Wednesday 25 March 2009

The Making Of 'UK Ambition'

The idea for 'UK Ambition' was based largely around the format of urban culture. We took a long time considering how to approach the issue of realism whilst at the same time giving the audience somehthing they haven't seen before. The location, soundtrack and dialog were all an integral part of this process and it took up a large amount of time simply getting the feel for the genre of the representation.


The location for our film was in my eyes the most important factor. We had to find somewhere that would put across the right message and set the tone for the film. In the end we chose a council estate near where we all live and this is where the theme of sport (Basketball) originally came from, as this particular location just happend to have a basketball court. The genre of sport gave a great chance to use a wider range of shots than we had in our prelimenary task and this meant we could experiment and edit more of the footage to put together a very accomplished peice of filming. The use of a low angled slow motion shot at the end of the film, i feel was a great way to end the representation as it gives a clear message of the genre and purpose of the film.


We did come up against a few small issues which we did eventuallt solve. The first time we shot the coversation between the two characters we didn't use the 180 rule effectively and it was quite confusing for the audience to gage an understanding of the characters viewpoints. We got this feedback from 3 different people and decided to re-film it but this time pay close attention to the quality of the shots. Another slight problem that we unfortunatly couldn't correct in time was the unfortunate weather conditions. At the beginning of the film the weather is overcast and is showing hints of snow. This however, changes within a few seconds of the representation to sunshine. The reason being for this is we fimed a number of different shots on different days and this made the conditions of the setting quite contrasted throughout.


We researched different techniques from films of similar genre to give us a guidline as to how to create the right effect. In the end we found the Noel Clarke film 'Adulthood' to hold a number of intresting ideas and techniques and found that fims of that particular genre use very fast flowing shot transitions and alot of subtle editing. As you can proberbly see from our film we have used the same technique to try and recreate the effect.


The soundtrack wasn't a great issue. We knew we had to use a local artist of the urban genre and managed to find a song from an unsighned London Grime artist. This really gives the film conviction as it fits perfectly with what is going on on screen and lies well with the purpose of the film.


We tried to use a wide range of shots and ensure that their purpose was clear to give the audience the best possible experience of the storyline. This meant filming a lot of material from different angles, positions and lights to create the best possible effect. We used a Birds Eye View shot at one point to give the audience a wider view of the characters surroundings aswell as two establishing shots to give across an initial idea of the setting. The reason for their being two is that the location changed halfway through and we felt it neccesary to re-establish the setting.





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