The Exchange Evaluation

Above: 1minute 32 seconds exchange work

The Evaluation

After we had filmed the exchange, we had the chance to edit them, in the editing suite at college to then show the class the following 2 weeks ahead.
From the class being able to watch our video, they participated in our audience feedback, mentioning the pros and cons of our video.

As i had previously mentioned we originally had an idea when Jon first announced the exchange, we filmed it in about half an hour, only too look back on it and realise how terrible it was. We did not have the right costumes or makeup, and not even the right location as it was already in use, we could have avoided this by having a better plan, by planning ahead Ending up in our group re shooting for our new exchange piece.

When the video was shown too the class there was no immediate positive or negative feedback.

From the begininng of the video we were complimented at the shot of Charlie and Jess near the beggininng, in which they are both in the shot, a close up of both thier heads. We were able to portray the feeling of eerie-ness, and as we were also able to get the sky in you could tell the atmosphere was rather gloomy.



Costume- Again, we weren't very well prepared, Jess' costume did compliemnt the whole enigma of the 'Femme Fetale' her long black trench coat, and heels, also her long hair helped with the persona of her character.

No one mentioned Charlies costume, but we felt that we had achieve making her look like the terrified adolecent.


Location- Our location was mentioned, as a good place for filming The Exchange. As no one else had done it near the docks, most had forgot what atmosphere we were able to create, long pathways and a large open view of the sky along with the water gave us the right scenery for which we wanted to create for the typical film noir look.


Music- As we had filmed our piece again, we forgot about getting a music track for our piece. As we Jon to look through it again, to check it, he was able to add a piece of music.

Although much of the audience didn't think it was suitable for the piece, it was described as sci-fi and as if aliens were about to land.


Cinematography- Our very first scene in my opinion was one of the best, as the camera panned as charlie turned to the right, the wind at the docks was just what we needed, it gave the audience a sense of how cold it was, windy contributing to the atmosphere. Most of our shots went down fairly well, although it was mentioned how there was dead space in ours, meaning we hadn't used up all of what was in the shot, a space in which nothing was happening.

In our piece we came to the conclusion that we needed more footage, this was pointed out as Charlie one minute was one place standing up, and the next she was sitting on a bench. There was no shot to show her going towards the bench. Also she had a note which was pristine in one shot, and the next it was obvious something had happened to the note as it had been scrunched up, this was an accident but we should have realised and done the shot again.

Overall our piece wasn't critizised to a point in which we thought was terrible, everyone had faults and it was just a chance to improve on our next piece of filming.

Film Openings

This week our media group has been looking at film openings and what makes a film opening.

'What is it that makes a great opening sequence? It's a personal thing, of course, but when a film grabs your attention from the opening frame, knocks you out of your seat or even grinds you into it, you tend to remember it fondly, even if the rest of it fails to measure up.'

I have chosen The Life Of David Gale as my first film opening.
I have chosen this opening sequence as it really caught my attention, it intrigued me, I wanted to know what was going to happen throughout the rest of the movie. You see a car driving down a straight road a woman gets out and starts running.

It's an opening which shows you, the last scene. One of which really grabs the audiences attention, casting a sense of mystery upon everybody. It's dramatic, almost breathtaking, and full of action.
A solicitor for a man put on death row is running, this is a long shot, and then becomes a mid shot. It pulls you in because you can see she is panicked.

The location it has been set on is a long dusty road, along fields and farms, a small village, or town's apparent that barely any people live there, so it fairly deserted, it gives a distinguished sense of eeriness. She tries to get a ride from a passerby yet, he drives straight past her. She looks as if she is determined to get somewhere, or perhaps running after someone, yet the viewer does not know which yet.

The lighting is fairly dull, the weather being mild, yet her hair is blowing around as she runs down, as the place is rather dusty you would assume the weather to be humid, almost creating a tense atmosphere for the viewer. The music which is heard makes your adrenaline rush, almost making you panic for her, although you do not realise what is happening. It's a serious tone of music, Ominous Drums/Ominous Pascal it's almost a piece too get your heart racing, it's very much a 'clunky' piece of music, metal drums, and cogs. It's a very eerie piece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6kw2jaU4lQ

Director- Alan Parker
Release Date- 14th March 2003

The Exchange Preperation

The Exchange Preperation-

During the last weeks of college, before the Christmas Holidays, as groups in the class we were too film a short video sequence of something called 'The Exchange', which was 1-2 minutes long.
We were put into groups of 4 and it was up to us to think of everything we could possibly do to make it appear as a film noir,such as Mis en scene- location,props, costumes. The lighting, sounds etc. As there was no narrative, we just used a music track.

