BLEAK, FINAL DRAFT

Audience feedback

I received a lot of audience feedback on youtube and also on facebook. If you want to see it clearer please double click on the video in the post above which will sent you to youtube. The feedback shows there is still a lot of work to be done and many people are confused about the fight scene.

Improvements that need to be made if this was to be done again..

-Re-shoot the last confrontation scene, and possibly add a few sound effects to show that the youth being robbed is in pain when he gets punched.


-Re-shoot the part where Damien takes a few moments to think about it but next time without the colorful board behind him. 


-Use final cut pro image blur control to stop the beginning of the walking scene looking to blurry. 


-Some extra shots may be needed of the scenery so the audience do not get bored when watching a whole minute and a half of walking. 

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Try to spot the continuity error from 0.05 to 0.12. If you haven't seen it yet then play it back and keep looking at my shirt.

Wearing black and white checkered
shirt

I believe we have all dramatically increased our knowledge from the first filming that we done. We were much more aware of continuity errors especially after looking back at our continuity footage and realizing we had made some mistakes.

Now I'm wearing a plain white shirt

We decided in order to reduce the chances of continuity error that we would should shoot the footage in one day. This would reduce the     chances of mistakes such as a different car being parked on the road which would be misleading to some viewers with a keen eye.  

 This is one continuity error that we managed to spot during our editing. On the bottom right of the screen you can see a bike wheel which is where the group was standing so they wouldn't get in the way of the film. 

The sound was another issue when filming. Because we had only one camera to film with this meant that when one shot cuts to the next, there is a sudden delay in the sound. This would have been resolved if we had more than one camera and a professional microphone which would have been separate from the camera therefore not having an sound cuts. 


So to sort out this problem we put non diagetic music over most of the opening scene not only to add to build up the correct atmosphere but also so it wouldn't become boring and so there were no noticeable changes in diagetic ambient sound. 

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

My main roles involved with use of technology were being the camera man and editing the footage into the final piece that we have now. The adobe after affects were done by one of my colleges Graham, who used a site called Video Copilot in which they give you detailed tutorials into how to create professional movie animations or logos.

The big leap that I had to take in my learning was moving from a simple Sony HD USB flip camera straight to a Sony HDV 1000 professional tape camera. From the pictures on the left it is pretty obvious to tell which one is the professional one.

The advantage with the Sony HDV 1000 was that due to its size and design it could be mounted on your shoulder to give a much more steady shot when moving rather than the flip camera where you would need time to constantly remove and put on a tripod if you have different types of shots. This was especially helpful in the walking part of the scene giving a "bopping" affect meaning the viewer could relate with the characters personality much easily.

The disadvantage to the professional camera was that it took much longer to process the film onto the computer via a special cable and this took away some of our editing time but in return we got a much more high quality footage. Whereas with the flip camera it would of only taken a simple usb connection to move all the files onto the computer.  Also, with the Sony HDV 1000 we were able to manually focus onto specific things which can be noticed at 1.15 to 1.19 minutes in our opening scene, this is where the background is slightly blurred therefore allowing the audience to focus more on Damiens face

Michael with incorrect colour correction 

Michael with correct colour correction 

Using Final Cut Pro was a real challenge, however after some assistance from people who were familiar with it I mastered the art of editing and was able to experiment with certain types of video effects. Colour correction was very important in the movie because we wanted to put a layer over the real image to make it seem professional and not like it was filmed from a normal camera.

Both of the top pictures are taken from the same part of the opening scene, however the first one picture with incorrect colour correction is from the first draft. This had to be changed to what it was in the second picture which is taken from the final draft. Because of Michaels dark skin colour it was hard to keep the dark gloomy look of the picture without his face being hardly visible. So in order to keep this effect I had to experiment around with the colour correction software and saturation in order to make it look like it had the same effect for the entire movie. 

How did you attract/address your audience?

In our audience research on survey monkey we found that the majority of people (58%) preferred if the opening credits were shown through the opening scene. The type of text was really important as this would have influenced the emotion of the viewer. After some experimenting we found that the simple font used was more effective and understandable rather than a font that would have been written in graffiti style handwriting. 

