From our preliminary tast I feel I have progressed both in terms of my understanding of software, but also in terms of being able to film and act. Initially I had very little experience in actually filming live actors, my previous experience was with recording and taking footage from my own recording of games etc. The difference being I had to learn and adapt to filming in different conditions and getting enough shots. Something that was aparent I lacked the knowledge about when producing our intial preliminary excercise.
Its clear to see in our initial preliminary that the camera work is shakey and the editing is pretty choppy. Throughout the video the camera is constantly shaking, this is a combination of both the schools equipment and my inexperience in operating the camera. Fortunatly we learnt from this mistake and used my own camera, tripod and monopod for the main piece. This meant we had reliable equipment that I had more experience in handling. Plus over time with practice I got more used to handling the camera on a stand and free hand, I helped my group understand how everything worked. But it was a combination of all of us who achieved the final result, Laura had great vision in capturing some of the indoor shots.
Another flaw in our initial preliminary task is the editing and amount of shots we took, the cuts are jummpy and that is my fault in all honesty. I had them cut too fast and it made it look very jumpy, it didn't help that I didn't try and balance the lighting on both sides to make it look natural. This also comes under the problem of not having enough shots, when you see Laura and the guy talking when it's looking from over Lauras shoulder the lighting is vastly different from when it's looking over his. This is because of the changing light conditions as the shoot went on and I didn't have any shots that I could use to make it look more natural. I could also have edited the lighting levels to match up properly but that just shows my inexperience in dealing with such things in video making. We did however learn from these mistakes and when making our final piece took everyshot a minimum of 5 times, some even close to 12 times to make sure we had options if something didn't look right. Also I myself improved my skill in editing videos when taking into account factors such as lighting, balance and colour. The audio was severly hampered due to the poor quality of the schools microphones so that's a hardware problem more than anything.
When comparing our preliminary to our rough cut you can see that I have improved upon keeping the camera steady and limiting shaking as much as possible. But there are still instances where the camera is a bit to shaky such as around 0:20. The shake during those scenes was due to it being freehand and I was shivering in the cold so it was hard to keep it stable. We still have issue with the balance of light, but this was due to the fact I had not yet added the proper effect, it was simply a black and white filter. At this stage we had not finished filming all the shots we needed so the placeholders wern't because of us not taking enough shots but more to due with us not having filmed a few missing components. Overall it's clear to see we have learnt a lot just up to the rough draft, I have become more knowledgable in operating the camera and maintaing a good quality image throughout the video. However the sound still needed work as it sounds a little off, but the recorded sound is much clearer and more crisp due to it being on my own camera.
Moving on to our final piece I have removed almost all traces of the camera shacking, apart from the feet walking due to us not having a proper trolly to mount a camera to we had to improvise with a skateboard and tape. Considering what we had it turned out pretty well all things considered, certain shots wobble more than others but as a whole it is vastly improved from my first tast. The balance has been nicely tuned, the low key lighting and effect applied after creates a very dark atmosphere which was what we were aiming for. It's also appropriately balanced based on each shot and works well with the red shoes being highlighted. I also had no trouble sifting through multiple shots to find the best one, or a mixute of multiple shots if needed.
Overall I have come along way from the preliminary, having a much greater understanding of how to film, frame and balance a shot to get the desired effect. It took a lot of time and practise but we eventually created a solid media product. The video itself speaks for itself in how far we have come from the beginning to it being completed.
While producing our media product I may not have learned as much about the technology behind creating it as my pears. This is mostly due to the fact I have previous experience in creating videos and using audio and video software to create reviews and short videos. That does not mean however I have not developed my skills in using said software and I have had to adapt my style of producing videos to accomidate having a team who helped me.
Our productions primary audience was intitally those interested in the genre, however this is too much of a narrow audience for the film to be profitable. To that end we tried to broaden it's designated audience by giving it a distinctive look and story. This should attract those who enjoy both style and substance, it also draws in those who enjoy artsy indie productions.
