Self Evaluation of Semester 2 Films

For the documentary our primary aim was to document and show an insight into the street art scene in Liverpool. The main inspiration for the documentary was Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy 2010) and I personally got some inspiration from some more amateur street art documentaries namely Urbanbugs (Ersoy 2010) and Getting Up (2000).

Due to the nature of what we’re showing I think we tried to make the documentary appeal to a younger audience around 15-25 since most of the people we talked to mentioned that it is generally a young person’s domain. If we’re showing a doc about something that is mainly done by young adults it makes sense to make the film appeal to them most. However most of the interviewees we talked to were around 30-40 so there is interest from older adults, also seen in the films I watched, so it too could appeal to that kind of demographic but we didn't purely aim for it.

As for the drama we wanted to try and make a fairly different and quite ambitious film, where we could have a large fight scene that could be a lot of fun at the same time. We wanted it to have twinges of comic book and video game influences to it. Since we were inspired by films like Kick-Ass (Vaughn 2010) Super (Gunn 2010) and Sucker Punch (Snyder 2011) our target audience is quite similar to theirs, that of teenagers and young adults.

This is because the fight scenes would be very engaging and fun for people of that age range to watch, and there isn’t so much overt character development or story, it is subtly shown without much dialogue. I think for the film to be the majority a fight scene would appeal to your people much more than adults. Furthermore since it is meant to be quite a fun piece and as I said based on the idea of comic and video game fights we aimed to make it appeal to people that are into that kind of entertainment.

The first thing to say about our documentary is that it had a much different tone to what we imagined it having; it feels a bit too corporate and not ‘urban’ enough. This is due to how we shot a lot of everything, we used tripods etc a bit too much I think and the bits that did fit that style there weren't enough of to bulk out the whole five mins. I don’t think this takes too much away from the story though, it still is visually pleasant and we succeeded our aim well I think. Also looking back the Liverpool street art scene side we were showing wasn't that gritty anyway, so the style of the film we ended up with probably more accurately represents what the scene is actually like.

The second problem is that we didn't have a story we were trying to get across, we simply wanted to document it as a whole. Resultantly the interviews fit together, but not as seamlessly as I’d hoped, it took a very long time to get a sequence that worked, and I think we can get away with it but it would've been better had we had more of a focus on what we wanted to get from the interviews.

I think our drama is very much what we were looking to make when we first began discussing the idea and throwing ideas around. It’s different, to show a fight of this complexity is something no one else has done. I also think the style and influences are quite clear too, visually some of the shots look quite similar to the fight sequences I watched and analysed and it plays out in a fairly similar way. I also think the film is fun enough to fit what we were going for, the fight is fittingly energetic and the brief moments of comedy I think integrated well.

The five minute time restraint also means that occasional moments in the film are a bit quicker than we would have liked and we maybe should have planned out and been more rigorous in shooting for the five min length rather than having to cut bits out resulting in this problem.

My only concern is that the ‘journey’ in the film as necessary to the brief isn't extremely clear, it’s a mental journey towards learning a lesson for Lucy, but I'm not sure if it’s not obvious enough. 

Though being editor I was involved with the documentary from start to finish, during the shoot I was assisting everyone and me and Oli actually formed a second unit to make sure we had enough footage. But obviously my main role came into play in post production. Noah and I are the ones that crafted the main story out of all the interviews, with all the other team pitching in and giving their input. I think the film had more of a corporate feel to what everyone expected but that was due to the footage we got and where and what we shot didn't have the ‘urban’ feel to it, so would have been out of place to give it that feeling. I think it looks fairly similar to how I imagined it would too, if anything I wish I had tried to come up with better ways to bridge between interviews visually, but I think for such a short film we got away with basic visual bridges, but it’s something I’d change given the chance now.

I didn't come across to many issues personally as editor beyond basic editing problems and all of them I managed to overcome, most of which are problems I planned ahead for anyway by backing up on multiple computers etc.

