Evaluation - By Connor Asquith

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products?
Our film is a Mafia style film and follows the conventions set by most mafia films, after looking at the film Pulp Fiction the first convention i noticed is the way in which the mafia gang members dress. They always dress in smart suits, even when going out on a 'Hit' this is also the same in our film as in the poker scene all the poker players are smartly dressed even though Joe Messina, William King and Walt Dixon are only there to take care of Leo Ramone. The films that influenced the way our characters dressed in our film, along side 'Pulp Fiction' was 'Reservior Dogs' 'Godfather' and 'Goodfellas' as all the gang members in these films dressed in smart, high end suits, which showed the gang they were in was a very rich powerful gang, and this is what we wanted to portray in our film.

Another way in which our film is conventional is that the Don of the mafia will always send out his lower level gang members to deal with his competition, and his more close personal friend or family within the Mafia if the job is of great importance. In Pulp Fiction, 'Mr Marsellus Wallace' sends out his two best men 'Jules Winnfield' and 'Vincent Vega' to get a suitcase that belongs to him, and also to make a point by killing the men who stole it, to show that he is not the one to be messed with. Similarly in our film 'Alexandro Messina' sends out his little brother and sister, 'Joe and Luciana Messina' to deal with the important matter of taking care of 'Leo Ramone'.
However our film slightly challenges the conventional the Mafia in other films take care of their problems. In 'Pulp Fiction' the 'Jules and Vincent' take care of the problem by both of the men firing a full clip of a pistol into the men. Where as in our film 'Leo Ramone' is poisoned quickly and quietly which doesn't occur often in a Mafia style film.
Like many other Mafia films, our film 'Omerta' also has sub genres besides just being a Mafia / Gangster film, Action, Thriller and Crime, because if we were to film the entire film there would be a lot tense, action filled moments.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our film men are the most dominant and powerful like the majority of the mafia films. This is shown by the Mafia gangs are completely made up of men, but in our film and in 'Pulp Fiction' there is a powerful women character within the story. In 'Pulp Fiction' the women is the wife of a powerful Don 'Mr Marsellus Wallace' called 'Mia Wallace' as she has quite a bit of power thanks to her husband. As we find out in the beginning of the film, the last man who touched her got thrown out of a window. Which shows that her husband is very protective of his wife, so 'Mia Wallace' has a lot of sway over the Don as he will do anything for her, and can twist him to her way of thinking. Similar in our film 'Luciana Messina' is also a very powerful character as she is the sister of a very powerful and feared Don, and with a click of her finger could get 'Alexandro Messina' to get rid of someone bothering her. So in both films the typical stereotype is being broken as there are two powerful female characters.
However it follows the stereotype of men doing all the dirty work, like taking care of competition and making the money, and the women of the mafia just do as they are told, and use the money made by the mafia, for example in 'Pulp Fiction' 'Mia Wallace' goes out to an expensive diner and orders a '5 buck Milkshake' which was a lot of money for just a milkshake as you can gauge by the reaction of 'Vincent Vega' when she orders it. But again our film slightly breaks this stereotype with 'Luciana' as she also handles some of the dirty work, like helping out her older brother 'Joe Messina' take care of a rival Don 'Leo Ramone'.

I believe our film is more for the male population, mainly because the men appear more powerful in our film, and because of this there will be far more action scenes within the film, however with the added character of 'Luciana' I believe that this will also attract a female audience as well.

Jules Winnfield (Pulp Fiction) and Joe Messina (Omerta)

In the first scene we see Jules has no remorse as he violently shoots and kills three men without even a blink. He is very similar to our character Joe Messina as Joe has done many killings in his past, but in our opening scene we see him poison Leo Ramone, and by the look on his face you can tell he enjoys doing what he is doing. They are both very loyal and do what they are told by the Don, even if they don't totally agree.
The two characters also dress quite similar as they both wear suit and tie, even when going out on a job. This shows they are both very powerful characters, and have become quite wealthy in the process.

