Changes in Plans: Filming Stage

Originally we were going to just do a deadpan shot to the camera in the tunnel at the end. Instead we had an idea to make it more psychological, and gathered inspiration from the film "Bronson", in which Tom Hardy has points in the film where he deadpans to the camera in a spotlight often offering small concise descriptions of this point in time, or thoughts occuring to his character. Also due to the size and design of locations we had to change some shots to keep to the guide lines of the coursework.

AS Media Coursework: Plot Synopsis

Nathan, a small-time drug dealer, is found by a couple of rival dealers. He has been seeing Amy, the girlfriend of Jamie, Nathan’s rival. Jamie and his friend catch Nathan in the park, and chase him down. As Jamie runs from his pursuers, he reflects on recent events, largely involving drugs and Amy. Jamie realises that Amy has betrayed him, and decides that he needs to confront her, in order to clarify the situation.

(Written by Rhys Waterman)

Evaluation of The Exchange

Our exchange exercise was based around a "noiry" thriller with a hint of supernatural on the side. During the making of the project, I was largely responsible for acting in the extract, as well as doing some of the editing that was needed on the finished film. The acting responsibilities took up a lot of time on the filming side, but in the shots I was not in, I played a big part in capturing them on film. Particularly the first half, unless I was in the shot. Most of the shots that I shot were reasonably good technically, we were particularly proud of a shot that we managed to get Becca to walk to and sit on a bench, right below a hazy sun in the sky, with condensation on her breath, we thought this was very effective in ramping up our project. We did, however, have some continuity problems in the second half of the project; we could have made this look better by putting in an establishing shot, to show the movement of the character in the background. Overall during the film we kept to the 180 degree rule. From the exercise we learned to take as many shots as we possibly could, as in "its better to have too much than not enough". We also learned that we need to take our time with the story and use more establishing shots. We made use of a very good piece of music and were able to put the "stings" in the right and relevant places, to make it more effective. I think that the idea was very good, if slightly too complex for a three minute extract. We were given mostly good reviews, it was given good technical reviews, and the music was enjoyed particularly. Our project compares to the real thing, in the way of mood, and music, i.e. slow and moody. Overall I think our project was quite successful, but it needed a lot of work to make it perfect and would need a complete re-shoot. We hope to do better than this in our final project.

Exchange Excercise Brief

We have been asked to, in groups of 4 people, prepare, shoot and edit a sequence lasting around 1 and half minutes. The project we were asked to produce was to be called "The Exchange". We have been asked to produce the sequence in a neo-noirish style displaying some of the codes and conventions of the genre. We were also told that we must all contribute to all of the different stages of the production, meaning we must all help with paperwork, we must all have a go at shooting the project and we must all have a go at editing the piece.

Idea for a Film Noir Opening

Rough Synopsis: Beginning: Starts with a man carrying a package being followed by another man, gets robbed and killed.
Middle: Several killings and exchanges over the package
End: Through some sort of misdirection and deception, the first guy comes back and steals the package.
Detailed First 3 Mins: Man walking along the waterfront carrying a package (Carrier), being followed by another man. Carrier turns the corner, sees he's being followed start moving quicker, the killer starts to move quicker as well, we see the carrier running through the woods, being chased by the killer then the carrier stumbles onto the floor, and we see the killer pick up a rock and repeately hit the carrier with it, killing the carrier. We then see the killer throw away the rock, pick up the package and walk away from the camera.

Evaluation of Preliminary Excercise

Overall the preliminary excercise was a success for our group, the shots that I personally directed were fairly technically sound. An improvement could be to make sure our panning is maybe a little smoother as to keep up with the character, we were following in the sequence. The problems we encountered were, some sloppy framing in places, we once let a characters head move out of shot very quickly, we also had a small problem with the sound boom, just dipping into shot once. There was no continuity problem in the editing, there was also no problem with the sound, i.e. no extraneous ambience or talking. In summary this excercise was a success, we made a film in which everyone contributed, and although it may not have been technically sound it certainly gave us alot of experience to use in our upcoming excercise, a link will be posted soon.

Micro-analysis of Brick

I am analysing the scene in which Brendan attempts to break into Tugg's car. The scene starts with focus on the car instead of on Brendan, this is also repeated later in the scene when Tugg finds Brendan attemptin to vandalise his car. This scen focuses on getting as much action in, whill at the same time using a mlittle camera shot as possible. There is no non-diegetic sound, and almost no sound for the majority of the scene. The intriguing shot in this is the continuous shot at the end of the scene. Which focuses on Tugg, instead of on Brendan. Odd considering that Brendan is our main character, this attention could signify that Tugg has quite a large part to play in the film. This scen overall is about going through what you have to, to get what you want. At the very end of the scene, Brendan vents his frustration by throwing a rock at the fleeing car. The character of Tugg is shown to be very domineering, until he gets into his car, because when he gets into the car, he flees from the scene, fighting as little as he has too. Overall a simplistic, minimalist scene, that shows a suprising amount about the film and it's characters.