Evaluation

Evaluation

My film opening ‘THE SETUP’ is an action thriller. It follows a man being perused by a mysterious agent, who won’t stop at nothing until he gets his documents.  The film opens up with two establishing shots (the water front and the unfinished car park). I used these two shots as contrasts. The nice looking waterfront represents the main antagonist normality and innocence. Henry Chung’s character has been thrown into the deep end and is unaccustomed to danger. This contrasts with the rough and grim looking unfinished car park. The car park represents the villain, the agent of change, who is out there to disrupt the normality of Henry Chung’s character’s life. The next few shots which I used were to emphasise the speed at which Henry was running at, at ‘0:29’ minutes is a great example. This shot was unintended to end up how it did, however I liked the shaking of the camera and resulted in a handheld type track shot.

                                                                                     

The shot that I used At ‘0:40’ minutes was great because it really captured  and introduced the feel of the film, I hope when people watch that shot that they are suddenly aware the film is going to be an action thriller. 

Introducing a villain has to be pulled off very well so that the audience knows what type of character they are. When I introduced Mark, (the villain), I didn’t want the audience to see his face, to create a sense of discomfort and mystery.  I included the scene, where Mark pulls the gun out from his coat, to tell the audience that he is a threat. 

The high angle tracking shots at 1:23 minutes created more depth towards the chase, rather than just having it all filmed along the pavement.

As the chase comes to an end, Mark chases Henry into a dead end the rain started to pour heavily, when filming. This produced rain drops on the camera lens which was a great effect. When Henry realises that he has nowhere else to run, I used a POV shot, which looks around the wall. I used this because it puts the audience into Henry’s position and to show them the fear that there is no escape. The shot that I used at 2:57 was good for showing that there wasn’t going to be any more running and that it was the final showdown. 

A lot of things worked well in my opening.  I think that the location was a good choice, the docks created a good atmosphere especially the run down area at the end. I think that filming at dusk made the lighting perfect. The rain added to the moody feel of the film. My choice of camera angles worked well including cantered angles, high shots, close ups, low shots, tracks and pans. The actors, Henry and Mark, were great to work with; they responded well to my vision and didn’t moan or fuss once. A great positive feature was the music flowed really well with the action and did a good job of creating tension and suspense. My film contains many enigma codes which leaves the ending open and lets the audience use their imagination on what happens next. Generally many things went as according to plan, however there were a few errors. My opening contains a lot of continuity errors such as when mark is chasing Henry at 1:48 minutes, Henry runs off into the distance, in the next shot, as the camera tracks Mark, Henry has disappeared. My thumb is visible on screen at 1:23 minutes.

When researching thrillers, suspense, tension and excitement are the key elements. I believe that I’ve included all three of these in my opening. The music is a reflection of this, it builds up these elements.
 By having the main character wearing normal everyday teenage clothes, I think that I have developed the thriller genre by presenting it to a teenage audience

When watching my opening, I think that a distributer like fox search lights would distribute my film because I would rather have my film classed as an indie than a major. Indies have more respect and are the directors are allowed to express their imagination. This is a unique choice for a thriller as most of them are distributed by majors.

My preferred audience for my film would probably be 15 years and older because I wanted my film to contain some scenes of violence and mild swearing.

I think that my film accommodates the audience well because of the general feel of the film. The villain holding the gun promotes violence and wouldn’t be suitable for anyone below 15. Although the film has an older and mature feel, having Henry and Mark in it would market a younger audience. Especially the clothing that Henry wears, it resembles something which a teenager would wear and could easily be relatable to a teenager.

From making my opening I have learnt a lot about technologies. During class work we practiced using the camera a lot and so by doing this I became more confident when handling cameras. This goes for the Imovie as well, we practiced and practiced, which made me learn the basics and also the main elements of assembling a film. I learnt how to split clips at play heads at the right time, to take away any continuity errors. I used to have trouble inserting, cropping and fading music however on the process of editing my opening; I learnt how to do all of these effectively. On one of the shots in the film, my thumb was clearly visible on the top right screen. I asked my teacher for advice on how to get rid of the thumb. For the first time ever I went onto final cut pro, my teacher showed me how to crop a clip. You simply move the focus away from the thumb and zoom in slightly. The thumb then disappears and the clip looks good as new. 
The two pictures below are evidence of this. Image one, you can clearly see my thumb next to Henry's head.
Image two, thumb has disappeared. 

On Imovie, it doesn’t allow you to put a transition if the clip is too short. However by asking a fellow colleague on how to get around this obstacle, he told me to simply take an unwanted clip, edit it in effects by making the colour completely white and changing the time to being a second long, drag it and drop it into an area where you need a transition and it works as a substitute for a fade out.

Looking back at my Preliminary task, I can see that I have come a long way. I wasn’t very adventurous with experimenting different camera types on my Prelim. My camera skills were not even on the scale compared to my final opening. When you watch my Preliminary, the camera is very wobbly and the sound and music doesn’t flow very well. However this was a good resource to look back at, I looked at my mistakes and improved them. Even though the actors are different, the plot is very similar to my final opening. So I guess I could say that I used my prelim as a blueprint.

All in all I am very, very happy with my opening; I couldn’t have predicted how well it turned out to look. The look of the film was almost identical to my imagination of what the film would look like in my head. I’ve really enjoyed working on my opening, it’s been great fun filming and editing. I can’t wait to go out and film something else!