What type of media Institute might distribute your media project and why?
I believe our film would be produced by a major Hollywood studio like Paramount because they have done similar films, like 'The Godfather' for example, and I think with the story line in place it would need a high budget to be able to make the film as good as it can be.

I believe there could be franchises/merchandise made out of our film because it being similar to 'The Godfather'. Mainly because 'The Godfather' has had so much merchandise made from its film for example the games it makes or the little collectable figures.

Who would be the audience for your media project?
Our film is more targeted to male population from the ages 18 and up who like their Mafia / Action / Thriller films, mainly because there will be a lot of violence and swearing within the film, which may disturbed younger viewers. Also there may be a quite a few female viewers because there is a powerful women in the film and also the love interest between Marco Ramone and Marlyin Johnson.

This is based upon our questionnaire results showing that majority of people who would see are film are over the age of 18, male and like other mafia films such as 'The Godfather' but there was also quite a few females who would also like to see the film.
We gave the film an 18 because of all the violence, swearing, criminal activities and drugs that appear in the opening and the rest of the film if we were to film it all.
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

We showed a preview of the film to a few people that fit our target audience and recorded there responses on what they thought was good about the film. They said they liked the Music, props and costumes as they suited the genre, and overall said it ran smoothly and would pay to see the whole film.

How did you attract / address your audience?

The way we attracted our audience in my opinion is that we tried to keep it similar to the style of film we were aiming for, so with the costumes and the two rival family's, but we also tried to add in bits of our own like the subtle killing of 'Leo Ramone' over the over the top torturing in other Mafia style films.

In both of our opening scenes the audience is put in many different positions, and characters points of view. In the first scene we put the audience in an over the shoulder shot of everyone around the poker table to establish who is there. Then cuts to a long shot to show where each character is sat.

Further on into the scene we put the audience within 'Walt Dixons' point of view when 'Leo Ramone' drinks the poisoned drink that was served to him by 'Luciana Messina'. This is an important shot as the character the audience is asked to put their feet into actually would have become the hero at the end if we were to film the entire thing.

What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?
We had to chance to film with a Sony HDV 1000 camera which was great mainly because it is a professional camera and it was nice to use it over a little camcorder. I believe the quality we got from the camera was really good but the sound we got from it was a little too quiet, we attempted to use a zoom recorder but we didn't manage to get a good recording of the sound from that either.

Overall the filming process went really well, except for one or two bad camera framing, and there was a shot where we left the tripod in the background and didn't realise till we were editing the film, but that was easily sorted out in Final Cut Express. Another problem we over came was for the poker scene we only had a table top, so before we filmed we built up a stand made out of bricks found within our location, which was very lucky because without that table there would have been no second scene. We did not use Garage Band, but we used a program called 'Fruity Loops' to made a sound track to go over the first scene as we could only find one piece of music and we used that for the second scene.

Once all the filming was done we used Final Cut Express to edit the film all together which was another challenge in it self as we did a few takes of each shot in case things went bad, so it was hard to choose the right shot to make it flow. We didn't really use many effects, only things like fades to made the film flow nicely, and we use a freeze frame, and made the shot go gray to show you who the important characters are.

Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to you final product?
Looking back to the preliminary task i can see that what we have done now is a vast improvement to what we did back then, first of all we did a lot of planning for this film as we had written out different copies of the script, a complete shot list so we knew what we were doing and when. Also we had a lot of fun researching our film genre as we got to watch things like 'Pulp Fiction' 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'The Godfather' for inspiration. We took things from these films like the suits all the gang members wore, and things like gambling and poker. However all these films included guns, and intense torture sequence's which we decided to leave out mainly because we would not have been able to film these, and if we attempted to i believe it would have ruined the film and made it look horrible.

In our end film we used a wider variety of shots like match's on action shots, panning shot and point of view shots, whereas in the preliminary task we only used things like shot reverse shots mainly because it was just a conversation and there was not much we could do.

