Evaluative analysis

The brief I chose was to develop a single character. I chose this as I knew that this left me open to a range of different story lines as long as it followed a single character. My film follows a young boy living in an abusive household. It begins with him playing with his toys and ends with him calling the police on his abusive father. I wanted to begin with a shot showing bruises on the boys face as this instantly creates an enigma and encourages active spectatorship. My aim was to make an emotional and thought provoking social realism film. I think I achieved this through my screenplay as it covered an emotional topic and I believe it worked out the way I wanted it to. I wanted to create empathy with the main character which I think I achieved by making him relatable and innocent.  I experimented with a cyclic narrative structure however found this to be too complicated and hard to follow in my screenplay so I chose to use a linear narrative structure as this seemed to work best as it fit well with the social realism genre of my film as it followed the action chronologically which is what most social realism films do. Aesthetically I wanted my film to be quite dull and dismal similar to the short film About a girl which was a social realism film which was filmed mostly outdoors when the weather was overcast and dreary. I liked the way this instantly had a negative impact on the mood of the viewer and that it made the film seem more realistic and less polished which I knew would help make my feel more clearly social realism as well as the other aspects I included. I decided to set my film mainly in one house to show the audience how trapped the main character feels and how they cannot escape what is happening to them. I chose to write a screenplay as I knew that my camera and editing skills were limited so the end product would come out better if I did a screenplay. I am glad I made this decision as I thing it gave me a lot more freedom to explore different techniques as well as being something that I had never done before so it was nice to try.

Before I began this project I watched several short films in order to get inspiration and ideas for my narrative such as The Grandmother and Meshes Of An Afternoon, both had very interesting narrative structures however I decided against using these as inspiration for my project as I knew I wanted the genre to be social realism so I took my main inspiration for my narrative and narrative structure from the social realism films that I watched. One of the films I took inspiration for my narrative from was Wasp by Andrea Arnold. The focus on social issues is similar to the idea of my film even though the actual issues are different. The use of mostly diegetic sound has also influenced my plan for my film however I may still add some music to creation emotional response in the viewer. In the pub scene diegetic music is used as it is playing in the pub. I took inspiration from this and used diegetic music playing from headphones as it fit in more with the social realism genre. I used music that juxtaposed what is happening in the scene as I saw this in films such as transporting when the song "Perfect day" by Lou Reed juxtaposes the overdose scene. I was also inspired by the way the narrative in the film About a girl is portrayed through a child so I decided to use this idea in my film and tell the narrative through my little brother who is the main protagonist. I like this idea as it makes the viewer feel connected to the protagonist which is exactly what I want. The innocence of the character juxtaposes the nature of the storyline which will give the uncomfortable affect that I wanted to create. There is a lot of dialogue in this film as the exposition comes from the monologue of the main protagonist and there is a lot of dialogue. In my film I used a limited amount of dialogue as I wanted to present the narrative through the visuals of the film. I particularly liked the ending scene in About a girl as the dialogue does not explain what is happening. As she throws the bag into the canal and the baby floats out there is dead silence which makes the scene unsettling and shocking to the viewer. This inspired me to tell my narrative purely through the visual elements of my film and keep my dialogue to a minimum. This contradicted my initial idea which was to take inspiration from the short film Stutterer and use an internal voice over from the main protagonist throughout the film however I later decided against this as when testing it out I did not like the way it worked with the film. It seemed out of place and took away from the social realism style of the film. I am glad I tried this out but did not use it for a film of this genre.

To create a sense of realism I decided to use handheld camera as this is typical of social realism films. This decision was inspired by the short film Wasp by Andrea Arnold which follows a lower class family going through normal life. The focus on social issues is similar to the idea of my film even though the actual issues are different. The use of mostly diegetic sound also influenced my plan for my film however I still added some diegetic music to create an emotional response in the viewer. In the pub scene diegetic music is used as it is playing in the pub. I took inspiration from this and used diegetic music playing from a TV or radio as it will fit in more with the social realism genre. I may use music that juxtaposed what is happening in the scene as I saw this in films such as transporting when the song "Perfect day" by Lou Reed juxtaposes the overdose scene. I though this was effective and created an interesting contrast between the visuals and the music. This was the only music I included in my screenplay and it fit with the social realism genre as I had the music playing through the boys headphones which meant that it was still diegetic.

