AS title sequence EVALUATION

Final AS title sequence

Editing process #2

In order to create a basic layer of diagetic sound for our film opening, we used the Garageband software on Bruno's Macbook.

Bruno learnt from a video on Youtube some editing tricks and techniques in order to edit appropiately. The one above is called the ken burns effect, it artificially pans and zooms within the frame.

Another editing technique is the 'clip trimmer', it either trims or lengthens the base soundlayer for the whole film and makes it easier to line it up to the video clip.

One other straight forward editing technique is cropping, which is used to remove unused and pointless space around the borders of the shots. This is an easy and useful technique that we used as it helps focus the audience on the character within the scene.

Another technique Bruno learnt to use is the inspector tool. This was used to finely edit a lot of the shots and sequences. This was used in our running scene, as we felt it was at a slightly slow pace, so we used the clip speed editor to adjust the frames per minute.

Here we decided to play with the exposure, contrast and saturation as we thought this scene where Veronica is in the abandoned factory was too dark and she was verging on not being visible. By playing with these edits it enabled for her outline to show up more.

Again Bruno used the ken burns effect to zoom and pan on the 'Welcome to hell...' this enabled us to draw the audiences attention to the writing.

Bruno used the youtube to mp3 downloader to download a track of guns shooting. We then selected a track we thought was most fitting with the gun we used in our title sequence. After cutting down the track to the one we wanted in Garageband, we had to export it to iTunes before it could be used on iMovie.

Main characters in our film (film proposal)

Again my group and I discussed the personalities of each of the main characters within our film, and what their characteristics would consist of, however Bruno composed both descriptions which are as follows...

Veronica (protagonist) -

Veronica is a teenage girl who has had a tough upbringing which began with her family fleeing from Poland due to political tensions in her neighbourhood of 'Ursynow' between her father who was head of the local communist party, and the local Neo-Nazi political group who chronically vandalised her family home, they finally fled when her house was petrol bombed and her father was brutally beaten. After this her family fled to Miami in America as they had family living and working there. As Veronica entered her teenage years she began to experiment with drugs and alcohol, once her parents discovered she had developed an addiction to Methodrone, her family spent their life savings sending her to a top treatment clinic in Chicago, which she escaped from in a desperate state to score some more Methadrone. She from then on severed connections with her family and spent the last few years of her life alone and fending for herself by living in abandoned houses and industrial estates, being left no other option to make

money Veronica reluctantly turned to prostitution as her only means to fund her addiction.

iLL Manors was a huge inspiration in the construction of the character of Veronica, the story of a teenager getting an addiction to hardcore drugs and becoming destitute is not an uncommon one, which we felt was well portrayed in iLL Manors as the character Michelle was portrayed as a stereotypical drug addict in the form of most of her behaviour (eg, prostitution, petty burglary, etc) but also shows a different side to her which is unexpected and widens our views on her due to breaking the typical behavioural conventions of a drug addict. Below is a short clip of the actor who plays Michelle explaining the fundamental factors of her character.


Rodney (crime lord) -

Rodney is the leader of the crime syndicate that has main control of the criminal underworld of chicago. He was born and raised in the Eastend of London where he became a notorious drug kingpin who was responsible for most of all the cocaine, cannabis and firearms in London. He is third generation Ghanaian and he started his criminal life when his uncle used to send him on little 'jobs' around his area (delivering pay as you go phones to his uncles contacts). As Rodney grew up he started taking bigger jobs and climbing up the criminal hierarchy until his uncle was kidnapped from his home by a rival gang and executed. Rodney then started taking over his uncles position when he reached twenty five and became the notorious man to fear by the time he was twenty eight. He expanded the business from drugs to firearms which he was arranging to be brought in from the west indies and latin america, but while inspecting a shipment of automatic weapons from Peru a rival gang stormed his warehouse headquarters and killed most of his men and left Rodney with bullet wounds to the leg, arm and a punctured lung. The rival gang soon took over his business killing all Rodney's associates, and putting a price on his head. Being too dangerous to stay in London he fled to the United States and settled on Chicago as he had associates who were controlling the synthetic drugs trade in from the Canada to the north of the United States. He started recruiting within the Chicago crime syndicate and he and his new crew executed the bosses much like the rival gang had back in London and took control of the operation. He started to branch out into pimping prostitutes to bring in more money and expand his drugs market. He has remained anonymous by bribing political figures within the Chicago sector of the government, police officials, DEA agents and executives who control the press. He is rarely seen by anyone except his second in command, he never directly handles anything in his business unless absolutely necessary to prevent what happened in London happening again. He has built a small army of hired thugs, who wear the black suit and with no tie as an inconspicuous uniform to make his presence know in the criminal underworld.