Again as camera I was still a big part of the planning process and how best to show what we wanted and I often pitched different ideas to consider experimenting with on set. The shoot its self went very smoothly and we made sure we got everything we needed. We encountered a few problems such as people using the location we were shooting in, camera battery issues and changes in weather but we got around them as best we could and got a lot of good footage from the days we had shooting, enough to not need to go back. Visually it did play out how I imagined it would when planning, I think this is partly thanks to our influences and amount of pre production planning and storyboarding.

I often went into the edit suite to check on how the edit was going when we’d finished shooting and if I was needed to help in post production in any way, shape or form. I never was and they were always on top of everything due to the good communication, planning and time management of the editors, director and producer.

I put my name in to be editor because of my lack of experience in that role and having an interest in it. As a result of dropping myself in at the deep end I feel I am a lot better at all aspects of the editing process now. I've improved at it technically at adapting all the clips and panning photos etc and creatively by coming up with ways to keep the frame busy and not dwelling on one image for too long, yet not making the cuts too erratic and still allowing people time to see what we’re showing. A lot of problems I’d never encountered I managed to get over myself which was confidence boosting.

Furthermore since this is the first big shoot I've ever done I felt like my time management skills improved greatly, since we knew how much time we had to get certain things and we all worked together to problem solve and make sure we got it all. This also came through in the edit since I had to work to a deadline so had to manage everything very well to get it all ready for the submission date.

It’s a similar story for drama I nominated myself for camera because I needed something to force me to have experience with the equipment, something the drama project definitely did. Not only did I get to grips with how to use three different DSLR’s to a fairly comfortable level but I also greatly improved my technical ability to change lenses and set up the camera onto either a shoulder rig/dolly very quickly, a very important and helpful skill to have on set.

Also as I mentioned I learnt how to use lenses and taught myself the pros and cons of each, something I’d never experimented with before and now that I know about them I feel I have a lot more creative ability to show what I want to in the best way possible.

This project also gave me the opportunity to work with proper actors for the first time, so I feel like I've learnt quite a few inter-personal skills about how to interact with actors so that everyone on set can be happy and comfortable on set to get the best performance and footage out of the shoot.

Our documentary group worked extremely well as a group I would say, from our first meeting we all gelled. We had meetings nearly every day up until going to Liverpool so we all stayed in contact to know how each idea was going, everyone was constantly involved throughout the whole production too. Just because people’s jobs were mainly done in Liverpool they still stayed involved and helped in post production and vice versa, the post production people threw themselves in during the shooting and everyone equally helped out in planning and pre production.

I think the only weakness we came across was occasionally in meeting we could get side tracked and go off point for quite a while. We could have spent that time refining ideas and coming up with specifics for the shoot more, since one of the things we did was leave quite bit to chance once we got there and hoped to find enough to shoot. It worked out in the end but in hindsight was a risky strategy and is the only thing I’d consider us needing to improve if we were to work together again.

My drama group too got on very well eventually, it took slightly longer for us all to feel comfortable around each other and express our opinions. This is due to being from different groups and not really knowing each other to start with, a benefit we had with the documentary. However it didn't take long for us all to get used to each other and feel more comfortable. We again were constantly communicating with one another via Facebook, with people constantly posting ideas on the wall and everyone giving feedback. I personally think we could have had more meetings in person but I think that is just a personal preference and in hindsight I don’t think would have changed a great deal about the film anyway.

I think in this, since everyone felt a bit more confident with doing a drama since it’s a more common form of film to make, that there was more of a focus on just focussing on your individual role. This isn't saying that people weren't willing to help one another though, on set everyone was checking on everyone else to see it was going OK and there was constant support and everyone was willing to help throughout the whole process again.