The film elephant has little to no dialogue which I thought was powerful and worked well as the basis of the narrative was so violent. The director easily could've made the film a fast paced action film however he chose to use long shots using a steadicam and no exposition through dialogue. I liked this and chose to limit the amount of dialogue I used in my film in order to tell the story through the visuals. In my screenplay there are only 13 lines of dialogue and the majority of the narrative is portrayed through the actions which I think worked well in the end because I decided not to do a voice over. The use of long shots adds to the social realism theme as it feels as though you are just watching an event happen as if you were there. This is how I wanted my film to feel so I wrote long scenes and kept the setting consistent throughout the film. I think this made the film seem a lot more personal and really fit the social realism genre of the film.

La Jettee was by far my favorite of the short films I watched. I decided to take inspiration from this by including some still images within my short film. La Jettee uses still images throughout the entire film with a voice over to tell the narrative. I didn't use still images throughout the entirety of my film however I did use it in a few short clips as I liked the effect it gives and I think it fit in well with my film. When including still images within my film I decided to use photographs within the mise-en-scene as a more subtle way of including them rather than having still frames filling the screen. I also took inspiration from this film and decided to include a flashback in my film in order to make the narrative structure more interesting than the linear narrative I chose to use as the basis of my film. Having a flashback within my film meant that I could add a montage which made a change to the other long shots that I mostly used throughout my film. I don't think that this fit the social realism genre completely however I think it makes my films narrative structure more interesting and gave more exposition without it having to be explained through dialogue. This film also uses a voice over in order to tell the narrative which I thought about doing but decided against it as I didn't like how it turned out. Although La Jettee was my favorite short film out of the ones that I watched, it was not my biggest influence as I thought that a science fiction film would be difficult to create and make original and interesting with the limited amount of time and resources I had to work with.

The last thing I looked at before writing my screenplay was other professionally written screenplays. One of the main screenplays I took influence from was Winters Bone by Debra Granik as it is an american social realism film which uses a lot of description about the setting which I liked and decided to do in my screenplay as I feel that it makes the screenplay more interesting as you can visualize the scene in your head. I also looked at the screenplay for Pulp Fiction as I knew from watching the film that it was highly visual. This screenplay also included a detailed description of the setting and characters which I really liked and think I did well in my own screenplay.I didn't take as much inspiration from this screenplay as I did from the Winters Bone one however it did really help me to look at two screenplays for two very different styles of film.

short film inspiration

Wasp

Wasp is a short film directed by Andrea Arnold. To create a sense of realism I decided to use handheld camera as this is typical of social realism films. This decision was inspired by the short film Wasp by Andrea Arnold which follows a lower class family going through normal life. The focus on social issues is similar to the idea of my film even though the actual issues are different. The use of mostly diegetic sound has also influenced my plan for my film however I may still add some music to creation emotional response in the viewer. In the pub scene diegetic music is used as it is playing in the pub. I may take inspiration from this and use diegetic music playing from a TV or radio as it will fit in more with the social realism genre. I may use music that juxtaposes what is happening in the scene as I saw this in films such as transporting when the song "Perfect day"by Lou Reed juxtaposes the overdose scene.

About a girl

I was inspired by the way the narrative in the film About a girl is portrayed through a child so I decided to use this idea in my film and tell the narrative through my little brother who is the main protagonist. I like this idea as it makes the viewer feel connected to the protagonist which is exactly what I want. The innocence of the character juxtaposes the nature of the storyline which will give the uncomfortable affect that I wanted to create. There is a lot of dialogue in this film as the exposition comes from the monologue of the main protagonist and there is a lot of dialogue. In my film I used a limited amount of dialogue as I wanted to present the narrative through the visuals of the film.

Stutterer

My initial idea was to take inspiration from the short film Stutterer and use a voice over throughout the film however I later decided against this as when testing it out I did not like the way it worked with the film. It seemed out of place and took away from the social realism style of the film. I am glad I tried this out but would not use it in my film this time around.

La Jettee

La Jettee was by far my favourite of the short films I watched. I decided to take inspiration from this by including some still images within my short film. La Jettee uses still images throughout the entire film with a voice over to tell the narrative. I didn't use still images throughout the entirety of my film however I will use it in a few short clips as I like the effect it gives and I think it in well with my film. This film also uses a voice over in order to tell the narrative which I thought about doing but decided against it as I didn't like how it turned out.

