly older audience maybe even up to 50 or 60 years old, that's still a good thing even though the film was aimed at a slightly younger audience.

Evaluation Activity 2

We've compared me and Elijah suited characters towards the two mexican drug cartel twins in the american telivison series known as Breaking bad. Although not generally about gangsters it is about crime quite a bit. We vaguely based our characters around these two as a mysterious duo who have little to say, but whom are excessively violent they also seem to have no feelings for the people that they kill, just like the characters we tried to create. They deal in business quickly, brutally and unforgivingly. Whats Strange about our characters much like the ones from Breaking Bad is the fact in how calm they are in killing someone really quite brutally and really don't bat an eyelid. and thats why i think these characters work really well

In contrast to this, one film we've always compare ours to, snatch. However to compare our main characters to theres being Turkish and Tommy. Who are almost too far in the deep end trying to get out of the London gangster world.  but is much less dominant than our gangsters. He never really sticks up for himself and is always being ordered around by the other gangsters, this is not the case with the gangsters in our film. The gangsters in our film do as they wish, when the wish, this gives them a more intimidating feel, which is what we were aiming for with the characters.

We made the decision to have characters like this in our film because gangster films almost allways have theese characters in them. Our characters are still sterotypical but are unique enough that it gives our film a unique feeling, and is not just another gangster film.

 

Evaluation Acticity 1

 

 

We added the title it at the end of the opening 2 minutes. This is typical of the type of film we tried to imitate. Its very simple and subtle, unlike many action movies that have very extreme and over the top titles. After looking though many films of the same genre. Lots of the films that we analysed had simple titles, like ours. Hopefully this effort to imitate the titles of similar films will help to make our film look authentic, and appeal to our target audience. The title is put up on screen at the very end of the opening two minutes, mainly because most films do this, but also to prevent any disruption of the film; as having a big title come up in the middle of the sequence would do.

The location that we used is not the most typical location used in gangster movies, but we wanted to give the opening two minutes a Tarantino feel so we used a setting that is more typical of a horror film. Many of the film that are made by Tarantino use less conventional locations and settings, that really give the film a unique feel, we tried to give our opening two minutes the same kind of feel as Tarantino's films, and with the choosing of the location, i feel that we have accomplished it. We also chose this location as its nearby, easy to get to and we have access to it. It also has previously been used for shooting a cowboy-horror film.

For the costumes used in out opening two minutes, we used very conventional old style gangster costumes, a plain suit, which is very conventional. We used very conventional costumes in our film to make it obvious of the genre of the film, for example if someone were to be channel hopping on the TV and this came on they would know its a gangster, which may help to attract an audience. Even though our film is unconventional, the costumes were made a conventional as possible in order to make the genre easily identifiable. The props that were used were also very typical of a gangster film, which are mostly guns. We didn't really go over the top with the props in our film, we tried to keep the film feeling gritty and raw, rather than some over hyped blockbuster. The props just add to the feel of the film, as the costumes make the biggest impact.


The camera work and editing took two different styles in our opening two minutes. The majority of the film is shot in longer more extended shots. This slows the pace of the film down considerably. This helps to build suspense and keep the viewer wanting to watch on. Longer shots are very conventional of gangster films as most gangster films are telling a detailed and complicated story, the longer shots make the story easy to understand and comprehend. Our film however features both conventional long shots, as well as faster cuts during the short fight scene. The longer cuts at the begging build the suspense, then the faster cuts climax the event, then the cuts show back down. This is typical of gangster movies, making the audience wait for the big climax.


The titles font was not originally going to be this style, it was going to be a much more plain, bland and simple font style but after getting some feedback from peers it was decided that the font should be changed in order to get a more conventional feel. We took inspiration from;once again, films made by Tarantino. We looked at many of the films he has made and chose this font. It has a gangster feel to it, so we decided to use it instead of some boring plain font. The credit titles as well as the film title were done in the same font to keep in looking consistent and tidy.

Our opening two minutes was designed to leave the viewer wondering what is going to happen next, and i feel like we have accomplished it. Almost every film, though out all genres. Our film defiantly leaves the viewer wondering what is going to happen, which is what almost all films do in their opening two minutes.
This is very conventional of all films in our genre and we feel like we have made our opening sequence very conventional.