The Edit

 I wasn't very involved in the edit. I stayed constantly in contact with everyone and went to the edit suite multiple times to see if I could be of any help at all, but everyone was on top of it.
Everyone seemed organised, and engaged in their jobs and from what I saw the edit was going fine. Everyone knew their individual jobs and it was all going along well to be complete for the deadline. I'm not sure about too many of the decisions that have been made in the edit, stylistically or what has been cut down to fit into the time frame, but from talking to everyone I know it seems in safe hands and it'll turn out well. I decided to not hang around too much and annoy everyone and let them get on with it, as I know editing can be a bit of a stressful task and you don't want someone just hanging around who's not needed.

Exterior Footage Review

As I did with the interior footage I checked over the shots of the second day, the fight scene day to see if we needed to re-shoot any of it.

These are an example of some of the insert shots we got when back in the flat at the end of the day. By showing all these films we wanted to get across further that she spends a lot of times in imaginary worlds, or as the title suggests in her 'Headspace'. I think this quick brief shot shows that fairly well. I also framed it diagonally to make it a bit more visually different and therefore more outstanding than basic horizontals and verticals. This pan across the colourful cases is also similar to what they did in the end scene of Super, so I utilised that idea but put it in my own way here.

Here is the opening shot of Lucy walking down the alley before seeing the fight. We chose to do this so we can discover the scene along with her. I like the depth created by the mugging being in the background, it gives a good sense of 3 dimensions (utilising the z-axis of the frame) to the scene and also in a way shows the whole scene to the audience so they understand the basic layout of the location.

Here is the moment she first looks round and notices the mugging. There is a lot of negative space because I wanted to show how she had a clear head or a lot of thinking space around her, before she realised the situation and we went into closer shots where she would be more focussed on the situation in hand. I don't think this works that well and doesn't really fit in with the visual theme of the film, so ultimately I wish it had been framed differently. The idea is there I just think it's a bit tenuous and more in my head than visible in the frame.

This is almost the counter shot so that we see the muggers eye line and can establish again in our head where they are, you can tell this because I stuck to the 180 degree rule. Also by doing this it means he's looking to the right and it is more natural for the eyes to move to the right to explore the frame, since that's how we read.

Here to establish the victim of the mugging we chose to do the shot from a high angle over the muggers shoulder so we are looking down on the victim, so he appears visually inferior and clearly doesn't have any power in the situation.

This works again as a sort of reaction shot, we see the mugger about to hit him then run off. Furthermore this further pushed the power of the mugger through the visuals, he is standing high above the camera so seems much more imposing and overbearing on the camera which is at the victims level. This gives us an insight to both perspectives of the mugging, letting us understand both characters power.

Here I ran backwards with the camera while the mugger ran at me. This makes it feel like he is running directly at the audience, which gives it quite an engaging feel. Since we're also moving quite fast it has a good energetic feeling to the shot. Furthermore we get to see the victim in the background too so you keep that character involved in the film visually and understand where he is in the layout of the scene, helping build a wider picture.

The moment before they begin to fight we move in to show both of their eyes in extreme close up as their eyes squint before they fight. This has a nice western stand off feel to it which I like quite a lot. It is also sort of a cheesy thing to show but I think because of that it works, and has very much a a comic book feel to the framing. It also reminds me of the kind of things you see in fighting games cut scenes before they fight, a sort of 'vs' moment which I think works a lot.

Here is one of the dolly shots I said I like the use of bars in, the background it quite flat to make it fit with the idea of 2D fighting video games, Mortal Kombat esque, but nonetheless it is still interesting because of the complex lines and provides a good backdrop for the fight. You can also see the shadows here something that I tried my best to show when the sun was out because it adds an extra layer to the film and visually looks good. With both the actors and the shadows moving it get across more of a feeling of movement in the frame too.

Here is one of the shots where we got a close up of Lucy during the fight as she's about to punch. This partly shows some part of how I learnt to let the actors get emotion across from my analysis of Super. It also feels this way like we're more involved in the fight as we can see their emotions, we aren't just watching it, we as an audience are involved too. Furthermore when we see things more close up they look more real for example when the mugger gets hit in this shot because of the angle it looks like it connects and he goes flying off screen, implying a big impact.