Plan update 29-11-18 & 6-12-18 & 11-12-18

29-11-18

After practicing with the camera and playing around with the settings I have decided to film as many of the scenes inside as I can as the weather has been inconsistent which would make it difficult to get consistency within the shoes, especially if I need to re-film any shots. I also found out that I may have to get some lights in order to make the shots clear as the test shots I did were quite dark and thats not how I want them to look. I also tested the shots that I planned out in my storyboard and a lot of them did't look as good as I planned so rather than shooting all of the shots from behind the character I will vary my shots more so only the ones that look right are shot from behind. I felt that using over the shoulder shots often obstructed the camera and blocked out too much of what was going on in front of the person. I found that the shots that looked best like this were the ones that had high key backlighting as it brought the attention to what was going on in the background and not to the person obstructing the camera. I also figured out how to change the focus when I was filming which means I can deepen the depth of field to make the audience focus on what is going on behind. 

Using the natural lighting in the house also made everything look very yellow so I  may have a play around with the effects in Premier Pro to see if I can balance the colour. If it still doesn't look right then I'll take out some lighting equipment and see if using white light looks better than just the lighting from the lights in the house. (update 11-12-18- I played around with premier pro and found that there were limited tools in order to balance the colour therefore I will take out some lighting equipment and test it and I will also try filming some shots earlier in the day so I can test natural lighting)

I played around with different camera angles in order to make the shots look more interesting. I can't tell if I like the way this looks but I will try it again when I'm actually filming as it's easy to do and won't take much extra time. I also changed where I filmed in order to create shadows as I like the way playing with shadows looks in films. I don't think the lighting was quite right in this shot so I will try changing the position and angle I'm filming from.

Weekly plan

I have spent this week planning
I plan to take out a camera next week and take some practice shots so I have plenty of time to think of something new if I don’t like the way they look or if the wind effects the audio
I will film the scenes set in the house first in one or two days
Then I’ll film the shots that are set outside of the house on a different day instead of filming the shots in the order that they will be edited in the film
Doing it like this will save me lots of time.
I think the filming will take a few days to a week and I’ll edit it as I go through
When I’ve put all the clips together I will start to look for music and sounds to use and edit those into my film
I will then start to analyse the films that inspired me and talk about how they inspired the choices I made in my film
The analysis of my film and the analysis of the other short films will take a while but it’s the last thing I’ll have to do.

Storyboard (1st page)

This is the storyboard for the opening few shots in my scene. These are my initial ideas so they may change after I’ve had a go with the camera and worked out how to shots will look. If they don’t look how I wanted to I will change them so this may not be how the final product turns out. I want the sound and lighting to be mostly natural lighting and artificial lighting from actual lights in the house I’m filming in however I may experiment with some lights with barn doors in order to get some back lighting and make the character close to the camera to look like a silhouette. The cuts between shots will be quite abrupt as I think it will fit with the style I am going with. The camera will be mostly handheld as the genre I chose to do is social realism and this is a typical feature of this genre.

Mood board- characters + setting

There is a park just around the corner from here which would probably be perfect for the first shot of my film as I wanted one of a boy watching children play on a park but not playing himself. The fact that it is right near my house which is my other filming location means that it is easily accessible and if a shot doesn’t look right then I don’t have to go too far out if my way to re-film it.

This is the birds eye view of the park where I plan to film. As you can see it has different play equipment so I can play around with what I want to be happening in the actual film if it doesn’t look right using the swings. 

This is the house that I’ll be using for a shot in the first scene. My storyboard has the actors in the top left window however I will probably change this to the window underneath as I have blinds in that room now and I’m not sure how it’ll look. I will try it as the blinds may give it a good effect but I’m not sure yet. 

This is my brother who will be the main protagonist in the film. He is the perfect age for the character I want and loves to be the center of attention so when I asked him to be in the film he jumped at the chance. 

