Evaluation of the Main Exercise

Compared to the Preliminary Exercise the Main Exercise was far harder and there was a lot more pressure on us to make everything as good as possible. Once again I was with Charley and Alex, which was good as we all got on and by this point felt comfortable in each other’s company.Our brief was to create an opening sequence to a film and myself and my group decided to follow the Social Realism genre, as this is the most ‘typically’ British film genre there is.As we had already had practice in planning, filming and editing, we already knew what was expected of us so, although daunting, we at least had some experience in that area and being recent we didn’t forget anything. We also got to grips with what we were better at and more comfortable doing so this made it easier when it came to deciding on roles within the group.

(The Wind that Shakes the Barley Is

a famous film directed by Ken Loach)

We decided to portray homosexuality as it is a contemporary topic and is becoming a huge issue for the younger generation which meant we had a target age group (teenagers and young adults) that would make it easier for us as if we had focused on an older generation it would have been tougher to get actors and harder to portray as we are more familiarized with our age group. To do this, we tried to use stereotypes where possible. In most places, an urban environment is used as it is a common representation that teenagers hang out in such areas.

The actor we used to portray our homosexual character managed to come across as quite lonely and withdrawn, especially when he realizes that his crush has a girlfriend, which portrays the ideology that homosexuality is ‘different’ and it is embarrassing to like the same sex. This is particularly significant nowadays seeing as it is becoming a fairly major topic and definitely something which teenagers have trouble coming to terms with when they are in that position. At the beginning of our film we start with blackness and the diegetic sound of a bus pulling up to the bus stop, then there

are opening credits that tell us it is produced by EM Media and that the UK Film Council are involved. We decided to use EM Media, as it is a British Production Company and produced the famous social realism film ‘This Is England’ which managed to make 93% of its reviews good. It also tries to focus its production around the Midlands area, which is thought on as a fairly dirty urban environment and we try to use an unclean urban environment and this would contend well with this production company. We decided to include the UK Film Council as Social Realism is the most British

of all genres and therefore we believed it is something that the UK Film Council would invest in straight away. I think that by focusing on such a contemporary topic, it attracted audiences as it focuses on up to date ideologies and is something that the target age group could easily relate to even if they are heterosexual. Because of its genre, it would be likely to attract a large British audience seeing as social realism is the biggest genre in British Film Production.

Overall the main thing I have learnt in the process of the Main Exercise is the use of editing programs to put together the film we made and edit them to an appropriate length and to make sure it went in time to the music. Although I have already had a small amount of experience with Windows Movie Maker in the past, we used a more complicated Editing program, Premiere Pro, which was difficult to get to grips with. As well as this, we use only non-diegetic music all the way through so

(An example of the area we chose to film in)

it means that the way the music fits in with the shots is very important in continuity and therefore it was difficult to make it fit together well. I eventually got to grips with it but there were lots of discrepancies about the way to do certain things, which made the editing the hardest bit of the entire process, but at the same time it taught us all a lot. I have also further developed my understanding of camera work such as framing and the rule of thirds by participating in it more and becoming more familiar with it. Since doing the Preliminary Exercise, myself and my gro
up have improved on everything as we have had the opportunity to become more accustomed to working with all the equipment and we’ve been able to work out what we are more comfortable with doing, for example, I know that I prefer to be involved in the planning as much as possible such as drawing the storyboards and writing the scripts but I also enjoy doing the

editing as you can mess around with things and change them how you want and play around with effects such as fade. I am thankful for the Preliminary Exercise as it gave us all a chance to gain some understanding of the process and allowed us to build on our mistakes and learn from them, for example in the preliminary exercise we didn’t contend with the 180 degree rule during a conversation which ruined the continuity slightly. Because of this, we knew not to do anything like that in the main exercise.
The thing that I disliked most over the process of the coursework is trying to organise everything perfectly as it is vital to have good organisation so that we know what is happening, where its happening and when as well as getting all the equipment together and getting the planning done by a certain time as well as the filming and the editing. As I am not an overly organised person, this was the biggest challenge for me but it also helped me to deal with it and has contributed to a life skill by helping me with my organisation. I was also not fond on the researching as it was difficult to find things that contended with what we wanted to do especially for the preliminary exercise but I decided to focus more on researching into the genre ‘social-realism’ whilst Charley and Alex researched the opening titles of films as they were both familiar with those two films ‘Love + Hate’ and ‘A Way of Life’.




My favourite part of the entire process was the planning and creating the scripts and storyboards (Script/Storyboard) but on the whole I mainly enjoyed the creativity of it all and it gave us a chance to do something fun that didn’t just involve writing.

Although there were some problems faced in the main exercise, such as people and traffic constantly blocking the frame and the fact that I was ill during the filming, everything went smoothly, the weather was good and the camera work went well. I am proud of the final outcome and I’m also happy I was put in the group I am in as they have made the process fun and smooth.