Here is the selfie joke mentioned in my analysis of the day filming. It's subtle enough to be there and get a slight smirk out of but it's not the main focus. Showing the victim over there also again implies the depth of the frame again and reminds viewers that he is still here. Lucy actually moves into this frame too, something that looks quite good. It might be too much of a tenuous reading into a situation but it could be viewed as a comic book cell that Lucy flies into because it is pretty much a fixed shot.

Again here you can see the shadows are being utilised and shown when the sun is out so it is possible to get that extra level to the footage.

Here is a good example of how the right angle makes the punch look real, from this point you feel like the impact is hard because of not seeing the punch  connect but seeing the muggers head jerk back as if it had. This is more down to the reaction of Craig the actor making it seem real, helped by the angles we shot this at.

Here we have the mugger falling down onto a crash mat we have off screen, we wanted to utilise everything we had so by having him thrown around a bit it makes it a more interesting fight.

Here we have a nice close up of Lucy filling most of the frame and again utilising the idea of looking from her hand in the foreground to the right of the frame since it's natural to see her, the main focus. Unfortunately in this shot though you can see the dolly tracks on the floor, something we didn't notice at the time of shooting so despite it being quite good it is a redundant and unusable shot. 

This bit where the mugger gets a sword out is when it is quite obvious that this sequence isn't real (the powers make this obvious too), as a result this is quite a funny moment. We also have a bit of a reference to Indiana Jones here since he starts swinging it all around professionally and flamboyantly as he moves towards Lucy. This build from fights to weapons is also an idea from the two fight scenes I analysed Kick-Ass and The Raid. It is our own slightly more comic take on it. Sadly there is a man in the background working on his car here though, something we managed to cut out most by moving shots around but here it was hard to not show him, and is something we should have planned for but also something we could do nothing about on the day.

This is one of the shots I'm most proud of from the shoot. From one of the sheets we got in seminars we found out the easiest way for the eyes to travel around the frame is down and right, because of reading and gravity. This shows me utilising that very much. Both characters are very well framed and the sword is coming right across the frame and towards the camera slightly because of the angle of it so it gets the depth of the shot too. Therefore this frame utilises the x, y and z axis to the best it can.

This shot too utilises depth because we see the mugger fly back towards the camera then down out of frame to reveal Lucy having pushed him with her powers. It works as it feels like quite a flat frame but by utilising the crash mat again we create a sort of sense of depth as the mugger falls towards us showing Lucy further away. This also fits in with the sort of middle framing idea we used a lot in the interior scenes. 

This is the finale, if you like, of the final scene. I think it works well because it's quite a simple frame but you get to see all aspects, the mugger downed, the victim happy he got his wallet back and Lucy happily running away. It seems like quite a gleeful scene and the light helps that, though it's unintentional and if anything would be a problem to colour correct in post, but the shot its self works I think even if it needs a bit of visual manipulation.

Here you can see how the sun coming out improved the colours of the scene, again this causes a bit of a colour correction problem, but in this shot the colours pop extremely well.

Again here you can see the use of shadow shown as clearly as it could be. Yet again the sun makes the scene look very good, even holy to a degree with the bright light coming from the top of the screen, and though may be a slight problem for colour correction it undeniably looks good. Depth again can be seen a bit here since Lucy is very much in the foreground while the victim is further into frame, it's not so clear here but still evident nonetheless.

Looking back at this footage shows that it all seems to be of a good quality and there is enough to get around any problems of shots that aren't quite good enough for the final cut. Most importantly based on the strength of what is here that we shot based on the storyboards and shot lists we created and discussed I don't think we will need to re-shoot any of the scenes.

Shooting Day 2

Road works, not there when we did the recce, so something we had to deal with.

