Evaluation of the Film Project: Gunpowder (Personal One)

For this project we had to make an approximately two minute film introduction. It had to include several different style of shot and keep the audience's interest for that time and hopefully make them want to watch more. It should also include credits and definitely a title. I think we managed to fill the criteria although obviously with a few bumps in the road.

We used iMovie HD which was not a very good programme as there was limited titles and transitions available but we managed to work with these by slightly changing where we placed the titles. Besides the lack of things to work with on the programme. It did, however have good ways of editing colours, exposure and other similar details. For example this allowed us to create the black and white with colour effect used in the first shots so that you could see her red dress. This effect was simply to accentuate the point of focus in the shots, which in this case is Ingrid's dress. As well as raising the exposure on shots to give them a heightened sense of reality and to draw attention to the title "Gunpowder" shot written in the frost. We edited the title because Mr Wroe said it was unclear as to the purpose of the shot as a title so he wanted us to make it clearer. We sorted this out by turning up the exposure and contrast, it would look a little like this (Picture from Gunpowder plot):



Before


After - With exposure turned up


One of the other problems we had was that when you had to stop a shot you would press the button on the camera meaning that it sometimes would shake quite a lot near the end of a shot. This meant that the filmed look much less professional. Also when trying to pan across to follow Ingrid's legs, the tripod was quite stiff therefore the shot is jittery and she walks off the side a bit at one point. I would like to have done this again to a better standard but it was very very cold at half past 7 in December especially for Ingrid in her dress. Because of the slightly small budget of the school (understandably) the camera quality was not very good at handling the lack of light in our shots making the shots quite grainy. Another group had a similar problem.

I think that the thing me and Robyn achieved the best in the film was the slick changing between camera angles within shots. For example when Ingrid pulls up her bag from under the bed it's almost seamless. We wanted to create this seamless effect to keep peoples interest and also to make the movie have a natural effect. Another way we managed to get this "natural" effect is by making Ingrid (and the other actress in the movie) start walking slightly before we start the shot this means that they don't suddenly jump into action when the camera starts and gives them the feeling that it's what they where doing before the audience started to watch.

We managed to keep the film set and props very simple by using the surroundings we had and Ingrid's already very elegant wardrobe. The only other props we used was the suitcase which we borrowed from Robyn's father and a sly wine glass and bottle of wine on the side table on the inside shots. We thought that the wine glass and bottle would help to connote a slight lack of control on the heroins life and show that she has flaws too. This would allow people in the audience to relate to her more and show that she might have a strange story behind her and draw people into the film.

The lighting in the film was pretty much just as it came when we where outside. But when we where in side We made sure that the curtain was closed so a Film Noir style shaft of light would fall over her face and the bed. I think this was quite effective. Later on in the inside shots the lamp was behind her giving her a dark and secretive effect which I found to be useful because, again, it imitated the Film Noir style quite strongly.

With our actress, we managed to get her to act in our film by offering her breakfast and a cup of tea afterwards. She was good at following what we told her to do except when we got in from doing the cold shots and she got into the big warm bed this made her incapable of looking confused or angry so we had a problem with that for a while but the end shot turned out alright.

Another issue that arose was that we needed to find some appropriate music to put over the top of the silence. The way I found some suitable music was to search on the Internet for scary movie themes, two songs came up that I thought was going to be appropriate. These where Wolf - 101 strings and Psycho - The City. Both from other movies. The only problem after this was that with the Wolf theme the tone started to change about halfway through. I had to blend both songs together to make it have a seamless and appropriate effect all the way through the intro. If you can hear, the songs change over just on the title shot. It worked out pretty well and the movie is complete with these themes.

Things that inspired us to create this movie are in art I studied Film Noir and how they create the gloomy dark and mysterious image then I took black and white film studies with Dr Ryan for complementary studies and watched "The Lady Vanishes" also I watched the Four Minute film school which is in one of the articles bellow.

If I where to do this again I would like to use some better equipment but otherwise I think we did it quite well and finished about a month earlier than we needed to therefore had a enough time to write a very long evaluation.