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.