Film studies
Our group consisted of four members, me I was the director. I make sure that we had the right locations and props etc for each scene in the clip. Alex our sound editor and costume designer, he created and found the music and sound effects that we have though the clip as well as sorting what we wanted people to wear. Ed our footage editor, who’s job is was to makes our clip run smoothly and to make sure there are no continuity errors and Cleve our cinematographer who choose our shots and filmed our footage.
So to start off we needed do come up with some ideas as to what to do for our clip and one of the ideas that Alex suggested was to have a piece set in a specific time period, we were thinking of setting the scene in a 1940's smokey bar in America or the UK. This was inspired but the noir genre, the black and white 50‘s mystery/murder films. The genre of our film was a Hybrid of Noir/Action. But we had to decide between colour, black and white or a sepia tone.
An idea I had that was similar was a more modern day English grime/gangster film. So the group decided to stay with the idea of a gangster gang film idea and start coming yup with ideas for story and scene and locations we could use and props we would need, we came up with a few script ideas which are on our blog and eventually came up with four characters ( Joe, Kev, Bills and Mucker), some basic scenes (the bar, the toilets and the backstreet scene) and a basic storyline for the film.
One other thing we wanted to sort out before we started to shoot was costumes, now to get with the gangster idea we look at the film reservoir dogs for some ideas and what we found was suits and thin ties with trilby hats etc.
So then we set about shooting some footage, the toilet scene was the first of the scene that we shot and this is were we ran into our first problem. In the scene Bills played by me is attacked in the toilet by an unknown assailant and with all four of us playing main characters in the gang we couldn’t attack ourselves, so we got Cleve’s friend Ollie to come and be part of the scene. This was shot with three different camera shots. The first was a high angle shot that me and Ed decided to use showed me entering and the unknown man coming up behind me to establish where this is and what is happening then I decided to make a match-on-action show from this shot to the next which is a close up of my face to make a sudden change from the calm establishing shot to the panning shot of the struggle which follows me for a moment then stops as I’m dragged around the corner and finally the shot is an extreme close up of my hand holding my phone and as it starts to ring the shot pans out two relieve me dead on the floor of the toilet.
Our next scene took a bit more planning and preparation this was because it was off of the college site and was far away from college so we only had the one night to shoot the footage and I choice to try a very complex pool table scene where all the characters walk around the table while talking. So I needed to work with Cleve our cinematographer to make sure that all the characters are the right side of the screen and on the right side of the 180 degree line. We also have the task of asking all parents with children if they minded us filming because without consent we were unable to film, luckily everyone was agreeable to us filming.
There were many more shots in this scene I would say there were over twenty different shots we look at to get the best out of the location, I tried to make sure that each character got a close up of there face and I shot to show where they are in the room and it they move around the table that it is made clear they have moved to the audience. And the final scene of the backstreet was an easy one to shoot with just two shots the establishing shot of Mucker walking towards the camera which then switches to an over the should shot of a car and the other two gang member stood waiting for him.
So now that we had all our footage we start to edit it and this is Ed came in though we all did bit he did a majority of the editing and did a fine job of it. Now on the sound side of thinks our first idea was to completely rip the old sound off and create a new background and folly work etc. But then later on decided against this and left the speech on and added to the background. Out first problem with the editing was that we have missed a shot out so we had Alex or Joe coming up from a shot on the pool table but not one of him going down, so we fixed this me reversing the shot of Alex coming up to create Alex going down. But other than these few problems I fell that our film had been a great success.
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Monday, 15 March 2010
Our clip was from a British gangster movie set in the late 90’s. Itwould follow mainly that genre but also have aspects of Noir in there as well. Having to follow rules of these genres we found was quite challenging but very rewarding, for instance, Noir likes to take advantage of the darkness in a shot, when we did use the darkness at first we found that it would not look right but after finding the right spots and seeing what we had captured we realised how good it looks. We also had to follow rules to incorporate the entire storyline following a British Gangster plot, this included the types of things we said and the way we walked and even looked at each other.
Our clip was the end scene of the overall film and this is very interesting for the audience because there is quite a lot that needs to be explained. This either causes a large question to be created by viewers which can cause a lot of people being intrigued by it and watching it again and again and also telling others about it. It also gives the possibility for a sequel and even though this project gives to possibility for that, to imagine that this was a feature length film, it is a possibility.