The style of the film defiantly shows the genre of the film, everything about it was designed to do so, from the costumes, to the style of the font for the credits to the colour correction. The opening of the film was meant to build suspense, and i feel, that's exactly what it did. The start is very slow with lots of long cuts, slowly building the suspense. This is very conventional of gangster films and a trait we think we executed well.

Our film actually starts at the end of the story and then goes back to follow the story and how the protagonist got into the situation the opening two minutes shows him in. This is a little bit of a more unique way of telling the story but doing this allows us to make the suspense factor in the opening two minutes a lot larger. It also makes the view wonder who the characters are, making them watch the rest of the film. I also feel that making the film start at the end makes it a bit less boring, which in turn, will make the viewer want to continue
to watch.


The characters are not formally introduced though out the entire opening two minutes, and for good reason. The two gangsters do not say their names, what they are doing, or any background information, this once again, is to make the viewer curious about the characters, making them want to watch on and discover their story. The gangsters are identifiable however by the clothes they are wearing, making them seem more powerful than the other character. As with the two gangsters, the protagonist is not introduced to the audience, he is just shot dead there and then, this makes the audience want to watch on an discover the motives of the two gangsters, which helps to draw the audience into the film.

The special effects that were added to the film were added because we could not do them for real, like shooting Chris in the head or burning down the hut. The special effects add the gore to the film, which is stereotypical of gangster films, which we wanted to imitate.

'Red Handed' AS Media Opening 2 Minutes

Script

Script

(First images show the hut from various angles, the two mobsters enter the frame walking towards the hut)(Two mobsters approach the door)
EJ:(Grabbing Will by the shoulder) "We need him alive"(putting petrol can down on the floor)
Will:(Putting the gun back inside his pocket, walking back from the building facing the door)
Chris:(Hearing noise from outside whilst eating a can a beans, putting the beans down a picking up a shotgun and standing up walking towards the window)
Will:(Walking back from the door, running at the door and kicking it open)
Will and Chris:(Will disarms Chris and knock him to the ground, Will then kicks him in the face knocking him out)
EJ:(walking acrros the room paralell to Chris, checking the clip and loading the gun, then turns to face Chris pointing the gun to his head from about 2 meters back)
Chris: (looking stunned and confused, falling sideways towards the ground as the trigger is pulled)
EJ:(turning back to will) "burn it down"(opening the door and walking outside)
Will: (Picking up the petrol can and pour the petrol all over the hut untill turning towards the door and walking out of the door, putting the lid bac on the can, passing EJ who is standing outside, indicating to throw his lit cigarette into the room, then walking pass the hut away from the camera and out of the shot)
EJ:(Turns towards the door and throws a cigarette into the hut, without looking back walking away from the hut)

Storyboard Anamatic

This was our final costume choice for the two mobsters. We stuck with the idea of the smart clothing i.e. the suits however we slightly changed the costumes. We got rid of the ties to give them a less over the top smart look, We drew inspiration from the two mexican drug cartelbrothers from the televison series Breaking Bad. we wanted the look rather than being too smartly dressed as we thought that the type of person that would execute another, gangster or not, would not be the smartest dressed person, but we kept the suits as it’s a traditional gangster image, this would hopefully make our opening two minutes appeal to our target audience.

The costume for Chris, our snitch stayed the same as we discussed. The casual clothes make it clear to the audience that the two mobsters are the more powerful characters even before any events have happened in the film. We kept the jeans and a plane white t-shirt looking scruffy, which suggests to the audience that he had been living in the hut for a while, which he had.

We got the costume ideas from many films of a similar genre. We took note of how the more important characters always dressed better and smarter than the less important characters; we implemented the same idea into our film. Sticking to this idea meant that the gangster movie audience would be able to identify that the film is a gangster movie, without even watching the film and only looking at still images. We tried to keep the costumes simple as well as making them effective as if we had to film over multiple days, the costumes would be a lot easier to reproduce and make the footage match seamlessly from day to day.