In some of the transition scenes we left the screen blank due to the fact that we didn't have enough editing footage to continue our movie in one scene. This did not vastly effect the viewing experience but it could have been produced better and efficiently if it was shot again so the audience viewing time would not be delayed. 

To get my product out there and to increase the views of my video (therefore increasing the chances of audience feedback) I posted up my video on youtube and then on my facebook where it would show up on all my friends home pages. Youtube and Facebook are two of the many free ways to market films and are especially important when on a low budget. 

During our production stages there was a discussion about what ending to choose for the opening scene. Due to us not having much time we had to rely on the feedback that we got from our peers to decide which ending to choose. The problem that we found with the first alternative ending was that the graffiti type font was not easily recognizable by everyone and some people mistook the "K" for an "R" and this would have caused confusion if we had put this in our final draft. The second alternative ending was favored by some peers but not by all as it was too plain but it would have fitted in with the previous fonts. In the end we decided to go with the final alternative which can be seen in the final draft.

Who would be the audience for your product?

Based on the equipment and locations that we had to film in, the most successful low budget films are drama films because they do not require any special effects or expensive equipment to film. And the drama that we created mostly be aimed at teenagers who live in London, and we may possibly recieve some interest from adults who are interested in these types of films.

If we were to market our film then it would be unlikely to go on a large scale, so it may possibly start only in the niche film market or may only go straight to DVD due to the likelyness of popularity being low. This is because the culture and characters involved in our movie would only be understood by Londoners (mainly teenagers). Adults are unlikely to consume this film because in their teenage generation the culture was very different and they may dissaprove of this particular film.

Having said this, the profit that would be generated by this film would be pretty low due to our main audience being South London teenagers. And this is because South London being one of the worst parts of the UK for unemployed teenagers and jobs being very scarce, many teens do not have a job to purchase the DVD or cinema ticket meaning the money would be coming from their parents.

The rating for our movie would probably be a 15 due to the fact that there is some violence involved and use of weapons. There is no gore and very little blood later on in the movie however, use of drugs may be present as there was in Kidulthood.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Based on my research the media institution would be most likely to distribute our media product had it been finished would be Revolver entertainment. The type of films that revolver entertainment has has distributed previously are films such as Kidulthood, Anuvahood and Shank. These are all films portraying South London.

Many of the same actors such as Adam Deacon are used in different films becuase they have the particular image to fit that South London teenager look. And based on the research on the previous evaluation question I believe that our characters look fits very well with the mise-en scene and environment of the scene.

The genre of our movie is a dramatic thriller type movie which is very down to earth and doesn't exagerate stereotypes to the fullest like similar movies such as Kidulthood where characters are the type of people you would find in the real world.

However, the majority of Revolver Entertainment films are based on reality, and the reason they would have taken up Anuvahood would have possibly been to diversify their product range so people don't get bored of watching the same dramatic storylines. However, after the release of Anuvahood, if Revolver Entertainment were to take our film on (if it were complete and professionaly done) then I believe it would be successful due to Anuvahood being released recently and people may want to be intrested in drama/thriller films again.

Also, Revolver Entertainment is known to market most of its films on a small scale, and our film would be categorized as a niche type film due to its target audience and storyline would mainly appeal to people in South London because they are more familiar with the culture.

How does your product represent particular social groups?

 The particular social group that we were trying to represent in our movie were South London typical, street dwelling teenagers. The typical black youth which is portrayed in films and media as someone who is ussually part of a gang and gets into trouble mainly due to the poverty surrounding his poor area. It would have been better if we had included at least one white youth in our filming as it is not only black youths in South London but in this particular area the white people are a minority. If we were to include a white youth then we would have tried to give him an "Adam Deacon" type personality from Kidulthood as he represents the typical white chav very well.

