This is England: Who made it and How?

What are Warp Films and Warp X?

Warp films are a side project from Warp records, and are an English company based in Sheffield and were set up in 1999 with help of funding from NESTA (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts).
Warp X are linked with Warp Films and Warp Records, and are based in Sheffield and have offices in Nottingham and London. They are pioneering new digital studio, they use cutting edge digital technology and low budget methods to produce high value films.

Who runs Warp? What was Warp created to do?

Warp is a small company, with only three full-time members of staff, and although they have limited staff, they have some of the best up and coming directors from Britain.
A Warp spokesperson said this about what Warp was about:

"Warp Films is an independent film production company which aims to mirror the ethos of its partner music label Warp Records. By keeping the creative process at the core of our approach to film making, Warp Films aims to create fresh and innovative feature length and short films to be viewed by a wide audience. Our current priorities are nurturing and developing existing talent, as well as discovering new exciting filmmakers." Directors:

Shane Meadows:
A lot of his influences came from "kitchen sink realism" that are from film makers such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh but with a "post modern twist." He is a very relaxed director, he encourages his actors to perform at "one's pleasure" (ad lib) in order to make his films appear more realistic and get a better sense of realism for themselves. Many of his films are inspired by events from his youth, for example: Twenty Four Seven and Room for Romeo Brass. A lot of Meadows films are filmed in the midlands, and he is known for using unknown people to take part in his films, such as his friends and family.
Five of his films were shown at the 2007 Flourish Festival held in Uttoxeter to mark the release of This Is England.
Chris Cunningham:
He works in video, music and commerical. He made his directorial debut with the music video "come to daddy" this landed him in the spotlight within the music industry. Cunningham was headhunted after Stanley Kubrick saw his work for the 1994 film version of Judge Dread, to do with the building of robotic arms, Kubrick wanted him to work on the animatronic tests for the robot child in the 2001 film Artificial Intelligence (AI), he worked on AI for over a year, before leaving to start a career in directing.
Chris Morris:
His break came with BBC Radio Bristol and Greater London Radio (GLR), he was sacked from BBC Radio Bristol for allegedly being abusive to a caller. Chris' earliest talk of work came from acting in "The Frogs" at Sixth Form.

What relationship does Warp have with Film 4 and the Film Council?
Quote from www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/warpx

"The key aims of the project are to establish a more integrated approach to development, production and distribution for up and coming filmmaking talent and at the same time to provide economies of scale for low-budget feature film production.

The joint objectives of the New Cinema Fund and FilmFour for Warp X are:

• to source a diverse range of filmmaking talent and mentors;
• to develop a more integrated and cost-effective model for the development and production of low-budget films by accessing a core team of production, financing and business affairs expertise and taking into account the cultural and commercial needs of the UK film industry;
• to provide new opportunities to increase participation of groups currently under-represented in the UK film industry such as writers, directors, producers and actors who are female, disabled and/or from black and minority ethnic groups;
• to encourage filmmakers to explore social issues of disability, cultural/ethnic diversity and social exclusion through the content and range of individual film projects;
• to create much-needed progression routes into the UK film industry for identified filmmaking talent, who may have experienced some success through their first feature film or through short filmmaking, but who need further infrastructural and other support to make their next film(s) a success; and
• to provide an opportunity for and to encourage established filmmaking talent to reinvest their expertise in the talent of tomorrow, both in front of and behind the camera. "

Who else financed 'This is England'?
This is England was co-funded by the National Lottery through the UK Film Council in partnership with FilmFour and EM-Media, Screen Yorkshire, Ingenious Media and Optimum Releasing.

Production Companies for This is England
*Big Arty Productions
*EM Media
*Film4
*Optimum Releasing
*Screen Yorkshire
*UK Film Council
*Warp Films

How was This is England distributed?

• IFC Films (2007) (USA) (theatrical)
• IFC First Take (2007) (USA) (theatrical)
• King Record Co. (2009) (Japan) (theatrical)
• Madman Entertainment (2007) (Australia) (all media)
• NetFlix (2007) (USA) (DVD)
• Nippon Shuppan Hanbai (Nippan) K.K. (2009) (Japan) (theatrical)
• NonStop Entertainment (2007) (Sweden) (theatrical)
• Optimum Releasing (2006) (UK) (theatrical)
• Red Envelope Entertainment (2007) (USA) (DVD)
• Sandrew Metronome Distribution (2008) (Finland) (DVD)

Preliminary Task: Continuity Film

We were asked to do a Preliminary Task, and for this we were asked to do a continuity film that involved three camera techniques:

* Match on Action shots

* Shot/reverse shot

* The 180 degree rule

This is the video we filmed and edited:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=g73aj51gKaU

Match on Action:
This is where the camera switches between the characters two perspectives, but not in the sense of an over the shoulder shot, as you can still see the character it is like the audience become voyeurs; for example the audience see the character walking towards the door, and the next shot the character has come through the door.

