New Wave Film and evaluation

Kill Us All- a Montage of Youth

Evaluation:

In evaluation, I feel that my film adequately conveys features of New Wave production; I was particularly inspired by the first scene of 'Easy Rider'(Dennis Hopper, 1969), and the idea of a road film. In my film, I wanted to show the youth of Britain today in a different and much more inclusive light, with the intention of displaying that contrary to media headlines and common opinions, that today's youth are curious, interesting and active; in order to do this, I decided to shoot BMX riders in a skate park, on an urban exploration trip and whilst I was out with my friends. In my first shot, I used my iPhone 7 camera to film in homage to hand held film cameras such as the Bolex 16mm and the Arriflex 35-BL that were commonly used in the American New Wave by directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Dennis Hopper and Martin Scoursese in their lower budget production. Although this created camera shake due to not being able to use a tripod to film, I felt that this added to the hands-on feel of the film and also added the illusion of actually being in the vehicle with the audience. The next shot used the feature of pulling focus on the Nameless riders to both draw attention to the next shot of the men riding, but also to effectively break the fourth wall and to reind the viewer that they are separated from the medium, which was a feature commonly used in new wave productions as a way to either directly address the audience or for creative affect. Here I used the pull focus for creative affect, in order to create a psychedelic aspect and therefore lending itself to connotations of the popularisation of illicit and psychedelic drugs within these groups specifically.#
I also used a lot of jump-cut editing and random splicing in order to create a discontinuous effect and break up the flow of the narrative and imply a swift passage of time throughout the film.  Shooting on location was also incredibly common in new wave film due to low budget not allowing for expensive sets that bigger studios would use; all of my footage is shot on location due to having no accessibility to studios or their sets, I felt that this was a huge learning curve for me as I had to learn to adjust myself, and the camera settings to weather, other people and the available light and in areas I found that my footage was either over or under exposed due to rushing to complete filming because of changes in weather. This is particularly evident within some shots from the skate park and from the derelict mansion, if I were to do this project again I would therefore spend more time to adjust the aperture and iso with reference to the cameras light meter to ensure that it was in the middle optimum range. I also felt that I could have been more creative with lighting and filters within my film to create further semiotic meaning within my film, such as using two different coloured filters to create a split-screen effect and display different emotions through my compositions in this manner. I also feel that if I were to film this again I would try to include some dialogue within this scene within relation to young people and their views and experiences to make the meaning more obvious to the audience. Therefore, I feel that my film does fit the brief due to using features of new wave production such as jump-cut editing, pulling focus, breaking the fourth wall, and using available resources due to limited budgeting, however there are elements of the film, particularly my outdoor camera skills, that I would take more time to improve if I were to create this film again.