My film

10/02/16

Pre-Production

Link to previous ideas

Originally I was planned to first make an epic fantasy movie, but the idea was turned down, then I tried out a western movie idea, but that too got turned down as well, (see link) so I got stuck with an idea according to a brief. I always wanted to do a western movie, just because I like the genre in general.

I guess I enjoyed choosing the name Niles from Frasier as my character's name. I suppose I also enjoyed writing the script.

I had no actors, because of the so-called "audition", it was just Performing Art students doing theirs acts without receiving any judgements from us, as of that I had no one to play my characters on the first day of shooting. Instead I chose some volunteers from my team, Simon as Niles and Malcolm as someone who was league with the caller. Another challenge was the equipment, we didn't check whether the recorder had any working batteries and a memory card, the camera was packed with so much data it just stops in the middle of recording. The weather was also a challenge when it started raining. Props were really hard to come by, they had to be bought out my money.

Production

I shot my film over the course of three days (5th to 7th January). There was Simon, Paige, Will, Megan and Malcolm, originally Anouska was in our team, but we found out she moved out of the course. We filmed it in Bath, because there was no where else to go. Luckily we found a phone booth near the college, because the assignment brief said our films have to feature phone calls and I could not find any other phone booth anywhere in Bath.

We had some challenges filming, because of buses getting in the way of the opening scene, the wind blocking out the sound, and people walking in front of the camera and talking loudly. I have learnt about the challenges of filming in a city, the abbey was especially challenging due to the fact that the abbey square was full of people and I couldn't be able to get a full shot of the abbey.

Will and Meg helped out with the sound, but Paige was chosen at the last minute to voice the unknown caller. I used a range of shots, such as Wide Shots and Tracking Shots. There were somethings I was pleased with, but there were also some things that I did not, for example, Simon didn't look anything like Niles Crane, but I like the music I chose for the opening scene: The Wanderer by Dion. I initially chose Better Together by Jack Johnson, but after watching the Fallout 4 trailer, I decided I shall go for Dion, because it seems like much better walking music and it makes an ironic contrast between the lyrics and the character of Niles, I could hardly imagine Niles being a wanderer doing the things that the character in the song does. If I could change anything about the acting is when Simon says his line "Alright!" he sounded nervous instead of frustrated.

Post Production

I used Adobe Premiere to do the editing process. I needed to fit the footage into the right sequence chronologically. The main type of special effect I used was fire when Niles confronts a dragon. I got it all from FootageCrate. I downloaded them into my file and into Premiere. The font was something I wasn't particularly concerned about, but I was fine with it. In terms of sound effects, I added a roar to suggest the presence of a dragon, I got the sounds from Youtube and Freesound. I changed the caller's voice to make it sound like she's on the other side of the phone.

The editing process was more difficult than I anticipated because the dialogue could not be heard properly, such as the phone box scene. In addition I used both Paige's dialogue and Simon's dialogue and spliced them both together. But there was also a clicking sound between the dialogue, Tobie showed me to use some transitions to make Paige's lines fade in and out of Simon's. I managed to get rid of the clicking noises, but I still could not hear Simon's words, so I tried another solution which was to re-shoot the scene and re-record the scene. Then I need to sync up with the separate files.

I learnt to use the sound after my Assassin's Creed project. I could not be able to get any proper sound for the final ending for the film, because the wind was interfering with Malcolm's dialogue. From the Interview with a Guitarist task, I learned about using the 5-shot method, reducing sound distortion and white balance. I used a variety of shots in the task which I have learned about before. I learned about put the right shots in a particular pattern in the Making of Rice Paper Crepes task.