FMP Evaluation
When I started the course I knew straight away that I wanted to create something around the idea of crime, I had seen lots of films involving crime the trade in different ways and in different style and it really struck me as something I was definitely interested in.
I first watched the film La haine which was the first film to inspire me to create a production about crime and it probably was my main influence throughout creating my final major Project.
I had the idea of creating a story around someone committing a crime, but the person committing the crime would be an average person, someone you necessarily wouldn’t expect, I came up with this idea that’s most crimes are committed by people you would expect, that’s why lots of cases are left unsolved. The biggest challenge was betraying my idea on to screen, I started by watching a lot of films that revolve around a similar idea. These included ” drive”, ” goodfellas” and “pusher” to name a few. I precariously watched each scene that involve the crime and made a note of how the are audience supposed to feel. i got to the conclusion that most successful crime films make the audience roote for the villain. I noticed that throughout scenes where the protagonist is risking being caught the main emotion express by the audience would be one of panic as they want the protagonist to get away. I thought this was interesting and something I would take on board, I realised I would try and manipulate your interview towards the crime all the way to the point were there in favour of it.
Looking back on early stages of the production I do realise a deviated from my original plan, I first wanted to film the production with a dynamic range of camera angles to tell her wider story. But I found myself being very attracted to the idea of the camera always being in motion whilst most of the time being behind the main character. This type of filming is very pleasing on the eye as it takes the audience on the same journey that the characters are going through, through physically walking where they’re walking. The style has been paid homage how many films including “the shining”, “children of men” and “son of saul” and it was something I quickly realised I wanted to mimic and replicate.
I think the strongest parts of my production with the strongest simply because they replicate my strength in that field, as I feel like I have a good eye for shot composition and camera movement. I feel like the striking Factor in my project was the way the shots were framed. I aimed for a lot of them to be quite symmetrical and wide, giving the audience a peripheral perspective on the situations at hand to replicate how the protagonist is veiwing situations. Upon later feedback after the preview I realised that that was my most successful feature in the production.
An idea that I was keen to dip my toes in was the idea of blurring the line between antagonist and protagonist, after watching many films where this idea is implemented I realise causes an internal conflict in the audiences mind, therefore making them constantly reevaluate situations as they happen, which consequently makes those situations more tence, as risks and rewards are highlighted in a clearer light. This is the same reason why I chose for the main character to not have many lines at all this was solely to make him seem more neutral, and have a cleaner view and the audiences mind.
Apart of my production which I think needed more work was the storytelling perspective, I found it quite difficult to portray reasons as to why characters are doing certain things in the story. I found this especially hard as my production did not feature any speaking whatsoever, which is always a challenge when you want to portray the complex story without dialogue. Upon further recollection I would make it ever so slightly longer and we’ll try and plot out the storyline and highlight it more as the audience might have been slightly confused as to why some events for taking place. But in general I think I did quite well as to fit a whole story arc into 3 minutes is very difficult.
In the time leading up to the presentation I was quite apprehensive about how my production will appear on screen I had a minor internal conflict i’ve been stuck between thinking and looks good and thinking it doesn’t look good enough. But during the presentation I was watching it on a larger screen and realised that the cinematography looks better then I thought it did. The wider shorts for wider and the black and white was more crisp which is exactly what I was hoping for, far away set pieces really less Focus what closer ones were sharper, this gave a great sense of depth of field which subtly and subliminally puts the audience into the scene by giving them a false perspective that’s a person would only see if they were actually there. I was happy with how the sound played on the speakers and have different bits of music faded into each other. Overall I was very satisfied with how it came out. The experience of creating my own production maybe learn a couple of lessons, one of them being that you can’t do enough planning for the way scenes turn out, also that’s all making a production should always leave a little bit of room for different ideas from others, as you learn many things from your peers. But most importantly I’ve learnt I will never be entirely happy with how my production turns out, and that satisfaction is never guaranteed upon looking at your final work.
Audience Feedback
Milo Cunningham 