Preliminary Task- The Exam

This is the Preliminary task entitled the Exam. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UUklYTRENNw

THE FINAL FILM.

This is the Final version of our film. We had to re record it as our first attempt at a shoot came under technical difficulties and a re shoot had to be done. This is our final piece.

Distribution and Exhibition

Due to the nature of undertaking Distribution wasn't really required. However, if we had to distribute our film due the nature and genre of our film (see genre) and budget of our film it would have a wide audience but would not be able to survive in a global market due to finances and so we would had to lower where we would release it. We would therefore be forced to do a saturated release in a couple of cinemas and if the film was to succeed we could extend the films distribution to an international release in cinemas across Britain. Before this however we would have to create a trailer and then release the trailer using primarily viral marketing as it would be the cheapest and easiest way to get our film out and known seeing as it is only a independent student project finance is a major factor in our distribution strategy.
Sadly the only exhibition we could actually go through with was to our class mates but we received very positive reviews from our class mates and teacher alike.

Evaluation.

In the outcome of our film we managed to challenge conventions in several ways. Mainly, the use of a young cast challenges normal conventions as many film noir films have a much older cast usually between the ages of 30-40 year olds. Ours consists mainly younger people which was suppose to be aged between 18-20 year olds. The use of this gives a completely different take on the usual conventions of film noir.  The film Brick also used a similar technique of bringing film noir for a younger audience.
Thanks to how we've challenged our conventions we have also managed to represent youth in our film. Youth are shown in our film in a faily negative way, smoking and drinking whilist playing an illegal game of poker before the fiml leads on to tale of revenge. The film "Brick" was produced by the production company Bergman Lustig Prodcutions. This company specilises mainly in low budget, inpendant films which would be perfect for the production of my film. The audience would mainly be young people under the age of 25 as the protagnoists are all around that age. It would possibly have an audience from all ages who just enjoyed film noir or independant films.Well the first thing would attract an audience is the age group of the characters. By being younger the audience would be able to relate to them more. Whats happening on screen would also attract audiences as there is much smoking and drinking on screen which would be a stereotypical habit of the audience. By being a low budget independant film noir some other people may be attracted as they like that genre of film. By doing this project i learnt alot about how to produce a film with thecnologies such as final cut pro and iMovie which we used to edit our film. I also learnt about how to record a film. Within the project i learnt about a lot about what you have to do to make a film. I learnt a lot about all the paper work involved in pre production. I also learn about how to record and built a set and in post production i learn a lot about editing on computers.

Genre.

We had made our film in the Film Noir style of film making. Our genre is basically crime drama as the main story of our film centers firstly around an illegal gambling ring which when one player cheats cause the others to seek revenge. Which therefore would sit us in the genre of crime genre. Due to the desired slick 1940's style of costume and camera use we would easily fit withing a modern Film Noir style of film.

Post Production

Our final step was Post production. However, from the start of this we had issues as it appeared that we had acquired a camera which had no sound function. Although we had planned to put music over most of the film we needed some other sound effects for the climax. Therefore, me and Joe had to recreate sound using an empty room and the poker chips from the shoot. We used a handheld recorder to do this.

Storyboard.

The shoot.

Once the paperwork and ideas were all finished we were ready for the most important part of the process, the shoot. Me and Joe traveled to Folkstone to begin filming. The filming went fair smoothly and we managed to capture everything in good time. Joe managed to provide a smoke machine which helped build the atmosphere.  We began filming at approximately 12pm and manged to be all wrapped by 4pm so managed to stay on schedule well which was fairly helpful as due to the distance between our homes we only really had one day to shoot. We also managed to capture all the shots that we had hoped to achieve within our storyboard.

Risk Assesment.

The next thing to do on the paper side of things was a risk assessment which i did. This was fairly easy as there is very few risk associated with our type of film and our location. Our only real threats were from hot lights we had to handle and as we were using cigarettes during filming there could be a possible fire hazard. To overcome this problems we made sure we all wore gloves during filming and had a proper ash try and made sure all cigarettes were properly out when finished.

location Recce Sheet

We now had to begin doing a Recce on the location which was primarily done by Greg as it was easiest as it was his garage we were shooting within. The main problem with our location was lighting as due to it being inside a garage and therefore having no windows or method to light the room in the desired fashion for our film. We first planned on hanging a spot light borrowed from Canterbury college  above the poker table. Unfortunately we soon discovered this wouldn't work due to the weight of the light restricting us from hanging it over head. We soon resolved this by simply using a extension cable to power just a small light over head and used just a basic lamp shade to light purely the table. Our only other issue was a road that ran behind the garage but this was only a small problem as it was fairly unused and so merely had to stop filming in the unlikely scenario of a car driving past. On the day of the shoot no traffic came passed.

Call Sheet.

Now had successfully put our idea into a script we now had to start planning the shoot. The details we jotted down into our call sheet. We decided to give our piece the name "The Poker game" and that we would shoot it in one of our group's (Greg Stevens) garage as it was an appropriate and easily accessible location with the added bonus of not needing to gain permission from any council or firm meaning filming could begin straight away.

We also included a cast list and and their contact numbers as well as contact numbers of any Emergency we may need.

Shooting Script.

 A shooting script needs to be kept to keep all the order of shots in the correct way. It is mainly important keep a schedule of when and where to record shots during the production phase. Below is a copy of ours.

The Script.

The first step towards creating our script was to make a treatment to give a breif description of what would appear on screen. We then had to adapt the treatment into a first draft of a script.

We had finished a first draft but it wasn't perfect so we worked with our teacher Rick to help see where we could improve on it before putting the script into a storyboard. Although we decided the idea and story was basically good we were warned about the difficulty of successfully creating the effect of a serious poker game and he advised us to add some conflict. We first decided a way of adding conflict and came to the idea of adding the cheating aspect into the script. This worked well as it allowed us to become more imaginative with exactly what we could do with our film. It opened many more doors in how we could make our movie stand out. We finally came with a final draft and were ready to move on.

The Idea.

We thought of several initial ideas for our group's by using a mind map.  production including a lads holiday idea, a skateboarding and a poker game idea. We then expanded on this ideas and tried to decide what ideas could best be used to develop upon and we took the decision to use the Poker game idea and it had the most potential. We discussed what we could incorporate into the film and then each contributed ideas into writing a basic first draft script. Although the script was not perfect we now had a basic idea to expand upon in the next drafts.

Introduction

Our group project is to create a 2 minute opening credits to a film. My group consists of three members myself, Greg Stevens and Joe Parrish and we have decided on naming our group ChadWolf Productions.