The bulk of the audience would probably be the American public, due to this film being based in their culture and about a time in their history. It means they can relate to the characters and settings more as it's closer to home. We knew this from the start that an American Gangster film would find it's largest audience in America. However this does not mean we could alienate those from other cultures or wrongly portray the American culture of the time.
Our film does not have a specific gender for it's desired audience, we went against the conventions by having an independant woman was one of the lead characters. This creates appeal to both a male and female audience, even though the genre itself is normally catered towards male audiences. I feel we have done a good job making it more appealing to both sexs, because the female lead also serves to be attractive to the male portion of our audience. We made the product suitable for our designated audience by making sure we had made it as accurate as possible, bearing in mind our limited budget. This means costume, props, voices and the asthetics were all appropriate for the time. We had to go out of our way to make sure not to include anything that would compromise the integrity of our time period e.g modern cars, products etc.
With the plethora of online options these days I felt that over the internet would be the most effective way to attract and address our audience. This opens up many different channels, from the obvious of social networking which proved to be very helpful. To more obscure things such as a small little marketing campign and feedback session I got from my website.
Youtube is the first choice, it is where the video is uploaded, however it's not easy to get a small channel such as myself noticed. I only have around 225 subscribers so it will not reach a wide audience. Despite this fact we did get some likes on the video and a decent amount of views. But the site is only useful for attracting the audience to the product but because of the lack of comments we cannot recieve feedback and see what they liked or didn't like.
We found the best way to get our product to people was word of mouth, by physically showing them and noting the responses we got. From people I know I got feedback on changing the initial contrast and on certain transitions. My friend also offered to produce a logo for me which he did and had some ideas on how to match up the sound to make it sound smoother as with the rough cuts they are rather sporadic.
In order to get some appropriate feedback I used the website I help run to make a topic and get some criticism. Unfortunatly the sites archives were cleaned out when the other admin was messing around with the sites layout and posts. So the only available shot I have is of people saying it was good and congratulations etc. I had done a number of other topics explaining what I was doing and that it was coming soon. I got a lot of interesting ideas from feedback given by the guys on this site, it's just a shame I can't take anymore screen grabs.
- We used the typical conventions of the gangster genre this included things such as suits, cigars, dark alleys and gun. This made it easy for the audience to recognise the film as an American Gangster film
- The film noir type look is something often associated with crime movies as such we found taking this and changing it to a Sin City type effect gave the film an appropriate look for the genre
- As with many films openings the production company logo appears first and when the titles begin to role we make sure the main actors come first.
- We took a similar approach from other films that vaguely establish characters and kill off the character the audience most relates to. This happened in films such as The Cube and Scream and makes the opening have more of an impact as the audience then feels that no one is safe and anyone could die.
- We created an enigma by keeping people and motives hidden, since the story is told in the past tense you assume that you will find out the basis of what is happending later on.
- By keeping conversation to a minimum we went against the conventions of many other gangster films that have wordy openings. However it was necessary to create a greater sense of enigma and really catch the viewers attention
- Having a female lead in this genre goes against the conventions because normally they play more supporting roles to the men but in our film we have her at the forefront. Which can be symbolised by her red shoes
The second social group our product represents is women, bearing in mind we had to represent her according to the time period of our film which is in and around the 1950's. In that time dressing in skimpy outfits was seen as obscure in public something socially unacceptable at the time. So in order to give our leading lady sex appeal we had to make her attire suit what would have been considered attractive. This is evident by the choice of her wearing high heels, an expensive coat and gloves. All of these create the image of a well dressed woman who would attract a man. The idea of having her wear legs bare also makes the woman have sex appeal as at the time this was the most acceptable way to show off a womans body in public. Her heels were integral to our representation of woman because not only did they give her that sexy sleak look we wanted but the highlighted red also gives the impression to the audience that she is important. This goes against the conventions of a typical gangster film where normally the female characters play a more supporting role to their male lead. However we felt this change would make the film more appealing to women.
