T-14 FILM EXTRACT

T-14 FILM EXTRACT

Wednesday 4 March 2009

Evaluation by Louis Clark

The project was to write our own film, giving a basic outline of the story, then to create a two-minute sequence of the film. The film is called ‘The “Sympathetic” Gesture’; this is a name I had come up with because it is regarding a gesture (involving money) from one man to his best mate. The reason we have made the word ‘sympathetic’ into sarcasm is because it doesn’t turn out to be a sympathetic gesture at all, as one man, the lead character played by Tom our director, betrays his best friend just out of pure greed. The film is a crime/thriller. We aimed to make the whole film relate to influential movies such as: ‘Reservoir Dogs’ (Quentin Tarintino, 1992) and ‘The Bourne Identity’ (Doug Liman, 2002).

I was given the role of cinematographer and was to shoot the main scene of the film, which involved an on foot getaway from a bank robbery. I tried to film this in the style of “Death Proof” (Tarintino, 2007), mixed with “The Bourne Identity”(Liman, 2002) with the cinematography by Oliver Wood. The problem I found with this was that it was hard for me to use my abilities to full extent; this was because I had to shoot quick, rough running shots in many different, clear, narrow streets. Whereas, I would like to have chose a few areas where I would have complete control of where props/people are placed and angles are shot. Another problem was when shooting the second scene of the meeting of the two friends, I allowed my friend to record the music by himself only to discover that we had lost all this footage due to over recording. Although we were able to reproduce few shots, with time against us, it was clear we were not going to get back much of the second scene and would have to make do, the dilemma with this was that we were not going to be able to make clear sense of the whole second sequence. Another problem was the weather. Unfortunately, between shooting the same scene, it had snowed, therefore we would either film it all again that day or have to wait until a later date without snow. We chose the second option and this meant that again time was against us and were unable to pick up as much footage as we liked and needed. Furthermore, there was feedback, which stated the fact it was hard to understand what was going on. Although this is how we intended the film to be, for example reminiscent of the storyline of Pulp Fiction (Tarintino 1994), I think was also due to the fact we didn’t have enough footage to put together, therefore the editor (Caitlin) found it difficult to combine the footage we had, in a logical order.

I think the successes of this project were that for one we had managed to edit, direct and produce the sequence how we had wished in relation to our chosen influences. Moreover, I had managed to get the shots, which made it look more like a professional high budget film rather than a very low budget college piece. I also believe I managed to get the shots which created the right mood, a mood of suspense and high speed action which along with the music(created by Alec Mctaggert combined with the expertise of production by Adam our sound engineer) in-gropes you into an on the edge of your seat, unable to blink, thriller like reaction. I got all good feedback for my cinematography, which I am thrilled about and boosts my confidence for a future role in this microelement. In addition, I believe, although there was not much of it, the second sequence (walking scene) is a success with Anton Corbjin’s influential movie ‘Control’ in mind. The beginning scene of Corbjin’s film is what I had tried to focus my photography on for the second sequence.

Overall, I feel, considering the problems we have encountered, this project has been a success and also, I believe the small amount of cinematography on show within this minor sequence has showed enough potential to be stated as an accomplishment and the film in general should be looked upon as a triumphant achievement. If I was to do it again I would allow myself more time for shooting and make sure I have more than enough footage, just encase I was ever to have similar struggle again. However, what I will take form this scheme is the way I was able to produce lots of angles which demonstrated the integrity of the character(s) and his/there surroundings.

posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 15:01 0 comments

Monday 2 March 2009

Adam's Evaluation (Sound)

Our film, ‘The ’Sympathetic’ Gesture’ is a crime thriller, many influenced by films like Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino, 1992) and Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001). The sound, which I was responsible for was inspired by many crime thrillers that use up beat music to create emotion. Death Proof (Tarantino, 2007) and Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994) are another two films that are like this.

