Media Evaluation- Daniel Sutton

Introduction

Our project is a gangster/ crime film set in the 1950s.I worked with two other people from my media class they were Daniel Whigham and Luke Pissochet. We worked well as a group together and produced a good product as a result of this. We each contributed equally towards the project me and Daniel Whigham acted whilst Luke Pissochet controlled the camera although we all discussed where the best camera shot would be in between shots using the 180 degree rule.
The genre of our film is a gangster/ crime in our questionnaire for audience feedback we asked “What kind of genre was our opening sequence and how do you think it was established?” 90% of the people that we asked said it was a gangster or crime genre film. The different conventions that we used to establish this are the two men are wearing suits that are plain black with a plain black ties the connotations that the colour black brings are death darkness and the thought that these two men aren’t pure and good men. We also used a roll of money passed between the men, again this is something that shows they are doing something that isn’t legal. The use of an old revolver gun is shown towards the end of the sequence again showing the conventions of a gangster film.
Two of the major conventions that we have used are that all our filming was done in a dark room with minimum lighting and the soundtrack throughout the film was typical of the gangster/ crime genre. We decided to put the whole opening sequence in black and white as this is something different from the usual colour images in film it also added more mystery to the film and set up more enigmas this is why I think this particular innovation was successful. We asked in our questionnaire for audience feedback “Did you think the film suited black and white?” 100% of the people surveyed said that the black and white was suited to the film and it wouldn’t be as effective if it was in black and white. This was a very successful innovation as everybody in the audience liked it.
We used dark lighting only using one lamp for the lighting in the whole room we asked the audience “Was the lighting in our scene effective?” and 90% of the audience said that it was effective and created suspense I believe this is a good choice that we have used dark lighting. Another thing that we used was smoke in between the scenes to break up the opening sequence and giving us the space to place the names of the director, actors, producer etc. This is another thing that is not usually used in a gangster/ crime genre film. We asked the audience in our questionnaire “What effect did the smoke have?” the feedback that we were given again was very good 100% of the people liked the smoke and said that it created mystery, fear, enigmas and separated the scenes well.

So again this was a good choice for us as it worked well In our film. Our sequence fulfils the requirement of an opening sequence because it sets up many enigmas and makes the viewer want to carry on watching the film. It also fulfils the requirements of the genre we were representing by using all the different micro elements, to create a sequence that people would recognise as a gangster film. The mise en scene was suits, guns

and a roll of money. The lighting was dark and minimal. We edited the sequence with short scenes and in black and white. The cinematography used close ups and extreme close ups.

