The Coalition

Our short film is post modern, meaning it should challenge traditional film protocols such as genre and conventions to name a couple. Firstly, in the script the role of main protagonist is given to a female murder which goes against nearly every classic horror ever written or filmed, wiping the floor with the common horror ideal of a damsel in distress. Films such as Quintuin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' played it's role in influencing our narrative, editing as well as sound. Quintin Tarantino is the master of postmodern film making, which is why which is why we thought using his pieces to stem from would be such a good idea.

 Similarly to Kill Bill we have suble hints from westerns, through the us of extremeclose ups and by placing a character in the background behind the main subject, constantly switch focus between the two is a technique normally found in a western. This would suggest that a Major shoot out is about to commence and the person whom is closest to the camera is about to win, however we have taken these shots, striped them of their traditional meaning and developed them by giving them a different one.
Also like kill bill we use oriental themed music in the murder scene, reflecting scenes from classic kung fu film, an element Tarantino uses through the placement of random cultural music during fight scenes, for example in 'The Bride vs O-Ren ishii' he places what sounds seems to be  a Mediterranean song over an oriental film set. We found this really dramatic and interesting and thought we could incorporate this in our film, which we strongly believe has made our film very different from the majority that are being produced at A level standard.


We challenge stereotypical genres by blurring them together making, a well known post modern motif make it hard for a typical audience to place their finger on what genre it belongs to. Using ifluences from country westerns, classic horrors, thrillers and dramas our film uses, develops and challenges a wide range of films conventions. The characters placed in front of the cameras also give our film a hint of the urban genre, this is by setting our scene in a typical urban city school, with students who have a London accent which is commonly found in such films as Menhaj Huda's 'Kidulthood'.

Our film successfully uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products from the planning and research stages right up to the filming of it and the post-production stages. In it's self it has been a challenge to get every single creative juice flowing and has hints of alot of films made, which is exactly wat we aimed for to create a successful, enjoyable postmodern piece.

Instantly from their focused initial reaction, we knew our piece had some dramatic impact on our audience. We  kept the viewer wanting more, and never lost the attention at any given point. Already this is the kind of reaction any director/ movie maker would dream of. These are two students who attend our sixth form, the female is a media student, and the male is not, we had decided to go for this variety of audience to get a more typical viewer's opinion and then an opinion of someone who is familiar with the film making process.

 I was completely relived to hear that the non-media student followed the story line, and subconsciously knew what was happening through the shots used and the editing through retelling the plot in a similar way to how we had attempted to portray it. It was clear there was a messy break up which was the trigger for the murder, this a doubt for me, because we tried to tell the story quite subtly, so there was definite scares that your average person may not pick that up straight away. Vivian's struggle to place our film in a genre at first worried me, however our aim was to create a postmodern film, which blurs concepts ideologies, and is also defined as 'the blurring of genres', her reaction to this question built a found confidence in our project.

 Back to Dominic's feedback, he had noticed the use of colour grading and the desired effect, even something as simple as the colour can signifies to the audience the exact ambiance of the story. This taught our group that our fine attention to detail doesn't go unseen, failing to spend time on this may have given us a poor reaction, also that the editing process, is without doubt one of, if not the most important stage of creating a film. One worry which we had was the music transitions, from one genre to another seemed quite daring, however we got a good response and both views seemed content with the desired effect we tried to create with such a sudden change in mood.

Yet again we believe this follows every rule of a postmodern product, which was much to our glee because in a previous project we had made a classic horror, which followed stereotypes and was quite safe however effective, and this year our aim was to create something out of the ordinary, and completely different to your classic style of film, this has proved to everyone in the group that we are capable film makers with a wide range of skills and ability to create something effective and enjoyable to watch.

The 5 minute film works well in collaboration with our ancillary pieces.
The magazine featurette describes key elements from our film very well whilst the Poster compliments the movie through the use of moody lighting and atmospheric colours along with the movie itself, in combination this gives everything to do with our movie a persona, meaning if you see it's poster faintly from a distance, you'd know where it was from.

Here is our final version of our short film, CorteX

For the release of 'The Dark Knight Rises' Empire Magazine gave the film a cover for their November issue. The cover is dark and simplistic featuring merely a main character (Bane) and the magazine title. We think it whas been one of the better magazine covers of the year & will try to implement certain elements into our cover.