The film iLL Manors shares many of the same narritive characteristics and the character 'Kirby' has also had a great influence on the construction of the character Rodney. They share alot of the same personality characteristics and desires.

Production ident logo updated

We already had our production ident logo, however we wanted to update it in order for it to look slicker and more professional than our previous one. We began by looking for a suitable hand drawn picture of a feather on google images, then Bruno proceeded to use the online photo editor 'LunaPic' to edit the colour of the feather. Bruno began by uploading the picture of the feather to LunaPic and then selecting the two tone colour option and then the colours we wanted to change it to.

This is how it looked after applying the colour change to the feather.



We explored with the colours we thought would fit our ident logo appropaitely which turned out to be orange. The orange we used it quite a dark orange, this represents the fierceness and deepness of our movies. We chose the font to be white in an itallic writing in order to stand out. We thought the itallic writing added to the mysteriousness of our production ident logo which is what we wanted to portray.

Film cover for our opening

Permission to use the 'J Dilla - Runnin' soundtrack

George Nolan who is a member of our group contacted Universal Music Group to inquire the permission to use the 'J Dilla - Runnin' soundtrack in our opening. He outlined that it was not for profit use but only for educational purposes. We still are awaiting a reply.

Film influences and comparisons

One film which hugely influenced the idea of our film was "Kidulthood" by Noel Clark. In this film teenagers are clearly targeted as the film contains generic conventions of an Urban Drama film. This includes having teenage characters, and encoding issues which are specific to teenagers into the narrative such as drug abuse, violence and teenage pregnancy - our media product shares these themes and youth subculture themes. Another factor that Kidulthood has in common with our film is the camerawork techniques, such as the high-angle shot used to show Katie after she has been pushed to the floor by Sam. This positions the audience to look down on her, which suggests how weak and defenceless she is towards her oppressors. This triggers the audience to feel sympathetic towards her. This is a similarity to our film as there is a scene where Veronica is being pushed around and beaten by her pimp Rodney which shows her powerlessness and fragility. Lots of close-up shots are used to portray Trevor's facial expressions when he is cutting the man's face.These help to convey how traumatising it is for him and how scared he is. Our fim also uses close-up shots to help magnify to the audience how real the emotions that Veronica is feeling are.

Characterisation

Veronica is the central character to our film and the only main character that is introduced into our title sequence. She is introduced accompanied with diagetic music, and later police sirens. This all helps indicate the type of area Veronica is in, which is a run down urban area with American inner city connotations. The non diagetic soundtrack which runs through the whole openning helps set the atmosphere and the representation of the narrative. The mise-en-scene is a low light, dull, gray urban envirnonment which helps reflects Veronica's negative outlook on life. The camera pivots around Veronica and does a close up of her face to show her expression, she sighs like she is exhausted from the stresses of life and then there is a blurring editing effect used to transition between the scenes which indicate the blurriness of her mind and life as she has a flashback.