In the two pictures above I took a picture of Michael. The top picture being his normal self where he looks like a typical teenager whose not agressive and if he were to approach you on the street you would not think twice to turn away. The second picture however shows Michael with a hood covering his face and having no glasses. This is the stereotypical hooded youth that we tried to create an image of. This would be the teenager that if you were to see on the street then you would automatically think he is up to no good or is assosiated with trouble. However later on in the film once we give Damien some dialogue the viewer would understand that Damien is not the typical youth because we were going to make his vocabulary quite sofisticated instead of having slang words in every sentence. This would mean he can relate to more than one particular group of teenagers.

The music was very important when producing as we would have had an extremely large choice of grime music to choose from however we would have needed something preferably with more minor chords to set the tone and slow paced as grime music has usually got more fast paced tunes than slow paced ones.

The reason we chose an instrumental rather than something with a person rapping over the song would have been because

1) it would have been harder to find something which had no copyright royalty over it

and

2) because many people have different tastes in types of music, and if we had something with lyrics then it may not have appealed to many peoples tastes so with this would be able to target a larger audience

In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real products?

All in all, the beginning of our movie starts off very well. Our inspiration came from movies such as Kidulthood and One Day where directors such as Noel Clarke are well known for using simple yet effective camera shots. As you can see in the video below titled "Kidulthood-blinded by the lights" there are many shots which are deliberately blurred to correlate in with the emotion through the song used. 

Here in our opening scene we have created a head and shoulder shot which is deliberately blurred due to the footage being recorded with no tripod or dolly support. This gives it a "rough and grime" effect which the viewer will associate with Damiens personality.  

The mise-en-scene was very important when filming our location. As we could not shoot it at night due to not having the correct lighting equipment this meant we had to shoot the footage in the day thus meaning colours would appear much brighter on screen. For example on the picture above there is a billboard displaying bright red and yellow colours. This would would intervene with the mood our scene has created before this shot as bright primary colours are associated with happiness and joy therefore it might cause the viewer to take the scene less seriously. Had this been thoroughly organised, the sign could have been temporarily removed to create a more authentic mis-en-scene.  

Here in this emotional scene taken from a part of kidulthood (no copyright infringement intended) it shows the characters walking through the crowded city at night. Bright primary colours are kept to a minimum and this increases the viewers perception of dark gloomy colours such as dull browns and greys.

This is similar to our piece in terms of mise-en-scene, we had a location in which there were colours such as dark browns and greys which would create a thriller-type atmosphere.

The music that was used was very important as this would reflect the characters feelings and create a mood for that particular scene.



The type of music used in this scene is a "grime" instrumental. Grime music is associated with culture mainly in South London.

Rough cut of our movie

Production

Time and Date of Filming: 

Wednesday 23rd Feburary 2011, 7.00am onwards

Actors and Crew

Director/ editor- Anid Bytyci

Producer- Kayan Patel

Adobe after effects- Graham Oddoye

Camera man- Anid Bytyci 

Damien Taze -Michael Oddoye

Youths-Graham Oddoye 

             Savion Bepot

Youth in trouble- Shey Hinds-meikle

This is the camera that we used to do our filming

This was the production logo that Graham created using adobe after affects using a tutorial from VIDEO COPILOT. This is a sight where they teach you how to use the software in order to create many different pieces. Graham used the original piece which is copyright free and then changed the bottom name to Astro Productions which we decided would be the name if our company were to be real.


This is the video tutorial site on video copilot…


http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/galactic_orb/








These music soundtracks are from someone who claims on their website that the music is free for anyone to use. And these videos were some of the alternatives that we had for the soundtrack. We found this on google by typing in "grime instrumental" and then found his youtube site which contains many useful music soundtracks that could be used for other scenes.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Nitruzz91

Location Research

In our film treatment and opening scene description, the first part of the movie ends with Damien going  back to help the struggling youth in the alley way. So we need to find a convinient area which would be quiet in the day so our filming will not get distrupted and so we dont have to ask the council for permission to close the area because that may take months and could cost us money as we would have to pay businesses in that area the money that they would ussually earn for that period of closure. Also, because our opening scene involves a group of youths confronting a young teenager, people may become startled by this and may intervine in the situation or they may call the police. So a few filming in progress signs so the public do not become frightened by this event and we would have to research or possibly ask the council about rules of filming in our local area.