Our influences included many films because of the many different micro features included in our film. The location was taken from “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” because of the context of the scene (a plan being established) which is the same location as when the plan was established in Guy Richie’s 1998 hit. The background sound we felt was very effective in the character establishing scene of “Reservoir Dogs”, Quentin Tarantino’s second film as a writer and director.
I personally took on the role of Editor; this was an enjoyable task as I was in charge of making sure the clip flowed well and made sense as well as other things. To make sure the narrative made sense I had to piece all our shots together and cut them accordingly to make them flow and seem as if the whole thing happened at once. After a while I realised that this was extremely time consuming, so I decided to write a list of things I must do in each lesson, so that I got the editing done by the time set because I did not want to end up wasting any time. However, I also helped with the sound as I found that to make this clip work to the best of our ability both parts had to be working hand-in-hand and so I decided to assist in the choices made in the sound department. We found that most of the sound that was filmed could be scrapped, especially background noise and replaced with artificial sounds to create a more obvious atmosphere which hits the audience more subconsciously because of the lack of a “fuzzy” overtone. I also helped create the soundtrack for the clip, the background band in the bar, the outside scene and the credits.
Altogether, the group worked well to develop genre, character and narrative, we all decided prior to filming what we were going to wear and the costumes also told a lot about the character for instance it was clear Alex was the leader of the group because he was dressed the smartest. This also helped with the genre being established.
An obvious change that was made in our project was that we were meant to have a large amount of dialogue outside, but when getting to the location the noise was too loud so we decided to have no dialogue and to get rid of all the sound and put in car and other noises in during editing. The reason we did not want to do any folly was because we knew how time consuming syncing voices with moving mouths on screen can be, so we kept that to a minimum in other parts.
The audience were able to follow the film completely which means that I made it flow well.
The feedback I received about the editing was very constructive. I was complemented on how the story flowed and the continuity; however there was one part where two clips changed and it was not done as smoothly as possible so it sounded and even looked wrong, but these are all things I can take forward to the next project.
I believe that my skills enabled me to do almost everything I wanted to.
Friday, 12 March 2010
Cinematographer (Cleve Roberts)
FILM EVAULATION
After viewing film sequences from past groups, (which included documentaries and thrillers) my group found the gangster genre very appealing and decided to create a film sequence in a similar style. Our final idea was adapted from the first ideas that we came up with, which included a satire idea, a 50’s film noir/gangster flick and a modern gangster flick idea. In the end we decided to try all three and produced a modern gangster flick with a murder in the bar toilets. This idea came also from the influences of films like “Reservoir Dogs” (Tarenteno, 1992), and “Lock Stock and two Smoking Barrels” (Guy Richey, 1988), both of which are heists and scams gone wrong, which is a conmen theme shared by the gang in our sequence. The original idea of the sequence was that we were a useless gang who had recently lost their bigger faction and were planning their revenge. The scene was originally going to take place in the middle of the film so we made some story connectives, such as Dan’s character being killed half way through the scene by the mysterious man in purple. In the end however we decided to make it the final scene in the film and I started the music for the final credits which we all then took in turns to edit, (though credit should go to Ed and Alex for their editing and mixing skills).
I was the cinematographer and producer and drew two different story boards, one for the fancy named sequence and another one that we implemented into the final script. I was also tasked with acquiring props such as guns, cars and extras, such as the man in purple. Also the way that Ed is framed in the doorway before he goes to the car was a work of genius.
Particular influences was the Reservoir Dog’s costume design of Alex and his black business suit which gave the impression that Alex’s character is a serious leader in his suit and Dan and Ed’s coats and gloves look reflect the typical London goon in Lock Stock. My grey shirt represented a sort of individual look from the rest to show that my character was an outsider, or was not particularly involved with said faction, (see Reservoir Dogs poster below). These different costumes show the characters roles in the gang. The main difference between the two styles that we chose was that our sequence reflected a more realistic view on the gangster genre, being that it is neither exaggerated glamorised.
Upon writing the script, Alex and I tried many different approaches, such as characters with flashy names such as “Lee Dynamite” and “Johnny Bullets”. It did not come to fruition as we got caught up on the names rather than the story. In reflection to this we decided to cut fancy names in favour of traditional ones, like Joe and Bill.
