2nd Shoot

The second shoot we did was in East London at Westferry. We hadn't planned in great detail shots we wanted at which locations and so a great deal of our footage was of similar angles.

We then filmed the rest of our opening sequence at Elliot's dad's flat. This was on the same day as he lives close to Canary Warf. we had more time again to pick good angles and take a number of different shots. This was good as we were then able to fit with the storyline we had written.

Our second shoot was good and we managed to film almost all of our opening sequence in one evening. It was useful to have a good location and in the end the editing helped us to creat a variety of different shots.

1st Shoot

Our first shoot was at Elliot's house where we decided to film both our flashbacks, a gambling scene and a violent visit. The filming went well as we were able to get a good number of different shots and angles to play around with during editing.

As we were only filming a short amount of our overall opening sequence, we had enough time to create perfect shots that would fit together and we were happy with the footage we captured.

Overall it was a good start to the creation of our production.

Preliminary task

We filmed the preliminary task in school. We decided to keep in the the British gangster theme to match our opening sequence.
We then uploaded the filom onto youtube and this is the URL to watch it.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EDU8z99Fzs0

Location Reccie: Elliot

We have decided to film our opening sequence in London. We have access to a flat in East london and also we want to film the area of westferry. We took a few photos of the area that we want to film in.

• We took a picture of Canary Warf tube station as this would be a good location. The only trouble with this is that there are often quite a few people and they may not like being filmed. We may not use this location but it is an option.
• Also a photo of westferry green close to the river would be a prime location. It is possible to get a 'Thames Clipper' boat and take some shots whilst on the river. This would fit in well with the business like gangsters.
• There is also a picture of a bridge over the river. This would be a very good location to film as it is a very run-down urban area. This ties in nicely with the British gagster theme.

Evaluation Of The Pitch Elliot

Our pitch went reasonably well. It helped that we had set up a good presentation containing everything that we needed to speak about.

There were a couple of things that we could have improved to make the pitch slightly better.
We did'nt have time to take a trip to London in order to take proper photos of the areas we want to use. We did find some photos of the areas around Westferry where we plan to shoot but photos found ourself would have been better.

Also we should have talked about our plans and plot in more detail so that when presenting the pitch we could have both talked in depth about what we want to do. Although we both seem to come up with the same ideas and this didn't hinder us too much.
We also could have commented more on the props and costumes that we intend to use however we hadnt decided completely on what we wanted to use.

Everything else that we commented on we feel went well such as the results of our questionnaire and the treatment decribing our plot. We came up with a good one liner and also our quick quips helped us to win over the audience.

We learned that our production has to be planned in a great deal of detail as there are so many different things to include. The pitch made us realise that there is a lot to prepare and decide before we can even start filming.

Costume, Props & Lighting Elliot

We plan to use an office as a main location for the opening sequence of the film so we believe that the props, lighting and costumes should be related to office workers. We intend to use a suitcase, a conventional prop, in order to make a delivery within the office and a car/london cab as our main props. Obviously all other equiptment and stationary within the office would also be props but not brought ourselves.

Our costumes will be smart casual. Suit trousers with a shirt, no tie and perhaps a duffel coat. Many of the British gangster films we have studied the characters seem to dress smartly with expensive clothing.

The lighting we use will mainly be natural. We want to film during the day and therefore we should have light however as it seems to get dark quite early it may be that we have to use lamps to light up the scenes and show the characters in their 'true light.' However many of the best British gangster films are quite dark as the crime is often carried out at night and hiden. We may find that the dark will be useful for what we are planning.

Audience Research Elliot

The questionnaire that we created contained questions that we thought were related specifically to the British gangster genre.
We used a survey to find out what it was that the audience wanted particularly.
We gave the questionnaire to our target audience which was males between 16 and 35. This was due to the fact that the British gangster genre is more appealing to younger males.

What gender do you expect the main character to be?

The response was that almost every wanted to see a male lead character. This is conventional of British gangster films.

What are the most important themes of a gangster film?

It seems that most people wanted to see organised crime and violence throughout the film. These themes are often seen in most British gangster texts and we shall try to include them within our opening.

Which locations would you expect to see during a British gangster film?

The answers seemed to be that nearlly everybody wanted to see the backstreets of London within our film. We will try to base our film within London as we have good locations to work with.

These seem to be the three main questions that we will focus on we also had other questions about characteristics of the characters and the narration however the answers seemed to vary somewhat and so we are able to chose which features suit us better.