My role for our short film sequence was Director and as a group we had to first of all we had to decide on the genre we would work with, as a favourite of the group and my personal preference we decided to choose a British crime/realism genre, the influences that made me want to make a British crime was because first of all the topic we had gone over and found out about all the different elements which make and British drama and try and include them in our work, the main choice for a British drama was mainly based on personal preference as I take an interest and influences from other British crimes. Films like Adulthood (Noel Clarke) such as the costume and attitude suited our scene, snatch (Guy Riche) had a good representation of tracking and fighting shots, from these I can take ideas and influences from as they put the grime and grit into there films to get this representation micro elements of the genre in there films. As we chose this genre we have had to put in certain elements that make the genre. This influenced our decisions such as location, setting etc. As my role was Director I had the role of deciding on mise en scene and character. The mise en scene that I had to think about was location, costume, setting, props etc. as well as character so the emotion and actions each character should show. With the mise en scene I had to create this gritty urban but still cultured scene, as the characters had to be doing this ‘deal’ we needed a urban but quiet area that still had this effect on the audience and suited the genre, so the Cineworld car park was a good choice for the style we needed and as we went at an early time, the space was clear and suited for this ‘meet’ that had to be a quiet location with no one around which set the scene for our sequence. The costume was a concept needed to create the right look for the genre, so we decided the characters to have a specific look, James looking like a student who just wants his drugs and I looked like the ‘hoody’ perspective, with scarf over the face, hood up and trainers with a duffle coat, mainly all in black that created this thuggish look and gave out this look as if I had a more grime/urban look that represented me as this harder character than James, so it looked right for the sequence we were creating. The other issue was props as we did well to represent the drugs with flour and a freezer bag but I had to change some shots and story line as we had no weapon so as a group we decided to use keys but it changed and I decided to just keep the attack as a brutal beating and went well. Another target I had to achieve was character and the emotion, as me and James acted I wanted this anger that attacked innocence but not out of willingness, a forced attack and from the time that we had and the style we had set the brutality but may not of shown the forced attack and could have been tweaked a bit.
As a group we came across a few problems with camera shots and some minor problems with props but as a group we made decisions that developed our idea and the narrative such as on editing changing the main fight scene to not use a weapon and use fades so the kicking scene changed the emotion with a more gritty brutal fight that I wanted in the beating in scene with the kicking and is one of my favourite parts that makes the characters and genre and emotion feel like a urban British film.
The audience are the main judges of our sequence and what I wanted to represent from my part was convincing characters and to create a British crime/realism from the mise en scene. To show the audience this I made sure there was nothing out of place and tried to use as much believable costume and props as much to create this British feel and represent each character/. Also to create this isolation for the meeting situation between each character so it was more of a real situation. From the feedback that we received from mise en scene and characters was that people liked the clear car park representing isolation and showing a more British and urban location and setting. As well as clothing was good and represented characters well. This tells me that overall the thought into choosing the right location, costume etc. helped our sequence show the narrative we were looking for and represents our genre as a British crime.
The Kidulthood part is relevant between 8:00 and 9:30 minutes which is the fight scene to relate to our fight scene and where some ideas were taken from.
As a group we developed the narrative and characters in our sequence. We started brainstorming ideas and settled on one we all liked. Myself, Harry (cinematographer) and Lewis (director) all began to talk about mise-en-scene and how we thought it should look whilst Ali began looking at sound. We worked on a storyboard and settled on a location and characters.
Originally we wanted to make a fast paced sequence and also for it to be a little longer than it was at in the end. However we did have major hindrance in our shoot. When we got to the location to do our shoot we found we had been given a camera without a battery. This meant that Harry had to travel back to the college to get a battery. This cost us lots of time we could have been shooting and also meant that, as editor, i didn’t have as much footage to work with. One particular problem with the editing was shot of the character walking, where two takes had been done that overlapped when we wanted one continuous shot. This meant i had to use a fade to show passage of time, but it didn’t look very good.
I wanted the audience to look at the editing and think that I had done well to create suspense within the sequence. I don’t think that this was the case in the end however, because it doesn’t really fit in with the story of the sequence and doesn’t seem to be the right way the story should have been told. This wasn’t what I originally wanted to do however and I think I managed to do well with what I had.
The feedback for editing said “some of the shots were too long; the fight scene was well edited.” This shows that the choice of long durations shots obviously wasn’t a very good choice. But in the end there was nothing I could do about this as I could only do the best with what I was given. I am pleased to see that the fight scene editing was well received because I did make the decision to go back and re-edit this. When we looked at the original rough cut I thought that it wasn’t fast enough and didn’t look very good so I went back and re-edited it. This of course meant that the clip was quite a bit shorter but I am pleased with this decision.
I chose to be editor because I felt confident with the Final Cut software and thought it was something that I was particularly good at. I think my skills enabled me to do better in the end as I knew what I was doing. I do however really feel that the sequence could have been a lot stronger but due to the lack of footage I did what I could. If we had had more footage, which wasn’t any fault of ours, I feel that I could have done a lot better.
Yesterday we all watched each others clips and left feedback for each other. The feedback we recieved was mostly positive.
The Mise-en-scene was good, people liked the clear car park representing isolation. Clothing was good and represented characters well. Character shouldnt have slowed down on the stairs.
Camerawork was good with some nice shots - water droplets. Said to be a bit shaky at times, wasn't clear if it was intentional or not. Some more shots for the fight would have been good.
Sound was good, matched well with the sequence but the music should have gotten quieter during the dialogue.
Editing was good, some shots were too long. Fight scene well edited.
We can now use our feedback to help us when we come to write our evaluations.