The original plan was to have no soundtrack, and to use diagetic sound (footsteps, heavy breathing, sirens) only. After the first lot of filming, it was clear that this would not be possible. The footsteps were not clear enough, and heavy breathing wasn’t recorded or caught on camera. This lead to us making a music track to go on in scene. This also meant that the sound on all the footage could be removed, and on a second shooting day, the sound did not matter. There is also no dialogue in the scene, so the narrative isn’t developed by the sound.

Because of the fast pace of the running section, the non-diagetic soundtrack, is basically a drum solo, with some guitar bits near the end. The drum beat itself was recorded separately Louis' friend. Also recorded, but not used was a piano track. This wasn’t used because it didn’t fit with the walking scene at the end of the clip. Once I’d heard the drum solo, it was clear that was slower paced at the start than we needed. However the main part of it was the right speed. I tried to increase the speed of the first part, but I couldn’t get it to the same speed, so it was left in it’s original form. Also, it needed something else, to stop it from sounding to repetitive. So it was put it into GarageBand to see if anything can be added to it to improve it. A guitar riff, which we believed fitted perfectly with the second, faster drumming. The music helps add to the atmosphere, and compliments the fast-paced style of the editing. This music was synced up to match the running, with the help of the editor.

For the second part, the walking scene, we needed a contrasting piece of music. It was suggested by Tom, the director, that a piece of music from The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers, 1999), called ‘Clubbed to Death’ by Rob Dougan. The bit used is the start was suggested mainly because we did not have enough time to compose a new piece of music, due to the fact that the second part was filmed towards the end of production, and because it seemed to fit the scene rather well.

From the feedback we received, it become clear that the music didn’t fit as well as we first thought. The music was complimented for being original, very nice and also that the pace was perfect for the sequence. However, others said that the music was good but it wasn’t fitted to the pace that well. It was also said that there was too much contrast between first (drum solo) and second (Matrix music) pieces of music.

Labels: Adam Taylor-Creek

posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 19:46 0 comments

Film extract feedback

Mise-en-scene

Synopsis bit to quick
Very attractive shots

Cinematography

Nice shot angles good variation - yea good

Editing

Like the way you made it look old
fuzziness when putting things in car is good
fuzziness was a no-no

Sound

Very nice sound
Pace of music fits sequence
Original music
Maybe too much contrast between first and second
2nd part of music doesn't fit as well
Good sound but not fitted to pace that well

Labels: Caitlin Smith

posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 07:14 0 comments

toms evalution

Evaluation

The film that we made was a crime/thriller film. This was influenced by the directors I like such as Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Smith. Films from these directors influenced by my film these films include “Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino 1993)”and “Severance (Smith 2006)” I thought that Severance (Smith 2006) was a good film to take notice of as there is a lot of scenes of running through a forest as this was the originally the plan for our film. I originally thought that a chase or getaway scene would be a good one to shot are there is a minimal plot so it is easy to follow in about two minutes and acting would be easy as you would just have to run about. One shoot type that we use that is a trade mark Tarantino shot was the shot from the boot. Another influence is “Deathproof (Tarantino 2007)” were some scenes are black and white and some are colour and the black and white is quite grainy and old fashioned. We decided to use this because we liked the contrast between scenes of colour and black and white and how you perceive the different scenes.

As the director it was my job to come up with the story line, the actual sequences and props this was quite important as we had no money to spend on this project so we ha to incorporate props that we already owned, we had to consider all of this when we were filming. In this process it was important that I had to keep in mind of location props and the zero budget for our film. Originally we story boarded this but as the story and script developed we did not redo the story board with I think would of helped us be more organized and helped everyone become clearer on what was going on as people in are group got confused about the order of the sequencing. Another thing that I knew I wanted to do early on was to include a variety of shot types, this included point of view shoots and close medium and long shots, I worked closely with the cinematographer to help achieve this. We did this to keep it interesting and change it up a bit. A good thing about the film is that is we started filming earlier as possible to give us as much time as we could, as we found that to film extra bits as we went along. We found that we needed a lot more footage than in our sequence. I also thought that madding are own soundtrack from scratch was good as we could get exactly what we wanted.