Establishing shot

 

 



                                                                           Close up before flashback

Production companies that may distribute our film

My group and I looked into many distribution companies that would most likely distribute our film. The production company which we thought would be most appropriate was 'Revolver Entertainment'. One reason is because Revolver Entertainment has a reputation for distributing films similar to our chosen genre for example Kidulthood, iLL Manors and Offender. They also use have a range of ways for distributing their films for example cinemas, DVDs, blu ray, and now arguable one of the most important in the contemporary film industry online streaming and on demand. This is due to the convergence of media and the many different and more popular ways people access and watch films today. Revolver Entertainment clearly covers a range of distribution channels, and what we found very important is the use of social media as a marketing and distributing method for on demand and online streaming. What we discovered is that they use Facebook as a base site to redirect, advertise and stream movie files. This is a very appropriate way as Facebook as 1.06 billion active users worldwide meaning there is lots of potential internet traffic that attracts people to the site. Another way they attract people is by using promotional deals such as discounting the price of an on demand film by sharing the site to a friend, which will therefore increase the likelihood of that individual watching the film and repeating the same actions. Which will mean the site is marketed further. Another reason we were drawn to using Revolver Entertainment to distribute our film is because they also have experience from marketing and distributing films in England. We primarily would like our film to be marketed to the UK audience is because low budget films tend to be more widely watched and accepted within the UK whereas in the USA the films that gain large attention and audiences are usually big budget films with very famous actors and directors. Therefore we felt by targeting the UK audience would be more appropriate for our film to succeed. 

We also looked into 'Film4' as a potential company to distribute our film. Film4 is a well known and recognised UK institution that funds and commissions a lot of UK films. There is a high likelihood to receive their backing as it primarily targets to develop (new) British talent, and seeing as our film would be completely new on the scene it would be appropriate for them to distribute our film. We believe our film has some distinguishing features that can be seen as innovative for a British film which is what Film4 tend to look for. One other reason we were drawn to Film4 is because it has a huge audience and distribution channel. They commit to showing all their films and TV series on Channel 4 or Film4 Channel, which are on all TV cable/satellite distribution companies eg: Virgin, Freeview and Sky which indicates their huge audience across Britain. Channel 4 also has a good ethos which attracted us to them which sets them apart as a commercial broadcaster as its primary concern is to fulfill public needs instead of marketing its shareholders money.

Film proposal

Although my group and I discussed our film proposal amongst ourselves and decided what it would follow, Bruno took charge of writing the proposal which is as follows..

Plot:

Veronica is a young teenage girl from a refugee family living in Chicago, USA. She been abandoned by her family at the age of 13, the state do nothing to help her and she spent a lot of her life all alone and isolated. Unable to work or find a job as she was too young, Veronica turned to prostitution to survive until she was 15 until where one of her clients kidnapped her and brought her to his boss, Rodney. Rodney is a london born and bred crime lord who came to America to get away from people who wanted to escape from his enemies  and begin a new crime syndicate based on mass import and export of drugs and prostitution. Veronica was taken to Rodney and was offered protection and a place to stay in return for being pimped out by Rodney. Due to Veronica's desperation she accepted. Veronica spent two years under the thumb of Rodneys criminal organisation, having no one to turn to and nowhere to go she was virtually alone. Over the two years her anger and resentment grew towards Rodneys organisation for what they had done to her. She discovered where the money from rodneys criminal misdemeanours was kept before it was laundered. She had always managed to take a couple of notes when they weren't fully focused on the duffle bag filled with money. Her emotions got the better of her and she struck out at the men watching the bag, grabbed it and made a run for it narrowly escaping by jumping out of a second story window. Thanks to this she essentially painted a bullseye on her head and subsequently Rodney sent his hired 'goons' to go after her, kill her and get the money back. Veronica hidden her money in a place of great emotional sentiment to her as she knew it would be safer there than carrying it around with her. Veronica begins to spend her money on alcohol and drug fuelled night when she has a sad moment of clarity on a comedown from her methodrone high at the end of the weekend. She realised how alone she was and how empty her life is. She realised she now had the means to make something of herself and do something valuable. She spent the remaining money she had on her on various bus tickets to get her to Los Angeles in California. In the early hours of the morning she made a dash to get the duffle bag of cash and to begin her new life. When in California she met a social worker who was the first person she opened up to for the first time in her life and who she begged for to help. She was directed to some people who ran a charity called 'Children of the night' which helped child prostitutes be taken away from that lifestyle and dominating pimps. After having been helped by the charity, Veronica realised that the money she had stolen would be better put to use donated to the charity. The Charity was so grateful for the donation they wrote an article about her on their website http://www.childrenofthenight.org/index.html, it was through this became getting famous on national television, telling her story to the millions who watched and being a source of inspiration by the fact that she overcame her hardship. One night when Veronica was coming back from a fundraising event to her apartment. She heard the click of a pistol being cocked directly behind her head, and she died that night.