Again shooting day 2 started with us meeting the two new actors so they knew us. Since there was fighting in this it was going to be quite physical for the actors so one of them (a trained martial arts instructor) took them off to do some warm ups. This gave me a good chance to set a white balance and exposure on the main camera I'd be using, one of the Canon's, since I was more used to it. Again since we were shooting outside in the day the weather changed a lot, from sunny to drizzling at one point, so again the exposure maybe would have needing changed a bit in hindsight but I thought it'd be better to stick to a set one rather than keep messing around with it and change it every shot. I think this was the right thing to do. Having the exposure working and looking good was key in my eyes. 

Using the shoulder rig for free movement and relative stability

The biggest problem by far on the day was batteries in the cameras. I started off using one Canon until both batteries had gone, so I moved onto the next Canon, as the batteries for the first one charged, then once that died so we moved to the Nikon but then that died. It was a bit of a kerfuffel and was probably the only thing we didn't really plan for. 

The other problem this presented was that all the cameras had slightly different setting, I obviously set a white balance with each camera I got but as I mentioned the weather kept changing so they would have all been a bit different, I set the same exposure in them all too but again there is a chance that may have differed slightly meaning a bit of colour correction may be needed. 

Also in the period when we used the Nikon the Canon 50mm (which again we were using for all the close ups after seeing how well it worked day 1) we were using obviously didn't fit due to the different models so we couldn't use that lens for the close ups and had to reschedule those shots for the end of the day, this all became a bit of a rush at the end as we were beginning to lose light a bit. In this rush I think a couple of things on the cameras would I've been left to automatic settings, which isn't ideal either, I'd rather have set all the different bits to get it right, but in the interest of time it was more important to get all the shots. If it looked too bad a re-shoot was always possible. 

Team brief before the main shooting began

Me and Conor running through
the storyboards.

Also I wasn't completely clued in on how to use all the different cameras I had fine research that night since I found out I'd be using new cameras, and it was easy enough getting to grips with them quickly on the day but it would have been helpful to have a proper experiment with them like I did the 60D. 

Here you can see us setting up a shot. Here we're using the 50mm for a good close-up.

One if the shames of this was that I would have liked to try out the 85mm in a bigger location so I could have utilised it's positives more. As I mentioned it was fairly redundant in the indoor shoot, but would've been good outside, a shame, but not a really important negative. 

Tom helping me set-up one of the dolly shots

Similar to day 1 I had a bit of a battle getting focus, since again we were shooting moving fights so  it was sometimes a choice of who was going to be more clearly in focus than the other. But this wasn't drastic and maybe not even noticeable, it certainly looked ok when we went over the rushes after the shooting finished.

We used the dolly quite a bit, but in moderation because a lot of the fighting stuff was handheld again. The fighting being hand held and most other things being tripoded or dollied made a nice link actually, because the fight is a fantasy sequence and is mainly handheld and in the flat it's handheld and she's drawing- also in her fantasy world. This gives a vague, tenuous visual link that when the camera is obviously quite handheld it represents she is in a fantasy world that is free flowing and not fixed, however everything else is still and regimented. This is a deeper level to the film that is quite good I think.

Checking the white balance and exposure so it looks good.

Dolly set-up for the opening shot

Doing a practice run of the opening shot.

I used the hill to push the dolly more
for a smoother glide.

Contrary to this I did like the dolly shots of the fighting a lot, and wish we'd done more since they were smooth, and had the kind of look I imagined. We couldn't have done the whole fight dollied though because it would have just been horizontal movements that would have got monotonous quickly. Something else I like about the dolly shots though is how they were from the side they were, something that was in my location plan. The garages were in the background and they had a lot of lines on them which to me at least brought up connotations if a fight in a boxing ring or a prison or something similar, the lines were visually extremely pleasing I though.

