Evaluation Activity 1

 The Title of the film
The title of our film is not only punchy but is a pun on the ethnicity of one of our main characters. 'King Of  Spades'. The word 'spade' can be interpreted as a racist term towards black people. One of our main characters is half black and is high on hierarchy in his community and his hypothetical gang. Also because because they tend to beat their enemies with spades.

Setting/Location
With our film location I believe that we met that created a mise-en-scene that captures the genre of our film.   We used a bar Brixton and a gritty alleyway  next to the bar. We also used the cellar in the bar  to create an eerie, scary atmosphere to match what was happening in the scene.

Costumes and Props
The costumes that we have used for our characters match their identities in the film and are based on characters from similar films. For example our characters talk with a cockney dialect and are wearing clothes as if they are business-men but are actually dangerous men like 'Happy Harry' relating him to 'Rory Breaker' from 'Lock Stock'. The only prop we used was a green spade as Karsey Ken's choice of weapon.

 Title font and style

With the title sequence of our film we use a black background with white writing over it. The titles cut in and out of the opening scenes of the film. I would not really say that we challenged any conventions of film titles because black backgrounds have been used since the beginning of Films. I would say that we played with theme of our films genre in regards of the font of the text.

Story and how the opening sets it up
The beginning of the story sets up the feel of a gangster film that takes no enemies. The cockney banter and the light humour lets the audience know that it's not strictly a violent film but has some intelligence in between the lines from the script.

How characters are introduced
The characters are introduced using freeze frames with voices overs we were inspired for this from the film 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'. Using these technique we were able to incorporate the banter associated with british crime thrillers.

Diary Vlogs

Diary Entry 1

Diary Entry 2

Diary Entry 3

Diary Entry 4

Diary Entry 5

Diary Entry 6

Diary Entry 7

Diary Entry 8

Diary Entry 9

Titles Sequence

The Title Sequence in a film is very important and is sometimes confused with credits, but they are different. The Title Sequence is at the beginning of a film and is the time to present the key people in production, key cast members, also the title of the film. There are many things that can be done to make a title sequence different from another film and also to singular it out so that it is remembered for your film due to it relating to the theme of your film.

I think a fantastic example is the 2006 James Bond film 'Casino Royale', which uses Rotoscoping to make the title sequence match the casino theme of the film and this keeps the viewer engaged through out, thus remembering the key names.

In regards to the opening sequence of my film the techniques my group used were based on the title sequence styles of the british Guy Rihcie film Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

The relation with Lock Stock and our film is the use of cross cutting from a black screen with text, including the essential cast and crew names along with the title of the film, to the film. We used this because it is a good way of introducing the key people of the film while maintaining the pace of the film and keeping the audience engaged with the film and not bored by simple monotonus white text on a black background.

Audience Research

The Genre of our film is British Crime Thriller. However even though we knew this we did some filmed research in our college with both students and teachers participating to see how our film would be received and also to see people's preferences in the 'world of cinema'.

Equipment

To create our film we needed the basic essentials such as equipment. This includes Camcorder and SLR Cameras. We as a team did not have a budget so our college provided us with both a very able 'Sony HVR-A1E' Camcorder from the media department and I acquired a 'Nikon D40' SLR camera from the Art department.

I also must include that one of my team mates (Naomi Highfield) actually bought a camcorder so that we didn't have to waste time renting the college's and also because it gave our team much freedom. The name of the fantastic Camcorder is 'Panasonic-HDC-TM700' which we did all our filming on for the actual 2 minuet film. (Most gratefull for this)

Sony HVR-A1E Camcorder

Nikon D40

Panasonic-HDC-TM700

Recce

Recce which originnates from the military term Reconnoiter, in terms of media is part of pre-filming. It is basically when the director visits the location for a scene to do a check up of what works. What this means if the lighting is correct, if the shots will work, to see what angles will work or need to be changed, if acoustics are right, if the script works, how the actors will position themselves and all in all to make sure if the Mise-en-scène is captured. It is very rare to get footage of a director doing one of their Recces but in the 'behind the scenes' of the DVD of the classic Reservoir Dogs by Quentin Tarantino he shows the Recce he did for the scene in the movie where one of the characters is bleeding to death on a ramp.

This is the scene that was Recce'd in the 'behind the scenes'

After learning from Tarantino in my group we created our own Recce for the scene after the two 'geezers' walk down the stairs. We used this time to explain what we were doing with the film's progress.

Similar Text

The two films that we have based our film on for the sense of inspiration is 'Snatch' and 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels', Two Guy Richie film. These are two brilliant, entertaining films with great storylines and even better directing.

As a group we chose to use these films as a basis for our creation, the genre of the film is British Crime Thriller and there is also some humour. The directing is innovative; using split screen to shot what both characters are doing and voice overs to explain characters identities. Scripts that are smart and catchy incorporating Cockney Slang such as : 'If the milk turns out to be sour, I ain't the kinda pussy to drink it'. Also with storylines that make the audience want to watch the films many more times after the first, entwining characters fates with irony and further humour.