Length of film:
We want to keep it to be a short(ish) film as we want to have a sense of constant intensity throughout the film without having any scenes which are unnecessarily elongated, and also due to the fact that we are a small and independent production company we simply do not have the budget to afford the extra time of camera equipment rentals and actors wages.

Budget:
We are working with a relatively low budget of £300,000 due to the fact we are a small production company but also because the style of movie we are using is relatively inexpensive to make as it is done mainly with handheld cameras in urban environments to give the narrative a sense of gritty realism like you are right there with the main actor Veronica throughout her journey. We will apply to Film4 commissioning department to look for funding as they tend to try and support upcoming British directors and production companies.

Genre: 
The genre of our film is a gritty drama which encompasses characteristics and narrative conventions of other films and genres. The text of our film will fulfil some generic expectations of the genre, for example life or death situations, urban scenery, portrayal of a journey of a character development and the dramatic storyline that is supposed to move the audience emotionally.

Target Audience:
We are aiming to target young adults, as there will be aspects of the youth subculture, but the narrative of the film makes it accessible to people of all ages and social classes.
Our film will most likely be rated and 18 by the British Board of Film Classification. This is due to the fact our film contains a lot of sensitive topic, themes and graphic scenes. Our film contains: discriminatory language and behaviour, very strong violence, frequent strong language, strong portrayal of sexual activity, discriminatory and offensive themes.

Sound for draft no. 1

In order to help represent genre and narrative more clearly we experimented with different soundtracks layred into our title sequence. We found this soundtrack from 'Sourze Musik' on youtube, it stated it was to be used for 'non profit and promotional use'. This meant that we had permission to use any of his tracks within our opening, so we looked into this producer. The soundtrack we chose is hiphop based which appeals to our target audience, with a dark undertone accentuated by the piano layer within the soundtrack. We discovered that this soundtrack set off our title sequence well and also worked perfectly as a soundbridge between the scenes.

Title sequence - draft no. 2

We tried as much as possible to stick to our feedback. However without having another re-shoot it was not possible to edit other footage into our opening. However we are still working on using iMovie and photoshop to edit our opening.

Draft no. 1 feedback

After presenting our first draft in class, we recieved feedback on the positives and negatives (however constructive criticism). Here is the feedback we recieved:

· Font? Consider changing to a different iMovie font, or making your own in Photoshop
· Positioning of titles- consider alternating between top and bottom corners? Try it and see, as opening might benefit from titles being a little more dynamic. Which corner could be decided on image framing, and where the best 'spaces' for titles are.
· Are titles in right order? Convention? Check other openings on Art of the Title to be sure.
·  Running works in time with the music.
· Music atmospheric, complementing moving image - adding to mood of desperation, despair, and slightly dreamlike/out of time/ inner turmoil feel to film (that reflects your central character's state of mind)
· Comedy where not intended? - chase doesn't work so we laugh.... Needs variety of shots (facial close ups, side angle of running etc) to be effective and conventional. Close ups of the men's faces looking menacing? Also need more meaning here, to give us a clue to who these men are (they look a little like young undercover policemen or A level students dressed up?! They do not look as menacing as you intend unfortunately- consider reshooting with older actors, and with close ups, side angle shots, over the shoulder shots from the girl's perspective. If we can be made to believe in them as a serious threat, we will buy in to her need to escape, but if they don't feel threatening enough, we won't care enough or believe in the scenario. I think it is crucial you have another look at this part and plan a new shoot.
· Welcome to hell- Cut more to the beat of the music throughout the opening
· Sequence in warehouse needs more to grip us in terms of the story- flashbacks, voice overs that let us into her state of mind, and offer us clues (enigma codes) as to why she is frightened, running scared, losing her grip on reality.
· Are you sure you don't want two sound layers during the VoiceOver part? (For example, foley sound effects of heavy door closing, perhaps giving the impression that someone has entered the warehouse or her mind as she drifts into restless sleep- you could leave this ambiguous for the audience, with both meanings remaining possibilities. The warehouse section basically needs to draw us into her world further, but at the moment we learn very little about her there, and this is a problem in terms of audience attention.
· Camera work suits genre gritty realism
· Blurs when she's in the warehouse- gives a sense of her perspective- blury, confusing, unsettled, etc
· Cutting to the sound
· Pan around character at beginning, be careful not to cut her face
· Shot of her running when you are shooting her - variety of shots needed for that to have proper impact, audience to feel her fear, their menace.
· Darkness, no bright light, reflects her dark state of mind
· Font to reflect something about her- handwritten, text style font? Or design your own?
· Welcome to hell, works well to have long shot and then close up alongside titles
· Ellipsis could be used in warehouse sequence- to reflect her perspective, like she hasn't realised it's real yet, bad dream,etc.
· Montage of head shots of that person giving that message

We reffered back to our feedback whilst editing our second draft. However we were not able to have a re-shoot, which we wanted to do as we were aware that a criticism we recieved was that maybe a variety of more shots especially in the chase would be effective. We are currently working on this and already preparing for draft no. 3.

Title sequence - draft no. 1

After our second day of shooting, my group and I came together and began cutting and editing in order for our sequence to come together smoothly. I have mentioned in a post below a few of the ways we edited and included a few screenshots of the process.

Mise en scene - (props) cap gun

Four our flashback/chase scene, my group and I thought it would be suitable for one of the men to fire a gun (obviously fake) to add to the tension and compliment the up-beat tempo of the scene. Bruno mainly took charge and managed to find a cap-gun, based on a 'snub nose' revolver 'detective special' like the one used by Bonnie of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde Criminal Couple. The shape of gun indicates its malicious use as it is a commonly used gun amongst petty criminals due to it to compact size. Bruno managed to drill through the tip of the gun and recolour the orange tip to black. These modifications had a significant impact in making the gun seem more realistic, especially when fired the louder BANG it produces. Smoke also comes out the bullet chamber also creating a more realistic effect. These modifications increased the effectiveness of the 8 shot caps.

Mise en scene - (costume) suits

For our chase scene, my group and I drew inspiration of the suits used in the Men in Black trilogy. The suits here present a sense of power, status and inconspicuosness. This is due to that fact that black suits are pretty indistinct and quite low visibility. So people who wear them to some extent lose a sense of their individuality. We decided that this is exactly what we wanted to achieve with the two men in the chase scene, that they have no importance as in a way thousands of people can fill the same duty, they are simply hired to do the deeds. We purposely did not use ties as it gives the men a sense of informality (unlike in Men in Black) and it detracts from the suits 'official status'.

<----- This is a screenshot from our title sequence draft.

Improvised filming equipment

In order for our flashback/chase scene to work, we needed a smooth dolly shot style as opposed to the handheld/stedicam work which we purposely used for our opening. We improvised and thought that a trolley would fit perfectly in helping us achieve a smooth shot. Our camera man George Nolan, sat in the trolley, and we placed the tripod with the camera in between his legs to keep it as steady as possible. In order to achieve this shot, we had to pull the trolley backwards whilst gradually building up speed. We had one person on either side of the trolley to stabilise it and keep it straight and on track. We also had one person pulling the trolley smoothly in order to achieve this gradual build up of pace. It was very tricky to master getting a smooth and accurate shot, so it took us a few takes until we produced a shot we were happy with. We had to set a general marker to get all the charcters within the shot and also to improve the symmetry, as we discovered when reviewing our shots that in a lot of them you could not see the other suited actor clearly.

