Interesting Screen Shots and Angles,

As the brief was to produce a silent film, we as a group had to rely on the action and camera work within the frame to make our story clear the audience. The camera angles used in the film also had to be good and so i recalled some iconic and rememberable camera angle from films that are within the same genre of our film.

The Dodgy Deal


When ever there is a dodgy deal going on within gangster films, they are either set in an alleyway or a mob boss' office. Here is a clip from Guy Ritchie's Lock,Stock &Two Smoking Barrels, where the boss is telling off one of his henchmen. This character is similar to Big Pete as he too has his henchmen (the Bodyguard) who seem slightly frightened of him. This is definitely how we pictured Switch's drugs deal scene to be, in an office/hotel room with bodyguards and an scary looking boss.

The Slow Motion Walk.



The original scene that we would base our slow motion walk on is a scene in Superbad where two geeky guys walk of a bus in slow motion, thinking they look really good in their new clothes. Which is exactly what happens within our film. But unfortunately i was unable to find the clip, but this is one from Quentin Tarantinos classic Reservoir Dogs. This is the iconic walking scene where each Mister and Nice Guy Eddie walk in slow motion out of the breakfast diner into the cars. The slow motion effect instantly makes the nerdiest of characters cool and that's why we want to use this scene within our film, for comedic effect.

Below is an example clip of geeky guys looking sooooo cool in their sharp suits and slow mo :P



Following Someone:

In the following scene we wanted to create like a 1920s sleuth atmosphere and i think that's as long as you have the right 'sneaky' movements, its the music that makes the scene that extra bit special. And to me the only acceptable soundtrack that creates this mood is the classic Pink Panther soundtrack.

Photo storyboard

During the planning stages of production we had to organise a day in we could meet and take photos for our photo storyboard. Organised by Rachel O'Connell we met in the afternoon and it allowed the other crew member to meet our friends/cast of the film. The problems we had on this day were that our original actor who would have played Charlie was unable to attend so we were able to persuade another friend to help out and take his role :) The final problem was the lighting, as it was winter the daylight hours got shorter and the streetlights came on earlier so we had to think about continuity and lighting for our final production.

Photo storyboard

View more presentations from Barking Abbey.

Props List

Various props we needed on the day foor our film:

COOKIES/TRAY

A CAR

FOR SALE SIGN ON THE CAR

BLINDFOLD

POT OF MONEY FOR FAKE CHARITY

BRIEFCASE FULL OF MONEY

FAKE DRUGS (BAGS OF SUGAR AND FLOUR)









EMPTY CAN

Cast List

FRANK - Ashley Walker

CHARLIE - Jack Glister

BIG PETE - Lewis Plaster

BODYGUARD - Matthew Partlett

EXTRAS - Sharon Uyinwmen
- Halle Smith
- Iman Shafi

Guy Ritchie

Born 10 September 1968

Guy Ritchie is an English screenwriter, film maker reknowned for his Brit-crime comedies like Lock,Stock & Two Smoking Barrels , RocknRolla and Snatch, which we widely based our film upon.

Film attributes: (click links for more information)

1998	Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
2000	Snatch
2001	The Hire: Star
2002	Swept Away
2005	Revolver
2007	Suspect
2008	RocknRolla
2009	Sherlock Holmes
2011	Sherlock Holmes 2
2012	The Fistfull

Richie recently changed his directing style by directing the new Sherlock Holmes movies which although were also set in the east end of ,victorian,London. It has a more light hearted edge with less violence and black comedy.

Snatch Trailer



Lock,Stock & Two Smoking Barrels Trailer

SWITCH titles

I researched different fonts and came across this website www.dafont.com that has great fonts for our movie'Switch'as our film is a slapstick comedy this website specifically had a font genre called comic which had a variety of different fonts, some very humorous and some a bit more serious heres some example which i thought would help the audience relate to the movie and understand the humor;

The first font is called Komika poster.




The second font is called Slapstick comic.






The Third font is called Badaboom.








The fourth font is called Que font.









The fifth font is called Shake and bake.

Money Making Schemes Research

From the start our group knew that we had to come up with quick and stupid ways that our lead characters Frank and Charlie could use to make enough money to buy their car. But we we also realised that they couldn't be elaborate schemes as they were not smart enough to some up with one, plus the council estate setting wasn't fit for a scam on the scale of the BBC hit show Hustle. Therefore, web had to research or come up with smaller scams and find a way to put a comedic twist on them. These were a few I found.

Cleaning Windows is something that i see in the East end nearly every morning and it is a good way to make money. In past years there have been many comedy sketches that make cleaning windows funny, whether it be buckets of water falling or the ladder slipping from under the character. This is a possible scam that we could use, however staging it correctly within the limited amount of time we have could be a problem whilst also finding a location.

Selling cookies is yet another scheme that we could easily put together for the duo to use. It would require minimal props and we would only need to find a few houses to film at, but since friends live around our shooting location, that shouldnt be a problem. Plus the image of seeing two grown men trying to sell something usually donw by girl scouts could be funny. I'm thinking costumes. :)


Selling....their bodies?This was one idea we thought of ourselves as we knew that seeing the duo dressing up as women for money would definitely get some laughs and put a lighter edge on a sinister subject of prositution. We were thinking of getting the pair to lure other men over, get in the car and then run out with their clothes and money.

