Reflexive Analysis

For my A2 Film project I chose to make the opening sequence of a film between 3 – 5 minutes in length and instead of a sequence that would be part of a film. When making my film I chose to work alone and therefore I could have full control over planning, directing and editing my Film project. I used a digital blog: www.bethanyhironsfilmstudiesa2.blogspot.com to keep track of all of the production process, including looking into detail into my chosen genre; Thriller. I chose to make a Thriller opening because I liked the stylistics that was involved; I also liked the vast possibilities that can be studied. The title of my film is “Drug Squad” and the narrative is about a police officer who is mentally disturbed following childhood trauma. The title came from research online into the thriller genre, but also studying previous film titles which are short but sweet.

In order for my audience to feel empathy and upset for my protagonist (Guy), I had to show him as a child seeing the death of his mother, this is easy for an audience to empathise with, because no matter what culture you are, the mother is the pinnacle of the family and losing her is going to be traumatic. I wanted the audience to begin to understand Guy’s obvious monotonous emotions so I decided to use a silent sequence which shows his past, this way I could create an alignment between the audience and Guy. One of my aims was to make sure that my film was as realistic as possible; in order to do this I could only use locations which were high in verisimilitude. In order to achieve this I used public streets, houses and a forest, all the places my audience will have heard of before, and realise that the film is set within this reality. The ending of my opening sequence was filmed at my house, it was done there because within it, it had all of the props and set design that was required. The scenes outside for the montage were filmed locally within a forest; the only item I needed to take was the costume for my protagonist.

The name of my protagonist holds significance due to what it means, when doing research into names, I found that this name was used a lot centuries ago before ‘Guy Fawkes’ tried to blow up the tower of London using gun powder. During the early pre-production stages I had issues finding the right name that fit my characters profile, until I stumbled upon a website that stayed that it is very common in American thriller films for the police officer. This is very alike my narrative. Guy usually means the very masculine one of the group, or even the leader, in my opening sequence I feel that I did not achieve my aim of making Guy look like the leader in the group, if I was to do this again, I would change the opening and show him in an office.

Within my film I wanted to experiment with music, I felt I did this successfully by using ‘Little Lion Man’ sang by Mumford and Sons and editing the 30 second montage sequence to the beat of the drums . I found it hard to find a song at first that could be edited in this way as I was sure that the lyrics would also have to match what was being seen on the screen; however, after a trial and error process I found that the lyrics in this song helped me to achieve my goal. Lyrics such as “Weep for yourself, my man, You’ll never be what is in your heart” where shown when he was sat upset in the forest, these were all small details to show that he wants to be living in his mother’s shadow but he does not feel he is achieving it.

As part of my pre-production process I analysed several film openings, one of which was Inception, which showed a montage sequence whilst playing the opening credits, this was one of the things of which I took inspiration from and chose to use in my own opening. My opening is very similar to inception, I chose to use music in the background and also chose to have a sequence before the credits, although, I do feel like I did not meet my aim of making it look as professional as this. The reason I do not think I achieved my aims is because I used to much artificial lighting due to poor planning of filming. If I was to do this again I would plan my filming schedule better so that I would have an image that is not grainy.

My original aim for the narrative was for it to be gritty and violent, although I could not achieve this because I did not have the special effects available. So instead of my original aim of making my film an 18 because of the issues it touches upon, I feel that it would be suitable for a 15. It would be suitable because although Guy does walk in on his dead mother, this is suitable for a 15 as although it causes shock to the audience, it does not show physical violence that makes them feel uncomfortable. The BBFC classifications for a 15 are:

·         strong violence

·         frequent strong language (eg 'f***').

·         portrayals of sexual activity

·         strong verbal references to sex

·         sexual nudity

·         brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence

·         discriminatory language or behaviour

·         drug taking

I feel that my film would come under these categories because although we do not see these in the opening, we can expect it later on when Guy aims to find the murderer of his mum. I feel that I have reached my aim of making my film a 15 because of the context that it is in, it would not be suitable to see dead bodies and violence if this film was a 12A.

Once my video was completely and put on my blog, I gave out a questionnaire which asked the audience what they thought of my work, the sample consisted of 10 people who could all correctly guess the genre of which my film is, however, they agreed that I had not reached my target audience of people aged 18 – 24, if this film was to go to general release, I would have to bring down my age rating in order to get a better showing. On the Likert scale at the bottom of my questionnaire the average number my opening was given was an 8, this was because the narrative was not explained thoroughly, I agree with this comment and feel if I did this again, I would pay more attention to the scene where his mother passes away.

 

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