This is my mum and will act as the mother in the film. She isn’t the most confident but the film is a social realism film and there is not a lot of dialogue from her character so she shouldn’t struggle to much 

This is my dad who will play the dad in the film. He will fit the role as he looks a little bit scary so will be able to portray an intimidating character. 

initial ideas

Short film planning

Film inspiration:
1. Wasp - themes & social realism style eg. Hand held camera & diegetic sound
2. Stutterer - voice over from a single person as if the audience are inside the main protagonists head
3.About a girl - story being told through a child & portrayal of social issues
4. La Jetee - use of still images with a voice over to tell the story (not throughout the whole of my film)

Setting
House
Garden
The story feels like it’s happening close to home

Characters
A family
Dad
Mum
Only child
(Can use family to save the trouble of finding people to be in the film)

Mise-en-scene + editing
Lighting lesson: red and blue gel to cover flashing light to make it look like police lights
Natural light & normal house lighting to increase verisimilitude.
Natural lighting and maybe a spotlight to draw the attention of the audience to where I want it to be.
Backlighting in order to make people closer to the camera appear as silhouettes
long shot duration
low angle shots - perspective of a child

The general narrative of my film follows a young boy living in an abusive household. The narrative will be simple however the action will be implied as I will cut the camera every time it’s obvious that something is about to happen. I wanted to keep the narrative simple as the film is only 5 minutes and I didn’t want to give myself too much to do and not be able to make it look as good as I want it to. It will mostly use diegetic sound however I will ass some music to build tension to help build up to the implied action. The film will be shot with mostly over the shoulder shots of the child watching the action occur so that the audience feel like they’ve been put into the story in the child’s position. I want to make the film sad as well as building a lot of tension to keep it interesting.

Wong Kar-Wai

One of the most visually entrancing filmmakers working today, Wong Kar-Wai is a man who creates films filled with dazzling images and characters with a sense of romanticism. Known for his broad ideas and unconventional techniques in the realm of filmmaking, he is an individual that refuses to play by the rules. He brings both Asian sensibility and French New Wave cinematic techniques to each of his stories. After finally making his return in 2013, with his Ip Man bio-pic The Grandmaster, it is clear that there is no other filmmaker like Wong Kar-Wai working today.

Born in Shanghai, China on July 17, 1958, Wong Kar-Wai moved to Hong Kong when he was five years-old. His mother introduced him to many different aspects of cinema ranging from the films of Hong Kong to 1960s French New Wave. After spending two years studying graphic design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic College in 1980, he enrolled in the Hong Kong Television Broadcast Limited course for production training and he learned the art of screenwriting. Kar-Wai took part in in an apprenticeship during this period which brought him to the attention of renowned Hong Kong producer Alan Tang.

Tang hired Kar-Wai to write scripts for various movies ranging from romantic-comedies to action films. Though they scripts were successful, and helped him to get a lot of work, it was clear that Kar-Wai wanted something more. Fortunately, it was Tang who ultimately gave Kar-Wai the chance to helm his first feature film.

Silent film evaluation

Coming up with the idea for our silent film was easier than we thought it would be once we realised that we had to make the narrative simple and easy to follow due to it being difficult to tell a story without using dialogue. We decided to do a modern take on a classic silent film narrative with a romance threatened by a third party. To add a comedic element to our story we replaced the classic femme fetal with Laurence as we knew it would be more difficult to make a silent film that would be taken seriously. It was easier to film than the normal films we’ve made as the necessity to over act and make the movements and expressions exaggerated made it easier for us to get our emotions across as it didn’t matter if the acting seemed forced or unnatural. I think we could’ve put more thought into the mise-en-scene as we just went out knowing what we wanted to film and not where. Us focusing too much on our narrative meant that we didn’t take into account the typical aesthetic of German expressionism such as low key lighting and the use of shadows. The editing process was fairly easy as we knew that we wanted our film to be black and white so that it looked more similar to the silent films we have looked at. We also wanted to add some dialogue using white text on a black screen as that is what they did in the classic silent films. We also added some old music that sounded like some of the music used in sunrise as our story was similar and we thought the use of non-diegetic added to the film. One problem we did have was that our camera ran out of battery before we finished filming which meant that we had to film some of the last shots on a phone which meant that the quality changed however it wasn’t too noticeable and didn’t have much of an impact on the final product.