All of these different elements blended together to fulfil all the requirements of a gangster genre and of an opening sequence.
Our media product represents the particular social group of organised criminals; we have constructed this image by using many different features these are: Costume, Appearance, Actions/ Activities, Settings and use of lighting and sound in their portrayal. The costumes we used to portray the social group of organised criminals are plain black suits with black tie this is the stereotypical view of organised criminals so we decided to use this normal convention of black suits and black ties to make it easy for the viewer to understand that they are organised criminals.
The appearance of our two men in the scene is hidden except for the eyes that we showed at the beginning of the sequence. This represents the group of organised criminals because it keeps the identity hidden and this creates enigmas and the viewers know that they aren’t doing something that is legal.
The actions and the activities that are in the scene clearly show that they are organised criminals as first they pass money to each other and we ask our audience “What do you think was happening in the sequence?” and 90% of the audience said it was a deal between mafia or gangsters, so this particular activity was picked up by the audience to show they were gangsters which is successful as this is what we wanted to show. The next activity is of one of the men pulling a gun out and shooting the man this most definitely shows that they are criminal or at least one of them is. This makes reassures the audience of the thought that they are organised criminals.
The setting that we used was a small dark room with a table in the middle of the room. This is again showing that the two men are organised criminals as the deal is in the small dark room this is what the audience would imagine the “stereotypical” organised criminal would do.
The use of lighting and sound in their portrayal is another good point to represent the social group of organised criminal, the lighting that we used was dark and mysterious this makes the audience think that these are criminals and not nice people because of the lighting in the room. We used a soundtrack that sounds mysterious and suggests that’s there will be violence, action and conflict in the sequence and throughout the film.
Overall I think that our group has represented organised criminals in a realistic and a way that shows they are bad people, we have represented them in this way because most people will imagine them in this way and it is giving the audience what they want and I think the audience have responded well to it.
I would be looking for a british production company and a Hollywood distribution company (making in a indiewood film) The main production company that I would want to back our film is Film4 as they back the best independent films and they have backed similar films like trainspotting and dead mans shoes which both have crime involved. The Hollywood distribution company that I would like to use is paramount as they have a reputation for big gangster films like the Godfather. I believe these two companies would be good to represent my film as they have the good reputation for these types of films.
The target audience for our media product is mainly going to be males between the ages of 16- 25 years old we have made it appeal to this age group because this is the main age group that go to the cinema. The main audiences that would go to watch this film would be from the United States and the United Kingdom. They would be middle class people and may also have special interests of gangster films/ books.
This audience would be a good audience to target as the age group that we are aiming for go to the cinema the most and males would much rather see this film than females.
This audience is good for us financially because they are appealing to middle class people who have the disposable income to go to the cinema and watch the film or buy the dvd.
The audience feedback that we were given was mainly positive our last question in the survey was “What would you rate our sequence out of ten?” I have made an average out of the score and the average score was 7. 75 which I believe is a good result and enough for more people to go an watch it.
I think that our preliminary task was very basic and I can tell that our main project is much better and more advanced than the preliminary task all of our group skills have become much better and we all understand the process in making a film much more than we did at the start of the year.

Dark truth evaluation

For our project we had to create an opening scene for a film with a specific genre. Each group was able to choose what genre they wanted so my group decided to do gangster genre, although this was risky to choose as we were told to try and not choose comedy, sci-fi or gangster genres as they are the hardest types of genres to portray or make in a film.

My group was made up of three people who are called Daniel Sutton, Daniel Whigham and myself. My group decided to share out the four different jobs between the group. My job was to film the opening scene and edit it as well although we then just all joined in doing the editing.

As I've already said my group decided to do a gangster film opening scene, we decided to use some conventions so that the audience would realise what genre it is early on in the opening scene. One of the conventions we used was to make the whole opening scene in black and white.

Some other conventions were props for example the money and the gun, the costume as it was old fashioned and the lighting as it made it seem more old fashioned. It was important to use some typical elements so the audience can see straight away the genre of the film. Although we do use some different elements like when we got the smoke to rise up slowly. It is vital to have something different about the film or the audience will feel like they've already seen the fil

m before and would get bored of it.

I believe that the innovations of the film are likely to prove successful as the changing pace and the smoke should keep the audience hooked on the enigma and mystery of what is about to happen.

We feel that the choices we made were the right ones as audience seemed to like the opening scene and also gave us some feedback saying things like “I liked the fact that the speed of the opening scene got faster as the tension went up”. Although we did get some feedback nit picking at some faults like “the music at the start didn't totally blend into the next soundtrack”.

The opening scene represents different things for example one of the representations is a society which names itself the Mafia. This has been done by the clothes that are worn (old suits which make it authentic), by the lighting (dim making it mysterious) and by the props that are used (rolled up money which gives the enigma of what had been done to earn that money).

Another representation in our opening scene is gender as it stereotypes the man as being the most likely to be involved in crime rather than women, this has been done mainly through the props that have been used (gun which one of the men used to kill the other with for no apparent reason).

The sort of company that would like to make and distribute are film would be a Hollywood company. One main reason I think the company I have chosen would like to make and distribute this film is because of similar films that are out there, for example “the Godfather trilogy” made from the year 1901 to the year 1992 and produced by “Francis Ford Coppola”.

I believe that the type of audience who would watch our film would be firstly from the UK or America, as this film is about the culture and attitude of American gangsters from the past. The English like to see films where it puts the American culture on a lower level to themselves and the Americans like to see films which portray them as brave and courageous. The age range would be from 16 -25 firstly this is because the most common cinema going audience is between the ages of 16 -25, as well as this the film would have a lot of action in it which would please that age group more than any other age group. Finally this film would be intended for males rather than females as on average females like films with romance and mystery not films with action and crime.