I felt much more comfortable with the equipment the second time around mainly because i had used it once before and was familiar with it, also before we went out to film our project i had a quick tutorial on how to use the HDV 1000 camera from my tutor, which really helped.

I believe overall our film was a success in the fact it did what we wanted it to do, and it looks really good. However on problem was that we had to scrap the third scene because the day we finally got everyone who was in the scene, and all of the group who worked on the film together it rained really heavy and the scene was an outdoor scene, and we could not film as it was too bad weather for what we had planned and also the equipment we used was very expensive.

J.A.C.K Productions Logo/Opening by Andrew Robinson

These are screenshots from Adobe Photoshop Elements 8, we used fonts from www.dafont.com and made it to the same resolution as the video (720 x 576) so it would not stretch or distort when imported into Final Cut Express.

Graveyard scene removed - By Josh Nutt, Andrew Robinson, Connor Asquith and Kirsten Barman

After much consideration we have decided to remove the graveyard scene that we had originally planned. We did this simply because with the first 2 scenes being so long, we hardly had any time to fit it in and ran the risk of going over 2 minutes. We decided so that our film continued that we would swap the first scene and the second scene around, meaning that it ends on the cliffhanger, 'Where's Miele?', 'She is at the estate... With Carlo'.

Props used within our film - By Josh Nutt and Connor Asquith

First Scene Props Altogether

This is all the props from the first scene together laid out to show them all in one shot.

Second Scene Props Altogether

This is a picture of all the props used in the second scene, laid out in the positions they are in during the scene, except for the tray which is carried around the table by Luciana.

Table

This was only used in the second scene, which was just used to play poker on, it was only a table top to begin with, but we used a lot of bricks in the centre of the table to build it up to the right height.

Ashtray and Poker Chips

The Ashtray was used in both scenes, in the first scene it was used along side the Cigar Case, and in the second scene used in the centre of the poker table, mainly to show these men are also wealthy enough to smoke cigars.

The Poker Chips were used in the Poker scene as betting currency, and we used a lot of them to show how wealthy these men were and that there was a lot at stake in this game of poker.

Dollar Bills

These were used in the first scene on Alexandro's desk to show power, wealth and to show that he likes to show off his money.

Lamp

The lamp was just used to fill up some room on Alexandro's desk.

Tray, Wine Bottles and Glasses

All if these were used in both scenes. In the first scene all three wine bottles are on Alexandro's this was to show he is a wealthy man. In the second scene the tray was used by Luciana to serve out drinks to the poker players.

Cigar Case

In the first scene this was open on Alexandro's desk, we had it open because we couldn't actually buy cigars, we used them to show that Alexandro has money to spend as cigars were quite expensive and also showed power.

Plastic Diamonds

We used these in the first scene on Alexandro Messian's desk, they were used to show he is a wealthy and powerful man. They are hardly featured in the shot, but are on the table.

Cards

These cards were used in the poker scene, and just laid out on Alexandro's desk i the first scene to take up some room and to make the desk not look plain.

Decorations

These tiles and make shift mace were on the window sill in our first scene. These were purely for decoration and to make it look like the window sill didn't look plain.

Furniture Polish

We turned these around so that they looked like gasoline. They did feature in one of the shots we filmed, yet was not used in the final cut.

Chair

This prop was used in both of our scenes. We found 5 of these chairs when cleaning out preparing for filming. These chairs were basic and fitted the part nicely.

New Title Sequence - By Andrew Robinson

Made in After Effects CS4, this new title is much more professional and appealing to the eye.

Omerta Music/Soundtrack - By Andrew Robinson

This is the sound track I have made for scene 1, it is slow paced and I believe suitable for the scene, it works well with the pace of editing in the first scene and can be looped.

I produced this using Fruity Loops Studio 9, using free violin .sf2 (SoundFonts) at www.sf2midi.com.

Edited Blog: - By Andrew Robinson

Added a search box as you can see above, making it easier for people viewing our blog to find items of work.

