Gold

Weeks six’s criteria was social realism genre focus on everyday life and depicts social and economic hardships within the working class. This week Dan wanted to be screen writer which he did well however we had to modify his initial idea which was a young couple who were expecting a new born child, both had recently been fired from the jobs and were looking for a job the male turns to alcohol and eventually they are evicted from their house and the film ends on them slumping in an alleyway. In the pitch we were told to simplify the idea and keep to one location as this was more like social realism. So we kept some of the original idea of the couple expecting a child however this time they were squatting and both needing a job before the child was born. As social realism consists of up close shots in small spaces that make you feel confide so you can understand there poverty it worked well just filming it all in a house. This week I took the role of director, for this I watch a few social realism film beforehand so I knew what kind things were consistent and typical of this genre. Helpfully we had watch Ratcatcher by Lynne Ramsey last term so I watch parts of this again along with having a look at some of breathless by Jean-Luc Godard I found with this film in particular the use of long drawn out silence that were sometimes so long they became uncomfortable and they reminded me a lot of real life that sometimes silences can go on for minutes without being broken. So I wanted to incorporate this idea into our film. Also with Ratcatcher in mind the use of up-close shots so that you were right in the drama not left safely on the outskirts made you feel more intimate with the characters. I felt that Sophie and Dan worked together well as actors they had good chemistry on screen that was need for this film as we were dealing with a very sensitive subject that need to be handled with care. They created very realistic characters which I was pleased with. To create this however we filmed a lot of the scenes over and over again until I was happy. As it was unscripted which I felt was more like social realism it was what they said at the time in the moment and how they felt. By just improvising it made their characters come to life more. We added a twist to our plot which was the camera was their other child watching them so all the camera angles were low and childlike even though it was revealed it was a child till then end. In feedback this got a very good response as no one knew it was coming. However in editing we found the sound to be off slightly in places and some shots out of focus. Despite these issues I felt that this was one of our group’s strongest pieces as everyone was very pleased with the end result and we were given good feedback. I felt I learnt a lot more about directing within this film and how to coordinate my thoughts and ideas better than before I felt I managed to effectively commutate with the group what I wanted to see on screen and I strongly believe we worked well as a group.