My research for my film opening involved analyzing gangster film subgenres to determine the necessary conventions. My group chose the mob gangster genre influenced by film noir. By studying previous mob film openings, I learned the needed conventions and that these films had large budgets which we could not match. Our target audience expanded beyond just mob fans to also include film noir fans, making it larger.

1. Research
My research stage of my AS task included looking into the details of Gangster films. This
included analysing different Gangster sub­genres to find out what conventions we needed in
order to create our film opening successfully. My group chose the Mob gangster genre, with a
strong influence of Film Noir. By analysing previous Mob film openings I learned what
conventions were needed for the film, and when looking into the production and distribution
companies I learned that Mob gangster films had large budgets, which we could not meet, and
there focussed on creating successful Mise en Scene, in order to create a successful film
opening of good standard. When researching our target audience, we chose to not only target
the Mob audience, but also the Film Noir audience, this in result made our target audience
bigger, and informed us on what they would like to see in our film.
Planning
My planning started very simple, by mind­mapping the basics we would need to create our film
opening e.g mise en scene, narrative characters.. This was a good starting point, as later we
further developed out ideas ideas into more details. Further in planning, we conducted location
shoots so we could gradually piece together the plan for our film. A storyboard was created
also, this helped us see our film frame by frame before creating it, making the construction part
of our AS more efficient, and flow better. Once all the planning was done e.g the script,
storyboard, music choice etc, we were ready to start the construction aspect of our AS.
Construction
Within this section we filmed and edited our film. First we created a rough cut, in which there
were errors such as failing match on action. Throughout this process we refilmed a few times,
however this worked in our favour as our footage improved with the more experience we got.
Next we edited the video, here we expanded our skills knowledge such as creating GIFs, cutting
footage, adding music/sound effects, and using smooth transitions. All this together widely
expanded my knowledge of using cameras and editing software.
Evaluation
From the evaluation task in my AS coursework I learned how to refine my own work in detail, for
example discuss the successes and failures of my film, and why I chose certain conventions. I
also discussed how well we targeted our audience, therefore for A2 I can discuss this again,
and improve on it.