Evaluation tasks

[Task 1]

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How Does My Film Represent Particular Social Groups? [Task 2]

What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute My film? [Task 3]

Who would be the audience for my media product? [Task 4] 

How did I attract/address my audience? [Task 5] 

What have I learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? [Task 6] 

 

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Remembrance Evaluation - Reflections on the preliminary task [Task 7]

Final Video DVD

Please click here for the full resolution/quality version on the original YouTube page 



You may notice that their are not many titles and distribution company logos in this video. This is because:

• Throughout my gangster mob film research what I had noticed was that it was very different to British gangster as there where only a few titles during the opening where a British gangster would be many titles and logos. 
• Films such as 'The Godfather' & 'American Gangster have only a couple of moving titles which I decided to use this idea to create a similar effect for mine. 

This finalised film opening is a combination of 2 separate openings that I made and version 6 of all the opening I produced. 

Communication between the crew

How did we communicate? 

Choosing to have a huge film crew with more than 4-5 people in both shoots, for this film opening to be a success, we had to communicate between each other effectively. Our first thoughts where to have old fashioned approach of actually talking to every individual alone separately but had later found this very difficult as our film crew varied all around Bristol. Our next approach was calling each other using our mobile devices, this was easier but less effective and we could not all communicate together in one chat. The next bright idea that came to mind was to open a 'What's-app' conversation which was way more effective as we could not only communicate all together as one group but also share files between each other which meant that I could send them a link to the blog, the script file, etc. The final and best was the idea of using Facebook to create a private group in which we could all communicate, share files, share videos, share photos, share links, access almost anywhere and so on. Using this modern technology we had made it much easier for ourselves to prepare for a scheduled day to film. Using this modern day technology really gave us the picture of how hard filming would of been back in days where there was no internet or common mobile communication. A screenshot of the groups activity is shown below: 

Editing machines

Editing machine 1 (at college)

Editing machine 2 (At the music Music Studio)

Editing machine 3 (My personal computer at my house) 

Photographs from filming

Fourth and final Draft

What was wrong with this?

• Too many production/distribution titles i.e. produced by two different companys
• Still titles go too fast
• still title font and colour font don't go with the rest of the opening
• You can hear the annoying noises of the camera being moved around
• Camera is unsteady and the stabilisation effect has created a weird effect where the screen is wobbling. 
• background sound is too high i.e. you can hear the sounds of the birds which is unconventional and shows the boss and his family to be weak. 

This draft is the best so far but it would be a waste to throw away the initial film so I will further experiment on attaching the two together to create one. 

- All my ideas cannot be written down but basically, I am planning to fade from the two henchmen taking the snitch to the boss, to zooming out of the snitches face from the initial film. This will then fade from the slap to a point of view shot of the snitch getting the talk from the boss and later being shot by the bosses main man. As the gun goes up, I am planning to add the gun shot title and edit the titles so it displays the director(s) on the bullet and the film title 'SOLO BUSINESS' as the title which gets blown away. I am also planning to keep the distribution and production company title at the beginning (the city CGI). 

*UPDATE* 

I have managed to attach both together and have cut out a lot in order to keep the film just below three minutes.   

I will be using this as my final piece and have received positive feedback from this opening.

Third Draft

What was wrong with this?

• Still a little too long
• Audio overlapping worked but was a little unclear with the background sound of the titles
• Camera was a little shaky at times and the audience could notice the stabilisation effect at for example, [0.54] where the sky is a little flashy. 
• dialogue was a little low volume and background music yet again overpowered dialogue at times
• around [2:11] you can hear a little laughter (low level) from the background where the two henchmen walk away. - This isn't a big problem as acting is not key but helps make the film come across better.
• [2:33] the boss doesn't have his hat on, [2:35] he does. This was not noticed by a class of around 20 but was later noticed by me when analysing myself. 

Second Draft

What was wrong with this?

