Evaluation (Part 1) - Brief

The brief we were working to was;

You have been approached by Film 4 to make a new British Social Realist film aimed at British 16-24 year olds. To give Film 4 and idea of how your film will develop they have asked you to produce the first 2 minutes of the film, providing a clear sense of the graphical, editing and musical style your film will use. To protect Film 4's reputation as a leader in British cinema the film must conform the conventions of the Socialist genre, and meet audience expectations for this type of film. Finally to keep costs low, all visual and audio material used the film must be entirely original, with the exception of stock sound effects.

The title of our movie was 'Framed.' The most obvious connotation of the title would be the act of someone being framed - which would be the protagonist which actually happens in the narrative. Another connotation of the title could be that someone has painted a picture and framed it to look like something has happened when in fact it hasn't. 

A summary of what happens in out opening sequence is, the protagonist - Jay doing his ordinary job of delivering packages and one day he has to deliver in a basement his never been to before. He delivers the package and gets rang by his employer (antagonist and agent of change) and is told to run, when the door bursts open and an undercover police (second agent of change) arrests Jay as we discover there are drugs in the package. We then see Jay being interviewed in a police station. 

The opening sequence sets up the rest of the film as in the opening sequence we see what events occur at the beginning which will lead him to take his revenge and change as a character throughout the narrative. We drew some inspiration from British Social Realism films such as Adulthood as we a flashback of the events which sent Sam to jail and him coming out which sets up the rest of the movie. 

http://amandeepsallyear12mediastudies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/questionnaire-results.html - Vox Pop Questionnaire Results

On 1.43 in our opening sequence, we can see how the theme of drugs is explored. We used drugs as in our research the most popular films mentioned when asked 'what British Social Realism movies have you seen' was Kidulthood and Adulthood - which tackled drugs which established the themes in British Social Realism.

Framed


               Kidulthood

Other themes we included in the opening sequence was poverty. We denoted that the protagonist was in poverty as in the narrative he was working for minimum wage. This could also be displayed as the clothes worn by the protagonist were very plain and looked inexpensive and had no branding on which could connote the poverty. 

Project Log 9:

This week was probably the most hectic out of all the production weeks due to the deadline approaching and lots of things going on. We started off in the week filming our last few scenes in the opening sequence and finished that early in the week. Once we had finished, we thought that we had finished the filming process and were going to finish editing. But we received feedback from the teachers saying that we could further improve our work by adding different range of shots and include various camera angles and making the whole opening sequence more interesting as a whole.



So we decided to go and re-film the main scenes of our opening sequence which was around one minute thirty of it. We added a different range of camera angles and included much more close ups to show emotion and facial expressions of the character. We also quickened the pace of the opening sequence to make it more interesting and attention grabbing to the viewers. Once we had finished, we looked back at the footage we recorded on the camera we saw that it was much much better then all the footage we had recorded before.



When we got back onto the mac we tried to import all the new footage we had recorded, but every time we tried it kept on coming up with an error. After around an hour of trying to import the footage we realized that the SD card was corrupt. This meant all the footage we had re-filmed was corrupt and there was no way possible of importing and editing the footage to the Mac. As the deadline day was fast approaching, the only options were to re film again or make do with what footage we had. 



We decided to quickly re film the scenes that were lost due to the SD card being corrupt, but we also had to bear in mind that we had to do this very quickly as we also had to edit and import the sound and graphics. We re filmed the scenes which took around an hour and then quickly imported the footage on the mac successfully. We also managed to cut and edit half of the footage, but had to stop there as school was closing.



The next day we continued to edit and put all the footage together. While two people in the group was editing the footage, the third person was finding appropriate music to use in our opening sequence. We narrowed down the music choice to four, and then by elimination process we chose the music that would fit our mood and theme of the narrative and also appealed to British Social Realism. Once we had finished editing all the footage and imported the music, we started to import the credits. Once we imported the credits we realized we could not increase the duration of the credits, which again stopped us from completing the opening sequence. After a while we realized the problem and fixed it so the credits could be tampered with so the duration could be changed. Once this was done we checked through everything and had one final check from the teachers and finally finished and uploaded the final product to YouTube.



In the last lesson of the week, we all watched as a class over our peers opening sequence and provided feedback on it. We included things that we liked, such as technical strengths and narrative strengths and also weaknesses of the work. We also wrote how each opening sequence could be improved. This helped us a lot as we found out what worked well in our opening sequence not just from our point of view but from others, meaning we could improve in the future.

Call Sheet 4:

CALL SHEET

This is the re-film of the interview scene.

Date and time: 16/04/13      1.10 -1.55 Location: Interview Room  (Chadwell Heath Academy) Script scene no.s: Scene 24-28 Contributors: Amandeep Sall, Jaspreet Kaur, Satveer Degun, Melissa Gur Contributors Contact Details: Amandeep Sall – amandeepsall686@gmail.com Jaspreet Kaur – jaspreetkaurrai28@gmail.com Satveer Degun – satveerdegun123@gmail.com Crew: Amandeep Sall, Jasprret Kaur, Satveer Degun Equipment voice recorder,  Tripod, Camera, folder Travel Arrangements: Went to interview room in Chadwell Heath Academy

Final low Quality - Framed

Project Log 8:

What has been the key issues for production/post production this week?

Th biggest and key issue for out production this week was that we had to re-film everything we had done. This was because of the fact that we had too much events going on at one time in a cramped amount of time and also we did not include a range of lots of different shots. 

What decisions did you make about the issues and why?

As a group we sat down and re-evaluated and discusses thoroughly what we could remove from the opening sequence. After quite a while, we came to a decision to remove one and maybe 2 scenes from our opening sequence. We also had to re film what we did in our draft due to the fact that I had a haircut, meaning there would have been continuity error if we had used the draft recording and mixed it with the new filming. We also added more range of shots to provide the opening sequence with more perspectives and also made it more interesting then it was in the draft.

 We also decided to change some things from the script when the main character is being arrested. For example, when we were re-filming, we decided to add in a point of view shot from my perspective when I was picking up the phone in one scene, which is not included in the script. I believe this made the opening sequence more diverse and added elements which you often see in British Social Realism movies. 




Once we had finished with the filming we starting editing on the Mac, once we had imported everything on the Mac and put all the scenes we had done so far in I-Movie, we worked on the graphics.

Draft:

Call Sheet 3 :

CALL SHEET

This is the start of re-filming everything again

Date and time: 11/04/13      11-1.30 Location: Car Park  (Chadwell Heath Academy) Basement (Chadwell Heath Academy) Script scene no.s: Scene 3-23  Contributors: Amandeep Sall, Jaspreet Kaur, Satveer Degun Contributors Contact Details: Amandeep Sall – amandeepsall686@gmail.com Jaspreet Kaur – jaspreetkaurrai28@gmail.com Satveer Degun – satveerdegun123@gmail.com Crew: Amandeep Sall, Jasprret Kaur, Satveer Degun,  Equipment Card box Box,  Tripod, Camera, mobile phones. sugar bags as drugs Travel Arrangements: Walked to car park and basement in Chadwell heath academy