e blog

                Evaluation

What went well?

Finally the Kings of Wealdstone project is finally filmed and edited; I can confidently say a lot of things went well in this short film, the fact that everyone had a role to play and we all displayed technological skills. For example Hamza and I did sound and Shirwa filmed, filming went well in term of how it looked and how it stayed true and realistic towards the gangster genre. The final product also looked like as if it was an apocalypse because you don’t really see anyone else in the film except for the person we beat up. Furthermore in my opinion the opening sequence does the whole story justice and I am absolutely certain it will capture the audiences’ imagination. To be honest I kind of came up with the opening sequence because of John, John said your short film has to start off with a bang and it needs to be interesting.

Props- The most commonly seen props in gangster films are guns, cigarettes, drugs and money. These often tie into the story line and theme of gangster films. Especially in Scar face. You could also say that these movies glorified the idea of drugs,guns and cigarettes almost saying that this was the dream life but nearly all of these movies didn’t end well for the protagonist and it was only symbolizing and foreshadowing deaths.

The opening sequences had an awkward correlation towards the feel of the story, I don’t know how to explain it but it was almost like a powerful symbolic foreshadow of how things were going to turn out for the longevity of the short film. In my opinion the music fits our short film because of the melody and tone of the rhythm and how gritty and violent the soundtracks are, it is almost a theme for each character because it shows what they are feeling at that present moment in time I think in most successful gangster the soundtrack makes the movie so I decided to create a music list on my blog.

The final thing that went well was the costume, props and location. I think without these three things are short film would be a colossal waste of time. Just things such as ski mask and baseball bats really made this short film standout and are unique.

I was quite impressed at the fact that we added a lot of mise en scene elements in our short film. One of the being setting. The setting in gangster films is almost always an Urban/City location. Rundown areas and industrial estates. Directors may pick these locations for the simple fact that they want the gangster to be very gritty and realistic. Some early Gangster films such as The Godfather is successful mainly because of the location and setting showing that locations connect with the narrative of the story. In Kidult hood the film mostly was on street corners and houses. I thing we followed this formulae however we did our way and didn’t just copy and paste ideas. Just the little things such as me wearing ski mask, track suite bottoms and swinging around a baseball bat did our short film.Even the way the exposure looks in certain scenes really bring out the dark themes of the movie and the way I edited it really went with the flow of the film.

What could be improved?
I think the sound quality could be slightly improved, for example when Hamza is plotting to kill shanks the narration was a little bit anti climatic to say the least. Furthermore, we could have the sound be raised a little bit using the audio clip mixer in Adobe premiere, this will then let the audience hear the emotion in Hamzas voice making it look like he is actually second guessing killing shanks and he kind of created a friendship. Every story needs to believable it is our job as film makers to make the film believable and in terms of the real media world whether or not they want to see it.
In addition, some other errors could have been improved as well things such as the repetition of certain scenes. It is good to have flashbacks sometimes but you do not want it to overlap, this was an error that I could have easily changed whilst editing but I just decided to render because I didn’t want to mess up the deadline.

What was bad?
In my honest opinion the ending ruined everything, there is not one good thing I can say about the ending everything about it was just forced and the psychology and ethic behind it didn’t make sense at all. Shanks and Hamza formed a friendship and it takes one phone call from vicious to turn Hamza into a cold blooded killer. I mean there is no character development we should have shown different stages of Hamza turning evil.

Conclusion

Overall I don’t believe we did badly but in the future we should plan things properly and not just half do things. Timing is everything and we as a group should time things properly and avoid plot holes in our film that will leave the audience baffled.

 

Today we encountered in issue with the weather therefore we was unable to film. We was also trying to film our final death scene but we lacked time and execution. To sum it all up we are going to have film tomorrow and our other clips are already edited and done. In this reflection I will be talking about our experience so far with the short and also the roles each person had, for example Shirwa is our camera man and Hamza and I are the sound guys. To be quite honest every person in our group has display great technical skill and on top of all that we decided to edit our own versions to tell different sides of the story; so the narrative and storyline will have alternate endings and beginnings. This is very healthy for our kings of Wealdstone project because we put a lot of effort and time into this project not to mention the ski mask and baseball bats we bought together as group.