Conviniently, the members of our group all live pretty close together in Croydon and we cannot pick a location which involves travelling far, for example, in Central London because first of all theres many people there so our filming might be distrupted and if mistakes are made then it would be very costly and time consuming to keep having to go there again. Also, we would have to ask permission because there are many cameras in London and the camera operators may not be aware of the filming going on and Police may be callled.

A possible location is near my house which is located on Swain Road in Thornton Heath and one road away, there is an alley way which is ussualy very quiet.

This is the route that our group has decided for our actor Damien to take, and it was also chosen to match the shooting script. So the initial planned route is that Damien starts in the middle of Marion Road, crosses the road to Bensham Manor road, sees the group of youths confronting the younger teenager in the alley way and then decides to carry on, and then turns back. The alley way cannot be seen on google maps, but it's litterally just in front of Swain road.

Thornton Heath doesn't have the greatest reputation and isn't the most safest area in London, so we will need to take care of our equipment. Also, it would be wise to film very early in the morning, just after sunrise so there's less chance of our filming being distrupted by the public, and also our group needs to keep an eye of the weather so we don't miss any good filming opportunities as we dont have artificial lighting for the dark and also so we don't get caught up in the rain.

Filming in progress sign

It is essential that we create a sign to make the public aware that our film is taking place. Because we are filming very early in the morning, we are less likely to encounter people trying to cross the alley way. However, incase there are a few people, a sign is there to ensure that they don't become alarmed by what is happening. Our group doesn't have priority of the area because it would take too long to phone the council and ask for permission, so priority is given to any public member who decides to walk across the bridge.

This is a sign i created on microsoft publisher to be printed out in A3 so it is easily viewed by anyone deciding to cross the bridge which leads to the alley way.

These were pictures that I had taken on my phone of the location we were going to use for our film. The images are taken in a typical South London borough. It was a sunny day so the original pictures came out very bright which is not the image that we want for our movie. This is because the genre is going to be a thriller type gangster movie, and bright colours would not set the mood for the movie. Next to every ordinary picture I have put an edited photo to see the difference of what it would look like in our movie. Many films have to have a coulor correction layer over them to give them that aesthetic "movie look" which makes it look much different to the original footage.

To create the edits, all I done was reduce the brightness, increase contrast and reduce saturation in each of the pictures. For our movie we would have to insert a colour correction layer over the original footage so it gives it a more professional look.

MOOD BOARD

The Shooting Script

Original Shooting script

NOTE: shooting script may change depending on location

“Filming in progress” sign needs to be made and placed before the alley way so people don’t think its actually real.

This was our original shooting scrip, however during production the bike was no longer available so we had to shoot the footage but with Damien walking hence the reason the storyboard is different. 

 

It’s a cloudy day with little sun. Damien is about to leave his house but is making sure his bike is good and running just outside. Currently, his bike is upside down while he makes some adjustments.