Something that we could have improved upon was the use of dialogue even though we filmed dialogue we did not use any in the final cut. We could have made more of an effort to make sure there was dialogue in some part of the film. Another thing that we could of thought about was the use of indoors filming as the first time we filmed it was sunny and had to put off filming twice due to the weather. If we could have incorporated indoors filming this would have not been a problem or if we had of got the filming all done in one day. We could have also of used more cuts in are film just to break it up more.

All in all I thought we made a good job of it, we started filming early as possible which was handy as we ended up needing all the available we had. I also think that we could have structured are film better and restructured it when we changed things.

Labels: Tom

posted by AS Film Studies Students @ 07:13 0 comments

Caitlin's Evaluation

The edits I have put in have been different transitions such as fading. I have also used effects such as the old film style and black and white balance, which transition into colour. These makes the audience think why this had been done. The reason all the
se things have been done is because it makes people think about the story and I believe it is effective to a point, which these effects that we have used make that story happen. Another reason why this has happened is because we wanted to show that the end of the film is at the beginning which is the black and white footage which then comes back into the real beginning which is the colour. We thought this was a good idea because it shows that we have looked at some films and we liked the effect. I think that this is good because it shows intuition and allows people to think.

The sound used was from one of the groups friends who he knew that was good with music and we asked him if we could record him playing. This created a good atmospheric noise that went with the pace of the film extract. The sounds were drums and a piano. We then edited it with some more sounds in Garage Band where we finished composing the sound track. We think this works well with the footage as the beat goes with the cuts within the extract. We play the music till the end of the black and white section, till the title comes up. We have done this because the rhythm of the beat works well with the pace of the film.

My role within the group was editor, where I had to edit all the footage and add the sound into the extract. It was sometimes difficult to edit some of the footage because there wasn’t enough of it and not enough different angles. Well we did have some more footage with different angles but that got taped over by accident. I think that editing is the most difficult job because you need to be able to have a clear mind of what the director wants and what he wants in it. This was sometimes hard because the director wasn’t always there so I had to work around it, of where things needed to go. Editing the sound to fit the extract was easy enough as it went all with the pace of it all.

The genre we have looked at was crime/action; also we took our ideas from other films such as Death Proof (Quinton Tarantino 2007) and Severance (Christopher Smith 2006) because we like how they set out there storyline and they way they are shown to the target audience. The reason why we chose this genre is because we everyone in the group liked this sort of film group and we thought we could try something similar to them and try our luck at the films we have seen and liked.

For our idea we started off with something basic such as what films we like and we chose crime. We then started to think about where we could take it in a direction that would work for us and affordable. So we then started to think about narrative, characters, places and other things that we could do. So we drew up some plans and collected the idea which is where we came out and filmed our idea. During the time of filming we changed a few things to fit into our schedule, this worked well and we managed to film it. Also during our time filming we had some problems such as someone taping over some footage we had filmed, luckily we managed to record another day some more footage. Some of effects we wanted weren’t available at first so we had to try something else that was similar, but we eventually managed to get the filter that made little speckles and flickers in films to make the footage more real. I think that it wasn’t the best filter but it’s the best we found that was similar to the film flickers that are on the film strips in the cinema.

As for the feedback I found that there was quite a bit about the sound and that it didnt suit the extract that well and that it shoud be more consistant. But they thought that it went with the pace of the film also original. As for my editing I had a mixed opinion about the fuzziness, where were running to the car, which is fair because some people don't like that sort of thing, also they liked the flicker and black and white scenes which makes it look old, which wasn't the main intension. As for the cinematography there wasn't anything bad to say, just they liked the camera angles which I think were good and which made my job a little easier as there was more to work with.