Gents

Excellent prelim I am very impressed. Here is some feedback, I am very happy to go through the film with you in more detail and explain my thoughts behind the points listed below, if any or all of you wish to do this mail me or come to see me. There is one technical fault that I mention below that we must discuss whilst looking at a camera, this is essential before you do any filming.  It will reduce your marks drastically if you repeat this in the final film and that is totally unnecessary as it is literally just the flick of a switch.

Perfect music that is also well edited (at the end), fits in well with the 'swagger' of the actors
(speaking of which, very well acted!) The music is a very good example of an intertextual reference, from Pelham 123 (that we watched in class), that is cool and is more successful in my opinion because of that - this may set up expectations for an audience that have seen that film that you can then either pay off or deny them, this could lead to different sets of viewing pleasures. Are you thinking of using any intertextual references in your film proper? Bear in mind these can be elements of mise en scene, camera, editing or sound...

I like the titles, especially that they are animated, again fits in well with the cool/hip hop swagger. The font is also a good choice, no frilly bits, rough and tough, macho. HOWEVER I do not like the fact you picked a different font for the film title (and I prefer the other one anyway, why have you chosen this one, what do you think it connotes?) You would have to make a very very strong case if you want to use more than one font in your finished piece. Having two different fonts suggests to me that you are uncertain about which to pick and hedging your bets. But what is the effect? It will confuse the audience as to what style of film they are settling down to watch and dilute the style you are trying to create.

Also the animation of the titles is great but do you really want them to appear in front of the faces of your star cast? This is very unconventional, Brad Pitt or Denzel Washington would not look good if they had words coming out of nostrils, ears, armpits or any part of their body. (unless you are thinking of a medical thriler, that might work but then it needs to be planned and precise not just names floating on top of stars faces)

The editing, especially the match cutting is BRILLIANT throughout. You have obviously understood this concept well and carefully orchestrated your shots to achieve this, congratulations you have succeeded.

I believe that you were missing a few 'linking shots', for example when moving between locations it seemed to me that it wasn't exactly clear all of the time what was going on and that was because you were missing the odd wide shot or contextualising angle here or there. Disorientation is good but is this what you intended? It didn't seem like all of the other elements were heading in that direction. Please look at this blog to get some tips on how to build a sense of a real location through framing and editing, it should help. In general get lots of angles and lots of shot sizes of everything you shoot, you will be grateful for these when you are in the edit. Also get some cutaway shots and then if you have a continuity error you will be able to cover it up.

http://asa2mediaresources.blogspot.com/2011/02/camera-never-lies.html

I like the slowness of the final shot before the explosion. This is really suspenseful as you are making the audience wait, wait, wait... BOOM much better that way, well done.

The final and most important thing is YOU HAD THE NEUTRAL DENSITY FILTER ON. And you shouldnt have. That it looks quite dark all of the way through. It is like a pair of sunglasses for the camera and unless you are under a very bright spotlight you do not wear sunglasses indoors. This is extremely important, it does not matter that you made that mistake here, in fact is good as hopefully that will help you to understand exactly what that filter does and why it is so important to have it set on or off in the correct lighting conditions. PLEASE COME TO SEE ME so that I can explain this further and show you where it is on the camera.

Again well done I think this is a very promising start.

Phil