Evalaution Targets

You've done so well this year Tom - so let's push yourself in the final stretch to really show our ability to reflect on our progress. Comment in detail on your findings from audience feedback. Revisit your recent posts and see if there are any more opportunities to use specialist terminology to explore mise-en-scene, editing and camera composition and comment on the way you intended to appeal to your target audience even more - there's so much to comment on to show how reflective you can be. Get working with your group to complete director's commentaries and comment more on what you have learnt from others.

Evaluation of scenes part 2

This shot we used for camerawork and to make it easier to film our dolly shot, we introduce the police officer from an off screen position here, and the introduction from behind the crime tape suggests that the officer has already been investigating the scene, the use of camera keeps our attention on the detectives, while the cop comes on screen, it also gives as a surprise as the detectives are looking at the cop who is off screen so the audience don't know who or what we are looking at. The location gets into the shot as well, this shows a rural-urban environment, this is not as common in crime films as cities are seen as crime hotspots but because this is a secluded area it wouldn't have many people going through it, which would make it a good place for filming and not many people would discover the body in the film.

Evaluation of Scenes part 1

In this scene we have a conventional start to the clip, as the cops are being briefed by the police who have collected preliminary data, I have seen in many crime films and TV shows such as CSI the police have normally arrived first and the detectives arrive later, this makes our film look like it is in the crime genre. The costumes used as well helps build this idea into the scene as we have some labelled police, suggesting crime and the two detectives look as they would in real life. Also some of the props used such as the police tape, helps as it would be common to have police tape set up around a crime scene.

Final Film

This is our final piece, we filmed this back during November and December, since then we have been editing this film trying to make the film flow and to make it look more like a film, overall I think the filming went very well as we now have full opening two minutes. I think some of our best work comes at the start and end of the clip with the camera work used to zoom in on Ashley's body, setting the scene and tone of the opening, and at the end the editing between the flashback and real time I believe that the editing and use of transitions really makes the clip look good and seamless. I beleive however that we can improve the film by adding a couple of transitions in when the detectives approach the river there is a jump which we could have as a time jump.

Storyboard

 

 

This is our basic stroyboard, we have had to make severla changes to the stroyboard over time and this contains much of the scenes that appear in our film and we have the timings for each clip and the sound that will appear in the scenes, with a basic picture of what it will look like. I believe this is a good Storyboard because it does its job of informing us what clip we are doing next, what sound we will have and what shot and camera type we will be using. A few changes were made to the film that weren't in the stroyboard, such as the exclusion of the title 'The Case' we thought it didn't really need to add it.

Opening title Research

This opening sequence is very scary, as it involves very dark gothic music that makes the audience jumpy and increasing the amount of tension in the film, it also suggests that this film is very dark and will involve a lot of violence or dark themes, it also fits in well with video in the background, the font of the credits, would remind many people of perhaps asylums, or someone who is very psychotic, this makes the audience frightnened as they can tell this movie will be very creepy. The music in the scene also helps add to that creepy effect, which could intimadate an audience, I believe that this music is very effective, as it compliments the credits font and background visuals.

History of the crime/mystery genre

The crime/mystery genre is a sub-genre of crime films, in which a investigator has to unravel a mystery, usually based around some kind of murder. The earliest mystery film was a 30 second film of the classic Sherlock Holmes, made in 1900 and registered in 1903 by Arthur Martin.

This is one of the very first examples of mystery films, despite Sherlock Holmes being unrecognizable, it was one of the first films to be based on a book or novel, most mystery films of this period were being based on novels such as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

In the 1930's many films came out with a detective that used Denoument, which is were the detective pools together all the clues to discover who the real bad guy is, this time period was also a period of so-called Gentlemen detectives who don't use violence but intelligence to solve murders, they normally carry no weapons and have eccentric personality's, however this style of detective only survived until 40's as the relative success as films like 'The Kennel Murder Case' were very popular and successful. But the introduction of tough detectives who used more brute force made audiences more excited.

During the 40's and 50's the genre took a much darker tone due to the second world war. This lead to an increase in macho, tough guy detectives who were almost as bad as the bad guys they were meant to be catching, the genre began adding new crimes such as corruption, making them appeal more to the audiences as corruption was a major issue in the US at this time and tales of corrupt businesses during the second world war fuelled this idea.

Humphrey Bogart was one of the major actors and influencing figures of this genre, as he was able to fit into the cruel and violent world many of these films were based in, the clip above was from one of his films 'In a lonely place' this film was one of the first psycholgical films.

 

The 60's and 70's was were the period of 30's films were being made tributes, with many films going back to the old times of more classic detectives like Sherlock Holmes, but the lead film in this period was Chinatown by Roman Polanski, this film is considered as one of the best mystery films ever made and it won 9 awards. The film was also credited with providing more awareness of the water issues involving Los Angeles during the 1910's.



 

The 80's brought about several new versions of the mystery film as well as the reemergence of the film noir genre from the 40's, in a new style of film known as Neo-noir erotic thrillers, this added to the moody atmosphere with more sexuality being explored in the films and more and used a lot of sexually exolicit scenes, the best film of this genre was Sea of Love with Al Pacino. Other film styles that became popular in this time period was military and Police films, which were complex films based around military matters, cover-ups and conspiracies, some of these films include State of Play, The general's daughter and Bloodwork. These also led to the introduction of period piece films based around LA in the 40's and 50's, these often had some message about current problems. LA confidential was probably the best of these films because it won 2 academy awards and was nominated for 9.