Critical Analysis of Project

My project started off after watching ‘Sin City’ as well as ‘The Naked Gun’ which gave the idea of creating a short film that captured the style of ‘Sin City’ through the use of black and white footage, voiceover and the look of the character as well as applying a more comedic tone over it with the idea of giving an incompetent person a lot of authority and power as displayed in ‘The Naked Gun’. As the planning and filming progressed, certain aspects started to change as the film began to become more unique. Instead, I began to focus on the idea of taking a generic character and placing them in a more relatable setting.

My film is seen through the perspective of the main character who was made to be a generic noir character which I displayed with the use of the voiceover filled with clichés (mostly the character’s view on crime inspired by ‘Sin City’) and the way the character looks as he wears a long coat just as they do in ‘Sin City’. Because he see it in his perspective, it therefore had to be shot in black and white as I surmised that is how a noir character would see the world as the whole genre is often depicted in black and white. While I did have the idea of different shots in my head, the underlining references such as the contrast between the black clothing and white backgrounds as well as the texture of the wall being split down the middle were all found based on location. While I had an idea of where I was shooting, I didn’t take the details of the locations into account.

My aim was to explore the use of voice over and establish characters and narrative within the time limit assigned. While I was disappointed in my performance in the voice over, it works well in establishing the tone and idea of what I’m aiming at with the character losing focus in his head and establishing that the film is aimed to be self-aware of generic conventions and tropes. I am also glad I managed to get the narrative I had scripted into less than 2 minutes as I was worried it would be too long.

I have learnt through the filming and editing process where my strengths and weaknesses lie. I had no issues with writing, acting or positioning shots however I found issues with editing and actually controlling the camera. As a result, the quality had diminished however I felt it actually worked for this film as the grainy look harkened back to the early days of film that also had film grain. I have many other ideas for short films that I hope to implement in later projects so writing won’t be an issue and, as an aspiring actor, acting will be fine too however I will try hard to improve in other areas of film making.