I worked with Charlie Slorick 1770 and Thomas Hutchinson 1733, I directed the film and made sure that it all ran smoothly whilst consulting my ideas with Charlie and Tom to make sure that they were okay with any directorial changes I may want to do.
My final piece is shown as above, it was made in partnership with IGNITE films and PSYX productions. We chose to go for a more older style of film, with a genre that is rarely seen as of recent.
We chose the black and white colour pallet as it looked smoother and fit the theme of the film we were going for, it also helped with making our production look more professional, smooth and tight-knit. The black and white was also chosen as it looked quite stylish as well, the lack of colour makes the audience more engaged and involved in the film.
There was one time in the film where we decided to use a bit of colour, and that was the flame that our antagonist used to light his cigarette, we did this edit because we realised that it would fit the theme that we were going for and it would look very stylish and professional, using a small amount of colour in our film was an idea we came up with to make our film unique amongst the other productions.
The camera angles we used were primarily used to indicate who was in power in any situation, the key time this was used in our film was on the boat, when the camera panned upwards when the antagonist rose from his seat, giving the impression that is was towering over the detective, both physically and mentally.
There was a smooth match cut which we used to show that the detective has travelled a certain distance, this was very effective and our editing was really good as to keep the cut smooth and controlled.
Each member of our team was responsible for a separate part of the film:
- Editing : This job was taken on by Thomas Hutchinson, he made sure that all the cuts smoothly fit together and he came up with the idea to make the flame coloured, as to make it stand out from the rest of the film. he also edited the soundtrack together in an effort to add some suspense to the film. he also managed request as he had the most experience and talent when it came to editing and managing editing software.
- camerawork/cinematography : Charlie Slorick took the lead for this role due to the fact he has camerawork experience and was knowledgeable on how to use the environment to our advantage. this worked out really well and we ended up with some extremely professional looking shots.
- Directing : i wanted to do something inspired by the godfather (1972) the rest of my team agreed that it would be a good idea as there aren't many films like that being made anymore and it had become less mainstream, so it would be unique. i did let the cast and crew have quite a lot of freedom in how they conduct their lines and how they wish to portray their character, i just made sure that filming was running smoothly and made sure that everything as going according to plan.
I had to make an ident as to show that anything I worked on was highlighted. i used a mix of Photoshop and Adobe aftereffect to help make a completely unique ident to brand my work with.
it is shown below:
I chose to use the name 'keyhole productions' to reflect the kind of films i would be making , which were primarily crime and mystery thrillers.
In preparation for the filming of our media production we made a short hot seating video in order to convey how
we wanted our characters to present themselves in the actual production. We used Adobe Premier Pro CS6 in order to put together the video, and made sure the font was consistent
throughout the video. we also made sure that the footage flowed consistently with fast hard cuts between
characters
We finished the editing process, added names to the scenes of the hot seating and uploaded it to YouTube with
tags in order to make our video easily accessible. also if we posted it onto youtube it would be more likely to be
seen as there are a large number of people that use the platform It can be seen below:
How does my film opening represent ethical problems and issues?
My film explores two main social issues that face society today, the first one is the large amount of violence that is happening, with specific examples being knife crime and gang related violence/crimes. we made sure that we tried to portray the problems as something that isn't good, as so we can be sure that no-one will watch our film and think that it is a good thing to commit violent crimes and hurt people.
The second problem/issue that we decided to help people realise was a problem was mobs or gangs. we tried to portray these groups of people as dangerous and something that isn't to be desired or idolised. we did this by making the people watching the film get to know the detective, even if slightly, then ending the film with the boss pulling a gun on the detective, this means that people will link the mobs/gangs to violent acts such as that and as the boss is portrayed as a villain the all these problems will than be linked to the horrible acts of the boss.
our film also lightly touches other subject such as drugs, however it is not a prevailing theme, this was done in the shots when the antagonist smokes a cigarette filled with and unknown substance. however we don't have this as a primary theme in the film and it is never referenced again.
Dark alleyway : - tripping and injury from lack of balance in the ground
- infection from cutting on glass, needles, knives, etc
Ways to avoid issues: We must be careful when filming in the alleyway, especially if one is holding the camera. This scene requires us as a production team to work together sensibly and carefully. If someone does become injured, there is an adult on set in order to help care towards them.
Boats : - Water, drowning
- Infection form dirty water
- Falling overboard due to lack of balance of the ground.
Riverbank :
- Falling over the ledge
- Drowning
Again we must be careful when filming on the boat and by the riverside, as we want to make sure we don't lose the camera to the water as well as all our footage.
On the day of shooting our film, we used our call sheetsto make sure we had all the props and people we needed to have a successful day of filming with minimal mistakes and setbacks. We decided to film our short film opening in chronological order to ensure that everyone was involved in the narrative, this also meant that we knew where we were going with our film and we knew if we needed to make any changes. This meant that the scene in the alleyway where the murder takes place is the first scene that we shot so we headed there first. Charlie was the cameraman, getting many shot variations with different camera angles which helps us with selecting shots for our story and our narrative.
One of the best shots we were able to achieve that day was the panning shot we got to link a transition to the next scene. Charlie and I did very well in achieving a smooth shot and left enough time to be able to transition to the next scene on the marina. We had to film a lot more scenes at the marina and used the tripod to stay as stable on the boat as possible. We managed to obtain many close up shots on Alex B on his cuff links and his cigar that we made using paper with some colouring for authenticity. We also achieved a focus pull shot from Alex to the bridge in the distance which tom thought looked very professional so we kept it in the final product. We made the decision to film most of Big Boss's shots at a lower angle in order to connote the idea that he held more power than the detective in this confrontation and had a more overpowering aura about him, which we managed to show quite well in our film.
We had to use the green screen in our film to show our expertise and skills in film and editing, of which we did a good job. We thought the final product looked very professional and was an overall success and Nathan (Detective Swanson) looked as if he was actually outside the alleyway in the green screen shot.
