'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.