Evaluation Part FIVE

Evaluation Part FOUR

Click below to watch part four
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXWIxYjj8Ds

Evaluation Part THREE

Evaluation Part TWO

Evaluation Part ONE

The brief that we were working to said that we had to create an opening sequence which was British Social realism aimed towards the ages of 16-24 and lasted 2 minutes.

Our title was very well thought off, the title “suffocation” related very much to our main female character who literally feels suffocated by her violent husband. The animation on the title is what makes the title very moving and I would say successful. The animation starts of from the letters spaced out then moving together very close and almost suffocating together. The spaced out letters of suffocation help show her isolation at the beginning but then overtime the violence that it built up and created literally starts to suffocate her. When creating the title we decided to keep everything plain firstly because if we made the typography or background more fancy it wouldn’t look like  British social realism film title and more and it would start to look like something which is more Hollywood based. Also by having a a simple font and background it draws attention to what the letters are actually doing, grabbing your attention and focusing on the movement. The music created with our opening sequence is very conventional firstly because it is not something mainstream, it doesn't have and lyrics and the simplicity of the music adds a huge effect to our piece. If you were to watch it without music the effect and the build of would not be the same. Our music was especially composed for us by Faiz Pokun. We told him what our idea was and he tried to create something that we would easily cut the music to but also give a dull and dreary vibe. I think our music is successful because from other audience feedback teenagers found that it was catchy and had a good base and this music is not specifically aimed at them so it just shows how effective the music really is.

The narrative in our opening sequence still sticks to being a British Social realism film but again because we aimed towards a more middle class audience. By doing this it allowed us to be able to film in more classy middle class locations. Our audience feedback alowed us to explore and expand out ideas which we already had. Our focus group gave us feedback on our orginal ideas and how we could improve them, we used a range of ethnictys and mainly teenagers because we wanted to get a better understanding of what attracted them. What really helped was firstly we had a as media student in our focus group which alowed us to get better feedback because they know what sort of answers we are looking for. We showed them a range of BSR films and asked which one they liked the best or disliked the best and feedback on each one, Zahra and myself mainly wanted feedback on one BSR film in paticular because it related theme wise to what Zahra and myself were trying to create. Looking For Eric portrayed some of the themes that we were going to show in our opening sequence such as isolation, dysfunctional families and a main thing that was a build up throughout the film was stress and in our film stress is what triggers all the bad things to happen.

I feel our idea was very original because you don't normally see many middle class BSR films and by just aiming towards a higher class allows you to be able to experiment with new techniques and new ideas and more importantly new loactions which you wouldn't see in a typical BSR film. Using better locations makes it more appealing to look at and then attracts the audience we are aiming to more.

From getting our feedback Zahra and myself then sat down and discussed our final idea what happens in our opening sequence is that we see the abusive husband at work and we see how his work is piling up and how the pressure is getting to him, we then see his journey home and how he encounters a prostitute on his way home committing adultery. And when he gets home he sees his wife waiting for him with a lovely home cooked meal but he just ignores it takes the alcohol and goes upstairs. After we see her clearing up and crying  then resulting to her drowning her sorrows in alcohol.  We show a lot of themes in out opening sequence and when you watch our sequence you see how we show each of them in a subtle way not making it so oblivious and unrealistic. We wanted to show enough so the audience would be able to understand what is actually going on in our opening sequence but we didn't want to show too much because it would start to become unconventional then. Overall when creating our sequence we took into consideration everything from the brief, audience feedback and teacher feedback.

 

Production Log 9

During this week, what we wanted to do production wise was be able to go back over our audience feedback and re-film what we had been given comments on. When getting feedback we showed out draft and a lot of improvements were given our draft was there to basically show the movement of the characters and some of the camera work that will be used. Zahra and myself knew that we didn't want to use any footage from our draft because when filming it we didn't really care about the lighting or costume it was more of a plan to show teachers and students our thoughts on what we wanted to do. This week that we filmed was the half term and we originally planned to do most of our filming during the holidays mainly because it allowed to have a more easy working schedule to go with and because it was the only other time our actors were free, not having the pressure of going back to school or having to film in a certain amount of time allowed us to concentrate more and allowed the characters to really get into role. Being able to re-film helped us make our opening sequence even better and by taking into account and trying to pay attention to detail is made certain points in our opening sequence stand out.
When filming some of out scenes we took inspiration from a Bollywood film which Zahra came across. What we found weird was the two different genres are completely different yet they do scenes which we are trying to imitate.

