Evaluation of "Gunpowder"

Our task was to do a 2 minute film, in which we conveyed our storyboard and established a film and genre as well as a story and character. We decided on film noir as a genre, because we both liked examples of film noir films, such as Physco, Vertigo and The Lady Vanishes. We really liked the mix of crime, mystery and darkness inside the film noir films. Both of us also like thriller as a genre, and film noir is quite similar. We also like the twist that comes, and the good plots. We used these ideas to create a synopsis, and from that a storyboard of the first 2 minutes of the film. These showed a dark bridge next to a canal, and a mysterious woman walking next to it. She collects a suitcase from a mysterious stranger, and we find out that there is a gun in it, and this leads to her considering killing herself, connoting that she has many problems. We filmed this at dawn to get good shadows and dim light, and also not alot of people around.

We got many of our ideas from films such as the 4 minute film school, a film school on you tube. This was useful, because it gave us many ideas, such as the way to use shadows, or transition effects. Also, Lily is studying black and white films in complementary studies. This also helped us, because it showed as classical film ideas, such as slow establishing shots to create tension. We also researched Film noir films by watching many of the srtars of them, on youtube and they gave us ideas about how to establish ideas, ideologies and characters. Because of this research, we decided to change the film to black and white, which made it more shadowy and dark. It also led us to film in the morning, because the light would be darker, and also create shadows. We also keep quite longer timed shots, and we added on many shots of a lonely canal to connote loneliness and mystery. Also, we do not see the actor's face until quite late into the film(about 1.05 minutes in) and this creates suspense, and also mystery-because the character seems to be hiding, and it links the character with crime. Also, we heightened the exposure to make the scene feel even closer to reality and also to enhance the shadows and light. This is similiar to film noir films, and gives makes everything very mysterious. In some shots, however, we dont go completely black and white, and let the colour of the red dress, for example, show through. This was because it added to the old feeling of the movie, as it looked sephia, and also because the red dress linked to danger, sex and death. This connotes excitement, and danger, making Ingrid seem exciting, and setting up her character.
We have few props, except for the gun and the bag. One of our props was to put a wine glass and wine next to Ingrid's' bed, and this connoted that she was losing control of he life, and that she was in trouble. Although this was not a large part of the film, it also established that she was quite stylish (as it was gin or beer, which are less classy.) The lack of props meant the audience were not distracted, and also meant that the room was quite expressionless, meaning that our character may not have been there long, or be going to stay there- connoting to despair or lonliness.

Although we are happy with what we achieved, there are some things that we could have done better. An example is while filming, there is a massive wobble on one shot- this was because the camera was cold, so the record button was stiff, so trying to push it made the camera wobble. We didn't realize until later, and we couldn't edit it out because the shot flowed into the next. This was bad. Another bad thing was the resolution of the camera-in dim light, it caused grainy-ness. This was due to the quality of the camera, and because were shooting in half light to get a film noir effect. Luckily, the grain added an old look to the film, but if the camera had had a higher resolution, we could have done it better, and made the resolution less pixelated- at times, it is hard to see the subjects. Another problem was the editing programme we used-it was too basic. We found that the transitions and the titles were too limited- we wanted to put in an effect where the whole scane swirled into the next scene-an effect put in many of the films we studied. However, we had to use the more basic approach, where we just did a circle moving inwards to the next scene. We also couldn't use more sophisticated titles either. Another issue was the music-it took a long time to get the right music, and we wanted to use uncopy righted music. However, we found that the music that fitted best was music already used in other films. This was initially a problem to our plans, but we decided that because it fitted so well, we might as well use it.

However, i feel as through we did our task well- we wanted to create a 2 minute film,which established a genre, character and setting. I feel we did this, and we are quite pleased with our results.

Film

Gunpowder....

Further editing

We looked for other music on the internet, and Lily found the soundtrack from Physco Wolf, which are quite classical, but also horror music. The versions we found are classical versions, and this means that it adds a thriller effect, espeically with the violins. This makes the whole scene quite eeiry, and adds a mysterious edge to the scenes, which links to the black/white film noir music. Also, because Physcho is a film noir/thriller, this music seems very relevent, and works well.
We also added titles. There were some problems here- the titles on our programme(Imovie HD) were not very advanced, and did not move, and we could not place them anywhere we wanted in the frame. This was infuriting, so we had still title, however, we wanted rolling titles, which links to other film noir titles. However, instead, we placed the titles in the corners, which looks stylish and also maens that the picture is not obsured. We also changed the times of the titles- we made them long enough to read, and also made sure they were easy to read by changing colour, size etc.
We tried to not get any jump cuts, so all of the scenes flowed together- we did this by using alot of our shots, and editing very precisly so the movements and match on actions fitted togther well. To make the flow better, we made sure there were no different sized shots, so they fitted togther well. Although we considered doing long shots next to very short ones, we decided to make all the shots fit togther by letting them get steadily shorter or longer, which builds tension.
The light was quite bad and grimy, however, this adds to the age of the film.