Did this through blogger's features, and I have added tags to each individual post so any keywords search will hopefully produce the right post, containing the right information.

Developement on Title Shot - By Andrew Robinson

I had to develop the title sequence for our film further to fit our shot, our previous title sequence made it so we had to zoom in and distort our shot to transist to the title, in this version the "A" is zoomed out so we can transist to the new title shot easier and keeping the nicer quality of our previous shot.

Analysis of The Godfather - By Kirsten Barman

I have chosen to review the first 15 minutes of probably the best known mafia film of all time: The Godfather. Consistently refer to as one of the best films in cinematic history; The Godfather won 3 Oscars at the 1973 Academy Awards and won a further 19 other awards. Based on the novel of the same name by Italian –American author Mario Puzo and directed by the also Italian-American Francis Ford Coppola.

The film opens with a quiet but striking soundtrack, again a very recognisable theme from movie history. A black screen appears, with contrasting white writing upon it for the titles. The screen stays black for a moment, and then we hear the voice of a man, with a heavy Italian accent. The picture fades from black and we see a dull, badly lit close up of a man, obviously the one talking. The camera begins to pull out to better establish the man; the music has stopped by this point. The man is clearly very distraught. He tells a story of his daughter being attacked by some American boys. We also do not know who he is talking to, the camera is still pulling out and in the bottom left of the screen a shoulder of another man begins to appear, we can now see this is an over the shoulder shot.

The man is handed a drink, and at this time we can see some of the setting, and it looks to be like an office, old wooden furniture and pieces of paper are across the room. The man finishes talking “For justice we must look to Don Corleone” And the second man talks. We assume that he is Don Corleone (Marlon Brando), his voice does not sound sympathetic or concerned. The first time we see his face, is around three and a half minutes into the film with a close up shot, he is fairly old, with grey slicked back hair, there is a solemn look across his face, he is dressed in a dinner suit and bow-tie which suggests he is at a formal event and also suggest importance. We then see a long shot to establish the room; they are not alone as there are two other people with them. This also suggests some form of importance. Could these people be here for his protection? The man has now stood up, and we see a shot of Corleone from waist height of the man, not looking down on Corleone. Corleone has a cat sat in his lap, stretching its paws and rolling about, Corleone strokes the cat affectionately continuously, this suggests a caring and loving side to Corleone. He talks for a moment to the man, referring to himself as “The Godfather” and talks about justice and respect, this implies he is powerful. We also learn that this is Corleone’s daughter’s wedding day, this is the reason they are dressed so formally. Next we see a medium shot of the man and Corleone talking, the camera is tilted slightly upwards in Corleone’s direction to show power and respect; the audience literally has to look up to him. Corleone agrees to “bring justice” to the boys who attacked the man’s daughter, and the man extremely thankful of Corleone leaves in a hurry. We assume that “Justice” is a kind of code word for violence and this makes the audience wonder what will happen.

In contrast to the dark room the audience now sees a long high angle shot of a huge garden, filled with people. Snappy, upbeat diegetic music is playing to the crowds. We see mid shots of people dancing and generally having a good time. There is also a shot of the Bride having a family photo including Corleone. The family is quite large and this adds to the idea that he has a caring side to him. In amongst the shots of happy guests dancing and singing there are a few shots of Corleone and the two other men that were with him before, greeting other men at the gates of the house, these men are also very formally dressed, but we get the impression that they are not strictly there for the wedding. These men are shown again, sat around a table smoking cigars not joining in the festivities and heavily surrounded by other men. But no women. A photographer with an old camera takes their picture, and the man at the head of the table clicks his fingers and instantly two men retrieve the film and hand it to him, which he rips up. This implies that these men are not wanted to be spotted here, or most likely don’t want the press to know they are there. To me it suggests that the men are obviously criminals and printing their picture would result in trouble for them.

