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.