Film evaluation

Film Evaluation

When producing our film, ‘Last Period’ we aimed to create a dramatic film about teenage life. We took our main inspiration from the romance between Renton and Diane in the film ‘Trainspotting’. The beginning of the planning of our film was a struggle as we all knew that we wanted it to be social realism however it took a while for us to think of an idea that would be interesting but not too difficult to film within the time frame we were set. As a group we worked well together as we get on very well and we know how to work with each other due to the fact that we were grouped together to create our first film for this course. From filming a horror film last time, we knew that we did not want to do the same again as filming at night made it difficult for us to all meet up due to some members of our group living outside of Nuneaton. Filming in the day meant that we could use time in lesson and after college. We also met on a Sunday afternoon in order to film the shots in a family member’s house, which we didn’t end up including in the final cut of our film. We worked together on all aspects of this film and thoroughly enjoyed writing the screenplay as it gave us a chance to create a vision of what we wanted the film to look like before we went out to film. This meant that any ideas one of us wanted to discuss with the group could be put forward early rather than leaving it until the last minute when we went out to film. As the screenplay was only two pages long, we also created a list of the places we knew we wanted to shoot and what scene of the film we wanted to shoot there. This gave us a huge advantage when we went out to start filming, reduced the stress on the two days we were out as well as making us work through things more efficiently as it meant we could shoot in the places that were close to each other so we got it filmed quickly.

Similarly to last time we created a film, we found actors but they all dropped out of it last minute meaning that two members of our group to have to step in. I believe that this made certain things more difficult as I had to film on a camera which I had never used before however harry taught me the basics and the shots didn’t end up looking too bad, even though I thought I was recording when I wasn’t meaning that we had to re film a scene that we were missing. However, not having to direct actors meant that we could get the scenes exactly how we wanted them as we didn’t have to explain our ideas to anyone else. Overall when we were out filming it went quite smoothly however due to the town centre being busy in the day we had to record the same scene several times in order to get the audio clear enough. As most of our dialogue was improvised we didn’t have to waste time learning lines and the interaction between characters seemed more natural. The camerawork was quite shaky as I had never used a camera like that before however it wasn’t too much of an issue as it added to the social realism feel of the film.

Editing the film was fairly simple as we knew what order the shots needed to go and which ones we needed to cut. However, the audio of the two phone calls, which gave the exposition for our film, was not as clear as we needed it to be. This meant that we had to spend most of our editing time adding subtitles which took a long time. I was unsure about this at first as I thought that it may make the film look silly however I think it added a humorous aspect to the film which I personally really liked. We also had some issues importing the shots that we filmed on Charmaine’s phone when the camera ran out of battery but we quickly overcame this by re filming it quickly in one of the lessons that we were going to use to edit. Using this time didn’t impact us too much as me and Harry had a free together on a Thursday afternoon which we used to finish the editing and make the film as good as we could.

Film script

Untitled 

EXT rough estate mid-day  

SHANE is walking through an empty rough estate and listening to hard drill music wearing tracksuit bottoms, hoodie and a cap.     

Shane's phone rings phone rings he picks up the phone   

SHANE 

Yo, 

FRIEND 

Yo, what happened? You didn't come back with us last night. Where were you? 

Shane pinches the top of his nose clearly in pain from last night before taking a brief pause  

SHANE 

Nah, I don't shag and tell. 

Friend laughing 

FRIEND 

Get in there! She was well fit.  

Shane smiles to himself 

SHANE 

Yeah man, I don't know if I'll see her again. You know them tings.  

FRIEND 

Yeah, I get you. 

Sighing  

SHANE 

So, how was your night? 

FRIEND 

Yeah it was great I met this girl and 

Shane shakes his head and cuts him off as he's about to go to the job center to job seek.  

SHANE 

Sorry mate I've got to go, I'm at work now, tell me when I see you later.  

Shane walks into the job center with his head down still in his tracksuit bottoms and hoodie. He is holding his head from last night clearly still hungover.   

EXT outside the job center 

Shane walks outside then sits on the steps sighing with his head in his hands, Shane gets a phone call from an unknown number. 

SHANE  

Urgh, hello? 

STACEY  

Hi its Stacey... 

Shane looks confused whispers to himself. Pressing his phone against his shoulder  

SHANE 

Stacey, Stacey, Stacey? 

Shane has a look of realization, puts the phone to his ear. 

SHANE 

Ohhhh Staceyy!! How are you darling?  

STACEY  

Yeah, I just wondered if you wanted to come over tonight? 

SHANE  

Yeah sure babe  

STACEY  

Cool, oh before I forget can you bring drinks?