Hooks & Blades - Evaluation

When we were given the brief for this task, we had multiple initial ideas. Our first idea was to have a girl crying, the audience wouldn't know why, with a boy trying to comfort her. It would later become apparent that the boy wasn't really there, and the girl was crying over his death. However we felt like this would be a cliché story. We also considered having a short film based on a fight that went through different periods of time (western to modern day). However we felt like the time sequence would be too difficult to edit in the time that we had, so we came up with a new idea.


Our final idea was an action comedy involving a pirate and an assassin having a fight on a beach. We planned to have the assassin hunting down the pirate, causing them to fight and neither of them winning. However when we planned the duration of each shot the short film would only last 60 seconds. Due to this we had to change the idea slightly so that the assassin kills the pirate, but the viewers then discover they've been watching a video game and we return to the real world. The characters were based off an assassin from the game 'Assassin's Creed' and Captain Hook from 'Once Upon A Time'.


We wrote a script considering these characters personalities, so the assassin was determined and more mature than the arrogant pirate. We also included lines such as "never judge a man by the size of his dinghy" for comedic elements amongst the action of the fight scene.

Shot Evaluation

In the pre-production stage we planned this shot how you see it without the title. We thought an OSS would be nice as it allows you to see the assassin and her target. It was later when trying to figure out a place for the title that we realised it would fit well on the right side of the frame.

We used a match on action of me jumping from the cliff onto the beach to show the change of my location and hint that I was now going after the pirate. We also weren't afraid to use close ups in this product as it meant that less of the modern aspects of the beach was visible. Using close up meant that it's less likely people could be seen walking past.

This shot follows the 'villains on the right, heroes on the left rule'. This is because the vast majority of places read left to right, it's programmed in our brains so having the assassin move in from the left feels natural, positive. The pirate however moves right from left which is feels uneasy as it's not what we're use to, negative (also seen in the image below). The close up also allowed us to almost split the screen as well, separating the characters so the audience can see they aren't together.

The colours the actors wear represent who they are. Black connotes evil while brown and white connote reliability and purity. While the assassin character can't be described as pure in this situation they are the hero.

We used medium close up for shots containing dialogue. This allowed certain facial expressions and movements, such as the pirate raising his hook, to be clearer. When using shot reverse shot we made sure to not break the 180 degree rule so the audience wouldn't be disoriented.

For the fight sequence we included three quick extreme close ups. The speed helps set the pace of the fight while the close ups helped to keep it neat. The beginning of the fight scene looked cheap and fake as it was a wide shot, whereas the close ups were more realistic as you couldn't see all of us.

Again we used an extreme close up to show the emotion in the actors face. By looking out of shot it also draws the audience in as it means he has seen and is thinking about something, which we do not know at this moment in time. However the violin music building up in volume hints that it is something sinister.

We used a medium shot here so the audience could not see what the actor had taken out of the cupboard, building tension.

We used another match on action here, showing the actor walk out the door. Continuity is successful in this scene allowing us to show the audience that the male actor has gone in the same direction as the female actor. This alongside the violin music, facial expressions and picking up of an unknown object suggests that his sinister intention is directed towards the girl.

While the prop itself is a bad prop it does tell us what the intention behind the male actor was. If we had more time to think of a way we could safely filmed this scene with a realistic knife it would have made it more believable, however it was rushed reducing it's quality. A close up was used here to block out the rest of the kitchen, emphasising the importance of knife. Following the rule of thirds we also had the actor raise his hand so it would sit in the right third rather than the centre because it is more appealing to view.