We used a match on action shot in the beginning of our film, as this is where the shot made the most sense and was the most convenient.

Shot/Reverse Shot:
This is used when two characters are looking at each other. The first character is seen to be looking at the second character, and then after the first character has finished looking at the second character the camera then shows the second character looking at the first character. This suggests to the audience that the characters are looking at each other.

This shot was used in our film in the time frame 15 - 20 seconds, where you can see the first character looking at the second character.

180 degree rule:
If two people are being filmed from one direction the 180 degree rule can't be broken, because if not the scene makes no sense to the audience. If you want to change the position of the characters on screen, you must show the camera crossing the 180 degree line.

For our film, we decided to do something slightly different with the conversation and have it between a daughter and her mother, however the daughter doesn't know that the woman she is talking to is her actual mother, until the woman tells her.

I played the adopted daughter and Emily played her real mother, and Matt filmed. We filmed in the school canteen, however we were thinking of filming in a cafe to make the film more realistic, but many cafe's aren't that happy with people filming in there, and the noise level in the scenes would have been much louder as the cafe would have been busy.

We were also asked to write a script, this made it much easier to film, because we had some idea of what we were going to say.

Script:

Characters:
Emily- Lauren’s mother
Lauren- Daughter of Emily, adopted by someone else, Emily’s her real mother.

Emily: Hello
Lauren: Hey
Emily: [nervous] I got you a drink…
Lauren: Oh thanks, what did you want to talk to me about?
Emily: [nervous, faltering] Well, this isn’t easy for me…
Lauren: I don’t have long, I’m meeting mum in about 20minutes.
Emily: [exasperated] she’s not your mother! I am!

[Cut]

Analysis of Sequence:
The sequence involves the first character walking through a door, using a match on action shot. As the first character and the second character are engaged in conversation, we have used a shot/reverse shot in order to show the audience who the characters are talking to. During the entire conversation we followed the 180 degree rule in order to avoid confusion. The set up of the sequence and the speed in which we completed it was helped due to the simplistic nature of idea; a conversation between two people in a "cafe." The simple nature also helped make the sequence effective and belivable.

Technology/Equipment:
We used a varied range of equipment and technology; video camera, tape, tripod, Adobe Premier Elements. After we had completed the filming we transferred the raw footage over via a Firewire Cable onto our media computers hard drive and used Premier Elements to edit the footage into a more sequential and enjoyable video.

Editing (Premier Elements):
In order to edit our video we used the schools editing suite and the software that is on the computers, Premier Elements. We used Premier Elements in order to separate the best parts of the footage from the unwanted parts; the software also made it easier to have smoother transitions between takes, i.e fade to black; we were also able to add a title sequence to the beginning to give the audience some idea of what the film is about; it also provides information to the examiners as to the length of the film and our candidate information. We were also able keep some footage, that wasn't wanted in the main sequence, but made some funny outtakes without transitions making the cut between shots quick and more amusing.
Once the editing was completed we exported the film into standard computer format (.avi) and then had to upload it to www.youtube.com in order to make it more accessible to examiners and teachers. The link for our video is at the start of the post.


Overall the filming and the editing went well and was effective. Even though we covered all the shots that we required in the brief, we only had one of each shot during our film, rather than varying the amount of the different shots. Throughout the filming, our camera skills weren't vastly improved, this is partly due to the fact that only one person could film at any one time, therefore the two characters in the film had no chance to use the camera because they were being filmed, however this was able to be corrected during our Thriller filming as two different people played characters and there was only one scene where the two characters were in the frame together. We did, however, gain an improved knowledge of Premier Elements and we can use this knowledge to make the transitions and the composition of our thriller alot better. Another thing that we considered during this filming and that we put into practice for our thriller was using the tripod more in order to make the filming more steady; the unsteadiness in certain parts of the footage became more apparent during editing due to the larger resolution.
We managed to complete the task, considering in the beginning our limited knowledge with the camera and the editing equipment, and managed to improve our skills using the camera and Premier Elements that we can take through and use in our Thriller editing/filming and for future videos.