AS Film Extract Evaluation Ali Westwood

I took the role of editor on our group and after completing the final edit of our film, with a few things I’d change about it, I can say that I am overall pleased with our final edit. Films such as ‘Trainspotting’ and ‘This is England’ influenced us, as they are both successful low budget gritty British films. Our film was based around a lonely and isolated teenage boy called ‘Wally’.

In the extract of our film ‘Chump’, Wally encounters two other teenage boys, who are seen as thugs and unfortunately gets mugged by the two.
By being influenced by films such as ‘Kidadulthood’ and ‘This is England’ we took the idea of loneliness from the character Shaun from ‘This is England’ and wanted to make it as much like as modern day Britain as we could. This influenced our costumes and the dialogue of our film. The costume’s we used for the two thugs (who mug main character Wally) are stereotypical costumes of thuggish modern day teenage boys, such as the trainers, trackies and hoods. This helped the modern day audience to determine that they were the dangerous characters when they first appear on screen.
To develop the narrative in our film, I tried to use smoother cuts when the character Wally is at home and in his comfort zone to keep the start of the extract relaxed and then build the tension from there. I used longer cuts in the home scene in attempt to create this effect of a more relaxed state on the audience. The further he gets through his morning routine I used shorter cuts to start building up the tension as it gets closer to the scene where he is being mugged. However, there is one cut in where Wally is walking down a road in where it is far to long – as you can see from the screenshot taken from final cut, you can see that the shot goes on for longer than 10 seconds; and because of this it loses its tension building effect on the audience.

Looking back on that cut, if I were to edit it again I would split the shot down into three cuts fading in and out as he is walking down the road to keep the tension building and the audience interested. After receiving feedback on my microelement (Editing), The criticism from people who watched the extract also picked up on the long cut and commented that it ruined the tension. I managed to use an editing technique which was inspired by watching ‘The Matrix’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arcJksDgCOU&feature=related) which gave the shot a smooth cut of the character Wally walking down the hall.
Looking back on my micro element Editing, I had to do a lot of cutting down on the shots as once we first finished our rough edit it was pushing 5minutes which exceeded the 2-3minute limit we were given. There are a few little mistakes and changes I have noticed and would like to have changed after completion of the film. There are things such as the shot where we have the character Wally putting on his shoes and walking out the door, that at the time of filming the shot the character Wally didn’t properly shut the door, which if was shut properly would have had a nice effect with the juxataposition of the fridge door shutting in the previous shot and would of gave the scene a nice effect.

There is also a mistake we noticed due to the feedback from Jake Wynne who directs and edits short films (www.jakewynne.com) who pointed out how Wally leaves where he was sitting and turns left, however the next shot we see him walking in the opposite direction. He also pointed out how we had a POV shot of Wally spraying anti persperant and it spoilt the build up as he commented that it made it humourous. As this wasn’t the effect we wanted it to have on the audience, due to his feedback on it, I decided to cut the first part of the POV shot in order to try and keep the flow and build of the narrative.

To conclude, despite being unhappy with a few cuts which should have been better, I am overally pleased with seeing our completed film extract.

'Chump' Sequence Evaluation Sam Bols

Film Evaluation

Watching the finished sequence from my groups British crime film ‘Chump’, I am very pleased with the outcome. Taking ideas from the films ‘Kidulthood’ (Menhaj Huda 2006) and ‘This is England’ (Shane Meadows 2006) my group attempted to combine ideas and themes from both films. We used the idea of violence and youths thuggish lifestyle from ‘Kidulthood’ to create the main antagonists personality. We also based our sequence in an estate and tried to make the sequences setting portray a rough lifestyle. We took ideas of loneliness from the film ‘This is England’, and attempted to portray our main protagonist as being very seldom and extremely lonely in the beginning of our film.

My Microelement I chose to work with was sound.

(Screen grab of timeline in final cut express)

Sound is a highly important role in any film. There are two types of sound in a film; the first one is diagetic sound. Diagetic sound is sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film. For example voices of characters, sounds made by objects in the film, music coming from different sources such as instruments or sources of media. The second type of sound is non-diagetic sound, this is sound that is not visible on screen and has not been implied to be present in the action of the characters in the film.

Whether the sound is diagetic or non-diagetic without sound then it is next to impossible to create a tense atmosphere. This is because sound is used to add emotion and rhythm to a film or sequence. An example of non-diagetic sound that is used in films is when the music builds up to make a more tense atmosphere, this tends to happen in thriller films when something scary is about to happen. Sound allows the audience to build up in suspense.

For our groups soundtrack I developed a piece of music entitled ‘Bring On The Bassline’ on a music developing program called Fruityloops. The sound was built from scratch using no loops of sound taken from other songs, or any loops made by the Fruitloops Company on the program. To achieve the final out product I used a lot of different musical instruments, and a plug-in called ‘Predator’ to develop the bass. Some of the instruments I used to create this piece include guitars, drums, sythns, orcastral, and piano. All layered on top of each other with different roles and beat patterns to create the final piece.

Personally I am very pleased with the music and think that it creates atmosphere very well. It also builds up energy and tension in the film, as at the beginning of the sequence the film starts of slowly just like the main protagonists’ (Wally) life.

In addition to the soundtrack my role was also to put in sound effects in the sequence to help build up and develop atmosphere. In the sequence I included the sounds of a harsh loud engine of a car roaring down the road followed by the sound of ‘sirens’ from a police car. This works well in the sequence as it adds to the impression that the setting is very urban and rough.

The original plan would be to have a fight or a chase seen in the beginning of the sequence. However we thought that to start a film of with violence straight from the roll of the titles, we decided would not be appropriate for the begging of our film as we wanted to introduce the main character and show his life to get the audience more involved and have more feelings and sympathy towards our main protagonist as the sequence unravels.

Once our group finished the sequence, an audience viewed it we had a great response to the clip. The feedback that personally applied to my role as sound man, was extremely positive and the soundtrack was a success as it did what I wanted it to do, which was to build up a tenser atmosphere.

To conclude, overall I am very pleased with the final sequence. Given more time I am sure my group could have improved on the sequence as we all had a lot of good mixed ideas about the film and storyboard. But overall I am hugely pleased with the outcome and I hope to be able to do something like it or similar again soon.

Editing

After we had completed the filming i started the editing using Final Cut. With many different and interesting camera angles produced by the cinematographer made the editing a fun and interesting job in trying to make the most of the different shots effective. With having so many different shots to choose from, it was difficult to decide which shots to use and the ones not to. It came across that the film ended up too long and was pushing 5minutes, so i had to be more strict on the cuts and some of the footage i used. I managed to use the editing technique as i mentioned in my previous post in the shot where the main character "Wally" is walking through the hallway to the bathroom.