Evaluation Part 8 - Preliminary Task vs BSR Opening Sequence

Evaluation Part 7 - Technology

Evaluation Part 6 - Attracting / Addressing Audience

Evaluation Part 5 - Representation of Social Groups

Evaluation Part 4 - Using, Developing & Challenging BSR Conventions

Evaluation Part 3 - Impact of Film 4

Evaluation Part 2 - Target Audience

Links:
Meet My Audience 
Vox Pops

Evaluation Part 1 - Summary of brief

The actual brief given:  

"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 two minutes of the film, providing a clear sense of the graphical, editing and music style your film will use. To protect Film 4's reputation as a leader in British cinema the film must conform to the conventions of Social Realist genre, and meet all audience expectations for this type of film.  Finally, to keep costs low, all visual and audio material used in the film must be entirely original, with the exception of stock sound effects." 

Actors who had little experience

My film is aimed at a 16-24 year old British audience, as I have used actors who fit the age group the opening sequence is aimed at, which creates a more real view of the storyline we have created. If the actors we used were of a younger age we may have lost the realism that we created in the racially motivated fight scene (1:05 - end). The actors had minimal professional acting experience, which allowed the actors interpret our ideas and explore their own characters, but still keeping it fixed to the social realist genre. The opening sequence is 1:41, which barely scrapes the 20% of 2 minutes either way, but I feel like we have explored as much of narrative, characters and locations that we possibly could have. All of our editing and filming was material we recorded ourselves, and the music was copyright free, and creative commons, which means we needed no permission to use it. We also included basic opening sequence conventions: Film 4 logo: showing the institution we had made our film in conjunction with, and also a Production logo, Compass Films to show the company who supplied general filming equipment and such. The graphics in our production included producers, writers, directors, editors, producers and actors, and did not included roles such as make up artist and location designer, as there was no make up and sets designed to keep to the true realism of the brief and relate back to the genre.

Production Company Logo

Institution Logo

(0:48 the title appears)

The title of my production is 'Faith' which is first shown to the audience at 0:48, as Usama is walking down a road to mosque in his Muslim clothing. We chose to use the superimposed graphic over this shot as it shows the Islamic nature our film holds to it reinforcing that religion is a main theme that runs throughout the film. By showing clips of Usama praying (0:18 & 0:26-0:31) this establishes that Usama's religion is a big part of his life. By having these praying shots parallel to shots of Joe waking up and getting out of bed (0:20-0:25 & 0:32-0:34) , foreshadows that these characters will meet later in the film and be involved in each others situations. Another connotation of the word 'Faith' is that the word foreshadows the friendship Joe and Usama build towards the end of the film. Usama eventually has 'faith' or 'trust' in Joe, and realises that he is not a bad person, just someone who conforms to the majority / authority figure, in our film this would be Bobby. 

My opening sequence is about a muslim teenager, Usama, who is on his way to mosque, and while walking there, he gets stopped by a gang of angsty white national boys. One of these boys, Joe, doesn't like how the gang leader, Bobby insists on beating him up, and feels sorry for Usama, and goes to stop Bobby, but Eoin holds him back. The fight scene idea came from the This is England fight scene between Combo & Milky, a racist nationalist and a Jamaican teenager, a racially motivated fight. There is more indepth analysis of this sequence on my treatment. 

One of the main themes in our production is violence. This is show majorly in the dialogue and actions during the fight scene. Eoin saying ''he's just on one of his crusades again'', connotes that Bobby is a violent thug. Joe proceeds to say ''Kill one for me, yeah?'' connoting the gang of boys are all as violent as each other. At 1:21 the low angle shot of Bobby looking down at Usama and breathing, who looks proud of what he's done and who he got all his pent up anger out on. Another theme is religion, the ethnic font we used for our typography is an arabic style, which connotes the religious element of the film is a strong yet harsh one. Usama's costume was a Jubba, a muslim item of clothing which is used during prayer times for the Islamic men, making the religious aspect of the film inforced even more, making it more realistic. The contrast of clothing between Usama and the white boys is very different, Usama wears religious clothing while the three boys don dirty tracksuits and large scummy coats to make them look bigger and tougher than they really are. Poverty is another main theme in the film. We can see poverty through locations, appearance and clothing. The montage at the start of the film shows run down old locations: an alleyway with graffiti, train tracks, gratified/barbed wired building, old flats and a main road with old cars with old registration plates.

