We have just finished editing our two minute sequence from a film, even though it is still a bit rough around the edges I am generally pleased with how our project went. Throughout our filming process there were a couple of hiccups, most commonly to do with fitting in a time we were all able to film, but apart from this everything ran quite smoothly.

At the begin of the project the first idea to crop up in our initial brain storming was to do a American style teen comedy, much like the American pie franchise or one of the new Hollywood ‘Bromance’ themed movies like ‘ pineapple express’ (David Gordon Green, 2008) and ‘I love you man’(John Hamburg, 2009). However this idea fizzled out due to location difficulties and accents etc. we then changed our idea to more of a social realist style film much like the work of directors Shane Meadows and Mike Leigh, on the other hand we still wanted some humour within our film so we ended up creating a clip from a social relist comedy, much like Meadows ‘A Room for Romeo Brass’ (1999) or Leigh’s ‘Nuts in may’ (1976) from the T.V show ‘A play for today’.

The story line in our two minute clip is about two brothers arguing over the possession of a knife which one of the boys has obtained. We added social realism to the film by using a story of murder and gang violence, which gave it a dark element, however the costumes and way the actors talk is funny and brings a lighter side to the whole clip, catching that classic British dark humour which is portrayed within many British films. My appointed job throughout the filming process was cinematographer and I was responsible for choosing the angles and also the panning of the shots. This role was important at the beginning of the sequence as we had to show one of the characters played by Will Banister walking home through an estate. I chose several shots which panned down from the sky to make the sequence more interesting to the viewer, and one of these shots was used in the final cut. Later on in the clip much of it is dialogue meaning less original shots where used, but just close ups of people’s expressions and them talking. The final shot in our sequence shows the knife fall on to the floor of the bedroom and we decided to use a crash zoom effect on this image to create more shock factor and to spark emotion within the viewer.

In our sequence we did not use any non-diagetic sound as we felt collectively as a group that this would distract the viewer from the raw emotion which was in place throughout our sequence and the relationship which is built up between the two brothers in the two minutes of footage. However using the software final cut we added some sound effects of helicopters, traffic and sirens in to the background of the sequences outside to make it feel more realistic and natural.

Generally as a group we worked well with each other and didn’t have many disputes about where to take our film or what to do next. The only minor disagreement between the group was on the name of our film. Originally it was to be called barrel boy, which takes reference to the film ‘Bullet Boy’ (Saul Dibb 2004), however due to a lack on props on the day of filming the original idea of younger brother Bobby walking in on elder brother Frank admiring a gun, had to be scraped and a knife used in the guns place. This meant a name change and I came up with the idea that our film should be called ‘Merkin, Skankin and Shankin’ as this uses street slang which is present in our film idea but also is a rather humorous name and plays in to the comedy element of our film. However other members of the group did not like this name and there was a debate whether to keep it or not. In the end though, we did decide to run with this title.

Another role in which I had in the group was that of Actor. I was chosen to act purely on the basis that the two roles within our clip were written for males, and being only two males in the group I had to step in and act. Personally I felt my performance within the sequence is a little rusty and in several shots I was smirking, which clearly took away from emotions we were trying to portray in our clip.

Despite this my general feeling about our two minute clip is that overall it was a success, obviously with more time we could have sharpened up the editing and sounds, and even shot a bit more dialogue footage to expand the scene. But I am pleased with our finished film and felt we worked extremely well as a group and as a collective of ideas and opinions.