Research
Before planning our film opening, we had to do a lot of research into the gangster genre, and then further develop this research to make sure we also knew about its sub genres. We spent a lot of time looking into what the conventions of the gangster genre were so that when it came to the construction of our 2 minute opening we knew exactly what to include and avoid to help replicate the genre as much as possible. We decided to choose the sub genre British gangster as we thought this would be the most professional recreation of a real British gangster film. We had begun to research common directors and themes within this genre to begin to know what to include in our opening so when it came to the planning and construction we could do these processes very quickly. Within our research we discovered that the British sub genre was the most appropriate due to most of these films being made by small independent companies with a relatively smaller budget than the other sub genres. When researching films of this sub genre we noticed there were some very strong themes such as violence, crime and urban settings, we then knew that is was key to include as many of themes as possible where appropriate to ensure a realistic representation of the British gangster genre.Once we had all of this information collected we also asked many people for their ideas for what they would like to see in our film opening especially the music as we thought this was key to creating the tense atmosphere we desired.
Planning
Then with our acquired knowledge if the British gangster sub genre we had to plan how we going to apply this into our opening so that our theme was clear to who ever would view it. We started by breaking up our ideas into a few fields being story, props, costume, etc. This meant that we had a clear way of viewing our ideas and could easily decide on what we thought we would work the best. once our main ideas were clear we thought about where we could put them into practice. We spent a few days looking around for the perfect places to capture our film opening, so when it came to the construction we could be quick and efficient with our time. We then story boarded our plot and drew each scene with its now found location, so we were really clear about what was being filmed where. This story board then became a detailed script for our actors so they knew exactly what to do, with them also being given dates for when we would need them to film, in advance meaning that there were no problems when it came to the construction. Now that we had our actors we began thinking of their costume and props that would represent their character the most, which didn't take long due to our previous research. Then we had to decide on how we were going to include our titles and how we were going to display them, so we just looked at our research and looked for a common theme.
Construction
The construction stage for us was relatively easy as everything was planned in advance so we knew exactly what we had to film on what days and where. This left us with plenty of time to evaluate our work and gave us a time period to film any extra shots or re-film any shots that didn't turn out quite as planned. This time also allowed time to sort out the music for our film.The music for our opening was probably the hardest bit of the construction stage as we couldn't find any recorded song that matched the pacing of our clip. This is why we instead took sound clips of royalty free music and put them together ourselves so the music sounded as though it was recorded for our film personally. We did decide to add extra plot points to our film opening as well, as we thought that the clip didn't really go anywhere, so instead we changed the ending so it looked as though there was a film to follow it.
Evaluation
Finally we had to evaluate what we had created. This allowed us to compare our film to those we studied in our research period such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, RocknRolla and Layer Cake, to see how well we had represented this genre and to what extent had we been successful. We had analysed mise en scene, sound, editing and camera within our own opening to see if our opening was effective at portraying our clip as an authentic British gangster opening. We also had to evaluate how we had thought about institutions and audiences and how we made our opening appeal to them. The final stage was then to compare this final film to out preliminary task and see how much we had learnt and see how much we have improved at film making as a whole.