Billboard Draft one

This is the design for my billboard advert of Switch. As you can see the house style for my posters follow a simple layout, with minimalist colours and the silhouette of Frank and Charlie. In this particular poster, i chose to use childish drawings/ characterture of each character with the film to reflect their personalities. I kept with the slick and simple style of previous film posters within this genre, but i realised it they lacked the comedic and juvenile edge that my film carries so that's why i decided to add the babyish pastel colours from Reservoir Dogs (Mr Pink, Mr Blue, Mr Blonde and Mr Orange). I felt that the colours lightened up the image. But i have also kept the main colours of black, white and red which i used for the title, which stays the same colour in each poster and also within the film. (Red,STENCIL font)

If you look closely at the cartoon drawings i filled the lines of the images with screen grabs of the specific character from the film and organised photoshoot. I felt this was important as the poster itself doesn't reveal direct information about the film, but there are a few things that give the audience an idea.
On top of each image i added a graphic that linked each character to the film.
The light bulb on Frank as he always comes up with the ideas. A cookie for Charlie as he is seen nibbling cookies within the film, and it was also the focus for one of the duos money making schemes. A suitcase (of money) on top of Big Pete's image as he has the money that Frank and Charlie want. Finally and car for the bodyguard has he does all the car drug deals for Big Pete, and also the hole film revolves around Frank and Charlies quest to buy a car.

The feedback from my previous posters and my research encouraged me to keep it simple. But if i could improve on this poster, in my next draft i would maybe add the character's names on top or underneath the graphics, to give the audience more of an insight into my film. However, this may make it too 'busy' again, which i wanted to stray away from.

Total FILM Review - Switch

This is my first film review pagefor our film Switch.

I made this using Microsoft Publisher whilst at school, i agianwasfairly easy to do how ever, i did come across a few problems when trying to follow the house style of the original Total Film page. As i was not allow to get imagesform the internet i had to scan a page in form a genuine magazine page. But once scanned in i realised much latert in the day that the image was slightly slanted and so i was conatantly rotating the images to fit mine, so to fill up and white space within the page. I realised that Total film did this as they have made their pages look busy and full of information. An aspect i tried to follow. Below is the orginal page that i based my own page on. Apart form the layout i also used the 'Talking Point' section, placed underneath the image as it allowed me to include some background information on the film, in this case the casting. I thought it was importanyt to add this element as the target audience of the maginzine are avid film enthusiasts who want to get as much information about the reviewed film as possible on and off screen. Alot of the other reviews also add extra information about actors thats audiences might want to know. The information i add were my actors previous work, luckily we managed to get actual actors for our film, Jack Glister is a professional so i was able to add a few of his previous film and television roles. Whilst Ashley Walker is a theatre actor and added the information about his play at the Edinburgh FRINGE Festival.

Poster One Draft

This was the first draft of my first poster. As you can see i tried to replicate the house style of Lock,Stock's poster. It was faily easy to create using Adobe Photoshop Elements. Whilst creating i felt that the colours were too saturated and soo darkened the shadows and lowered the saturation levels. I also tried to incorporate elemnts from the film , so i added the graphics of a lightbulb, cookie, piggy bank and a briefcase. I felt that it added a comedic effect to the gangster theme thats was already on it.The feedback i got from this poster was that its was hard to read and didnt look like an obvious film poster. I had work to do...

Poster Research

RESEVOIR DOGS! a brilliant film and even greater poster, i found countless amounts of poster and billboard work in my researched and i each one was different. The film follows a gang of men named the resivoir dogs, each with their own names Mr Blonde, Mr Pink, Mr White, Mr Brown, Mr Orange and Mr blue, and they are indicated on the poster by the colored background of each face (pictured left). Throughtout my research of the crime genre i found that many follow a very simplisitic style of minimalist colours and fonts. On the left the poster just shows close ups of four men within the film, with black and white writing. pure and simple. If you look closely you can also see that within the title there is a silouette of the iconic slow motion opening scene which show each character of the film. The film posters for Resevoir Dogs are what inspired my posters the most. Its slick and simple style is perfect.


Another Guy Richie blockbuster, that hit our screens in 2009. These posters are a perfect example of the simplicity that is seen within the Brit-Crime genre of film. On the left the poster allows the audience to see each main character within the film and that's it. It also has a plain white background with lower case black writing on the top showcasing the film. I feel that it is the costume that gives the audience an insight into the film as we can straight away see that its going to be a very macho and gritty film, maybe based in a run down area. The sharps suits and the fact that there men are on different sides also give us an indication that there could be some gangster rivalry between the two groups. The poster on the right is even simpler with just two colours being used, it makes it harder fr the audience to guess what the film is about. The only indicators are the yellow and black which is often used on warning signs, suggesting an element of danger within the film, whilst the large diamond on the finger graphic could suggest that the storyline revolves around a large diamond.

RocknRolla is an other of Guy Richie's brilliant Brit-Crims that have the perfect balance of violence, action, seduction and sharp witty comedy. This is one of the busiest posters i have seen for this genre of film as they are normally very slick and simple to make the styling of the film. On the other hand the film itself is very busy with a large cast and several storyline happening at once so i guess it suits it perfectly :)

Pulp Fiction, one of Tarantino's iconic films and i chose these posters as it not only has that gritty gangster edge, but it also has an infamous double act. I was interested in how they portrayed them within the posters. Having them leaning in the door frame shows their laid back persona whilst also creating a mysterious edge as they are both watcing the girl, and Samuel L Jackson is slightly hidden.