You have been approached by Film 4 to make a new British social realist film aimed at British 16-24 year olds. To give Film 4 an idea of how your film will develop, they have asked you to produce the first two minutes of the film, providing a clear sense of the graphical, editing and musical style your film will use. To protect film 4's reputation as a leader in British cinema the film must conform to the conventions of the Social Realist genre, and meet all the audience expectations for this type of film. Finally, to keep costs low all visual and audio material used in the film must be entirely original with an exception of stock sound affects.
For our opening sequence, we were approached by Film 4, for which we had been asked to create a 'British Social Realism (BSR) film. These are films made using lower budgets, and inexperienced actors (raw talent) in order to make a film which is not made to entertain, but inform audiences of issues that take place in society. We feel that we have met the brief well as we used a white teenage male character as the protagonist for our film, which targets a British audience, as asked ( skip to 0:22 secs). The title we chose for our film was 'Bridges' (skip to 1:06 secs) which connotes the relationship between the white protagonist and the Indian girl. However, the implicit message implies 'Bridges' represents the cultural clashes between both the main characters and due to this why they cannot be together. It can also show how the white character's struggle to face and fit into the Asian society. This idea would have then further developed, had we produced a full film. The rest of the film would show the white man undergoing many difficulties and facing racism from the Asian community, as well as the Indian girl's family along his journey to gain his love. Although it is fairly difficult to establish these BSR themes within the first two minutes of the film, we did not show verbal racism towards the white character as it was supposed to be very subtle in the beginning, showing a gradual build up. However, we show the Indian shop owner giving the white character a nasty glare (skip to 0:53 secs), making the audience aware that there is an issue, and shows he is unwanted, which is further explored when the Indian girl's brother throws the white character out of the shop (skip to 1:37 secs), which implies to the audience that he does not belong there.
During the beginning of the year, my knowledge of using these HD cameras was not very strong, so I found it hard to get used to the basic functions of this camera. I was also working alongside a person who had no experience in media studies at all which made it slightly more difficult to work quicker. For next year, I will not face this problem because this year I have understood fully how to use the camera and it's functions which will be necessary to me.
Creativity
After analysing the brief, my partner and I chose a theme relevantly outlined in these Film 4 Films, however the use of locations made and mise-en-scene showed more creativity as we made the situation look much more realistic, creating verisimilitude. A disadvantage of this was because we had tried being more creative by using different locations, we filmed at different times of the day, which shows in the video when we show the establishing shot of the polyclinic and when she is actually sitting in it.
Post Production
I was familiar with using iMovie from previous media projects so I could help my partner understand the basic techniques of the software. Also the fact that it was a very simple task with not very much editing required mainly cropping, made the work have good continuity and less effort required. A downfall of this however, was that we were using an updated version of iMovie and had to be trained on how to use it. So the functions had changed, making it harder to become familiar with this new software. Next year, I will ensure to plan my time more wisely and make sure that I have more experience with the software before using it. This makes it easier to understand what you're actually doing, as well as making it less stressful. This also can help play a part in helping others around you that may not be as comfortable in using the programmes and vice versa.
Research and Planning
I am pleased with the editing outcome, and I kept to the storyboard pretty well and used majority of the shots I had drawn up. However, next time I'd stick to a slightly simpler storyline or try and find an alternative place to film as its not always possible to go far out and get to film certain parts of the work during a school week so using a closer location or even the school itself will help save on time and allow you to finish your film quicker. Also, I would give more thought into the actual planning, this includes drawing up the storyboard and the actual time management in order to get the work filmed on time and well.
During this week, we have been editing our opening sequence in which I have faced many difficulties. Although in the beginning, when I imported all the shots to the library, and placed them in order, the total time was too short after I had trimmed the clips. So to resolve this, I had to put the production company logo and institutional logo on a black screen and increase the duration of these slides to increase the overal running time of the opening sequence. Then, I noticed minor problems such as, very slightly breaking the 180 degree rule and there not being a good and consistent eyeline match in some cases as well as a few jumps. So to fix this, I had to cut the hot and put other extra shots from other clips and close ups to make the whole piece run smoother. The slight jump cut that could not be resolved had to be cut and I had to put the the film title 'Bridges' on a black screen. All the other credits as you would have noticed run over the film at the bottom out of the way. We turned to our peers for some constructive criticism, which turned out to be very helpful for us because their response stated that by putting 'Bridges' on a black screen makes the title stand out to the audience and outlines it's importance to the film. Another problem we faced was the sound. The sound was probably the hardest thing to edit to perfection because as I had to cut and replace shots, the soundtrack did not match the image smoothly at times and shifted the entire sound from the clips along. In the beginning, it was unnoticable, but towards the end when there was very little dialogue then this was a huge problem as the image and sound were asynchronous. To resolve this issue I had to crop the relevant part from the soundtrack, remove all the sound from the actual shots and extend it across till the character took off his headphones as this is shown as non diagetic sound. Then another problem which occurred after this was we had not counted for the time in which we had placed the black screen title in the middle. Placing this clip in the middle, meant that there was ambient sound within the clip either end of the black screen, except the 3 seconds the title 'Bridges' had to appear. The best method in which we ammended this was by removing ambient sound recorded when shooting the establishing shot of the location and pasting it over the 'Bridges' slide. The problem with this, which we only picked up on after was that we used sound from an external location for an internal location which made the sound not balance when played together. When doing it, we did not see this problem, but watching back on it the next day, to have a final thorough check, we identified the fact that it did not match well but did the best we possibly could. If I were to have done this again, then I would remove all the sound from the whole openeing sequence and use soundtracks and voiceovers as dialogue which would improve the clarity of speech as well as remove any uneccessary background sound.