When we were shooting the main bar scene around the pool table we stuck closely to the script and the story board with the exception of added close ups of the balls being potted to break up the dialogue so that the scene is easier to follow and is much more effective at introducing the characters and made the scene flow smoothly. The establishing shot from the head of the pool table frames the opening in a dynamic manner which instantly makes the scene more interesting. We were missing one of the shots which made continuity a problem and had to manipulate an old one but it still looked fine. This was inspired by the restaurant scene in “Goodfellas” (Martin Scorsese, 1990).
The biggest problem we had was that the set was filling with people which posed a legal issue for us as there were children among them and we had to ask for parental agreement to continue filming. Aside from that there were not many problems. To finish the scene we needed a car and I managed to get a Peugeot Escapade that I believe added to the fact that the gang is useless at what they do, as depicted in the original script. We also found that after we uploaded the footage to the computer the sound of the people in the bar drowned out the dialogue and got in the way of the scene, especially the “45” woman, who Ed managed to silence.
The non-diagetic sound proved the biggest problem and received the biggest amounts of critersism which we took positively and replaced the 70’s funk jingle with a typical grimy soundtrack. We tried adding Foleys over the dialogue but it looked out of sync with the footage and we adjusted the equalization instead, though we did dub a new version of the bar background using our film studies group. The sound itself very much reflected the 50’s gangster idea and consists of a jazzy under tone that sits in the background crowd, which changes to a dark clay and shaker undertone beat that gets more intense as Dan is killed by the man in purple, which we were told was very effective.
After viewing film sequences from past groups, (which included documentaries and thrillers) my group found the gangster genre very appealing and decided to create a film sequence in a similar style. Our final idea was adapted from the first ideas that we came up with, which included a satire idea, a 50’s film noir/gangster flick and a modern gangster flick idea. In the end we decided to try all three and produced a modern gangster flick with a murder in the bar toilets. This idea came also from the influences of films like “Reservoir Dogs” (Tarenteno, 1992), and “Lock Stock and two Smoking Barrels” (Guy Richey, 1988), both of which are heists and scams gone wrong, which is a conmen theme shared by the gang in our sequence. The original idea of the sequence was that we were a useless gang who had recently lost their bigger faction and were planning their revenge. The scene was originally going to take place in the middle of the film so we made some story connectives, such as Dan’s character being killed half way through the scene by the mysterious man in purple. In the end however we decided to make it the final scene in the film and I started the music for the final credits which we all then took in turns to edit, (though credit should go to Ed and Alex for their editing and mixing skills).
I was the cinematographer and producer and drew two different story boards, one for the fancy named sequence and another one that we implemented into the final script. I was also tasked with acquiring props such as guns, cars and extras, such as the man in purple. Also the way that Ed is framed in the doorway before he goes to the car was a work of genius.
Particular influences was the Reservoir Dog’s costume design of Alex and his black business suit which gave the impression that Alex’s character is a serious leader in his suit and Dan and Ed’s coats and gloves look reflect the typical London goon in Lock Stock. My grey shirt represented a sort of individual look from the rest to show that my character was an outsider, or was not particularly involved with said faction, (see Reservoir Dogs poster below). These different costumes show the characters roles in the gang. The main difference between the two styles that we chose was that our sequence reflected a more realistic view on the gangster genre, being that it is neither exaggerated glamorised.
Upon writing the script, Alex and I tried many different approaches, such as characters with flashy names such as “Lee Dynamite” and “Johnny Bullets”. It did not come to fruition as we got caught up on the names rather than the story. In reflection to this we decided to cut fancy names in favour of traditional ones, like Joe and Bill.
When we were shooting the main bar scene around the pool table we stuck closely to the script and the story board with the exception of added close ups of the balls being potted to break up the dialogue so that the scene is easier to follow and is much more effective at introducing the characters and made the scene flow smoothly. The establishing shot from the head of the pool table frames the opening in a dynamic manner which instantly makes the scene more interesting. We were missing one of the shots which made continuity a problem and had to manipulate an old one but it still looked fine. This was inspired by the restaurant scene in “Goodfellas” (Martin Scorsese, 1990).
