The topic that we have chosen to do from the Brief is The Secret
Mixture of Action and Horror
Film Noir (1950's theme)
The pitch
There were many gunshots all around Greenford and many innocent people had been shot dead.
Before the murders, people in Greenford were quite jolly but the murder turned everything upside down.
Everyone in Greenford would wear brown bags with smiling faces on them (coloured in yellow); They are using these bags because underneath the brown bags, they are feeling down due to the fact they believe that this is a unsafe place to live in and people are thinking that they may be next.
This is used to symbolise the bizarre features that is linked to the arthouse movie effect.
Another reason why we chose this feature is because it will show they have a hidden identity and the people who would normally killed someone wouldn't be sure who their target may be.
Our production was all to do with a hostage. A man was kidnapped by the 'boss' since he didn't give him the money for some reason and therefore tied him up and started to torture him, which then led to the innocent man being dead. We used quite a lot of straight cuts and a variety of match on actions with some that had failed and also attempted to do the 180 degree rule.
Planning
First of all, in our group we had 4 different people including myself. We then had to split the work among ourselves; Me and Sunny did the script, Sunny did half of the storyboard with Rashida doing the other half and Ladan doing the shot list. I think that if we didn't split this work into 4, then we wouldn't have gotten up to the deadline of when the production was due and I still think we would've been still filming. However, we came across that and got everything complete. On the other hand, I still think that we should had a detailed storyboard and we also should've stuck to every single shot because when we were actually filming the production, it was half planned and half not planned which I think took a lot more time doing this. Therefore, our one improvement as a group should be stick more to our planning which would result in us getting the work done much quicker because we had only finished the production the day before we actually screened it.
Strengths and Weaknesses
In this production, we had quite a lot of positives and very small amount of negatives which I think was really good and shows how well we did when it came to the planning because of this outcome. The types of positives we had from this production was the make up, the performances, the contrapuntal sound of when Sunny was listening to that sound track (when there was screaming in the background), the match-on-action at the beginning of the production and the handheld camera. The one that I believe was really strong with our production was the off screen violence and the lighting. We were able to join these two key techniques together by creating a shadow of the violence that was happening between the main protagonist and the antagonist by using our prop (the floodlight). The lighting itself was coming from underneath which allowed us to have the shadows of the two bodies on the white wall. I also believe that we had a good use of cinematography, as I think we used both the panning and tilt very well; We used these two when the part of the main protagonist was tied up and there was a panning movement and then went to a tilt movement when it was showing the boss. Also, we used a wide range of close medium shots when the antagonist was speaking which I thought was done really well, as it caught the eyes of the audience since he seemed very angry by the look on his face and also quite intimidating since he was wearing that red tie and that long jacket. The red tie could be associated with blood which is also linked to death so that's why we got the character to wear this tie colour. The contrapuntal sound was used to show a bit of humor to the audience which suggested that you don't need to just have the production based on one genre only, it can also be based on something completely opposite which in this case it was comedy. In my opinion, I think that this contrapuntal sound created a little enigma code of why is this 'so called' Heavy listening to music when he should be the type of guy who would kill someone and not listening to pop music. Throughout the whole of the production, there was a variety of action codes created, e.g. why was 'the Boss' playing with his ring and why was the knife of the table?
On the other hand, the negatives that we spotted out in this clip was that we failed on the 180 degree rule. This is simply because when we were viewing the antagonist, when had the camera on the other side of him which therefore seemed that he was speaking to himself since the main protagonist hadn't been revealed at that time of the production. Therefore, in order to improve this next time, we need to do trial and error before we finally put it all together because if it doesn't look right, we can always change it before publishing it. Another thing we need to improve on is the sound because sometimes, 'the boss' may be speaking quietly and at another time, he may be speaking quite high pitched, e.g. when he was screaming, it was too loud for the audience and therefore, I think that the voice should be consistent throughout the whole production.
WWW: Some good attempts to incorporate media language
EBI: Re-Do Qs 1 + 4
Q1)
At the beginning of this extract, it shows a beaten up man who is sitting on the floor and is about to set fire to something but another man who was on a particular balcony and looked rather intimidating, urinated the fire when the line of fire came level to the balcony. This man had then come down to the person who was on the ground. He looked quite intimidating because of the long, dark coat he was wearing alongside the hat which showed that it is linked to a film noir novel. It was also dark clothes, he was wearing which can suggest that he is a villain.
At the beginning of the extract, it showed a dead body which will obviously show the audience that this type of genre is going to be a thriller and crime type of movie if they had already shown a dead body in the first few minutes. Another action code which suggests that this movie was something down the lines of being a thriller movie is the gun that the shadowed man had, which he used to kill the worn out man, sitting on the ground. The action code created by this is that what made him shoot the character why was sitting on the floor? Some audience may believe it had something to do with the dead body in the beginning.
Before the shadowed protagonist had shot that person, the protagonist who was sitting down seemed very relaxed which could result into knowing that this whole thing of the person being shot was planned because he didn't really do anything to stop himself from being shot by the antagonist in the hat and trench coat.
Q4)
In the beginning of the extract, it showed a slow motion effect of the helpless character on the floor lighting up the paper with his cigarette which was creating more and more tension because it suggested to the audience that he was either going to be doing something bad or it may just be the characters role where he might be struggling.
Throughout most of the extract, it showed a wide range of editing techniques which did create a lot of tension through most of the extract as well. First of all, there was a wide range of straight cuts which was showing different parts of the setting. The setting seemed quite dull and evacuated which may suggest the fire because it wouldn't be safe for people to be around there. There were also many different straight cuts happening between the hopeless man sitting on the floor and the man in the trench coat. This showed that they were having a conversation with one another because of the 180 degree angle the shot was taken at and because of how they were looking at one another (one looking down and the other looking up). Also, this suggested that there was shot/reverse shot going on because continuous straight cuts were happening while the conversation was going on between the two characters. This created a lot of suspense because the cuts were moving really quickly and this is when the enigma code took place in the extract where what the audience that is going to happen next between the two characters. Later on in the extract, the enigma code was finally answered when the man in the trench coat finally pulled out a gun and killed the man on the floor.
