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Evaluating Sweded Version Of Goodfellas

Strengths of my swede

camera- 

Through my swede i felt that at 2:14 which denotes how i who plays Henry is in the shower, fully clothed and slips over, with the camera at high angle tilting down. whilst this shot was not specifically in the film its self, i did think that the camera language was done well. The shot connotes how it was meant to almost look like a cctv camera, as it has that high angle, looking down on me.

Another good piece of camera language can be displayed at 0:06 seconds, this shot denotes how movement of the camera is tilting up, to show me, faris & franki. I felt this shot was good as the speed of the movement was done well, and was smooth, the camera didnt jerk which made the shot better, the shot also is a low angle shot which makes us look more intimidating.

mise-en-scene- 

I felt that our mise-en-scene for the swede was best at 1:38, here from the track shot we can see how the natural lighting pours through the window and into our shot. As our track is coming round the corner the light makes the shot a little more exciting, this i feel is needed as it is a long shot and the audience will get bored if the shot doesn't have moments of excitement which can keep them enticed into the swede.

For the second piece of mise-en-scene that i felt was another strength to our work was at 1:58, this shot denotes how Karen(farheen) is throwing things at me as she is angry, and stressed. The mise-en-scene was particularly good in this shot for its props, in the real scene she throws food and we substitued that for stationary, which i felt was good as it added more humor to the scene. As having no budget we wanted to find props that was similar but also adds comedy, to keep in the themes with a sweded film. 

Sound-

The sound that i though was done particularly well can be seen at 0:03 seconds, here the sound denotes me and faris, making the car noises ourselves, as the toy car is being moved along. the sound of this shot connotes how we wanted to add humor to the shot using our own voices, i felt that in by doing this idea we showed how we can become innovative using nothing but our own voices, and creating an element of humor in doing so.

At 0:26 i felt that this scene also showed some good sound as well, here this scene denotes faris playing Henrys dad beating Henry up. The sounds from this scene that can be heard are more exaggerated hurls from faris and then in the background you can also here me struggling in pain. the sound i felt was good as it was clear, and like my first example it was humorous using only our voice, which i think by having good sound within a swede makes the whole film better.

Weaknesses of my swede

camera- 

some weaknesses in the camera language can be seen at 0:35 this shot denotes Henry (ben) and another person buying ciggarettes in a car park. i felt that this shot was one of the weaker shots from our swede, as the camera was very shaky and constantly jerking, which didnt make the shot look very ascetically pleasing for the audience. the shot we wanted to create was there, but i feel that the execution of the shot was done wrong and we should have re filmed it again.

I think this was the second of very few weakened shots within our film, at 1:56 seconds the scene denotes how karen (farheen) throws things and me in anger and frustration. i felt that the scene was done very well but this shot i felt weakened the scene in terms of camera language. the shot denotes farheen standing up, shouting and throwing things at me. however as we didnt use a tilt for that shot we accidentally cut out farheens head as she speaks, by using this small movement it would have made the scene tighter, and the audience would have been able to see the facial expressions of farheen adding more intensity as well.

mise-en-scene-

I felt that this shot was weak in mise-en-scene because of the costume that was worn during the shot, which can be seen at 0:50. The shot denotes how a policeman has come to arrest me for selling the cartons of cigarettes. I thought that whilst the acting was good during this shot, it was weak in a couple of areas of mise-en-scene. For instance the location may have been a little too full of cars which feature heavily in the shot, but i felt that the shots main fault was the costume also. During the real film Henry was dressed more smartly and there was a clear distinction on who the worker was and who Henry was. i felt that all of the actors within this shot wore normal, plain clothes it was more ambiguous in distinguishing the different character roles.

sound-

During this scene i felt that this shot was a weakness as the background sound coming from the passing cars overpowered the shot which can be seen at 1:02 seconds. Whilst during editing i tried to lower the sound of the shot it was still very loud, and weakened the shot, when compared to the shot with less background noise which would have been much preferred.

I felt that the sound of this shot at 2:39 seconds was also very weak, the sound of this shot denotes many people talking behind the camera in the background in general conversation. For me thats what made the scene weak, because it is easy to hear a lot of the background noise it almost brings me & farheen out of character and doesnt really feel particularly like we are shooting for a film.

Improving my skills- 

pre-production skills-

During the pre-production stage of the film, of which we had a lot of paperwork to fill out and plan on, i felt the main one we got right was the cast list. This document enabled us to plan out who we really wanted to cast for each character, Naturally, as we filmed a sweded version of the film, it allowed us to use one person for several characters, at the end i felt perhaps it kept within the nature of a swede but personally i felt it added confusion the scenes and perhaps made it harder recognise the scenes we wanted to re-create. However the cast list we did put together was something we stuck well too.




For another pre-production piece i felt i improved on massively was the shooting script, this document was actually very useful as when referred to during production it really helped to make sure i added in the different types of movement and different camera angles. Whilst i sometimes thought best to record and use a different shot rather then just stick to the shooting script, i really felt i understood more about the importance of having a shooting script as sometimes its easy to be lost when filming and the script just helps to keep you on track. 

logistical/production management skills-

Through the logistics and production management during my film i felt one key area i did well and improved most on was the production schedule. This document helped me out massively as certain shots are planned for different days which breaks the whole production down. Instead of thinking about having to film  so much it was easy to just see what was needed to be done on each day, so there wasnt as much stress during the whole production stage.





