AS Film Studies Coursework

The aspect of filmmaking that I undertook as part of my AS project was sound. I was chosen to undertake this task because I had the most knowledge of audio within the group, having used Audacity, Garageband and Fruitloops before. Sound played an important role in our film because there was a lot of dialoge, keeping with the theme of a drama focussing on social realism.

Originally we had ‘Kidulthood’ in mind while making our film and so I looked into music of the ‘Grime’ genre, used to represent youths and what they are listening to. After this reasearch I understood that most tracks of this genre were around 140bpm and usually had a male MC rapping over them. Due to this, I set about making a grime track using the software ‘Garage Band’ at 140 beats per minute. I then found a royalty free clip of a grime MC acapella at the same bpm and was then able to cut the clips together to create a copywrite free tune, but without the need to actually ask somebody I knew to attempt rap vocals, which would take too much time and probably sound unproffessional. The track was effective and definately riffed on the themes of youth running through our film. I even edited the sound of a few different phones ringing into a tune, to further identify with youngsters.

However, I had made this before the actual film at hand and once it was created we realised that the track didn’t really fit with the film, both stylisticly (The location originally in mind was mainly on the streets but we ended up setting a lot of it outside) and that there was just no audio/visual relation so I knew I had to change and adapt what I had already made.

Our film was almost all dialogue, so in the end I decided not to include any non diagetic sound whatsoever because it would disrupt the rest of the film and be out of place. I also belive that by having no non diagetic sound we fit the genre of a social commentry better, and personaly I was influenced by the Dogme 95 style of filmmaking, of having no music and only natural lighting, creating a more realistic feel to the film and making it seem quite raw and edgy. In fact, a film that is shot in this way “Red Road” hugely unfluenced me by opening my eyes to how effective silence can be. There is a scene in our extract that includes somebody being pushed over and hurt, I could have done the predictible and included a dramatic sound effect, but by not having any sound at all the result is much edgier and almost tests the viewer by not using sound to tell them what they should think, but instead allowing them to decide the emotion they feel over the incident for themselves.

I worked in a collaborative manner with my group after knowing this was the choice I was going to go for, and so the editing was done in a fast fashion, deliberately leaving no space for intervals but being completely understandable due to having a good script. We wanted this breathless feel to add a sense of panic, this feel was also helped by our use of inturuption within the dialogue, and so I had to layer sounds in some areas to make the conversation still flow.


The green areas in the picture are sound, and you can see where I have used overlapping for effect.

I had asked the actors to speak clearly so that their voices were clear and they all did brilliantly but unfortunately there was a lot of wind on the camera which I hadn’t noticed when watching the film on the mac, but then when played to the class it became clear and I had a lot of feedback about how I could have dealt with this. If I could have done the project again I would have removed the sound from the clips completely and asked the actors to completely re-record their lines for a more crisp and clean sound. There was no other critical feedback relating to sound, and I am glad that people understood how music was not neccisary for a film of this type.

In conclusion, I am happy with the choices made within my micro element, but I do wish I had asked the actors to overdub their lines. I also wish that I had used the song I had made over the end credits, as I feel it would have helped express our ‘Kidulthood’ influence more strongly without inturrupting the feel of the rest of the film.

Film Studies Evaluation

Our aim was to create a 3 – 4 minute clip of an original film. The genre we chose was crime thriller hybrid similar to Bullet Boy (2004, Saul Dibb) and Kidulthood (2006, Menhaj Hudda) which we watched clips of for research. The basic plot line for our film involves the main protagonists Emma and Darius in each of their struggles against (or for) drugs. The other character shown in our segment of the film is a friend of Darius who has a few lines but less social status than Darius. We had to swap some character's roles around and get rid of some after several issues involving missing actors.

My role in the group was Director. I found this role increasingly difficult as we seemed to come across more and more problems. However I feel we managed to pull together a reasonable (however short) clip of a film. While filming, I collaborated a lot with Becca, the cinematographer. I found this very helpful as we could work around the problems together and end up with a better result. It was difficult to fulfil my job as director while acting but this issue became increasingly easier as we filmed more scenes and I learnt how to do both jobs at the same time. I found the television Misfits (2009, Howard Overman) useful as a similar genre. The camera shots are similar to our film and a lot of the programme is made up of dialogue. I blocked the scenes in our film in a similar way to Misfits, often positioning the characters in the frame together if the relationship is positive and having them in separate frames if the relationship is negative.

Fig. 1 and 2 demonstrate the close relationships of the characters by being positioned in the same frame.

Originally, we were going to create the lead up to the climax of the film. The scenes we were going to film were a scene involving and extra character Darius with his friend discussing the past event of Emma demanding drugs from him. The following scene would be the flashback showing the previously discussed events. This would involve Darius pushing Emma and injuring her. The next scene would be the confrontation between Darius and Marcus (and extra character we later had to drop) who is Emma's boyfriend. The scene involves Marcus confronting Darius about hurting Emma and the two characters continue to threaten each other throughout the scene. The scene ends with Darius pulling out a gun. There is then a sudden blackout and the sound of a gunshot is heard. This creates the question of whether Marcus has been shot or if Darius missed.

The first problem that we had was that we couldn't film the use of a realistic looking fake gun in public due to rules set out by the college and the risk of a member of the public calling the police. At first, we tried to find another suitable location (that original location was the train station car park) where the public would not be involved but all the options we came up with didn't seem suitable. We then decided to alter the script to adjust to this difficulty. It was decided that instead of using a gun, both characters would approach each other with intent for violence. We would use quick cuts and low angles to create a tense atmosphere and give the characters power and status. It would then proceed to cut to black, leaving the audience wondering who won the fight.