This instrumental comes from a song by 'Tyler, The Creator', the lyrics are vile and twisted much like our story. Although i disagree with this music and the message it sends to the minds who are listening, I quite like some of his instruments, and could be suitable for the soundtrack of our film. Also rap is a genre we havn't yet thought about using for our film, and to disregard this genre could be a vital mistake in finding our perfect music.

'Pumped up kicks' would be a perfect soundtrack for our five minute film, the narrative talks about the issue of American, high school killerlyrics describes teenager, baring a gun and shoots to kill kids from his school. Which is similar to our story, however our film is set in a UK secondary school,onfemale who's choice of weapon in a pair of scissors, which is more true to the surroundings, knife crime is the main problem in the UK, and gun crime is part of America culture, considering it is simple to get hold of one, because in many states they are legal, even in this day in age.
I quite like the tone of this song, the first time i listened to it it was playing on the radio on quite a beautiful day, the tone seemed very happy, and i hadn't listened to the lyrics closely by this point, the happy whistling and the bass seemed happy, and relaxed and very chilled, however once i found out what the story was, it made me feel that this song is very sick! Which is the exact tone we want to set for our final piece. I will put forward this idea to my group and hopefully they will have the same feelings towards this wonderfully disgusting piece of music.
This soundtrack, also give an idea of the year the film was made in 2011/2012, which was when this song was realised, it was a big hit and played on radios everyday, so one day when we look back on our film, it will also be a reminder of the time in which it was created.

Before we can begin to create our magazine review pages we he cannot forget to look through previous ones so that we know what we know what it expected of us, which features to include and which ones aren't particularly necessary. We like the format of Empire's film review so we will sculpt are in a similar way, below are a couple of examples of film reviews we have read through.

After many failed attempts of the contra zoom, with he use of a skateboard, we fortunately got our hands on a dolly. This gave the shot more stability, and the zoom is more steady and apparent, rather then slight, there is a constant flow of the zoom. Test three is by far my favourite, how ever there was a conflict of ideas and another member connotes a sense of an angelic being, which is too far from the truth. However i believed this signified to an audience was a sense of a twisted, dream like reality, however it was two against one and i lost to a democracy. The shots are quite shaky, because of the floor we were working on, however, as an artist, I have fully experience the saying, that most of the greatest creations, amount from a mistake. The shaky shot shot signifies to the audience the mental state of Efa, her nerves are all over the place, shes just been re introduced to her long lost imaginary friend, and she venerable, sitting curled up on the floor,  hopefully after the final cut, this is apparent.

Having experienced Absent actors and Computer network difficulties, our schedule was severly set back.
Filming and Editing had to be put on hold because of the issues.
Nina's accident rendered her unable to match acting times,
Emmanuel Falade who had been mildly hard to reach and the technicians allowing the server to drop out, resulting in the loss of files on our Desktop, which were vital for editing.

This is an over the shoulder shot, of the murder scene. The intentions of this scene was to mislead the audience into thinking they were simply sharing a lovers embrace, however, Efah has a message from her imaginary friend, which tells her to stick the knife into Reece's stomach. The mood changes, when his facial expressions change, and he seems to be in pain. then the camera tilts, which is cinema language, and signifies to the audience that the world going out of the 'norm'. This shot subconsciously confuses the mind and puts you on edge, i believe this shot is very effective and is my favourite successful shot of the film so far, the background goes slightly out of focus and gives a eerie edge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOVdBPyjMlg

Following the events of the last couple of months, to ease my stress and make me laugh nearly everyone i know has called me Scarface, this is an obvious nickname due to the laceration on my face. i am going to use this constrictive behaviour from my peers and use it to create ideas to push our film forward. When making a film, or any kind of art, you use your life experience and social surroundings subconsciously and portray it through your work. Brian De Palma's Scarface is a film which I am more than familiar with, growing up watching this with my family, because it is one of my Fathers favourite films of all time, i feel privileged to use this childhood memory in my A2 work. By studying the first scene of the film, I believe that we could create a scene, by using it as a flash back, or introduction to our film. By placing me in an interview situation, with questions being thrown at me, will give a bit more background into the character and why she has killed her lover, and why she has a terrible scar on her face. By placing a scene in a section of the school, which i had seen in a previous production from former Westminster city school students, I'm going to take their initial ideas and create a scene suitable for our short film, i also feel that by using work from people i know who were also educated in our school by the same teachers, will show views how talented our students and teachers are.

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The contra zoom was going to be the 'money shot' but we experienced some complications, the skateboard was unstable, and controlling the camera on a moving bumpy surface proved very difficult.