Practicing the fight scene to avoid any accidents

We still utilised that in the handheld shots though, there was a very nice sense of depth to the image with the lines of the roof going all the way down the location drawing the eye through the frame. I would like to have shot the whole thing with that in the background to see if it worked, but instead we opted to move around the fight more. This was partially to try and get more of a whole view and sense of the situation, but in a more practical way it was important to get behind certain people at certain points so it looked like they had been hit and you can believe there was impact. 

Since the handheld shots with the shoulder rig were a lot more kinetic than the shoulder rig shots in the flat, it got across more of a feeling of energy but whilst still having a professional smoothness to it so viewers don't get motion sick looking at it.

Seb getting sound levels while everyone checks the fight to see how it looks.

I tried briefly to jolt the camera similar to the techniques I saw when I watched and analysed The Raid when punches would hit so it feels more immersive and you feel the impact of a hit visually, but I didn't stick to this as after a few attempts it wasn't clear enough and instead looked a bit like I'd just tripped or stumbled while filming. 

Conor and Seb running over ideas for the next shot.

Something we kept the idea from the flat from was the idea of subtle moments of comedy. Here we utilised this by having one shot in the background the victim of the mugging takes a selfie while the fight is happening, just a silly little moment to give the film extra layers. Since it happens in the background it's subtle enough to make people smirk but not ruin the tone if the fight, it might not even be noticed on first viewing. 

Break while the next part of the fight is explained

The other comedy moment fits into the fantasy idea, when the sword just appears out of the muggers back. It's unexpected because nothing in the story has led to make you expect that and the way it seems to come up by its self mirrors a very video game-y feel. 

Practising the reaction to the punches, I angled myself behind Lucy to make it look like the punches connected

Conor made the decision nearing the end if the day to not do the second fantasy sequence where Lucy gets stabbed, due to time restraints, and I think this was a very good call. By scrapping that it meant we could fairly comfortably get everything and if when we do the rough edit we desperately need that it wouldn't take too long to re-shoot. Also in hindsight I think with both fantasy sequences it would have been hard to make the film 5 mins, I think we would have overrun and had to cut things out anyway. 

Meeting between me Conor and Shane (the mugee) about the next shot

Yet another problem we faced was that we were shooting at some garages that were in use and half way through the shooting day someone came to work on their car that they stored there. This was something that was obviously not foreseen but ultimately something we couldn't really do anything about. I tried to change the shots a bit to try to not show him in the background but sometimes it was impossible without having to re-establish where Lucy started etc, which would have been a waste of time and not worth the hassle. Since it was public land we just had to live with people walking through every now and then and people accessing garages. I don't think it detracted from the story too much. 

Setting up a tripod over the shoulder shot, with 50mm

The whole crew worked well on the day and we all were talking to each other and making decisions as a group and supporting one another well. One of the actors Conor knows complimented us as a team to him too, which was nice to know we seemed professional. Conor himself was a very good director and took care of all the actors while still being very involved in the technical side, he balanced it all extremely well. Seb too as sound recordist was very
Despite not having any direct involvement with the production that day Sarah, Hannah and Tom were also extremely useful whether it was talking to the actors and helping explain things, giving input on shots/ideas or assisting those who were directly involved. Tom in particular was good as my camera assistant when I needed him.

The selfie from the subtle background selfie joke

At the end of the day we went back to the flat and got a few more insert shots of games and dvds etc to use to emphasise how she likes to detach from reality through those things. Then we compiled all the footage for Tom one folder and the audio in another for Hannah's sound editing. 

Shooting Day 2 Pre-Production

Camera layout plan for outside location

This time it was Sarah who was going go book out the equipment, however when she tried couldn't book out the DSLR we used the first day (Canon 60D) or any of the lenses. However Hannah, Seb and Sarah all had DSLR's they were willing to use and Seb had a 50 mm we could use, so it wasn't the end of the world. 

In our tutorial with Martine we planned the times for the next day shooting day which we set as Wednesday 9th April. Since our tutorial was on the 8th we just discussed that we'd meet at stores to pick up all the equipment at a certain time then all go up as a crew together, so we could be professional and so we could help carry all the equipment equally. 