We attract our audience to our film by firstly using a bold and unused title for our film “Dark Truth” this makes the audience think about what the film is about and what happens in the film.

To attract the audience to the film we also made it look a bit like other films that have been great hits in the past, this should make the audience think that this film will be great to. As well as this we also established a story at the start of the film to introduce themes such as revenge and betrayal; this attracts the audience by getting them hooked to the film from the things that have already happened. Lastly we end our opening scene by leaving a lot of enigmas, for example why did the man shoot the other man and why was the money passed over the table? This interests the audience and makes them want to carry on watching the film all the way through.

From creating this film I have learnt a lot about different technologies, for example I have learnt how to use and control a digital camcorder in specific ways like the different settings which helps the film look as best as possible. I have learnt how to use ”imovie” which helped me edit the film’s colour, speed and frame changes.

Finally the internet provided a lot of help including the website “www.border.com” this website helped us to keep and store information we may have needed in the future, some of this information came from a website “www.youtube.com” this site provided clips showing other opening scene from many different films which we used and incorporated into our opening scene. All of these things have helped our group to create our opening sequence in the best way possible.

Project Evaluation-Daniel Whigham

Our project was an introduction to a mafia style film that was set around the theme of corruption. It was filmed in black and white to give an old and classic theme and to make it look more professional, we know this is effective and can back this up with the film ‘Sin city’ that was also in black and white and had this exact effect. We never showed our faces to the camera during filming so that enigmas could be set up as to who the people are and what they’re doing. I worked with Daniel Sutton and Luke Pissochet. My particular contributions involved coming up with the original idea, acting as the man who gets shot, finding the location for the filming and working out how to create the smoke effect.
Our opening fulfilled the mafia theme through music, camera angles, lighting and mise en scene. We chose ‘Father’s day’ for the music as it had solemn connotations which match the connotations of a mafia film like this one. Extreme close ups worked with side lighting to keep up enigmas and connotations of mystery as it obscured our characters from vision. The extreme close ups would also help the mise en scene to have a greater effect: The eyes carry connotations of mistrust, we edited them together to show that the two men have a distrust for each other; the sweat has connotations of nervousness and fear which hints to the audience that there is something for the man to be afraid of and this intensifies the enigma of what they are doing. Aside from these things, there is something that makes this opening different and that is the gunshot. This is because the smoke, the suites and the money has told the audience that these men are from the mafia, and that one would shoot another shows that there is a conflict within the mafia instead of with the police or a rival gang as the audience would expect. This is a kind of conflict that has never been explored and has made our opening unique. We believe this will be successful with the audience as they will want to see where this new kind of conflict leads to. It is always important to bring something new to the genre as without it people are generally seeing what they have seen before and this will bore them. I think that overall our choices have worked well and we have evidence for this in a Questionnaire we gave the class. Out of 10 they rated it an average of 8 and agreed with us on the lighting and the smoke and how they related to the theme. Most said they would watch the film meaning it didn’t bore them so we must have succeeded in making it unique. They expressed that they were very interested in the enigmas proving that our lighting, mise en scene, music and cinematography definitely worked in the way outlined above.


The main stereotype in this sequence is criminals and they have been represented in both good and bad ways. Their suites show that they are well off and represents criminals as civilised people. The slow-motion editing makes everything seem calm and smooth which suggests that these people are comfortable and in control, it represents criminals as people who know what they are doing. The gunshot shows the man’s treachery and represents criminals as people with no morals or honour and only have concern for themselves. These stereotypes seem very common in crime films except for the latter, the mafia is usually shown to have respect for their family and partners. Gender has also been represented in this sequence, some aspects go with the common stereotype whereas some challenge it. The suites and the money give in to the stereotype that men are the ones that earn the money and the absence of women from the scene suggests the mafia is a man’s business. We also see the common stereotype of men being violent from the gunshot. However, we also see the man sweat showing he is afraid and developing his character as being somewhat cowardly, this challenges the stereotype that men are the brave heroes. Overall our opening does conform to the common stereotypes but we have challenged them in some aspects, men are mostly portrayed in a positive way.
We would need to find an institution to develop this film and I believe that we would go to Hollywood for this. I believe this because Hollywood is the movie centre of America and the mafia is something that is better related to America than England. The mafia as we see it today is represented closest to people such as Al Capone from America in the middle of the 20th century. Hollywood would likely take a good interest in this film as similar films have appeared from here.