Day 1 of filming- On day 1 we was doing some location scouting for our short film and we came across this isolated location, the location was isolated because we didn’t want draw any attention from people mainly because we were in masks and had a bat. We took into consideration the amount of things that could have seriously gone wrong. We also wanted our footage to be as professional as possible and we didn’t want anyone else in our shot other than extras.

Day 2 of filming- On day 2 we proceeded to start filming our opening sequence of the film, this was not the plan at first for our project it wasn’t until I looked at movie like Kidult Hood and I got inspiration to use a baseball bat for our sequence. Below you are going to see were our ski mask and baseball bat idea came from and how we developed it and made into our own thing.

Above you see a video clips showing the ending of Kidulthood, pay attention to the specific props we used and clothing. In our short we have the exact same thing and we did this because we didn’t want to deviate from our original goal.

Conventions of the Gangster Film Genre

1. 1. CONVENTIONS OF THE GANGSTER FILM GENRE
2.  Mise En Scene – colours & Lighting
3.  Mise En Scene – Setting
4. Mise En Scene – Costume & Make Up
5. Mise En Scene – Props

Colours and lighting-The colours used are often very dark, this is mainly because of the fact that most gangster films if not all have deaths in them and the dark colours create dark themes in a movie. Another film for a dark colour can insinuate that their maybe some sort of betrayal,jealously and drama.

Setting-The setting in gangster films is almost always an Urban/City location. Rundown areas and industrial estates. Directors may pick these locations for the simple fact that they want the gangster to be very gritty and realistic. Some early Gangster films such as The Godfather is successful mainly because of the location and setting showing that locations connect with the narrative of the story.

Costume and Make Up-Formal outfits like suits and ties are one of the most recognizable conventions in gangster films. Movies like American Gangster which tells the story of Frank Lucas starring Denzel Washington, you mostly see the main character dressed in a suit further utilizing the idea that these characters are men of class and are also criminals. Dresses are also often seen when women are involved. The colour red often ties in with these outfits also. For Make Up things such as blood and scars are used to maximize the use of violence in these films.

Props- The most commonly seen props in gangster films are guns, cigarettes, drugs and money. These often tie into the story line and theme of gangster films. Especially in Scar face. You could also say that these movies glorified the idea of drugs,guns and cigarettes almost saying that this was the dream life but nearly all of these movies didn’t end well for the protagonist and it was only symbolizing and foreshadowing deaths.

Today we encountered in issue with the weather therefore we was unable to film. We was also trying to film our final death scene but we lacked time and execution. To sum it all up we are going to have film tomorrow and our other clips are already edited and done. In this reflection I will be talking about our experience so far with the short and also the roles each person had, for example Shirwa is our camera man and Hamza and I are the sound guys. To be quite honest every person in our group has display great technical skill and on top of all that we decided to edit our own versions to tell different sides of the story; so the narrative and storyline will have alternate endings and beginnings. This is very healthy for our kings of Wealdstone project because we put a lot of effort and time into this project not to mention the ski mask and baseball bats we bought together as group.

Day 1 of filming- On day 1 we was doing some location scouting for our short film and we came across this isolated location, the location was isolated because we didn’t want draw any attention from people mainly because we were in masks and had a bat. We took into consideration the amount of things that could have seriously gone wrong. We also wanted our footage to be as professional as possible and we didn’t want anyone else in our shot other than extras.

Day 2 of filming- On day 2 we proceeded to start filming our opening sequence of the film, this was not the plan at first for our project it wasn’t until I looked at movie like Kidult Hood and I got inspiration to use a baseball bat for our sequence. Below you are going to see were our ski mask and baseball bat idea came from and how we developed it and made into our own thing.

Opening sequence to our Kings of Wealdstone short film

On Wednesday I took it upon myself to film my opening sequence for our short film Kings of Wealdstone. In this opening sequence we decided to start of things with a bang and so I did. This scene included Shanks, Vicious and H commencing with their daily routine of chaos, putting the fear of God into their victims who they distribute drugs to. This 1^st shot is of a crack addict and one of Shanks’ highest paying consumers. But it looks like the crack hasn’t been paying his money to Shanks and he must pay up.

How we created this?

We decided to edit our own versions of our opening sequence because all three of us have a different side to our story. On my blog you will see my version and two completely different versions on Shirwa and Hamza blog. This could be beneficial in terms of linking all of these together in the main film. However I will say each opening sequence is vibrant, unique and epic.