Shot List

 

Video shots

1) Medium shot of the hut from outside, wide angle shot, low angle
2) Medium shot of the hut from outside, wide angle shot, kow angle
3) Long shot of the hut from outside, wide angle, low angle
4) Closeup shot panning into medium low angle two shot
5) Long shot becoming medium two low angle shot
6) Medium high angle two shot
7) Long high angle two shot
-Match on action from shots 4,5,6,7-
8) Cut away shot, medium/closeup shot starting at high angle and transitioning into low angle as he walks towards the window loading his gun
9) Cut away shot back to the gangsters outside. Two shot with one character in the foreground and the other in the background.
10) Match on action, transitions into low angle close up shot, then transitions back to a low angle medium shot as he kicks the door
11) Shot cuts to inside the door as the door is kicked open, over the shoulder shot
12) Fight scene with fast paced cutting
13) first person shot of a punch or kick and the screen cuts to black
14) High angle shot looking down at body motionless
15) Panning two shot, low angle of EJ walking across the room
16)Shot cuts back to Chris who awakens, very high angle shot
17) Over the shoulder shot of gun being held out in front of EJ, gun is the shot at Chris who flinches and the slides down onto his side
18)Camera cut back to EJ who turns to Will, two, medium shot transitioning into a closeup shot in the same shot
19) Medium shot of Will pouring "petrol" over the hut
20) Behind low or high angle shot of is silhouette leaving the hut
21) Over the shoulder shot if a match being thrown into the hut and it catching fire
22) Long shot of the house burning in the background and both characters walking away from the scene.


Audio information

1)Only diagetic sound such as the birds and the wind in the background
2)Only diagetic sound such as the birds and the wind in the background
3)Only diagetic sound such as the birds and the wind in the background
4)Sound of footsteps coming from the distance, sound get increasingly louder until the characters enter the shot, sound such as the birds and the wind in the background still present
5)Sound of footsteps gaining in volume as the characters get closer to the hut, sound such as the birds and the wind in the background still present
6) Same background sound as shots 1-5, diagetic sound only still, dialog is spoken
7) Sound such as the birds and the wind in the background still present, no dialog
8) Diagetic sound is present, as well as some added sound effects, background noise is reduced inside the hut
9) Sound such as the birds and the wind in the background still present, no dialog
10) Sound such as the birds and the wind in the background still present, sound effects added when the door is kicked
11)Sound such as the birds and the wind in the background still present, level is reduced inside, sound effects added when the door is kicked open
12) Sound effects are added during the fight scene including a gun shot and punch noises diagetic sound is still present such as the sound of feet on the ground and the rattle of the gun
13) Sound such as the birds and the wind in the background still present, reduced level indoors, kick/punch sound effect added
14)Sound such as the birds and the wind in the background still present, level reduced inside, the sound of footsteps in the background
15) Sound such as the birds and the wind in the background still present, level reduced inside. Sound effect of a gun loading added, footsteps on the floor
16)Sound such as the birds and the wind in the background still present, level reduced inside, footsteps on the floor
17) Background noise still present, sound effect of a gunshot added
18) Diagetic sound present, some dialog said
19)Music starts to play in the background, sound of the petrol being poured over the hut
20)Sound of the music drowns out the background noise
21)Sound of the music drowns out the background noise, sound effect of burning added
22)Sound of the music drowns out the background noise, sound effect of burning added

Final Props (changed)

This is one of the guns we are going to use in our opening two minutes. It is a standard looking gun of a similar style to those used in the other movies that we studied. It is a good gun for us to use as the main weapon of the gangsters as not only does it look the part and is plausible that a gangster would be carrying a similar weapon, but its color makes it catch the eye, which is needed as the location we are going to film in is dark, so a black gun would not stand out enough.

This is the second gun that we will be using during our filming. Like the first gun, it is a standard looking pistol that might be carried by gangsters. The reason why we did not select this gun to be used as the main gun is due to its color. As the gun is black and the location that we are filming in will be quite dark, this gun will not stand out enough for the audience to be able to see what it is, for this reason, the silver gun will be used during the shooting scene.

This is the last gun that will be used during the making of our opening two minutes. This is a more military style pump action shotgun that will be used by our snitch. Unlike the two gangsters, the snitch does not need to transport this weapon anywhere therefor it can be larger than the weapons being carried by the gangsters. We chose this gun due to its sheer presence and the ability to use it during our fight scene. Unfortunately this gun is black which will mean that it will not stick out in the dark, meaning that the viewers may have a hard time seeing the weapon, but there is nothing we can do about this so it will just have to do.

During our filming we will also have a red Jerry/petrol can made of plastic, filled with water of course and not petrol. This will be used to "burn down" the hut where we are filming in our opening two minutes. This is nothing special and can be bought at almost all petrol stations. We used this container as it makes it clear to the audience that there is petrol inside and not another liquid, as petrol is clear it could be mistaken for a different substance.