Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood was released in November 2010. It was initially released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, before being released for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in May 2011.

The game passed over a million sales within a week of being released, and in May 2011 its developers, Ubisoft, announced the game had sold over 8 million copies. In March 2011, having sold 6.5 million copies, the game had generated an estimated $390 million.

In 2011, he game took the Assassin's Creed franchise to over 28 million units sold, generating an estimated $1.8 billion.

The game had 7 different editions; Standard Edition, Special Edition, Auditore Edition, Collector's Edition, Limited Codex Edition, Digital Deluxe Edition and Da Vinci Edition.

Spartacus Essay- Improved Version

The scene begins with a long shot showing the fighter's living quarters. They are very basic, representing  a low standing and class. Also showing this is the clothes the characters are wearing. The fighters are wearing dirty, grubby robes, again signifying lower standing than the guards who is taking them to wherever they are going.
The camera then cuts to the wealthy, higher class people, sat in their luscious robes, playing with expensive jewellery. This juxtaposes the opposites, with simply their balcony being much better than the fighters' living quarters, as well as the clothes they are wearing and the props shown in the scene. The balcony is also more colourful. The fighters' living area is very mundane, brown and dark greens, whereas the rich balcony is colourful- vibrant colours such as pink and yellow, and a regal white are worn by the characters. This signifies a higher class and status.
The weapons that the black fighter has to use- a trident and a net- represent a fisherman, which gives the immediate impression of a lower class.
When the fighters first enter the arena, their robes are removed. This emphasises their vulnerability- they have nothing to protect them because they don't deserve to be protected. It again shows a lower class and status as they don't deserve armour or even clothes.
In the scene, the doors used are a big signifier of wealth and class. The fighters walk through a creaky, wooden door which hasn't been given any level of attention to detail. On the other hand, you have the guards, who when exiting the arena, use a proper, enforced, crafted door, which has had money spent on it. This shows higher class and status, as the fighters don't use this door, they are deemed unworthy.

There is a shot when the first pair of fighters are just being called out, which the editor uses to show the three levels of class in the scene. At the bottom are the fighters, in the middle, above the fighters are the guards, and above the guards are the wealthy people watching the fight. This is the only shot where we see all three levels of status together, and it does it well, showing them on levels of class.
During the clip, we spend a lot more time with the protagonists. This means we are more likely to side with them as we get to know them better and can see things from their point of view. This makes the audience dislike the wealthy, as they are of stark contrast to the gladiators we have spent more time with.
There is a number of shots where we see the protagonists at their worst- being forced into a small crooked hut type thing, or a body being dragged away, before the camera cuts straight to a shot of the wealthy people. This juxtaposes the opposites and makes us feel even more sympathetic for the fighters as the previous image is still firmly in our mind.
At the end of the clip, the wealthy man kills the black man. It is significant that the rich man delivers the killing blow as it signifies his power over the fighter, and his ruthlessness connotes a lack of care for those below him. At the end of the scene, the blood squirts in the rich man's face. This instantly makes us dislike him even more, as we find this image disgusting.

Towards the beginning of the clip, when the guard is leading them away, there is a camera shot from behind a cage wall. This connotes captivity and shows that the fighters are being controlled by higher powers. This imagery is later repeated with a shot through the black fighter's net, showing that despite them fighting in an open-ish environment, they are still in captivity and under control.
The introducing shot of the four rich people sat on the balcony is a wide shot, so we can see everything of them in one shot, and see their wealth and class in contrast to that of the four poor fighters shown before. The shot itself shows the four characters laid down, relaxed. This connotes almost a lack of care for what they are about to witness, which shows class and status because the rich don't care for the poor, don't care that they are about to fight to the death.
A lot of the fight itself is shown from the high angle of the balcony. Again this symbolises a superiority of rich over poor. This further emphasises that the wealthy are of a higher class and status than the fighters they are looking down upon.
As the rich are sat on a balcony, the camera is often looking up at them with a low angle shot. This connotes superiority and control over what is going on, suggesting that they are of a higher status than those they are controlling.

When we enter the arena with the fighters, the music becomes frantic. We hear the harsh tones of trumpets which build suspense. This represents the horror of the lower class fighters.
Throughout the clip, the fighters do not talk. Whereas whenever we are with the rich, a lot of the time they are talking. Often they are laughing. This emphasises class as when we are with the fighters, the music creates a very tense and anxious atmosphere, whereas that all disappears when we are with the wealthy people. They are chatting, laughing, giggling. The juxtaposition of these emotions emphasises the gap in class between these two sets of people.

Preliminary Film Review

The Locker Room was the title of our film. It showed a student running through different parts of a school in an attempt to find survivors of a mass murder. He finds what he thinks to be a survivor (in the locker room) who turns out to be the killer.

The brief was to film a short film showing a character enter a room, cross the room and sit down, before exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue with another character. The film should include example(s) of match-on-action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. Our film met all required criteria.