These locations are raw and real, and give the audience a perception of where the characters live, and an idea of what locations they hang out in. Usama's house is quite poverty stricken. The paint is peeling off and cracked on the front porch door. This connotes poverty and the fact that the families do not really care about the appearance of their house. This is then contrasted with the fact that Usama says 'bye mum' as he leaves, connoting the family may not have a lot of money but they have each other and thats all that really matters.  Also the location where the fight scene is held is in a disgusting, grungy back alley, further exploring the harsh nature and poverty families in Britain face every day.

Overall, I feel like I have met the brief, taking in to consideration all of the typical opening sequence conventions and conventions of the British Social Realism genre. Also, our film had a blue tinted colour palette which is commonly used in BSR films like Fish Tank, which is set in a location not too far to where we filmed our film. 

Production Log 17

The production is finally over and completed!!

I personally feel my production was successful and the final result looked really like a film from the BSR genre. I feel like Eoin and I stuck to the main BSR conventions very well as we were making the production and were constantly aware of rules such as the 180º rule and the rule of thirds. The pre-production stages had its ups and downs but overall in the end the opening sequence turned out pretty good, and all the hard work payed off.

Overall I feel like I contributed equally with Eoin during all stages of production. I took Eoin's idea and together we both shaped and moulded it into something workable. I feel most of my input into the production was during the directing and editing stages even though we worked together. During the editing process my main input was vocal, as i told Eoin what I thought worked and didn't work, and voiced my opinions very clearly, which I feel made the production look less messy and more clean cut.

During the making of the production i feel Eoin & I got on really well, and if we had problems we always voiced them without arguing. This made the whole process a lot easier and he is a really good listener who always took into consideration my ideas and different ways to edit shots to form a good sequence. The fact that we could communicate well proves that communication is key when working with a group, and both our creative personalities came together to form a good opening sequence. 

I feel the strengths of making this production were:

• A strong violent fight scene exploring the themes of violence which are typical of the genre.
• Setting the key locations, by establishing shots, and the first 10 second opening montage of the surrounding area.
• Also the parallel editing between Joe and Usama, to show that in some way they are connected and the two main characters the film would go on explore.
• And also gaining an amazing friendship by working with Eoin. 

Final Production

Production Log 13/14/15

Graphics

This week we started making opening titles and graphics that will be super-imposed for our opening sequence. We started to use Livetype to create our graphics which is another production programme we are able to use. This process has been very time consuming due to teaching ourselves the basics of using a new piece of software. We chose an ethnic font to use as our substantial font for our production to re-inforce the ethnic and realist themes in our production. The font is an Arabic style font but it is not over complicated, allowing the the target audience to read the graphics clearly. Eoin & I felt super imposed graphics stuck to the conventions of the BSR genre, as we did not want to differ throughout and this allows the audience to still focus on onscreen action and events. The only full screen graphics we will have are the Film 4 logo and Compass Films. These two graphics are the most important as they show the Instiution logo and production company. The title of the film 'Faith' will be a superimposed graphic, and it will be super imposed on the last football scene, and will fade as the ball is kicked. We chose this to happen because it keeps the audience drawn to the story and creates an almost enigmatic foreshadowing of what happens later in the sequence. The foreshadow comes roughly about 20 seconds after when Usama in his traditional Muslim attire gets kicked by Ethan, an intolerant attack on faith is transcended through a foreshadow as the word 'Faith' is kicked.