We then successfully managed to film the above scene, as well as the extra scene previously mentioned, fairly easily with all the actors. However after uploading the footage onto the computer, we noticed that a large amount of our footage had disappeared and had been replaced by some blank footage. This could be due to us rewinding the tape while filming and recording over the top of the footage accidentally. This really let us down and we realised we would have to film the entire clip again. We did, however, feel that it would be easier the second time as we had done it before and would be practised at each of the camera shots needed.

Unfortunately, after planning to film again on several occasions, the actors we were planning to use became mostly unavailable. Finally, after being left with one actor, we managed to pull together a new version of the script and piece and use some previously filmed footage. We cut out several characters and changed around which actors played which characters. We had to play most of the characters ourselves, with Jennie playing Emma, Marcus (who originally played a character of the same name) playing Darius, Becca playing Emma's friend and myself playing Darius' friend.

While filming some scenes of the film we had the problem of only having one person to operate the camera, direct and hold the script and storyboard. I filled in this role while filming the scene of Emma and Darius. This problem occurred again but worse when I was not available to film and Jennie and Becca were both acting. They solved this problem by setting up the camera first, to then move in front of the camera to act.

Of course, if I was to film this section again, I would make sure we sorted out all of the problems that occurred ahead of time. For example, making sure the actors are available a significant time before actually filming, and checking that all technical things are in working order and we know how to use them so as to not lose any valuable footage.

Film Extract Evaluation

Our task was to create a two minute long segment of film. I took on the role of editor in the group.

Our Initial ideas were inspired by the British Social Realism genre. Examples of this genre include Bullet Boy (Saul Dibb, 2004) and Kidulthood (Menhaj Hudda, 2006). We wanted to pick up on key themes often used in this genre such as gun crime, drugs and gang culture. Our characters were:
· Marcus – The main protagonist
· Emma – A drug user and friend of Marcus
· Darius – Emma’s dealer who is now refusing to sell her drugs
· Darius’s Friend – Drug user who hangs about with Darius

We were originally going to film two scenes that lead up to the climax, one would be a flashback, set in the woods near college, of Emma demanding drugs from Darius and Darius refusing because she hadn’t paid him, this then turns into a fight in which Emma is badly beaten. The other, in Cambridge train station car park, would be a meeting between Marcus and Darius, with Emma and Darius’ friend on the sidelines, where Marcus and Darius threaten each other over what happened to Emma, Darius would then draw a gun and the scene would end on a gun shot and cut to black.

Our Initial plans were not possible. Firstly it would involve using a fake gun in public, which would be impractical as it would be too easily misinterpreted as a real gun. Then we realised that we would not be able to film in the train station because it is far too busy and we would have to keep moving out of the way of cars, it would also be impossible to get permission to film there anyway.

We encountered other problems during our project and as editor I learned allot about maximising minimal footage. An example of this is when we filmed the dialogue, we forgot to shoot any footage of the actors in character, not speaking so the scene cut with each new line and looked clunky. To fix this I took snippets of footage from out takes in which the actors didn’t speak and placed them over another character’s line e.g. at 0:35 where Marcus deliberately interrupts Emma to convey his anger. This quick cut made the scene more dramatic.


*Layered interuption footage

We wanted to make the scenes leading up to Emma’s meeting with her friend obvious that they were not set in the present so I put some video effects onto the footage. The video effects that I used were an increase in contrast and adding a soft glow filter to give it the feeling of being in the past. The use of blurring filters over flashback footage is also used in Life As A House (Irvin Winkler, 2001) where George Monroe remembers spending time with his son. Although this film is of the drama and romance genres it incorporates the themes of drugs and teenage relationships that we also tried to include.


*Flashback effect comparison: Left = our project, Right = Life as a House (2001)

From our feedback session we learned that our project noticeably lacked a soundtrack however because our film extract is largely dialogue based it was a good idea as music in the background may detract from the speech. One area for improvement was to get rid of sound bumps caused by wind noise on our footage, in order to fix this we would have had to remove the video’s sound and dub over the footage. Although this was a good idea we simply didn’t have the time. Another way to progress with our project was to re-film certain shots as the eye lines of the characters aren’t always looking at the person they are meant to be talking to. This makes the conversations seem less realistic and confusing to the audience, as it is hard to tell if they are talking to more than one person. The pushing clip between Emma and Marcus was another point to be improved. Originally it was going to be followed by Emma on the floor shouting abuse at Darius. Because of this Emma falls backwards more than normal when pushed. Before filming the next scene the script was changed and we didn’t have time to go and re-film it leaving us with an unrealistic fall. In order to put this right we would either have to film the scene again or film extra shots continuing the scene.

Although this project challenged us with problems we worked well together and the finished extract works well.

Final Project

Screen shots

Here are some screen shots that we shall use in our evaluations.

Filming

Because of filming issues we have changed the project to fit around what we can manage to film. We have removed the confrontation scene between Marcus and Darius. We replaced it with a conversation between Emma and friend Becca and a phone conversation between Emma and Darius. We also faced the problem of actors not being available so had to make do with group members instead. Becca is now playing Becca, Marcus is n0w playing Darius, Kathryn is now playing Darius' friend and Jennie is playing Emma.

We have completed all of the filming appart from Darius' lines in the phone conversation and edited much of the footage we have.

Project Timetable

• Tuesday 23rd last lesson- film entire confrontation scene and hopefully the flashback scene.

• Wednesday 24th lunchtime- edit film segment in Final-cut and hopefully add sound whilst any missing shots are being filmed.
  

• Thursday 25th lunchtime - complete editing and sound ad upload to blog.

• Friday 26th third lesson- Deadline