Evaluation of the Film Project: Gunpowder (From Questions)

Our media project challenges forms and conventions of real media products because there is a woman protagonist who lives on her own, and has a dark past. Most women protagonists, especially younger ones, are light and cheery or have a reasonably clean past. She appears to be in quite deep with some kind of issue that makes her consider killing herself. This would not classically be on TV or in a film. Also her middle class appearance starkly contrasts her alone stature and alcoholic problems. Our lady does not represent any particular social groups as she is from the 1950’s, and a middle age, young women. She does not represent any modern social groups and she definitely doesn’t fit the traditional stereo types of the 1950’s. Mostly women where expected to be married and a respectable housewife. She does not appear to be any of this.

The Media project may be supported by KOCH Entertainment. They have supported several film noir movies and have a host of classics. They are one of the fastest growing independent institutions in America. Although it is mainly based on music, you can see its film section here: http://www.kochent.com/kochlorberfilms.htm

The audience for our media project would be intellectual adults, this is because film noirs generally have many twists and puzzles in them and have morally ambiguous endings. The people that would see our film would more likely be film buffs who understand and relate to certain cinematic techniques that you would need quite a lot of cinematic knowledge to understand.
They would have to be the kind of person who would want to sit through a dark and mysterious film. Most likely people over the age of 17.

We attracted out audience by using the classic style of film noir, for example the black and white style and edgy lighting. We also, throughout the introduction slowly increased the pace of the shots to make the audience drawn into it, and want to keep watching. We felt that the music also pulled people in as it was quite calm and mysterious. Also one of the pieces of music was used from one of the classic film noirs (Psycho) which meant that people would instantly know which genre it is and if they will like it. Another factor that would appeal to the film noir audience is the fact that you do not get to see the actress's face until she gets inside the house, this creates mystery and interest.

By doing this project I have learnt how to use iMovie which I had never used before this project. I also learnt how to use and negotiate apple macs much more than I had done before. Also I haven't had to use a video camera myself before, properly anyway. So now I know how to use a video camera, an apple mac and iMovie. I also learnt how to connect up a video camera to an apple mac, and to convert the film back into a MP4 and then upload it to youtube.

During this project I have also learnt how to blog properly :)

From the start of this project until the end I have learnt how to use the different technology available on an apple mac (as I'm much more used to windows). I have also learnt different shot techniques and how they change the effect of a shot. I have learnt the techniques used in film noir and the way lighting and shots are used to create a dark feeling and moody sense of anti-socialism. I have also learnt about classic movies and how they have added to today's media and how things are created.

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.

The Finished Peice :D

Here is me and Robyn's film, Gunpowder:

I think we succeeded at what we needed to do. Allthough there was a few problems such as when you try and stop the camera filming at the end of a shot, it makes the camera wobble quite a lot. This happens a few times during the intro. Me and Robyn are happy with the results.

Editing Task.

Me and Robyn managed to upload the video without as much difficulty which we faced in the Prelim task which was nice... We were dreading it because of the fuss we had to make to do it before.

When editing we used iMovie (no-one else is using this programme now because it was removed from the other computers). Then first of all we started to cut the shots up into the appropriate parts and also when we cut halfway through an action we had to be precise and make it flow properly. After we had selected the best shots, we then made each individual shot Black and White (we couldn't figure out how to select all of the shots, and no Ctrl A didn't work either). We also turned up the exposure to make the shots seem more authentically Film Noir.

One problem we faced with using a dark room like we did for the shots inside, was that the picture came out quite grainy in some parts. Hopefully this makes it seem more like an aged piece of film but it might just make it look like the poor quality that it is. But we can't do anything about that.

After getting that alright, we put some credits on which come on at appropriate times and we thought it was quite good that the wording carries on over more than one shot.

The most difficult part of the task now though, is to find some suitable (free) music for it. Both me and Robyn spent an extra hour during a free period searching for some kind of music to put on, we could find some but it would cost us 79p and we didn't think we could pay for it at school. At home I found some music which hopefully will be okay. Now we have to choose where and how to put it on and maybe edit the shots a bit to fit with the music.

Now all we have to do is put some credits on at the end. Hopefully we'll finish next lesson. It's looking allright.

The Shooting.

Today we took all our shots. A day late but we stuck to the promised time of 7:30 and ended up very very cold (thank god the other half of the shots were indoors so we could have some tea.

Here's a picture to prove how cold it was:

Anyway, there were no hitches besides how cold it was. Me and Robyn took turns to both direct and take the shots. It worked out well most of the time because when one wasn't sure how to fabricate a certain ideal that we wanted to portray the other person was very able to do so.

So now hopefully we can get the tape onto the Macs without as much trouble as most people had when trying to upload the preliminary task.

So that's done.

Photographic Storyboard. (Curtosey of Matthew Foster)

This is basically a storyboard of every shot that we had pre planned and Matthew has included annotations which show what the shots are technically called.

Film Noir...

For our final peice/ main task, we (in pairs) have to create a short movie intro which is specific to a certain genre. My parner is Robyn Furtado. For our introduction we thought it would be best and easiest for us to do a film noir style movie. This is because in Art I had to study film noir to see how film directors create the gloomy and suggestive scenes and inticing story lines where suprise is allways added by the classic story twist.


A typical film noir set up. It includes many film noir indicators such as shadows and a death threat.

Also for complementary studies I took black and white film studies which lead me to realise that black and white film is a lot about the tone of both the pictures and the film itself. For example my class watched "The Lady Vanishes" (which Dr Ryan imensly enjoyed). Which has a sinister tone because of the story line; everyone in the train lies about how they didn't see this lady who was kidnapped and was going to be killed.

We weren't too sure how to create the unforgettable film noir style of shooting so we went onto youtube and found a very usefull video by Indymogul*:

*not sure if that worked if not here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J97VnLw7PM8