Filming

Filming has been completed over 6 different days, which is a decent time schedule, and has been spread out over just over a month. Sticking to our filming schedule has been hard, as different people aren't always available, so sticking to a strict schedule has been difficult. The actors have all been very helpful and have helped us keep continuity through the film, by wearing the same clothes, as not all continuous scenes were shot at the same time. Filming non-linear has both pros and cons, but it is much easier to do, and work around other people, in some filming days we may have only done two shots, which we could just piece in to the editing sequence. One criticism of our filming so far is that there are some shadows on the fight scene of the camera and actors who are on screen which makes the opening sequence look messy, and the lighting is too bright and early in the day for the scene to take place, so I feel like we may have to refim that scene to make it look more believable. We have stuck well to our shooting scripts, and have also added a few scenes to create a more real storyline which the audience will not just think, "how did the scene change that quickly?" So we"43 giving reassuring scenes that the characters have a developing movement to get from one place to another. 

Sound

Music has been a difficult aspect of the production for us as we have struggled to find a piece of music which suits the themes snd storyline of the film. This has caused conflict and it is really difficult to find a song which connotes some of what the piece explores. Also we have to have permission to use the song in our piece which is difficult, and the Creative Commons soundcloud page is full of wonderful songs but Eoin & I are yet to find a suitable song. A sound effect we may have to use is a phone, because in one scene one of the boys gets a phonecall from Ethan and he just picks up a silent phone, which we will have to do something about.

Overall the production is going well so far and is coming to shape nicely.

Production Log 16

This week we made our production logo in Fireworks, because it is a simple programme to use and is not too complicated to use. We chose Compass Films as our production company name because the films the company could possibly produce would be set all over the world, starting with the BSR genre and then move on to other realist cultures in the world. The compass on our logo is very simplistic and not over complicated connoting our films will be easy to understand. Also this week we had to change our graphics in Livetype because of the changes in characters & scenes we had edited out of the opening sequence. Also this week we did a wide and broad search for music as we can not find a piece of music that we find suitable for our opening. 

After both of our media teachers watched our almost completed opening sequence, they both gave us constructive criticism. This included making the 2/5 still scenes in the montage opening sequence have movement, and completely cut out all of the football scenes and scenes after the fight scene. Mr P. advised us to focus more on the fight scene which can connote more violence, and really sell the BSR violent tendencies and themes to the target audience. This was a good shout and we spent the majority of Saturday re-filming lots of scenes in a back alleyway behind houses near the school. The changes we were told to make have potentially saved our coursework grades, and being able to really do a good job in exploring the BSR genre ourselves. We also filmed some parallel scenes, with Usama and Joe, as they are the two boys who's lives are intertwined some way, and we needed to show the audience this. 

We decided to cut the scenes after the fight scene because feedback told us it was too messy and there was an unclear meaning of some characters. Also the friendship between the two boys was said to have a homosexual aspect to it, and we cut a scene where Usama waves to Joe, to get rid of the wrong impression we may have gave to the audience.  

I feel like this week has so far had a good outcome due to good progression with the film even though there has been drastic changes which would have gone unnoticed by Eoin & I if the teachers had not pointed them out 

Production Log 8

The idea for our BSR concept came from a lot of different aspects. Racism in BSR is a key theme which is almost always touched upon in the BSR genre, and we felt we had to put a twist on the stereotype of caucasian males in london exploiting extreme racism amongst youth culture. Our idea is easy to portray due to the many different types of violent racism, not just knife crime and gang culture which is a big issue in London. Racism towards Islam is usually motivated by a spark in events shown in the media in different parts of the world, such as the shootings at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, and the Sydney cafe siege. A friendship between a two boys of different cultures becoming friends shows the good side to boys caught up in gangs and explores the peer pressure involved in attacking someone you genuinely like and have no reason to attack. Living in the very multicultural society in suburban London, has its benefits which allowed us to find suitable actors for the role.

As it goes for choosing a partner to work with in this piece of coursework, I needed someone I had a good friendship with and knew they are reliable. Eoin is calm and thinks relatively in the same ideologies as me, so combined i feel we could make a good BSR film. A passion for media and good skills with editing and filming combined will make sure our BSR opening sequence is a success and i don't doubt that we will let this film fail as we are both very strong, passionate and really want to do well in  this piece of coursework.