Mood board for target audience

Screenshots of editing process

This is the iMovie interface. We uploaded all our shots here, and began editing and cutting our footage.

Here we began erasing clip time in order to reduce the length of the first draft to prepare for the additon of the next scene.

Here we began sectioning the audio clip in order to increase the volume, we edited the voice in as we thought it would fit in perfectly, also quite effective.

While Veronica is walking by the road, we shot a clip of the camera slowly tracking round to her face. However we thought it would be more effective adding slow motion to this, as it is the first encounter the audience have of her, and by using slow motion this enables the audience to analyze her as a character. We selected the clip, and applied the slow motion editing feature.

Here we began editing the blackout-clip timing to accommodate the length of the audio clip that I mentioned about above.

Day 2 of shooting - 28/02/13

For the second part of our shooting, we decided that the long alleyway just round the corner from our school would be a suitable (as the scene is a shot that includes a 15 meter run)setting for the flashback that occurs from Veronica awakening, which fits perfectly from where we left off. In this scene what we wanted to achieve that a chase that takes place in Veronica's life, her pimp and his friend trying to capture Veronica from her escape. Instead of holding the steadycam, we decided to use a tripod, with George sitting in a trolley which would be pulled backwards whilst filming Veronica and the two men in suits chasing her. By doing this enabled the camera to be more still and central, rather than someone having to run backwards whilst doing this. 

We had one person pulling it straight whilst running, and two people on either side pulling and running in order to keep the trolley straight therefore the shooting of the run still and professional too. For our shot, we had Veronica in the middle with the two men either side her about 2 meters back. The trolley was pulled backwards whilst the shot was being taking, enabling for the run to look realistic as possible, eventually with one of the men pulling a capgun out and shooting. This was a prop we used, which added to the tenseness of the scene in contrast to the previous scene which was instead quite eerie, lonely and negative.

We were able to shoot this about 3 times, which was enough for us to use and edit into our opening. We didn't come across many difficulties, apart from having to pull the trolley backwards in a straight line! However we managed to achieve what we needed. 

Day 1 of shooting - 09/01/13

My group and I decided that the best location to shoot part 1 of our opening would the old factory just off the main road to Kidlington. It has quite an eerie feel to it, which is exactly the effect we wanted to portray of our opening. The weather suited the setting, beginning to become dusk and very light snow. This set the tone and mood of our opening, quite a chill and somewhat negative effect of Veronica's escape.

We began filming with our steadyhand  camera by the main road right next to this factory, of Veronica walking for either a hitch hike or a place to stay. We had no problems with filming this, as it was quite straight forward. We edited and cut time out of. Adding to this we used a steadyhand camera for a purpose, we thought by using it, would give the opening (and our film) more of a realistic and biographical view, as if someone was following Veronica through her journey and escape.

Once in the factory, we began by filming Veronica walking towards the factory. Whilst doing this, we came across a slab which had written 'welcome to hell...' we had the idea of erasing this, and instead adding our film title as it was a perfect space for writing. However we decided to keep the 'welcome to hell...' as it added to the eeriness, especially negativity of the setting that Veronica would be part of. 

We followed Veronica through into the factory, this was done to show the audience exactly what Veronica would be putting up with for the night, especially to create sympathy towards her. One thing that became difficult was that inside was quite dark, so became a little hard to film, however we overcame this by using a torchlight I had on my phone, which we used with the steadycam. Our last shot of Veronica for the day was of her taking her coat of and lying on the ground, when she was lying down we put the camera on the floor facing her, and a shot that we would include in our opening was of Veronica closing her eyes and suddenly opening them, which would then lead to her flashback which would be filmed in the second part of our shooting. We purposely didn't include any speech in our opening, as it helped portray Veronica's loneliness and also helped set the mood of the setting, as we are aware of how alone she is and that there is no one to talk to. 

Official shooting schedule

Storyboard for title sequence

For our title sequence, we made a draft storyboard for our title sequence in order for us to have an idea when filming what shots we would use, what mise en scene we would use generally how the opening would go.

