LF: Evaluation 1

Our film opening definitely adopts popular form and conventions of media products allowing the audience to be position with the main protagonist whilst sustaining a sense of enigma. One of the main things we tried to sustain throughout our opening was keeping the protagonists’ personal characteristics and mannerisms hidden. Therefore through the use of props we tried to keep the protagonists face hidden whilst he was training, we originally gained the idea from the Raging Bull opening where the main protagonist is seen wearing a hooded robe. However one of the reasons I feel we could afford to shield the protagonists character was because we followed the typical convention of boxing films by clearly positioning the audience with the main character. Therefore although the audience may not know everything about the character but they are still clearly positioned with him.

Furthermore we also felt as though iconography would play a large part in engaging the audience throughout are opening. After researching films such as Million Dollar Baby and Rocky we came to the conclusion that because boxing is an iconic sport the props we use in every shot must be relevant to boxing, and allow the audience to paint a clear picture of the boxers surrounding. Thus we recognized that every shot was crucial if we wanted to gain the best marks. So after analysing the film Ali we wanted to use some unusual shots to enhance our film opening, and Ali provided us with the idea of a POV shot on the speedball.

One of the main films we gained some inspiration from was Raging Bull produced my Martin Scorsese, firstly we decided to shoot the whole of our opening in black and white to try and add an authentic feel to our production. However the main shot that you can draw parallels to is the shadow boxing in the ring when the camera is positioned through the ropes. In my opinion this is my favourite shot of our opening especially when we slowed it down, it clearly follows typical conventions of our genre as well as the true beauty of the sport. In addition Raging Bull also allowed us to consider the use of classical music throughout the opening, we felt that many people consider boxing as brutal sport however we felt we could challenge stereotypical viewpoints of the sport by opening the audiences eyes that in fact boxing is an art, and through the use of classical music we feel we achieved this.

The voiceover

In addition we realised that if we want to conform conventions of boxing film we needed a voiceover to explain the narrative. However to coincide with the beautiful classical music we felt we needed to create a philosophical script, which also gave the audience enough information, so they could follow the narrative. We felt that the voice over was not as important during the montage edited training scene as through iconography and the uplifting music it was quite self-explanatory what was happening. However during the funeral scene especially we felt we needed to explain the situation and it would also allow the audience to get inside the head of the main protagonist slightly more. Moreover we felt we followed typical conventions whilst writing the script because we wanted to use a slightly cockney working class accent to express the type of environment that the protagonist lived in. Also we also touched upon certain social issues that people from working class backgrounds often have to deal with.

Editing

• Whilst editing all the footage we had we felt it was essential that we did not have any shots that would loose the audiences interest, therefore we aimed to use a face paced cutting rate during the montage boxing scene. Also during the scene in the changing room I feel the voiceover is extremely effective however the use of slow motion allows the audience to concentrate on the narrative even more.
•  We also followed the typical conventions of boxing films by using quite basic font and titles, we wanted to go with the classical style of writing, once again expressing the beauty of the sport and I feel we through editing we created a great effect of filtering the gold colour into the title at the end of the opening.
• Furthermore when analysing our own footage we felt as though the shot of the picture was too long, however by including a title in the shot we feel it keeps the audience entertained.