• The opening was too long to be marked (4:07) 
• Their was no distribution company title (all MOB Gangster films included this and not so not including this made the film opening unconventional. 
• opening did not include any credits for the director's, etc. 
• Audio overlapping did not work at times i.e. while on the phone
• film opening was all in daylight and unconventional as I initially planned for it to be low level lighting
• background music overpowered the dialogue at times
• At times, the opening lacked continuity which was a huge problem. (only about 2 cuts where like this). 
• Cut out dialogue from the boss did not make sense as a lot of previous dialogue had been cut out.
• Blood from gun shot at the end looked somehow unrealistic but wasn't a major problem

First Draft

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QxRVPfYAZg

                                                                        [remember, their is a full screen button below me                                                                                       -top right- if you cannot see the text.]

Initial Film- early filming (january - December)

Below is the initial film show screened on January to class. I will be uploading below, the edited version of my production and my raw footage put together.

[The video being on Blogspot, gets highly compressed and loses a lot of quality due to lossy compression and is not at full resolution, for better quality please visit the actual Youtube page by either clicking the Youtube icon on the video or going to the direct link under the video]

First screening (RAW)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL03H4rX1zQ]


First screening (edited)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfb_qt4jD80]
                                                                            [remember, their is a full screen button below me                                                                                       -top right- if you cannot see the text.]

Improvements and revisions for re-shooting

Filming improvements: 

• Some scenes are too dark (film under a light source) - This can also be tweaked through editing
• Get actors to learn their lines in order for the filming to be done at a faster pace. This is important because last time we filmed, we took so long to finish filming that it gradually went past our filming schedule for that day and it started raining which was a huge problem for the camera and actors. 
• Dialogue needs to be more clear and slaps/punches need to be clear and done while filming. 
• Camera needs to be steady at all times unless intended 
• Use punches except for slaps as some people found the slaps unconventional. I disagreed with this as I had seen a similar slap in 'The Godfather Part 2.' So this is not very important. 
• Shots are too jumpy and need continuity. This got our audience confused (from the reviews) and either need to be thought through, audio overlapped or the jump cuts need to be a feature in the film in order for it to give an intended effect. 
• Avoid showing street signs, houses, etc. in the background as this was seen as unconventional and the focus was said to be on the street sign at some parts of the opening. 

Editing improvements:

• Some scenes are too dark and effects can be added to either create a separate light source or adjust brightness, contrast and saturation settings in order to reveal more of the scene. 
• The film opening's colour is too warm and can be made a little cooler by making the blue colours more revealing. 
• Overlap audio (dialogue)
• Style/font/placement of titles not working 
• Background non diegetic music needs to run smoother (too much fading and its noticed) 
• The music is looped too much and more of the videos raw sound would be better 

Raw footage of my final construction

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0D-YLgOi-4&feature=youtu.be

What has been edited?

• The background noise has been reduced with Logic Pro (sound gate) 
• Annoying noises from the camera movement has been completely removed with Logic Pro        (sound gate)
• Brightness, contrast and saturation has been tweaked to give my intended effect (the scenes are less dark, less warm and more cool) - this has been done in After effects using magic bullet and optical flares to create an additional light source other than the natural lighting. 
• Scenes have been split to fit the rest of the footage in Premier pro (Razor tool) 
• Non dietetic music has been created/added through Logic pro and later produced with premier pro
• The camera has been stabilised all the way through using a function inside After effects called 'Stabilisation.' 
• Diegetic sound has been created in the music studio, processed through Logic pro and later produced in premier pro. These sounds include: Phone vibration, extremely low talking through phone, gun pull-back, etc. 
•  Annoying background plane noise has been reduced with noise gate in logic pro and later covered up with background non diegetic music
• All audio from video has been raised with a function inside logic pro called 'compression' which basically squeezes all the sound together and puts all sound at one level so we don't have some sounds very high and some sounds very low. This has also been later raised even more through premier pro. 
• End sound of engine has been reduced with logic pro (noise gate) and later covered up with background music in premier pro. 
• Beginning and ending titles have been added