Connor again made a lot of storyboards, they were more based around choreographing the fights so he knew the combos to get and how to show them easily etc. I again made a couple of different shot lists just for something else to refer to on the day, a plan B if you like. I also made another layout plan for camera locations to help me out.      

Pre production wasn't so big on the second day because it was more a case of dealing with things on the day. We'd also discussed a lot of things on the first day of shooting with Lucy about where and when etc, so we were all well clued in and not in need of another major meeting. Props used etc were in possession of the actors. All we had to really worry about was getting up there with the filming equipment. We planned all this after the tutorial with Martine.

The shot list ideas I did:

Analysis of 'Kick-Ass' Fight Scene Dir: Matthew Vaughn

What is first obvious from the Kick-Ass fight scene is that it utilises a lot of aspects similar to those from The Raid fight scene I analysed. Such examples of this are the fast cutting during the scene. This again is used to create a sort of pace to the scene and a sense of energy to the scene, we aren't left looking at one image too long the frame is constantly changing to therefore constantly engaging.

One of the frames that mirrors a cell from the comic book.

One of the things this film did differently is how occasionally it cuts away to long shots of the fight happening showing the scene as a whole. This makes the viewer take a more objective and observant view of the fight making them feel a bit like the people watching from the diner shown. Yet this is juxtaposed with POV shots of Kick-Ass in the fight getting hit and kicked so it shows both a view from outside the fight and a very immersive view from within the fight its self, making you simultaneously feel involved and like you're watching the events happen. These wide shots similar to The Raid help establish where all the characters are too, so we have a feel to where everyone is in the scene. The wide shots also look quite good as the diner is used as the background for them as the camera dollies slightly, the light of the diner makes the people involved in the fight almost silhouetted something that visually looks quite good and outstanding.

A wide shot to establish location, where the characters are and make them look a bit like silhouettes so they still look visually good.

Also the shots of the crowd in the diner break up the action of the fighting to give the audience some sort of relief from the fighting, something again utilised if to a lesser degree in The Raid. Since it appears in both films it is something that I think I should definitely include in ours.

A shot where I think the crowd in the background are just as important to the image as the fight in the background.

A direct reaction shot of the people in the diner to break up the action.

The music again is a key part of the fight, the music swells when Kick-Ass is on the attack and drops when it isn't showing him or he isn't doing very well, this sort of cohesion between visuals and audio helps towards the fight being very effective in the film.

Showing the use of phone footage to show the fight in multiple interesting ways. Also making it feel more real.

Something this film utilises is the use of multiple mediums of showing footage, not only do we see it through a film camera but we also see it within the diegesis of the film through a camera phone and CCTV footage, this again works towards setting the scene they're in and giving an impression of the fight from different views rather than just a cinematic eye.

The shot of the fight from the CCTV camera

Again like The Raid the fight develops into the attackers using weapons (a bin, partly for a comic effect) to develop the fight and keep it fresh from just punches and kicks and again it works. Since it's been shown to work so well in both the films I've looked at I think this is quite an integral part of our film to integrate.

The attack with the bin mentioned above

This fight scene also features a lot of shots that feel like they would be at home in a comic book, as the film is obviously adapted from a comic source material. Some of these are shots we can use such as the camera moving into Kick-Ass from a mid close up to a close up before he moves in to fight. They feel simultaneously cinematic and like they'd fit in the source material, something I definitely want to try to do in our film.

Example of the POV shots of Kick-Ass getting beaten up enhancing the realism and engagement with the audience of the scene.

Since this (like our film) is a fight in honour of a certain person, the victim to the attackers the victim is shown a lot during the scene for people to remember his importance in the story and in making this fight happen. Since this is something so similar to our film I think this is something we'll definitely have to take into account when making it.

My notes from watching the scene