Prelim task Evaluation draft

When deciding our genre for our prelim we researched films, I started looking for films we could research using www.imdb.com What I found when using the top 250 films voted by the users, is that the most popular filmed all had the genres of Crime | Drama, this told me that this was the most popular genre. This couldn't go unnoticed and the group decided this genre could be done fairly effectively. Many of the crime | Drama film opening 2 minutes started with a gloomy, dark atmosphere e.g. the 'shawshank redemption’ where it is night time and the character in the car is kept mysterious for the 2 minutes giving the audience the question of what’s going he doing? Whys he there? Etc. From this research we could put these concepts into our own film fairly simply but effectively.
We did research around Oxford on where we could do our own filming, we were looking for like a back street, hidden, gloomy, worn down place, although we could have done this with effects, although it wouldn’t look as professional and effective. We were then given an opportunity to use an abandoned shop. We weren’t aware when giving the opportunity of its interior but we knew that it would still be helpful for us to film to avoid the problems of like change in weather, random people walking by which could cause lack of continuity between shots. It was only when checking out the shop that we realised it was perfect for our genre, wooden floors, hanging wires, deteriorating walls and creaking doors. Which from the idea from other media products, we believed the location was conventional for our type of genre.
We had decided to dress me (walker) up in a suit to make it look like a business type meeting, but we didn’t want to make me look like an official businessman one who works in banks, offices etc but to show that what he’s doing is behind the scenes and not completely legal whereas for Piyal we wanted him to be slightly more casual but also with a serious look to fit in with the genre.
In our media throughout we wanted to keep mystery, we felt this would be engaging and make the audience want to carry on watching to see what’s happening. We started the mystery by not revealing the guy in a suit for a while and just see what he’s wearing, the brief case and hear the footsteps of him, and we then carried on the mystery with the enigma of 'what’s in the brief case? The fact that it’s in a gloomy dull environment suggests to the audience that it’s something dodgy.
In our prelim task our characters we tried to represent criminal’s social groups we did this from what we understand from other media products what have achieved this it may not be accurate in real life but in terms of how the media portrays it, is what we tried to achieve. We tried to portray our characters as dodgy looking, hidden away from society and of few words. How we interpret the black market operates.
The group did research on our age group to find out what they liked in a film which we could implicate in to our film. We decided that our target audience is people who we can relate to as we will have similar views and opinions. We chose quite a large age range from 16 - 40 which young to middle adults, as this age range is the most significant contributor to IMDB. To attract this audience we wanted to create mystery and gloom which according to our research and the IMDB website was what the top 250 films had in them. On the basis of our prelim it’s hard to give it a target audience as not much happens, and no synopsis for a whole film.
Available to us was a handheld camera, a tripod and editing software, the very minimal needed to make a film. We found the camera which used mini DV tapes needs to be used with caution as it easily can record over previously recorded scenes, so if watching stuff just recorded, we had to be careful to make sure we had played until empty film, this is also relevant to fast forwarding and rewinding as it wasn’t easy to find specific parts of the film and had to be estimated. We also found when filming in a quiet location and playing back the film that white noise was produced within the scenes. Finally the camera battery on hand held cameras is very limited, 3hours maximum, and had to recharge. We found the Tripod to be useful for still shots, but juddery when panning and largely used steady hands for the majority of our shots. The editing software we used for editing the film was Imovie, this was new to the whole group but a little bit of trial and error we managed to do it all in around 2 hours, although it was basic skills. When editing we really noticed the change in lighting in the middle of the 'shot reverse shot' where it was fairly light to quite dark this was because of the time charging of the camera time. We were hoping to edit this to make it lighter but we found it didn’t work effectively so left it dark. We researched this to find out how we could deal with this issue next time and its all in the filming, using lighting and umbrellas to direct light effectively.
The institution which is mostly likely to distribute our preliminary task is 'Film4', which is part of channel 4 which has its only film production company, film4 productions. It is quoted on their website "The Company develops and co-finances film productions and is known for working with the most innovative talent in the UK, whether new or established." This would fit our criteria they also fund Projects, which we would need.
The aim of the task was to complete 3 objectives, going through a door, walking across a room and having a conversation. I believe we achieved this. We made it have more of a storyline than just the objectives, e.g. walking to the door, having a brief case. We used good variations on camera angles rather than the same over and over. The continuity of the shots was very precise and footsteps were timed and worked together but the shots also kept mystery to the audience. My only negatives of the film was the lighting change and the shot reverse shot sequence which had few shots, even though it was one of the criteria’s of the task.