Film Four Ideology

Looking for Eric

The characters represent real life situations by portraying a man who's life is at its worst and has a mental illness. These characters are located in lower class houses. There are many British cultural references like the use of slang by the youngsters, the pub, British football team reference Manchester United, the British police and their use of language like how they use 'me' instead of 'my'. This is a typical Film Four story-line  because it deals with relationship problems which is very common.

Submarine

This film portrays a teenage boy who is in a conflict between his relationship with his girlfriend and the relationship between his parents. This location was set in South Wales so its quite a boring normal British area. The characters have Welsh accents that the British audience will be familiar with and it uses British soundtrack. This is a typical Film Four story-line as it depicts the relationships between certain characters and life's difficult choices that people will need to make.



Four Lions

Film four used the characters in this film to depict the extremists in real life. The main characters represent terrorists and are used to portray the Islamic dominance and how they see the world. They used a location in Pakistan to depict where these type of people reside in which is a common stereotype. The British cultural references would be their accents, British soundtracks, road signs, references to mobile network and the few British areas that the British audience can familiarize with. This film isn't a typical Film Four representation, however the ending shows all the main characters dead and Film Four usually present sad endings. We can also denote this was a very risky film to produce as terrorism is a serious topic and this film portrays this as a comedy and would have been banned in many countries like America and the middle east.


Attack the Block

The characters here represent of mainly a black ethnicity which is stereotyped, because people see black people associated with gangs. This is aimed at teenagers unlike other typical Film Four films and there are many British references like Fifa and their use of street slang. This is not a typical Film Four story-line as it features aliens which is unusual, uses CGI which can be expensive, aimed at teenagers and it has a happy ending.

The Inbetweeners Movie

The characters here are all white British and have strong British accents especially the character Will who has a more posh voice which suggests he came from up North. The main characters all represent teenagers and they have a typical story-line where they have their own problems and decide to go on a holiday after they finish Sixth Form to get drunk and have sex. There are few British cultural references as their main setting is abroad, but they use slang language which represents all British teenagers. This isn't a typical Film Four story-line as this is considered a joyful comedy film with a happy ending unlike most other Film Four films. 

Edit Workshop Evaluation

In my edit workshop i portrayed the use of many techniques for my continuity exercise video.



180 degree rule



 I used the 180 degree rule effectively, because the two actors are standing against a wall, so then you cant physically break through that rule. Therefore actor A would always stay on the left and actor B is always on the right.

Rule of Thirds

 I used the rule of thirds here correctly as the actor's eyes are almost level to a third of the line. We had to pan the camera up slightly to match his eyes to a third of the screen.

Match on action

Here I portrayed match on action by shooting the first scene of the actor opening the door all the way through and then shoot the same scene from the opposite side and then edit the two scenes by only showing the actor opening halfway in the first shot and the second half from the opposite shot so that it flows continuously.

Shot-reverse-shot

Here i showed the use of shot-reverse-shot of the last scene, because the two actors are in a conversation and it is the easiest way of doing a shot-reverse-shot. I also implemented an over the shoulder shot to give it a bit more creativity by using two different shots at the same time.

I have faced a few challenges during the production, for example on the street, we had cars driving past on the road, so we had to stop filming and wait for it to go past. We had to overcome this by timing our films perfectly when there are no distractions and this also meant being fast with our filming. We also had to repeat some of our shots many times to get it just right as from the first shot we learn how to do it better. If I was to film again, i would change the dialogue in this scene as I believe it wasn't interesting enough. Also the filming was done over two days, so the lighting would have changed even if it was slightly. If i filmed again i would make sure to do it in a certain time period on the same day to keep the continuity more fluid.

During post-production I used iMovie on an iMac to do video editing which is new to me, so i had a few problems in using it as it was my first time doing video editing. I found it quite easy to use and the clip trimmer tool was very useful in trimming parts of the clip and mixing it together with other clips to make them flow as one. I had faced a continuity error as when showing the match on action, the character opening the door in first person is a different actor to the person opening it on the other side. One thing we didn't notice at first was the actor was wearing a watch in the first shot, but in the next shot there was no watch. So I had to re-edit that scene, to make it more believable by removing the shot with the watch. Another problem i faced was the audio, because the wildcat track I originally recorded was much louder than the original scenes and it had many sounds of footsteps walking by. Also there was a difference of background scenes between each scene so i used a tool on iMovie to reduce the volume in the first few scenes. I then went to find a suitable music track to fit in the video and finding one was not easy. I went through YouTube and listened to at least 10 songs before I chose my favourite one. If I had a chance to edit again, I would have reduced the background sounds in the conversation as the actors dialogue is unclear and hard to understand.

Strength-wise would be the unique idea of having a meeting for concert tickets outside the park/school, as no one has thought of this and it makes mine stand out. Another strength would be my effective use of iMovie. My editing is very spot on and the video flows well error-free and the music is almost on time with the actions. I also added some transition effects to be more creative and to make it look more flashy. 

where there's strength, there are also weaknesses and I have a few here and there. In terms of planning and research, we didn't have much time and we had to rush through in order to start filming on time. We could have gone more in depth with the plot and make the subject more interesting as a man walking up to someone asking for concert tickets isn't very appealing as it should be. I think my sound editing was a bit weak during post-production as during the conversation, loud wind noises could be heard whilst the person was talking thus making it a bit difficult to hear.

Overall, I would have made this better by having better time management to do all filming on the same day to avoid different lighting's including weather and change the dialogue to make it more interesting and appealing to the viewer and make better use of editing in terms of sound. Also I would reshoot the whole conversation, because it wasn't very clear as a new viewer would find it hard to understand what the actors said. Also I think I should have kept the music playing during the conversation, but at a lower volume to keep the pace going, because when the conversation scene starts, the music abruptly stops thus breaking the flow of music. 

My continuity editing exercise- The Meeting

Continuity Editing Exercise

Our group had the task of creating a scene where one person opens a door, crosses the room and shares a conversation with another person in the room. We had to demonstrate our skills by using the following:

180 degree rule

• Rule of Thirds- a guideline to ensure the eye is at a third of a line.
• Match on action- a cut in which two parallel actions are mirrored.
• Shot-reverse-shot- a cut used to show the opposite shot then back to original shot.
• 180 degree rule- when filming a two shot, the camera must stay on one side of the shot.

Rule of Thirds

Match on action

I worked with two other guys (Abir Mohammad and Satveer Degun) to plan and film the whole scenario and we established this successfully. There was no problems in the group, we worked well together and we managed to complete this in time. We created our scenario outside the park and school area and we developed this by adding different types of shots like over the shoulder and close-ups. We also added a wildcat sound track to create a realisitc feel to the scenario. Our storyboard was very useful and we filmed everything based on our storyboards. One of our shots we changed in the storyboard from a midshot to an over the shoulder shot for added audience interest. In my storyboard I included a two shot and then an over the shoulder shot which i changed from a midshot. I also have a shot-reverse-shot to end the scenario. I added more creativity by changing the setting to outside the park and used fast paced music. Also for our dialogue, the subject was about selling concert tickets which is a creative idea.