Final Film

This is our final film:

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Our final comment is that:

We all researched together, although some members of the group played a bigger part than others at all stages. In terms of practical work, we have broken down our individual roles:

Stephen Callen- made the music from scratch on garage band, most of editing, some filming, some acting, provided the props (guns etc), script writing and research.
Paul Anderson-some acting,some editing, some filming, some blogwork (more responsibility for camera work) initial research.
Kieran Peverley-some acting, a little editing, some filming, most of the blogwork
James McDermott- some acting, contributed to editing, little filming, some work on blog

Draft of Film

Re-filming and comments on the product

We have refilmed a few shots as the mise-en-scene was not correct:

1. We re-filmed the lockers so that they are blue. and so that you can actually see what is getting taken from the lockers (to add to the range of shots)-this has been done.
2. We refilmed a shot of Josh when he is looking at his phone, to make the lighting better. This time we filmed behind him (OTS) so the lighting was better and then cut to a high angle shot of him.
3. James has a blue jacket on in one shot (where he shoots) and doesn't in the next (picks package up) we needed to change this as the continuity is all wrong, however we didn't get the chance to do so as James kept forgetting his jacket and we also couldn't arrange a common time to film. We would have liked to have refilmed the shooting scene also as if you look closely James laughs a little just after Josh has been shot.
4. We needed to refilm the shot of our package as it is not wrapped properly and this does not show proffesionalism - this has been done.
5. We had to refilm the shot of Paul when he spins in his chair, this we did early on but we forgot to take a screen shot of the original footage before deleting it.
6. Originally there was a shot of me (Kieran) falling on the floor after being shot, we decided to cut this as there was a plastic cup lying on the floor. Instead we just have the shooting and me throwing the package into the air, however we should have also filmed this scene elsewhere too as the mise-en-scene is very 'school-based'.- this has been done.
7. There was a B Block sign above the door as Steven runs in, again this shows lack of effective mise-en-scene but instead of refilming we have also cut this.
8. Sound wise there is also a cough at the beginning which we have cut and during the voice over background noise can be heard so we have re-recorded this also.

Overall we are happy with the concept of our film and our chosen genre. We all think that we have a good range of camera angles used and shots are generally composed well. The music is highly effective and we are pleased we created our own instead of just using sound effects already available on the Apple. The storyline is strong and sets up good enigmas as to who exactly Paul is? What is in the package? We also like the playing around with time from 1999 to the present day, the white out transition also makes this clear. We think the target audience would want to watch and know more.

Feedback from an audience

When we received feedback it was questioned that I'd died and then came back to life to take a gun to Paul, however we feel people were commenting on this as they knew us and when working with a limited set of actors we thought we could get away with having me approach Paul and hold the gun to him without seeing my face.

We recieved some feedback from fellow pupils in our school who have watched out trailer, here are some of the comments:

One person said "it seems like a fast paced thriller, from the actions and guns" this is exactly what we wanted our audience to recognise.
A large number of people also recognised that the age rating was the same as what we had indentified which was 15 year old males. "males aged 15 and above."
A few comments we got was about how it looked more like a trailer than the opening of a film. They say that because that there is no speech in the opening, we have done this because it is all a dream and not what has actually happened but it sets up enigma for the audience to want to know more.
Another person in our feedback sample said "action- the guns are a give away and there is a good build up of tension."
Much of the feedback we got just identified exactly what we had identified was wrong with our trailer such as the lck of continuity with the change of jackets. One comment was made on the unrealistic gun shots, however we are in a school and we clearly cant use a real gun!
The music, which we created ourself, was credited a lot in the feedback we got with one person saying " the music is really good"
Most people understood the opening and were clear on intended target audience and genre.

Our final thoughts
We feel that the feedback which we have had good, appropriate feedback, as people got what we wanted them to from watching our opening.

HERE IS THE DRAFT THEY WATCHED OF OUR FILM OPENING:

Making Changes

We added in different titles throughout our production but when we sat to look at them today we found continuity with the titles wasn't right, so we had to change them so they were all the same and roughly the same size. The i-movie application sometimes foes not allow titles to be moved or resized and positioned easily but we have done our best.

Certification and Distribution

These are the distributors of our film, we have chosen Lionsgate because they are large distributors in the US and Lakeshore are large distributors in the EU, this gives a wider range of audiences as our film will be available to more people.

We have chosen to have the 15 age rating as the bbfc definition for 15 fits with our film, there is not much explicit material in our film, there is only crime and violence, there is no sex scenes so there is no need for the raring to be 18 plus. Also a lot of teenage boys of 15+ would like to watch such a film so putting it at 18 would limit our audience further.

Representation in similar films

We have chose these images as they match some of the shots that were in our film opening. These shots are close representations. The shot of Paul in the chair represents him as a a mafia boss (the film image we have chosen for this is from the classic gangster film 'The Godfather') Also the shots of two of us walking along with guns represents us as gangsters (we consider a similar one to be from 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'

The way things are seen by an audience is important in establishing genre and helping the audience to decide if they want to watch a film or not.

Wednesday 3rd March

These are a few images, that we decided needed to be re filmed as they had bad continuity or inappropriate mise-en-scene for one reason or another.

The shot where the door is being entered has a B Block sign above the door showing it has been filmed in a school, this is not good enough.

The shot with Josh (helped us to film but not doing A Level) shows the school in the background but is also too dark.

The package shot is because it is very untidy and doesn't look much like a package that gangsters would use.

The lockers are 'pink' and gangsters would not have pink lockers so we changed it to blue.

As James picks up the package he is wearing a different jacket to the one he wore as he shot the victim. This is due to both sections being filmed on different days and our failure to stick to continuity.

It is our intention to try and refilm these things as soon as possible.

How we have worked

Though there is still a little refilming to do we are going to talk about the technology we have used to get our project together. We have learnt to use the camera(s) and tripod effectively, learnt to feed film into our editing package of i-movie on the Apple Macs via a firewire lead. We have worked our way through the editing process and also used garage band to create music. There was an option to add copyright free music from a site we were given www.incompetech.com but we decided creating our own music was better. We have also used the stills camera to take the photos you see below and learnt how to do a blog as we had never done one before. Se images above:

1. Using the Blog

2. Using i-movie

3. Using Garage Band

4. Tripod and equipment

5. Camera and firewire lead