At first it seemed like an easy task, drawing up the storyboards, completing a call sheet, synopsis, treatment,video risk evaluation sheets (for the location). As we were having no narrative in these, it made them easier to complete in a short amount of time.

Storyboard link- http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h105/suzioi/SB_exchange.jpg

My group was composed of Jess, Charlie, Maya and I. For what we thought was an easy task we hadn't put enough planning into it. We ended up trying to film it in an hour outside the college, when we had uploaded the video onto the computer, we realised how dreadful it was and had turned out like a drug exchange on crime watch. We were thoroughly disappointed with the outcome but not surprised. During our own time at college we decided to re-film it as we couldn't be showing the previous video in front of the whole class.
We then re-drew the story board and relocated.


Synopsis- A girl walks alone, ever since a member of her family had been in a tragic accident she senses she’s being followed by a silhouette… When she can feel that she is being followed, there is woman following her yet this girl cannot see her.

The girl stops and looks around only too see no body near her. She sits on a bench by herself waiting for her friend’s arrival, when a woman appears beside her, dressed in black. She whispers something in her ear, then hands over a piece of paper. The young girl opens the note anxiously, and reads. She then looks around too see if she can spot the woman again, but there is no sign of her.


Costume- For the outfits we used for the characters, Jess was the femme fatal, she wore, a long black trench coat, with heels, it gave her the look of a woman who was in control and knew what she was doing, yet at the same time she was able to portray herself in a mysterious and intimidating way.

We wanted the girl (Charlie) too look innocent, in the film she is wearing a floral print dress, and leggings and dainty shoes, it presented her as a young adolescent, who would look overwhelmed by what she received with a look of fear.

With the editing there were many shots which we couldn’t end up using because they didn’t fit or flow with the rest of them, after we had finished the edits we realised we hadn’t got enough shots to even make the film flow properly, as one scene Charlie just appears on a bench, without walking over too it.

Props- We only had one prop for the whole video, which was the letter than Jess had to pass to Charlie. When Jess hands the note to Charlie which was pristine, we have a close up, in which before we filmed it, Charlie had crumpled the paper, so in one shot the paper was perfect and the next it had been screwed up, which then wasn’t a shot which made perfect sense.

Location - Principally a marine leisure and property management company, providing a high quality client focussed service to customers, both water and land based. Ipswich Waterfront is a hub of activity with a mix of vibrant restaurants, cafes, interesting shops, apartments and awesome views of the water, overlooking yachts and powerboats, both traditional and modern. The entire wet dock regeneration area is rapidly developing with an ever changing skyline and growth.

The location we found was perfect, we had what we needed. We weren’t going to use much furniture at all, so it was functional for our needs. There was that sense of eerie-ness too it, compared to our last exchange, which was just at college.

The dock was easily accessible, but the disadvantages were the public who kept walking through our shots as we were filming which became frustrating. By the docks, there was such strong wind, which made it difficult to shoot at times, and if anything we were just too cold.

Performance- as actors expressions can be used to tell the story, we were glad we had chosen the people we did in the roles they were assigned too.

Charlie was able to portray that look of fear while Jessica was lurking around her, and with Jess she had a cold face on for the filming which meant she looked threatening.

We had no narrative in it which helped emphasise the expressions of the characters.

Lighting and Colour-The lighting was, just normal daylight, and we had no additions too it as there was no way we could use electrical appliances.

The lightening was decent, yet at some times the sun would come through the clouds and would be on the lens of the camera, making the shot overly bright. Too such an extent that you couldn’t see the characters face.
We couldn’t portray shadows as it as far too difficult being fairly dark day.
The end result of our video was put in black and white so the lighting did not affect it as much as it could have.

Example of Neo Noir

Sin City was all shot in colour. On set they were able to tweak lighting but pretty much kept it neutral so there was enough to play with in post. Once the plates were in their team started doing rough composites and turning them black and white getting the contrasts levels right, making sure the skin looked right and that the eyes didn’t get too dark. When it was starting out the look of the film was all graphic, almost no grey at all.