The target audience for our film would be mystery and crime fans of ages 25-40 who enjoy putting the pieces together and to understand the plot. This is a good target audience as it is quite broad so it will include a lot of people and we will be giving them the enigmas and twists that they want. A potential secondary target audience would be action fans, they would want to see the murders and how they are resolved. From looking at the answered Questionnaires of people who I believe belong in my target audience, I saw that they labelled it ‘interesting’ and it had ‘good enigmas’. This shows that our audience does indeed appeal to the target audience.
We have attracted an audience to this film in a number of ways. We set up an equilibrium of the mafia working as normal, but this is disturbed as one member turns on another. The impact of this is that the audience now knows that there is someone in the mafia who has betrayed them. Tension is built in the opening through the secrecy and nature of their actions. The darkness of the room has connotations of being hidden away, this creates a tension of them being caught. From the Questionnaire many people whom we judged to be in our target audience agreed that they felt much tension from watching the opening so we know we have succeeded. The chronology seems to have worked well. Editing the two scenes of the people’s feet together suggests that they are in the same place at the same time and that these two men are linked. The scenes also flow and create realism as each scene takes place where the last one left off. The message on crime in our opening is that it is a dangerous business in which you can trust no one.
We used a variety of technologies when making our opening and I feel I have learned a lot about all of them. I learned about the usefulness of blogs as this was the first time I’ve seen them used for ongoing projects like this one. The same is with youtube as before I wouldn’t have found any use in it besides entertainment, now I know it can be used for homework and research. The internet was very useful as I could work on my project at home as well as at college and contact Luke and Daniel. As for the camera I learned how big a change a tripod can make and how professional and smooth it makes the scenes look, it was very good for panning and tilting. For imovie, I learned how much you can do with a scene even when you think it’s finished.
I think that we’ve come a long way since our preliminary task, this is because we used so much more in our opening that we didn’t think of then. These are things such as better lighting, we used side lighting and low key lighting to create a solemn mood that matches the genre, we did this by buying black sheets and hanging them around the room to make it look darker. This wasn’t present in our preliminary task which used high key lighting that didn’t fit the mood. Other such features were slow-mo and mise en scene, for our preliminary task we were dressed in normal clothes but we changed into suites for our opening and this made it much better.
Overall I believe our product was a brilliant success. In my opinion it’s greatest strengths were the smoke (created using a kettle), the suites and the music. However, it wasn’t without flaws, the starting sound doesn’t fit the genre very well and changes to ‘Father’s day’ quite clumsily. Slow-mo may also have been overused. Despite the flaws, I am very happy with our opening.

Dark Truth

Some reasons why we like this film are different things we did in it. For example when we needed smoke we were going to get some smoke machines but we couldn't so we used a kettle. As well as this we needed to get some sweat coming from Daniel W and instead of getting him to work out we got a empty click ball point pen and a bottle of water and made some sweat drops.

Making the smoke

 The story board first shows smoke rising into the air, we had many ideas for creating this effect.

 Our first idea was smoke matches, however, we couldn't find them anywhere and when the time came to film we still had nothing. We had to find something in the house that could make smoke.

 We soon found what we were looking for. A kettle. We tested it and we achieved the shot we have now, which is very good. The kettle was in some ways better than the smoke matches as it could be used over and over.

and the other peace of music is called Fathers Day, which is shown below.

after creating the story board and making our list of what we needed we moved on to listening to different pieces of music we could use for our opening scene.

we finished our research disiding that we liked two different pieces of music, they are called Indigo which is shown below.