A long shot follows a young man hurriedly walking towards the gates of the house. This is Sonny Corleone (James Caan), the son of Don Corleone. He shouts at some men that are wandering about in front of the house, and walks over to a man in a black car, a medium shot shows the man pulling out a badge, we assume he is a police officer, Sonny is instantly silent, then spits onto the ground. This shows disrespect for the law. He angrily walks back to the house cursing under his breath, there is another photographer taking pictures of the men stood at the gate. Sonny pushes him up against a car, for no apparent reason and throws his camera to the floor. Realising his outburst two men grab Sonny to calm him down. He regains his composure, and throws dollar bills to the floor where the camera lay and then leaves. This action shows two characteristics to the audience one, that Sonny thinks that he is better than the photographer because he throws the bills to the floor, And two that he has no regard for money; he simply grabs whatever and throws it about carelessly. The idea that the Corleone’s have a huge house also enforce the idea that they have a wealthy background.

Two characters then enter the scene, a man and a woman arm in arm. The man is dressed in what looks to be a military outfit, and again we see neither of their faces. Medium shots show them walking through the crowded garden with people greeting them. This shows he is important to the story and family. A point of view shot from Corleone looking through blinds show the man’s face, he has dark brown hair, parted neatly to one side and bears a striking resemblance to Corleone himself, all around the we can hear guests saying “Michael!” or “ Mikey!”. The use of a nickname suggests he is quite young, as shortened names are often given to children by parents or close relatives at young ages. The couple sit down, and we see a shot reverse shot conversation between the two. We learn that the man’s name is in fact Michael.

A blonde man walks into the shot and the camera pans across to the left with him. The two hug each other and Michael refers to the man as “My Brother”. This shows some family links. The blonde man, Tom Hagen, was also in the room earlier with Corleone, this also suggest so further links between Michael and Corleone. Then Tom tells Michael (Al Pacino) his father wants to see him, and we learn that this must be the son of Corleone.

Michaels date then questions why Tom has a different second name to Michael even though they are brothers. And Michael replies with a story of how Tom was found by his older brother Sonny when they were younger, and he had nowhere to live, so Corleone took him in and called him his own. This explicitly shows that despite a violent and bloodthirsty side to Corleone he has a soft gentle side to him. The woman is amazed. Michael also goes on to say that he “Is a good lawyer, and will go on to become Consigliere” the fact that he has become a lawyer suggests that he has been sent to school which again shows financial stability, and even more so to consider the fact that he is not actually a proper son of the Corleone’s. This also shows that Tom is a smart man.

Out of all the mafia/gangster style films that exist, I would say The Godfather is a perfect source of inspiration to look to but there are some differences between the two. Its plot line is linear. But in contrast The Godfater II has a non-linear narrative with flashbacks to the younger days of Vito Corleone. The film is also male dominated with only females as the wife/girlfriend characters.

Analysis of Goodfellas - By Andrew Robinson

A link to the opening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nZKzsr-hUA

I have decided to analyse the first 15 minutes of Goodfellas, which was a Mafia orientated film based on the book called "Wiseguy" written by Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese. The film is about the ascension and descension of three gangsters over the course of 30 years.

Well lets start off, the titles and credits come up first, sliding and fading across the screen with the sound effect of cars, they also pop up in the centre of the screen to make sure people can read them, it then cuts to a shot of the behind of a car, this is very well thought out for continuity from the sound of cars on the titles to a shot of a car, the camera then seems to drive past the car and another title shows up stating the location and year of the up coming scene, in this case "New York 1970".

It cuts to the inside of a car, where I presume the three main characters (we do not know their names yet) are sitting, with the focus of the camera on the driver who is in a close-up shot, the characters are all dressed in suits which signifies importance of some sort, it is a dark scene which puts it at night time, this is when the first lines of dialogue come in, and the accents are clearly new york/italian as you would expect in a Mafia orientated film.