The biggest problem we had was that the set was filling with people which posed a legal issue for us as there were children among them and we had to ask for parental agreement to continue filming. Aside from that there were not many problems. To finish the scene we needed a car and I managed to get a Peugeot Escapade that I believe added to the fact that the gang is useless at what they do, as depicted in the original script. We also found that after we uploaded the footage to the computer the sound of the people in the bar drowned out the dialogue and got in the way of the scene, especially the “45” woman, who Ed managed to silence.
The non-diagetic sound proved the biggest problem and received the biggest amounts of critersism which we took positively and replaced the 70’s funk jingle with a typical grimy soundtrack. We tried adding Foleys over the dialogue but it looked out of sync with the footage and we adjusted the equalization instead, though we did dub a new version of the bar background using our film studies group. The sound itself very much reflected the 50’s gangster idea and consists of a jazzy under tone that sits in the background crowd, which changes to a dark clay and shaker undertone beat that gets more intense as Dan is killed by the man in purple, which we were told was very effective.
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Evaluation (Sound Director)
Alex Reader Evaluation
My position in the filmmaking was the sound director, our initial idea was to make a film Noir/Gangster movie, so a sub-genre of noir. We wanted to create a British gangster film with techniques of noir. For example at the start of the film I used the music genre known as smooth jazz, I used this for two reasons. The first reason is that in the film “Sunset Boulevard” you hear smooth jazz in “Norma’s” house and in other old and original noir films jazz seems to be a good choice in music since it suits the mood of a noir film; quite, apprehensive, slowly progressing. These features are in both the genre of music and the genre of film. The second reason I used smooth jazz is that the instrumentation is key when trying to convey to the audience what genre(s) you are presenting, ours was Noir/Gangster and in films such as “The Godfather parts 1, 2, and 3” you can clearly hear smooth jazz being a consistent theme of music in those films. Therefore to make the genre obvious at the start of the film I had to choose a genre of music that fitted both genres’s of film.
We also used other atmospheric sound such as sound that creates a tight, apprehensive and uncomfortable atmosphere. In the scene where “Bills” goes to the toilet in the bar restroom and a member from another gang is creeping up behind him is extremely tense because we used music and percussion to create an uneasy effect. For example when the other gang member is opening the door and starts walking out the shaker starts on the second and fourth beat of the bar which is made dominant by the light drums you can hear underneath the accented beats. As he walks closer to him distinct drums are heard, the drums as well as the shakers are both accented on the second and fourth beats then as he gets even closer the drums are accented on every beat of the bar building to a crescendo when he finally grabs him round the neck and pulls him away where the volume of the drums and shakers are lowered and reveals the killer walking into shot with no atmospheric sound to be heard. We found that building the volume, dynamics, and instrumentation up slowly matched the tension seen in the shot.
Another major part of making the sound work in this film was to get the diegetic and non-diegetic sound rite. Diegetic sound is any sound presented that is real in the world of the story in the film. The hard part for our group was that the sounds we were looking for were very specific to the place where we filmed them, for example we needed to create the sound of a pool ball being potted. So I looked for sounds, which related to a heavy, metal ball and found the sound effect on a pinball machine’s ball being potted in the machine and we tried it and it worked perfectly, although at first we did have to lower the volume since it did over power the voices greatly. Other examples of diegetic sound we used were the sounds of car doors being shut and also, running water, phone ring tones, outside noises such as crickets and traffic to set the mood of a late night and footsteps which “Ed” synchronised the length, the timing, and the volume of each step to fit the character on screen to make the diegetic sound believable to the audience.
As I mentioned before we had to use atmospheric sound as well as music that suited the genre of the film, these are all examples of non-diegetic sound that we used, as well as the atmospheric sound I have already mentioned we have had problems with it. For example we are trying to create a British gangster/noir film but I took inspiration from a new film called “44 inch chest” with Ray Winston and John Hurt. In the trailer for that film the British gangster film genre is made clear by a slow build up and then the music moves into a funk beat. We tried this funk beat in our film and to be honest it looked horrible, it didn’t fit the mood, you couldn’t recognise a clear genre at all, and it didn’t convey and help in plot development which music should do in film. Therefore we decided to use British modern day garage/drum and bass music in the scene when he is walking to the car, this music helped to illustrate the story and progress the narrative by showing the audience that it is building up to the final scene where the gangs will clash in one final fight, the music is accented with heavy beats that represents with each beat the gang are getting closer to the final fight and it also forces the audience to get excited, eager, and fired up for the last scene of the film.
