Pitch Presentation

Group43 Main Task

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This is our pitch presentation which contains the bulk of our research.

This Is England Part 1 Analysis

The film begins by showing a montage of typically 80s fads/crazes/phenomenons and well known figures (including the arcade video game "Space Invaders", the TV show "Knight Rider" and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher) spliced between its opening titles, while non-digetic reggae music plays simultaneously. The music continues as a moving shot of an old, run down British suburb is shown, while the film title is superimposed onto this. As the music continues, so does the montage of clips, which include school boys, 80s bands playing, exercise groups and major national events such as Princess Diana's marriage to Prince Charles, the race riots and the Falklands War.

The main plot itself begins in July 1983, on the last day of term, when 12 year old white British boy and protagonist Shaun wakes up in the morning and promptly makes his way to the newsagents to read a comic without buying it, which leads to a dispute between him and the Asian shopkeeper in which Shaun calls him a "mong" as his thrown out, which is slang, shorthand and racist for "mongoloid". Shaun then goes to school and gets into a fight with a bully who makes an offensive joke about Shaun's deceased father who died in the Falklands war. They are then both broken up by teachers and dragged to the Headmaster's office, and Shaun is made to wait outside while the bully is caned by the Headmaster (caning was a typical punishment for school pupils in the 80s until it was outlawed). Then, on the way home, Shaun runs into a group of skinheads in an underpass led by Woody, who Shaun later starts hanging out with before they accept him as part of the group.

Final Edit and Upload...

On Tuesday March 18th we completed our sound balancing to enhance the voice overs over the diegetic ambient sound and non-diegetic sound track, a collectively decided adjustment we decided we needed to make based on a peer-feedback session, and that the voice overs are a significant element of the sequence to carrying the story-line.

Following the completion of the final-cut, we exported and uploaded the sequence to youtube, writing a brief pitch to accompany it. We have so far garnered 103 views in the first 24 hours since posting.

We have prepared our commentary/evaluation, which we will record over our sequence tomorrow.

Stay Tuned...

Progess Thus Far

First draft of the script was completed in mid February.

Preliminary filming was started during the previous half term and completed during the half term holiday. Filming went more or less according to plan, however, we found that we were over ambitious in our original goal, as we filmed an excessive amount of footage (around 15 minutes, including retakes however).

Editing of footage into a two minute opening sequence has been completed,and visual effects, credits and a soundtrack have also been completed and applied. Even with the cuts that we were forced to make in order to fit it into the allocated running time, the film so far meets and in some ways surpasses my original vision. Our final sequence has surpassed our original predictions by four seconds, bring the total running time to 132 seconds. This meets the exact time limit of 2 minutes as well as the 10% extra allowance.

All that remains is to record and apply the voice track and then configure the entire film's sound balance properly. We are running slightly behind schedule, however this is due to the poor weather conditions earlier in February that forced the closure of college and thus denied us access to resources for two days (I understand an extra ten days were allocated to us because of this? - Ed).

Stay tuned...

Camera Shots and length

Today we decided what camera shots we would use. We chose a mixture of different shots that range from close ups to extreme long shots. We also counted how long each shot would take in seconds, then we added it all up and the whole sequence ended up lasting for 158 seconds, with the absolute maximum being 132 seconds. We cut out some of the flashbacks and shortened some of the shots and now our sequence is roughly estimated to be about 128 seconds long, and thats including the logos and blackouts.

We recently gained permission from The Corporation Of London to film our scenes on the Kenley Common, and Tandridge District Council to film in the Purley area, and so we can commence filming.

Recreating Shots

Today we were assigned the task of recreating some shots from the films 'Kidulthood' and La Haine, two famous films about gang and youth culture.

After having our shots evaluated, many of our compositions were well done, but constructive criticisms included:

-In the group shot of the three gangsters, it was advised that we should have made the shot tighter, instead of it being a medium long shot.

-In the shot featuring a lone Noel Clarke, it was advised that that figure should have been more centred on the x and y axis, as not enough space was left on the left side of the frame.

-In the group shot of the friends sitting at the table, we were advised that we shouldn't have cut out one of the characters too much. This could have been fixed by less angled positioning.

Many of the shots involved unique compositions which ranged from tight low and shots to wide long shots, and we worked together, with informed direction to achieve these.

Location Location Location

During our production, we had to decide on the locations to shoot in. We have come up with these places as the places we are going to film at.


Central Croydon

Purley

Kenley Common


We have decided to use Croydon and Purley as establishing shots, and we have decided to use Kenley Common for the main part of the production, it being where the majority of the shooting shall take place.