We planned effectively, spending a lesson and a half, as well as some time individually at home, working on the storyboard, script, music choices, as well as deciding our roles in the filming. Unfortunately we misplaced the script, although it was brief and all lines are said in the video so it isn't required. Below are images of our storyboard, which we used both during filming and editing, but didn't stick 100% to, exploring different possibilities, camera angles or transitions we found worked better when we had actually filmed them rather than we planned before.


This section shows the start of our film, which begins with the protagonist running around two or three sections of the school, before cutting to a shot of the antagonist. The antagonist is introduced with a medium, high angled shot, designed to make the character look weak, before cutting to a close up of his face, showing him laughing menacingly. This familiarises the viewer with the antagonist early, and makes us realise who the protagonist is running from, and we know who he is when we meet him. The storyboard depicts more shots of the antagonist before the characters meet, something we didn't include in our final edit. We felt that the same/similar shots could get boring, and weren't sure where they would fit in. Perhaps with screams in the background, followed by shots of the antagonist smiling and looking, to all intents and purposes, rather creepy, the film could have been improved.

This image shows the protagonist running around schools, and checking a door. This is to show the viewers he is searching for someone/something- not running away from something. This is important as we know the antagonist is stationary, and isn't moving anywhere, so if the viewers thought he was running from someone, it could get confusing. The character is shown running down stairs. This is simply to give a different setting, so it isn't all running in a straight line. It also gives more of a sense of realism I think. The final edit followed him round the corner of the stairs, contrary to the storyboard. This, I must say, was an input of my own. I, as cameraman, felt there were too many stationary camera shots, and the camera moving could create a more frantic atmosphere, which I think it did.

There were more running scenes, but we didn't storyboard them, as we didn't realise, without actually filming, that the running scenes came and went so fast, so we needed to add more in to fill time, but also to add a greater sense of realism. He wouldn't find someone after running in 2 or 3 corridors and checking one door. This storyboard shows the protagonist enter a room, demonstrating match on action by opening the door. Another example of match on action in our film is running around a corner. This was a late decision, as we felt the shot running around the corner went on too long, and it needed a new camera shot to keep the frantic feeling. The shot is a somewhat point of view shot, making us feel with, and side with, the protagonist. The antagonist is sat down, so that the protagonist seems bigger than him, fitting the metaphor if "the bigger person", also shown by the fact he takes up most of the screen- despite us only seeing his shoulder and the side of his head, while being able to see the whole of the antagonist without taking up as much screen.

This scene demonstrates both shot-reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. The protagonist thinks he has found a fellow survivor, and without getting a reply to his question, picks up a chair and sits opposite him. This is where the 180 degree rule comes in. This part is the only major failure of our film. The protagonist picks up the chair, and due to mixed ideas of how it is portrayed, the camera shot doesn't work. Also the sound is not correct. He says his line and the sound of the chair means we cannot hear it, and it is important. As a result we had to pinch a section of sound from another clip, and place it over the other video. We had to actually use two separate sound clips, so the sound doesn't fit at all, and realism is lost as we don' hear the chair touch the floor. We should have filmed the scene again but didn't have time.

The end of our film was designed to be dramatic and scary, which it definitely achieved. The music stopped at the pinnacle of its build up when the dialogue began, and again, my job (not that I'm boasting or anything) but it was just perfectly edited. As the scene ends, and we see the antagonist lunge to attack the protagonist, the screen goes black and the music kicks in loud and fast, creating sense of panic and fear. This works to perfection and is a great ending to the film. The ending is our best section in my opinion.

Overall, I think the film was a success. To say we had never used editing software or filming equipment before, to learn it all and produce a 1 minute 30 film in less than a week is a great achievement, and to the level I think we achieved is something. I thought our film was to a very high standard.

In terms of me individually, I felt I did a good job. In some ways, I slacked off my first job- to write the script. I sat down to write it but didn't know quite what to put and gave up quite quickly, without putting much thought and effort in to it. In many ways, however, I think this was a good thing. It made me realise that I didn't want to be that person, the person who the group carries and gets away with doing no work. I knew that I could offer something to the group, so when deciding roles, I immediately put myself forward for both cameraman and editing. The role of cameraman was shared, but I like to think I did a better job, selecting different angles and not being afraid of moving the camera or going off the storyboard a bit-which worked well, giving us good options and choices in the editing.

I think the editing was something we did fantastically as a team. Not afraid to criticise each others' decisions or choices, and all getting involved with our own ideas. As a result I feel the majority of the editing was done to a very high standard. I think the team dynamic worked well. We got the work done, but also had a laugh at the same time, enjoying it very much. It felt good to have freedom to do things without supervision, whilst we also knew we didn't want to be split up for the next task, so we did the work properly, to a very high standard, and did things numerous times to make sure it was perfect. I think it was the perfect work environment.