The next shot is a long shot of the three characters outside at the back of the car, it cuts to a closer shot of the back of the car, slowly zooming in towards the boot of the car whilst we hear a banging from the inside, notice all the sound so far apart from maybe a birdtweet here or there has been diagetic, which enhances the seriousness of the film, it cuts back to the shot of the three characters and pans to the right to zoom in on one character pulling some keys out, it then cuts to a match on action of him opening the boot to reveal a person wrapped in sheets bleeding, zooming towards his face and upper torso, it then reverts to the shot of the character, some with weapons and does a pan to follow one character while he stab the peron in the boot, then cuts to the other character who has a gun, comes into focus (Robert Deniro) and shoots the victim, quickly cuts to an over the shoulder shot of Deniro whilst he is still shooting, Deniro then walk out of the scene to leave the victim in shot, showing us him dying. It then cuts to a medium shot of one character who walks up to the boot and closes it, whilst this happens a voice over starts, I assume of the person who just shut the boot, saying "As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster.", this is non-diagetic sound, after this some music starts playing, with trumpets, and freezes on a close up of the characters face.

Following that, it cuts to another title sequence that is the same as before, saying the title of the film, "GoodFellas" which is in red to signify it is the title, with the music still playing it carries on showing more credits.

The shot after the titles is an extreme close-up of an eye, and zooms out to reveal the un-named character who we heard the voice over of, this voice over I imagine are the thoughts running through his head when the man was killed in the boot of the car, which comes back in this scene stating that he thought "Being a gangster was better than being the president of the United States. It then cuts to the outside of a house, and pans to the right, with a title fading in to show it is "East New York, Brooklyn. 1955", it pans onto a long shot of someone walking across a road, the voice over has also started again at this point, it cuts back to a close-up of what I assume is the face of a younger version of himself and zooms in, the voice over is explaining what were the cool things about being a gangster, it cuts to a shot of the side of his head and pans behind him to an over the shoulder shot to show the gangsters he had being looking at, switching the focus from his head to the gangsters on the street as it panned, it then did a eyeline match from him looking outside to a shot of outside the window, where a car pulls up, it then cuts to a shot of the bottom side of the car and the floor, where someone puts there leg down with nice shiny shoes (shows this person is important), next it cuts to a shot of the back of the car like before which shows it going up (like someone has stepped out and weight has been lifted) and then back to the shot of the floor where two legs are there, and does a vertical tilt to a medium shot to show the man behind the shoes closing his car door and walking towards something. It then cuts to the other side of the car to another medium shot of a different man stepping out of the car, he is also dressed nicely to show he is important, but the fact he stepped out second tells me he isn't the most important person, the next shot is a close up of the man who has just stepped outs hand, full of jewellry and chains, to show wealth.

It then changs to a medium shot of a big man, not dressed too well but smoking a cigar who leans upon a wall, like he is waiting for something to happen, for the past minute the voice over hadn't said anything until he joins us again when it cuts to the shot of outside of his window again, he is explaining who has just stepped out of the car and his fellow men. Next up is a medium shot of a different person next to a wall smoking a cigar (cigar represents wealth also, not a cheap mans cigarette), he then walks to the right of the shot and it cuts to a match on action of him walking outside to the street.

Another change of scene here, the voice over is still explaining the story so far to us, it is a shot of the inside of a house which establishes the setting, the costumes emphasize the family in this house aren't too rich, the camera pans to follow the mother walking up to the narrator (as a child), who follows his mum and the camera follows him, including the wobbly walk he was doing to make it seem like we are another person in the house.

A faster change of setting, the shot is of the outside of the house, a long shot of the narrator running to school, then it does a shot reverse-shot of his mother talking to him, after that it doesn't follow him but it tilts up to show the area he lived in, but quickly cuts to a shot of the boy but the camera is behind some poles, like we are hiding from him, he walks towards us and the camera cuts back to a long shot of his mother walking back into the house.

Goodfellas links in with our film alot, with costume, music and iconic things to do with the mafia, we will wear suits in our film to signify importance of characters and some not, the music is exactly what we would like ours to be in our film and other iconic thing like smoking cigars and the accents the characters have is perfect inspiration for us.