'Remorese' - The Final Cut

This is the final cut of our film opening sequence. This differs from the previous cut by incorporating a non-diegetic voice over. We found that timing the lines in correlation to the music helped to emphasise the element of sadness, giving the voice over, and the narrative as a whole, more substance and meaning. Comparing this to our first cut, we can conclusively say that this is a much more appealing and professional looking product. Doing multiple cuts also made us feel more confident to add in new aspects with every cut, so that when we reached our final cut all of these technical areas worked together to solidify the idea that this is a good example of a film that sticks to the conventions of the crime/drama genre and fulfils the need of an opening, which is to grip and entice audience members and make them feel compelled to continue watching for the sake of closure.

- Ryan Chapman -

Rough Cut 3

This is the third cut of 'Remorse,' with more fine tuning to shots, in regards to the framing and transitions used. The most notable change is that we have now added some non-diegetic music to help establish a contemplating tone to mirror the character. We found the gentle piano ballad worked well with the opening, especially because we found that, in our research, similar music styles can be seen to give the product more depth.

- Ryan Chapman -

Rough Cut 2

Feedback

• 'Nice establishing shot but it is quite slow

• Change the font of the titles – it Is not good

• You need institutional logos at the start

• Look at the placement of the film title – it is right on top and the shot where he walks across the screen with the lamppost in it is too long

• Some of your shots are much better

• Consider placement of other titles too – some of them are over the action

• Consider sound track

• The shot after he has thrown the leaflet away and the shot on the bridge is too far shot over to the right – it looks odd as he has just been in the centre of the frame

• As an opening title sequence it runs well

• Narrative is difficult to follow'

 - Miss Peacock and Mr Bluck -

 

Comparing this to our first rough cut, there is a clear distinction in quality, in regards to our uses of camera and narrative style. It's clear we took more care with conveying our opening in a more gradually enigmatic and artist way, with more varied shot types that reflect the main protagonist's current state of mind. That being said, as seen in our teacher's comments, there are still certain elements we need to capitalise on for our next cut if we want to get as many marks as possible. Luckily, because none of us in the group were in the opening sequence we won't have to go back and film again, which means the filming aspect of this task is now complete. This means we will be focusing our time on post-production elements within the film making process. For example, adding non-diegetic music will help to better establish a mood and tone, while a different font type will also aid in defining our genre. We will fully utilise this feedback we've been given and do our best to incorporate all of these elements into our next cut.

Rough Cut 1

This is the first edited version of our 'Remorse' film opening. After having given this cut to our teachers we soon received a list of improvements and they are as follows:

'You have a few nice shots but on the whole there is lots to improve on in order to bring your piece up into the higher levels:

 

• You need an institutional logo - at least one at the start
• You need at least another 30 seconds of footage
• The notebook on the bench is not great
• Your titles are not in the correct order - look at your research for this
• The voice over is not good - there are gaps in it - will you add in non diegetic music?
• The Film Title font and lavishness is bad - does not fit in with the genre
• Some of the shots are out of focus and need to be filmed again
• The narrative doesn't make sense - does he love him? who is it? I thought it was meant to be a gangster film - it feels like a love story at the moment.
• As Ryan is in it, he cannot get any marks for use of camera at the moment.
• For rough cut two you need to focus on the narrative and what you are actually trying to produce because it is all a little confusing at the moment.'

 

We have taken this criticism on board and will improve on these particular areas for our next cut.

 

Filming diary

Day 1:

The first day that we began our filming our film opening we had several issues to solve. The largest issue was that the original actor that we had planned to use did not show up for the shoot. This created a large problem as we were unable to get anyone else to fill in, so we had to use one of our group members in the film. We had originally planned on staying in the location (Admirals Park) for roughly 3 hours, however as we did arrive later than expected at 4:30pm we had to accelerate our filming as we had roughly 2 hours of sunlight left in the day. This did at first cause some concern as to if we needed a second day to film the rest of our opening but we were able to fit in all the shots that we need and we left with about half an hour remaining. Over the next couple of days Ryan and Peter spent a large amount of time editing our first rough cut together. We knew this was a rough cut but we still put a lot of hard work into creating a professional looking piece. After showing our product to an audience and our teachers we have been given a list of improvements that we need to do whilst in editing and while we are filming. The biggest thing is that we needed to make it longer as it was too short to be a film opening. From this feedback we were given we are going to be able to improve on our original piece and create an even more professional looking piece.

- Peter Godwin -

Luckily, because I came up with the main protagonist's characteristics, he had a good idea of how to portray him and the qualities within him. This was challenging though, not just because it was short notice that I would have to play him but also because there wasn't any diegetic pieces of dialogue nor close ups to convey the character's attributes. This meant I had to focus on his physicality, specifically his body language, showing that sense of remorse and regret by looking at the environment in quite a contemplating way, and therefore displaying that sense of doubt that helped to present the enigmatic tone we, as a group, wanted to achieve with this opening sequence. Despite the visual weather on camera being sunny, it was also very windy the first day we filmed, which, on top of the impending night time darkness, made us feel all the more compelled to finish shooting as quickly as possible. The wind also didn't help us, in regards to our camera work, especially with the numerous panning shots we have in our sequence, because it resulted in the camera being harder to control steadily on the tripod. While doing our best to control the stability of the camera itself, we also tried our best to make the panning shots appear as smooth and thus professional as possible, however, looking back at our first rough cut, we can now see and understand why this was not achieved.

- Ryan Chapman -

Day 2:

The second day of shooting we had to re-film our scenes as we had a different actor so we re-filmed to create a sense of continuity throughout the film. As we were filming during the day at 1:30 we were no longer rushing our filming so we were able to take as many takes as we needed before we thought we could move on. We were in the same location as before (Admirals Park) but we had arranged for a different more reliable actor to use in our film. We have also added in a few extra shots and extended the time of some shots. This will hopefully extend the overall time of the film opening to a more acceptable length.

- Peter Godwin - 

Having more time to shoot meant we were also able to make the opening appear more artistic on screen, with a higher attention to detail, in regards to the cinematography. I (Ryan) also took into consideration the connotations within each shot, making a point of conveying this single character as the stereotypically masculine, yet remorseful male we had planned to from the start. For example, we used multiple low angle shots to present this male as a physically dominant protagonist and amplify the stock character of a humanising, mourning and vengeful businessman, quickly establish this narrative as being very much character driven. The weather also worked in our favour more so on this day of filming than the previous, with the dark clouds helping to highlight the depressing and solitary tone we wanted to get across. When we compared this to our original footage we found that the less vibrant weather conditions worked a lot better in correlation to our narrative than the sunshine that can be seen throughout the first rough cut.

- Ryan Chapman -

 

 

 

25 word pitch for film

This is our pitch for the film. We limited the word count to make it more concise and offer a general overview of our plot.

Jake Scofield, a crook, becomes part of a corrupt empire, resulting the death of his best friend, with the help of an enigmatic woman.

First ideas for the opening sequence

Below is a spider diagram of my original ideas for the opening. Each person in the group did their own diagram (resulting in 3), experimenting with different concepts as to what genre, and more specifically what the narrative should consist of. Mapping out our ideas helped us to be creative as well as apply perspective to our ideas to see if they made sense. While making our ideas we took into consideration what our target audience would be and how we would appeal to them particularly. In the case of my ideas, I believed the kind of people who could really empathise with this depressive and contemplating character is the kind of person who has experienced loss in their life. It's therefore logical that we should target a more mature and experienced audience that can find the narrative more relatable.