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.