Saturday, 2 October 2010

Pre-Production:East is East

The film ‘East is East’ had a budget just under 2 millions pounds. This is very small compared to Hollywood blockbusters that have around 70 Million to use. The lack of funds is evident in the mise-en-scene such as they have used real locations all the time. No part of the film was filmed on a set simply because they didn’t have the budget for it. The clothes looked worn and old, not slick new and trendy in like the Hollywood films. Co-Produced by Film4 they produced other films such as; this is England, Slum dog millionaire. Both which have similar characteristics tot his film. Including they have all been unexpectedly successful.

The film has been released in over 30 countries worldwide including; France, Croatia, USA, Italy, Sweden, Singapore… It’s also was screened at many film festivals such as European Film Week in Hungary and the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema in Argentina. It won awards like the BAFTA for best British film award. It also won best British film at the Independent British film awards. That was only a couple of the nominations and victories some others were EU media prize, European film awards, evening standard British film award…

There wasn’t much traditional advertising of the film; as they did not believe that it would be so successful. It received most of its exposure at film festivals and as a result of most of the people liking the film word spread and people bought the DVD. They also didn’t use any guerrilla or viral marketing techniques; they were solely dependent on word of mouth. The main selling point or point of interrest of this film is, that it shows British Asian family differently to what is normally shown or was normally shown. It was the first time it showed the more modern type of Asian family doing things like eating pork or even having a white girlfriend. These things were quite controversial when the film was released especially in the Asian community.

Wednesday, 29 September 2010

Pre-Production:Continuity Exercise



Good points:

  • The movie flows together nicely; the cuts don't make the clip seem unrealistic
  • The match on action is good, there is no jump between the two cuts
  • Nice use of different camera angles
  • Its an original story line
Bad points:
  • The story could be clearer, people may become confused about the point of the short film
  • There is too much free hand filming, it takes away from the finish because the camera is sometimes 'shakey' and it isn't a point of view shot.
An improvement would be to use the tripod more often to add a better finish to the film. Also try more types of camera shots to add variety.