U-23 FILM EXTRACT: Film Evaluation - Josh Boothroyd
Monday 2 March 2009
Film Evaluation - Josh Boothroyd
HiNdSigHt Evaluation
My micro responsibility was editing. I decided to split the two time zones using a Black and White color tint, as to make the divide clear. It also added an eerie element to the flash back vision. Although there is slow motion in both the present and past tense shots, the majority of it was in the past tense, and a lot slower to make it seem faded and reminiscent rather than the clearer side of the present time. In the present time there was a continuous effect called "Gloom" Which is a type of blur. This effect gave it a more surreal look, and highlighted the strong colors in the video. The whole movie has effects on it, because the whole incident seemed like it would be surreal, so it really suited having a unique look to it. The editing wasn't particularly fast paced, but we weren't trying to make it fast, we were actually going for a slower style, but still build tension in a different way. Rather that it being really fast, and having loads of things in front of your face, i decided that a slower edit would make people want to see the next shot thus building suspense.
We decided to work in the genre of 'Gritty, Drama, gang culture, Drug, youth' much in comparison the the recent film 'Adulthood'. So in the sequence the Mise-En-Scene had to fit this category. We did so by making sure the characters wore stereotypical clothing, such as hoods, tack suit bottoms and trainers. The hoods are key to the story line, because both sides of the incident would try to conceal their identities. In the clip we realized, through feedback and self examination, that it is not incredibly clear who are the 'good guys' and who are the 'bad guys'. However, we came to the conclusion that this problem was irrelevant because none of the sides could really be deemed 'good. But there is definitely a favored side. Still though, it is only a segment from the scene (in this case the end). Still though, they would both require hoods, so the costuming there was a good choice.
The Genre being 'Drama' did not really effect many decisions we made. But it being 'Youth' made us have to think about the lingo, and the activities that the youth of today would be participating in. The 'Drug' genre is definitely becoming more and more prominent in today's films, both as influences, references and foundation genres. And i think it slotted well into our project.
We had a session of deciding Narrative, Characters and Genre. And i had a specific genre in mind of which i wanted to tackle. So it was my idea that we decided to go with. When we had the initial choice of genre, we began to speak narrative, and we all pitched in with ideas we wanted to see in the sequence. We had ideas for the narrative way before we decided where in the story-line the incident was going to take place. We used an A3 piece of paper to Brain Storm some ideas. Then we plotted the rough idea onto a story board which we then developed after some consideration.
We tried to make sure that the idea was quite possible to make from the start, in order to avoid as much alteration as possible. Unfortunately some things weren't working out as planned so some very minor things were changed slightly. For example the drug dropping. It was originally gonna be a load of separate bags and one of them would be left behind. But it wasn't practical to get all those props together. So instead we decided to use a smaller package. Apart from that though, it was planned out well enough for there not to have to be many changes.
I wanted the sequence to seem draggy. As if it was happening slowly, whereas in actual fact, what you see happens very quickly. So there are two feelings, one that is thinking it's slow, and one that is thinking it's missed something because the action is over before it starts. I also wanted the audience to appreciate the clear difference between the two time zones. I would've hoped they'd come away knowing what went on as well.
The feedback was mostly positive, although there were instructions for negative feedback as well. Some of the things we weren't so sure about were praised in the feedback, which gave us a little more confidence in those ideas. At the time of the feedback session, we were having problems with our music soundtrack. So a lot of the negative points were to do with that feature being in the lack. the camerawork was positively touched on which was good. We were also complimented on how the mise-en-scene fitted the scene well. So in 'hindsight' we made all the right changes i think, I'm please with the result.
My Technical skills have only helped along the process of making the creative choices i wanted to. And thus i am pleased with the overall result of the project.