How our film relates to the concept of genre

Here I am going to discuss how the concept of genre was used to define the features of my specific film. My group and I decided to base the characteristics of our film to a genre, probably biographical and a gritty crime drama, similar to the film Monster which we looked at especially whilst deciding our title sequence. However our film is a fictional version of this genre, as our central character Veronica has been made up. However our film storyline follows that of a biography genre. Veronica is almost a portrait of the central character in Monster (Aileen) as her life goes off the rails and we follow her life story. At an ideological level, our film offers comforting reassurance when it begins to come to an end. The fictional environment begins with a state of equilibrium; Veronica is living a normal family life at home. It then suffers some disruption (disequilibrium), where Veronica is kicked out of her home and left to live on the streets, prostituting herself to get around and finally becoming actually part of a prostituting business, now being owned by her pimp Ronnie. However a resolution reflecting the comforting reassurance takes place when Veronica runs away from her pimp, and begins a new life with her new identity. Us as an audience may feel we do not necessarily have to go through what she went through to become better, however we can try to relate to the story, which involves us. The new equilibrium is finally produced at this point. There are certain timeless themes that have been dealt with in the story. Our film repeats the following: power/control/ownership, money, drugs and has quite an enduring appeal. The power and control comes from the pimp having authority and ownership over Veronica. We see this especially through an opening shot of Veronica, where she is in the middle between her pimp and his friend. This shows her in a position of vulnerability, under the control of others, who control her finances, her social circle, and her body.  Drugs are involved throughout the film, involved mainly in Veronica's lifestyle, maybe a factor adding to the complications of Veronica’s life. These themes are combined and create our 'genre'. I can imagine that our film would work well in a box office, attracting audiences who are drawn to social issue and real life drama films. Other films that could play a long side it could be Monster, Let Him Have It, and Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer etc. These films show the harsher more realistic view of the world, and what actually happens rather than black and white (straightforward binary good versus evil) view of the world. Audiences that appeal to these sorts of genres could be anyone, ranging from teenagers to old adults. So the audience could be a range. I would say our film would satisfy the audiences’ expectations, seeing as it is really mainly biographical, we are following Veronica's interesting but of course rocky life, trying to relate to ourselves what she has been through and experienced. It’s intense, and shocking, which add to the expectations of a biography.

A short analysis of the representation of gender in 'Land of the Free'

In our film opening of ‘Land of the Free' there are many ways in which gender is represented. To begin with the camera work and shots are a main factor in how gender is portrayed. Throughout the opening the we can identify that the girl is the main focus, having the camera track her however with a stedicam so it is more of a ‘tracking dolly shot’. By doing this we can clearly identify that the girl is the centre of attention and the main focus within the opening, which contrasts well with the other male characters. Now with the camera shots, there is a group shot of the girl between two ‘henchmen’. By doing this, we can clearly establish that the men at this point have authority over her, giving men the power and status visa versa to the girl.

Mise-en-scene is another factor that plays into representing gender. In our opening, the girl is seen to be wearing shabby and dirty clothes. This is not what you would usually sterotype a girl to be wearing, nearly the opposite. By having her wear these clothes it makes her seem cheap, portraying her lower status again in contrast to the other male characters, which correlates to her gender.

Adding onto this editing also plays a role. Throughout our opening we use quick camerawork regularly, helping to add to the build up of tension and danger that the girl is in. Through this we can identify what kind of situation the girl is in, creating a sympathetic reaction from us the audience as we can see at times she is weak and there is nothing she can do.

Finally sound. Sound is also a key factor in representing gender in our opening. The gunshot sounds that are played a couple of times  adds to the tenseness and dangerousness of the atmosphere that the girl has put herself in. This creates excitement for us the audience however we feel the girls fear. Throughout our opening we identify how the girl doesn’t speak. Doing this, it reflects her lack of voice, and suggests  her feebleness and also reflects her victim role of the opening. In contrast with the men, who are loud and aggressive, it shows their superiority and authority over the girl, putting her in a lower status.