One of Frank Millers trademarks is his use of black and white, negative and positive images.
There’s a shot near the beginning of the film where 2 people are standing on a rooftop and the frame goes completely negative, what would normally be white is black, vice versa.

The challenge was to make the images work in a 3d environment where there's perspective, when you see things in 3d they change a little. Something very graphic that works in 2D panel can get confusing when moving. The start is contrast the black and white, trying to translate that too 3D and moving a camera through it. There was contained a lot of photorealism.
The scene where Jackie Boy and his ‘goon’s are killed in a comical sense, The blood isn’t red but glows white, making the scene more palatable for the audience

Individual Ideas for Noir project

Our final piece is too create a film noir opening sequence which is 3 minutes long. Here I will be publishing my initial ideas for the piece later on followed by our group work.


As the idea was brought up for the Film Noir opening, Charlie, Marc and I thought of many inventive yet overly enthusiastic ideas, all of which would be difficult to show on screen, with our lack of skills and equipment.

Our idea for the imposter was one of the main first ideas, yet it included the main couple being in a train accident, which we then narrowed down to a car accident. These we both found would be hard to capture or film in any sort of way, we then scraped the idea completely.

Overall many of our ideas were too complicated, involving many different characters in the scene, when we only needed roughly 3 main characters at the most, and Jon mentioned that the audience would not be able to figure e out the characters in such a short space of time.

We had this initial idea from a piece of work we had done for work previously looking for the history of film noirs.


2- First rough synopsis-

Rough Synopsis for a film noir

A woman unmarried survives a train crash and takes on the identity of a young bridge killed with her husband in the accident. She is accepted by the dead man’s wealthy family, but then the lover, Mark, finds her and blackmails her.

3- Synopsis-

A young thriving couple have finally arranged their perfect wedding day; a couple very much besotted with one another announce their love for each other in front of friends and family. There is one passerby, whom no one seems to notice, she looks on enviously at this young married couple, and carries on walking to her destination.

The couple are on their way to their honeymoon, when there has been a tragic accident, no one knows quite what has or had happened, and only that the husband is taken straight to hospital along with his newly wedded wife.

The consequences are devastating, and the husband has ended up with concussion and the wife in a dire state. After a short while the distraught husband has been released from the hospital and a woman manages to make her way into his life, and his family’s life, claiming to be his newly wedded wife.

This supposed wife is living the life she has always dreamed about, a family, a man who loves her, friendship, loyalty, love, respect, honesty? Reality?

She faces the reality and consequences of what she has done in the end.

Preliminary Excercise

Our preliminary exercise was the first video we created we were in a group of 4 containing me Kamal,Dillan and Charlie and Nicola. To practice using the camera's we were set the task of filming a short sequence including one character opening a door,walking into the room, sitting down with another character with whom they have a short conversation.

The main task was to make sure there was continuity throughout the sequence, so this meant using the 180 degree line rule, match on action and a couple of shot/reverse shots, when filming we also had to make sure everything was in the same position if we changed where the camera was (for example in a shot/reverse shot, making sure a folder was in the same place in the second shot as it was in the first, and the rest of the sequence).

It wasn't particularly easy and Jon was able to notice some small things that we hadn't picked on, the change of hair, or placement of a hand.
If the production didn't have quite a clear continuity the production looks cheap and very amateur. We had to re shoot some shots, this was because we had people walking through the shots as it was in the college hallways, or the sound of people talking, murmuring, so the microphone had to be put to better use for a level sound quality.

Our storyline is a teenage boy ring his friend while walking down the hallway to meet his friend to see which room he's in, he walks into the room, he sits down behind a table, with his friend on the other side then offers him a mint.
The audience feedback went well, our narrative and dialogue was simple, therefore easy to interpret what was happening on screen. As alot of us weren't quite sure what was good and what wasn't we didnt recieve much critisism as we were all around the same level of skill.

We used the 'Keep It Simple Stupid' using basic camera shots, such as mid shots, closeups and panning it helped us too keep it very simple, without confusing ourselves with trying to incorporate difficult shots for us and the viewer. During editing of the video we realised we'd have to leave handles and during our next productions had to improve on that, the meaning of handles was too leave a few seconds before and after the shot, this makes it easier to fit together with other shots, if you weren't too leave handles the production would end up very rough, short, and wouldnt flow well.