Something else i felt i improved on was the locations list, it was a document that didnt recieve a lot of attention. However i did rely upon it a few times, during prodution its easy to get caught up in all the filming and when the documents are there such as the locations list or the production schedule everything becomes more organised and easier to film.

mise-en-scene-

The acting during our film was something that i particularly liked and perhaps improved my skills in. When filming any sort of video i think that if the acting and performance is not good enough then anything else becomes irrelevant, the acting is the thing that touches the audience the most as it creates a connection with the audience, i felt i understood that better with farheens performance. Throughout she constantly performed her role well and it shows when watched back. When a film has no budget i think that the acting is even more essential. 

Another aspect of the mise-en-scene that i felt i improved on was the lighting, during the film i felt we did a good job of keeping the shots light and not having a lot of dark shots which wouldnt look particularly good. I feel that during this film i was more conscious of the lighting as i was constantly trying to emulate the real film, and because i was always referring back to the film the scene were improved massively just by having better lighting and taking notice of it.

how well does your swede imitate the real film?

I felt that our sweded version was most recognizable at 0:07 seconds this scene denotes where henry stands karen up which for me i felt was especially recognizable due to the acting  and performance. The camera language isn't exactly the same, but it is smooth and you can really see what part of the film you are watching.

The second scene that i feel is most recognizable is shown at 0:18 seconds, this is where henry's dad confronts henry for skipping school and going to work instead. The reason why i felt that our scene imitated the real film well was because the camera language was well done and much like the real thing, the acting was performed well, although the accents and props were particularly bad to create humor the scene we shot was most recognizable.

Goodfellas swede

ME-VID shooting script

Edit Workshop Evaluation

180 degree rule, rule of thirds, match on action. 

The 180 degree rule was established in our shot reverse shot, here this scene denotes Ben playing the boss and Franki playing the other mobster, we talk to each other considering a shipment deal that went wrong. We start this scene with a two shot which connotes where we are both sitting and establishes the 180 degree rule as we go into our shot reverse shot. Through the series of over the shoulder shots you can see that the camera is always placed on Bens left looking at franki, the camera is then always placed on Frankis right shoulder looking at me. By keeping the camera on the same side for our shot reverse shot we have kept to the 180 degree rule and made it clear to the audience.
In terms of match on action this is shown through Franki walking into the office. The first shot denotes Frankis hand opening the door as he also starts to walk through, this is then followed by the second shot, which is a long shot, of Franki continuing to walk through the door into the office. These 2 shots have connoted the match on action in a simple way, however it is clear that this is the match on action which we had to incorporate in our film.

What challenges we faced through production?

I feel that the main problems that we faced through production was the locations and setting, we wanted to have an office for the head of the mafia, but it was hard to achieve the era of a mafia office. Our film will denote throughout that we used an office which was used for large portions of our film. We wanted to connote that the mafia boss had a lush and big office but in or out of school it was hard to find a place that we could really capture the essence of what a mafia office would look like, such as the one in godfather. I feel that some aspects of our Mise-En-Scene also were a bit of a problem as perhaps we could have lowered our lighting in the office which would have added more tension to the scenes.

If we was to film again i think this would be what we changed, the office that we used i felt was too modern for the scene that we wanted to create. I feel that our film would have looked better if we had used an office which looked more old fashioned, as they also tend to be more darker as well this could have also added to the tension of some of our scenes and would have had better mise-en-scene.

What challenges we faced through post production?

Through editing i had realised that continuity was the main problem, when editing i found it hard as we had moved props about and hand movements were also different in certain shots. This made editting harder and i couldnt make a really tight edit because of these slight problems which made me cut shots shorter, and extend other shots which would have preferred not to do. I feel that because our continuity was not perfect it limited me to what i could and couldnt use in each individual shot.

Strength of our work

I feel the main strengths from our film was the camera language that we used, we tried to constantly keep our camera moving to make scenes more exciting. Although some occasions we had to keep the camera stationary, within those shots they were exciting and had a lot of tension in them. The creativity that we had to try and create all kinds of different shots i felt was a particular strength, we wanted to show off our skills using a camera and i feel we did that very well. I felt that the idea itself was very creative in trying to create a mafia scene, but the use of our camer language was a main strength of our film.

Weaknesses of our work

I think the main weakness of our film was the location that we used, we wanted to have a big office but the one we used i felt was too modern for what we wanted to create. It did not look like the offices that are in films such as the godfather, i feel that this was the thing that let down the film the most. I feel that the lighting of our film could have been better as well, i think it was too light and we should have tried to make things darker in the office's scenes to add tension to the film. 

Overall improvements

Overall i think that to improve our film the location has to be changed, the film doesnt fit with the location used and as a result it doesnt look professional. Our budget didnt help the fact that we didnt have one, realistically i think that if we were to have had an office that was more like the one in the godfather then our film would have looked more professional and been better in many aspects. Producing this film has made me realise just how important location is to a film, because if thats right then the whole film looks better.

The encounter,

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