PICTURE	TIME (aprox)	AUDIO
Low angle shot of back bicycle wheel turning. Camera is facing upwards at an angle of approximately 45 degrees.	0.02	Pleonastic sound of clicking of bottom bracket in back wheel
Cut to: Damien picking up bike so that it is the right way up. Camera starts from low angle shot from handle bars and slowly tilts up	0.04	Natural Diagetic
Cut to: Back wheel of bike falling on the floor, (possibly in slow motion)	0.01	Pleonastic sound of tire hitting ground
Low angle shot of Damiens hand testing brakes. His hand and brakes are at bottom left corner of screen and at first camera is focused on his hands but with manual focus we loose focus of his hand and can see his face at which we see him give a nod of satisfaction to his work.	0.03	Pleonastic sound of brakes tightening.
Damien then gets onto his bike. Shown with Low angle shot 1 foot away from rear of bike, highest point in the frame that is visible of Damiens body is his waist and lowest point is the ground. Damiens hand reaches into his pocket.		Diagetic
Cut to: Close up match on action shot of Damiens hand getting his phone out. Cut to: Damien using phone, low angle shot, phone is close to camera but we can see Damiens face and body above. Cut to: Back to Match on action close up of phone in Damiens hand as he chooses the song he wants to play.	0.01 0.01 0.02	Pleonastic Music turns on in sync as he presses play. The audio soundtrack is all we can hear at the moment.
Damien puts his phone back into his pocket and rides off. Low angle shot from waist as Damien rides past camera	0.02	Soundtrack
Damien starts riding his bike on the pavement. Tracking shot can be done by using a bmx with stunt pegs on back (one person riding bike and camera man standing on pegs on back of bike)		Soundtrack
Cut to tracking shot: Camera tracking shot is on road filming Damien as he’s riding his bike.	0.03	Soundtrack
Cut to: Over the shoulder shot from Damien looking at a group of youths on other side of road. Cut to: low angle shot from group of youths talking, camera rises upwards until we see the youth notice Damien and turns head towards him. In the shot we see Damien riding past in the background but two youths are in the frame. Cut to: Close up of Damien’s face, staring at the youths (remember to use rule of third) and Damien then looks away and continues riding.	0.02 0.04 0.02	Soundtrack
Damien approaches the end of the road and stops, ready to cross and is looking for traffic both ways.
Tracking long shot going past Damien as he is at the end of the road.	0.03	Soundtrack
Damien crosses the road, and starts riding on road 2 (Bensham Manor road) Tracking shot on road showing Damien riding his bike on pavement.	0.5
As Damien reaches the alley way he realises his shoe lace is undone and stops to do it up and as he goes to do his shoe lace he sees a group of youths bullying a girl. Over the shoulder shot of Damien as he’s riding bike, camera tilts downwards to show his undone shoelace. Cut to:  low angle shot of Damien looking downwards at his laces. Cut to: Match on action of Damien stopping the bike with the brakes. Cut to: Mid shot of Damien getting off bike and kneeling down to the floor and gets his phone out to stop music Cut to: Match on action shot close up of phone in hand showing him pressing stop Cut back to: Mid shot of Damien about to do shoe laces but looks up Cut to: over the shoulder shot of Damien looking up to see the 3 youths bullying the younger youth halfway  down the alley way. Cut to: Wide shot (a quarter way up the alley way) showing Damien looking at the youths.	0.04 0.02 0.01 0.05 0.03 0.04 0.03 0.04	Soundtrack Diagetic Voices of youths and younger youth
Damien gets back onto his bike but keeps glancing down the alley way. Medium close up shot from his head height as he gets up to go on his bike and rides away it turns into a mid shot.	0.06	Diagetic
As Damien is riding away from the alley way he has a sudden change of mind and pauses while his conscience battles with his feelings whether he should go back and help or not.
Mid shot of Damien riding bike, camera is slightly tilted upwards and his face is very clear. Cut to: Match on action close up of hand pulling brakes Cut to: Match on action of back tire skidding Cut to: Close up shot to extreme close up shot of Damiens face as he gets closer to the camera. Sudden pause of around 5 seconds as he decides what to do.	0.05 0.01 0.01 0.06	Diagetic Pleonastic sound of tire skidding
Damien turns around and starts riding the other way, As he does so the camera tilts upwards and the name of the movie is revealed through editing.	0.03	Soundtrack

STORYBOARD

Damien leaving his house in his council estate

Damien (mid shot) outside his house getting ready to walk out

(Match on action shot) Damien presses play on his phone which is synchronized with the non diagetic music

Damien is walking through his town roads

Damien sees two youths trying to rob a person

Damien walks away but he stops for a moment and has second thoughts on whether he should help or not

Damien is about to intervene with the confrontation and this is where the opening scene cuts and we see the title of the movie

I used an electronic smartboard to create these images as they would has stood out much better than pen and paper when put on the computer.