Production Log 7

What have been the key issues for your production/ post production this week and decisions made?

This week Zahra and myself had finished our pre-production planning  so we started to create our graphics, we wanted a unique title and graphics that would make a statement but not be too overpowering. When creating our 'Suffocation' title it took us a few tried to get what we wanted. We experimented with different positions and fonts and effects, we finally came to the decision that we would use the effect which gradually squashes the text together, this relates to the title because the words are almost suffocated. The simple yet effective title really has a big impact when watching it and is something Zahra and myself is very proud of. We downloaded our font on dafont.com because the fonts already installed in the programme we were using didn't have any fonts that we liked, our chosen font is very slick and smooth and can relate to a main character in are opening sequence, the letters are very refined and spaced out quite a lot relating more to our opening sequence. Zahra and Myself made sure that we choose a suitable title that would be suitable for a British Social Realism film. The typography matches our themes a lot and it something we spent a lot of time on trying to get it the best it can be. At first we used fireworks to try and edit our text but we were having difficulties because when cropping around the text we started to get some white and black bits which make our title look very un professional and tacky. We then downloaded the font we wanted to use and started to edit on LiveType and our problem was resolved. The name of the font we downloaded was 'Neou'. After creating our title we then went on to finish the rest of the credits in the same font but with just a smaller font.

After creating all our credits we then went onto doing a test plan of first shot, we went to our location and experimented with different hot types and how we would film it. We needed to create a smooth track so we decided to get creative and create our own trolley track, by attaching a camera to a trolley with some string we decided to create thing, from learning about it in class we decided to create our own. The trolley track did work but we did have some difficulties with the shakiness of the camera. We then tried to solve the problem by having someone sit in the trolley to weigh it down.                                 

We then recorded ourself showing how we made the trolley and the process we went throught to create it.

Call Sheets 1-8

Suffocation - First Draft & Production Log 8

This is the draft version of our opening sequence we put this together as we wanted to see how our ideas worked together and how they looked on camera and edited in sequence. Rianne and i were given some feedback back from our audience who watched this and evaluated it to see if it met the conventions of a British Social Realism film. We benefited from creating a draft as we are now able to create a opening sequence with a review from our target audience, also we are able re film are tailor the opening sequence to the audience preferences  However there is a piece of clip missing before the opening title that we were not able to film for the due day of the draft because of our actors not being available at certain times however we plan to include the missing part in the final of our opening sequence. The sound will also be cut out and our sound track will be played over the opening sequence. 

This is our draft for our opening sequence, what we did this week was we were editing the draft together. When filming and editing our draft it was mainly to plan out the camera movement and what actions wheer going to take place, many takes were taken to get what we wanted. Although this is rough we aimed to film it as close to what we wanted as possible so when we film the real thing we can use it as a guide.  After creating our draft we showed it to the rest of our class to get feedback on how to improve our sequence. The feedback was very useful because the feedback we got was very specific and good and detailed feedback is very easy to think about and take on board. Bearing in mind in our opening sequence the characters are not in the correct costume and our shots are not in correct lighting. Also there is no sound placed over it and a section where the car is driving off is not been edited in.

Production Log 6

What have been the key issues for your production this week?

This week during production Zahra and myself encountered a few problems when filming out first shot as you can see in the video above what we were aiming to do was create a smooth track because we didn't want to do it the handheld way we though to use a trolley but we had some difficulties on trying to attach the camera to the trolley on what positioning we wanted. Also when filming for the first time when watching it back we noticed that it was very shaky so to counter the shaking we decided to have someone sit in the trolley to weigh it down to make the shaking stop.

We also started to create graphics this week and we picked our initial font from dafont.com, the font we choose suits our opening sequence very well and is very versatile. We started to use a new program for this called LiveType, this program being very different from what we are used to using came across as hard to use at first and then we got use to and realized it is much better than other programs we have used before such as fireworks because it allows you to do so much more with it and you are barely restricted.

What decisions did you make about the issues and why?

When creating the track as you can see above we decided to move the position because firstly we were having trouble attaching it to the trolley but this location on the trolley was better because it was closer to the ground and that it what we wanted the shot to be. By doing this it allowed us to get a more precise shot of someones feet walking and is easier to follow someone feet filming if they are in line with something, so putting it on the top makes it easier for them to follow. 

Style Analysis