My position in the filmmaking was the sound director, our initial idea was to make a film Noir/Gangster movie, so a sub-genre of noir. We wanted to create a British gangster film with techniques of noir. For example at the start of the film I used the music genre known as smooth jazz, I used this for two reasons. The first reason is that in the film “Sunset Boulevard” you hear smooth jazz in “Norma’s” house and in other old and original noir films jazz seems to be a good choice in music since it suits the mood of a noir film; quite, apprehensive, slowly progressing. These features are in both the genre of music and the genre of film. The second reason I used smooth jazz is that the instrumentation is key when trying to convey to the audience what genre(s) you are presenting, ours was Noir/Gangster and in films such as “The Godfather parts 1, 2, and 3” you can clearly hear smooth jazz being a consistent theme of music in those films. Therefore to make the genre obvious at the start of the film I had to choose a genre of music that fitted both genres’s of film.
We also used other atmospheric sound such as sound that creates a tight, apprehensive and uncomfortable atmosphere. In the scene where “Bills” goes to the toilet in the bar restroom and a member from another gang is creeping up behind him is extremely tense because we used music and percussion to create an uneasy effect. For example when the other gang member is opening the door and starts walking out the shaker starts on the second and fourth beat of the bar which is made dominant by the light drums you can hear underneath the accented beats. As he walks closer to him distinct drums are heard, the drums as well as the shakers are both accented on the second and fourth beats then as he gets even closer the drums are accented on every beat of the bar building to a crescendo when he finally grabs him round the neck and pulls him away where the volume of the drums and shakers are lowered and reveals the killer walking into shot with no atmospheric sound to be heard. We found that building the volume, dynamics, and instrumentation up slowly matched the tension seen in the shot.
Another major part of making the sound work in this film was to get the diegetic and non-diegetic sound rite. Diegetic sound is any sound presented that is real in the world of the story in the film. The hard part for our group was that the sounds we were looking for were very specific to the place where we filmed them, for example we needed to create the sound of a pool ball being potted. So I looked for sounds, which related to a heavy, metal ball and found the sound effect on a pinball machine’s ball being potted in the machine and we tried it and it worked perfectly, although at first we did have to lower the volume since it did over power the voices greatly. Other examples of diegetic sound we used were the sounds of car doors being shut and also, running water, phone ring tones, outside noises such as crickets and traffic to set the mood of a late night and footsteps which “Ed” synchronised the length, the timing, and the volume of each step to fit the character on screen to make the diegetic sound believable to the audience.
As I mentioned before we had to use atmospheric sound as well as music that suited the genre of the film, these are all examples of non-diegetic sound that we used, as well as the atmospheric sound I have already mentioned we have had problems with it. For example we are trying to create a British gangster/noir film but I took inspiration from a new film called “44 inch chest” with Ray Winston and John Hurt. In the trailer for that film the British gangster film genre is made clear by a slow build up and then the music moves into a funk beat. We tried this funk beat in our film and to be honest it looked horrible, it didn’t fit the mood, you couldn’t recognise a clear genre at all, and it didn’t convey and help in plot development which music should do in film. Therefore we decided to use British modern day garage/drum and bass music in the scene when he is walking to the car, this music helped to illustrate the story and progress the narrative by showing the audience that it is building up to the final scene where the gangs will clash in one final fight, the music is accented with heavy beats that represents with each beat the gang are getting closer to the final fight and it also forces the audience to get excited, eager, and fired up for the last scene of the film.
Thursday, 4 March 2010
Final touches
We are just putting the final touches on the film which is mainly the equalization of the sound.
There are worse things than funk................
Apparently, according to "the powers that be", the ending theme to the scene is apparently not appropriate for the end of a grimy gangster flick. This being the case we decided to change the overal sound to suit the scene better.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Voice over background change !
We have decided to use a voice over of many people talking in distoreted and dissonant conversation in a crowded room. Then we have lowered the volume to give the effect of many people talking in the background of a public place. Initially we had the original sound we gathered when we had filmed, but there was a problem in that. Firstly we had very burly men in the background speaking very loudly which was incredibly hard to dub over when we had to hear our lines aswell. Also we kept hearing awomen in the backf=gorund shouting with a very loud west-country accent "Fourty five".
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