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Thomas Hutchinson 1733

Claremont Fan Court School 64680

I worked with Charlie Slorick 1770 and Alexander Wain 1779

Our brief was to make titles and openings of a fictional film. The title to our film is 'Duty Calls'. Our idea was to bring the genre of Film Noir back into the 21st century, by following genre codes and conventions whilst breaking some to bring it to life. The story is about a world leading detective who goes by the name of detective Swanson who discovers one of his best friends has died. It is Swanson’s duty and moral duty to sift through the fog of his job in order to get to the bottom of the crime, by all means necessary. 

Editing: I decided to take the lead in the editing of our film. This was mainly in choosing what stayed and what was cut from the film. In also made the decision to have the flames singled out from the rest of the film to make our film unique. I edited the soundtrack together to add suspense and pace to the film. I also took charge in managing the requests from our director, Alexander Wain as in our group, I was the one most experienced with the editing software we were using.

Camerawork: I stepped back from this role and made sure that the shots we were getting were in focus and that we had a variety of different shots with different angles of the same scenes so when it came to editing we had choice. Charlie Slorick took the lead for this role as we felt he was the most experienced person to take it on. I did contribute and film some scenes and help film some scenes.

Directing: I put forward some initial ideas for our film opening, however, it was Alexander Wain. He wanted to do something related to The Godfather (1972) and we agreed with him and got to work. When it came to filming I did take on role of telling our actors where to be and how to act their part in the scene, however, I did make sure that Alexander was on board with the decisions we were making.

The final production piece can be found here

OUR FINAL FILM

We decided to upload our final piece to YouTube on my production team's official youTube channel. Below you will find both screenshots and a link to the finished piece. You can find the final piece here

Construction: BBFC Age Rating

What is the BBFC?

The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) is a non-governmental organisation, founded by thefilm industry in 1912. It is responsible for the national classifications of films and the censorship of films exhibited at cinemas and other such content. 

What is a BBFC Film Certificate?

A BBFC Film Certificate is a certificate that is given to a film before release which indicates what the minimum age a potential audience member must be in order to view a film in a cinema. It is based on the regularly updated guidelines presented by the BBFC in order to reflect people's current views and expectations. They are used as a guideline for audiences to see what type of film they are about to watch based on the age limit set on the film, with U films being rated as universal, to the opposite end of the spectrum where 18 rated films tend to be gritty. 

What Did We Rate Our Film?

We, as a group, decided to rate our film as BBFC 15. We felt this was most appropriate as there is mild drug use, and strong violence. This take us out of the 12 and 12A category as we felt that the use of cigarettes and cigars was slightly glamourised in our film. We also felt it should be in the 15 category because the violence involved can be depicted as strong, but not as strong as an 18 rated film may be. The content in our film may have been viewed as unacceptable to those younger than 15, so as a result that is the age rating to our film.

How did We Make Our Certificate?

We found a BBFC15 Certificate on the internet and edited in Photoshop. This was a relatively easy task as we all new how to use Photoshop. We had struggle in finding a similar font to the serif font used by the BBFC, so we went with one we found which looked similar. We changed the template's pre-existing content to show: mild drug references and strong violence, to fit with our film.

CONSTRUCTION: Feedback

One of the things we did in order to get a non-biased view of our film production was to screen our film to our peers and get them to give an honest opinion of our film. We had many compliments to our film, such as people enjoyed the professional Idents we had made ourselves, and people enjoyed the monochrome feature to our film as it made the film unique to other things they had seen.

Editing: Changes we made in post were crucial to our film appearing how we wanted it to. One of those things was the seriousness of our film. We didn't want our film to come across as if it was a parody or making fun of the serious issues we were trying to tackle. In order to do this we decided to cut the smiles at the end of some of the scenes that we had not previously noticed. We also trimmed down the pan tilt shot we got of the detective walking away from the camera. We tried to stabilise the hand held shot of the detective walking towards the body, however, we came into problems with this and so we had cut it and choose a different variant of the shot that we had caught on the day, which I think suits the film better. 

CONSTRUCTION: Editing

For our film, we decided to show off our editing expertise and show some of our abilities to use green screens and isolate certain colours in order to bring attention to them. We also voiced over all the dialogue caught on the day in order to make sure that the audio was crystal clear. We decided to take ideas from one of our case studies Roma (2018) We made our film monochrome in order to fit the stereotype of the Film Noir genre we were trying to conform to. I decided to take the lead role in the editing of our film as I was more experienced in editing and I enjoy it. We used Adobe Premiere Pro in order to edit our film to our success.

One of the main things we wanted to accomplish in our film was the continuity of our film to be spotless. We feel as though by carefully looking through the frames of our film to make sure that the flow of the film was not interrupted was key to our film. We also wanted to show our expertise by separating the flame from the lighter and make it stand out in the scene. We did this in Premiere Pro using Lumetri Colour to allow us to select the colour scheme that we wanted to stand out ahead of the monochrome filter. This meant creating another film layer within the edit and highlighting the colour we wanted in that scene. We then removed the other colours that we didn't want in order to have the flame on a clear background to move in sync with the flame in the original. We thought that this effect would help bring a unique aspect to our film and also breaks genre conventions for our genre of Film Noir.

We decided to add a voice over of Big Boss to the end of the film in order to add suspense to the end of the film. This is crucial to the opening of a film as it helps to draw in the audience and makes them wonder what is to happen next in the film. We decided to add a sinister end to the film, suggesting that Detective Swanson is in big trouble and there are bigger criminals in the world that he must fight to take down. We thought by overlaying the logo to our film afterwards would follow the conventions of film openings and would tie up the opening very well. We added some flair to the end title by making the two assets appear separately from each other. I am very happy with the editing of our film.

CONSTRUCTION: Sound

On the day of filming we had a few problems regarding the sound quality of our clips. We managed to fix a few of these issues by adding the DeNoise effect to reduce some of the excess sound, including: wind and other people's voices. We also added a DeReverb to the sound clips to negate some of the echo that came into the clips that we filmed indoors. 

However, one of the major struggles we came into contact with was that some of the sound clips couldn't be salvaged. So as a result we had to voice over some of the clips so what the actor was saying could be heard loud and clear. To overcome this issue, we went to a room which was sound proofed and used a good quality microphone to recapture the voice. We made sure we played the clip that the actor was voicing over was playing in front of them, to assure that the sound was in sync to the video as to make sure it was not out of place.

For the backing track music, ew decided to follow codes and conventions of a Film Noir film. This meant finding the appropriate style of jazz music for our film. We searched the internet for a 1920-50s Jazz style of music and found one by C148 called "Stal". We felt this was appropriate as it has the classical Jazz riffs which were stereotypical of the time. We decided to make sure that the backing track was purely in the back of the film to make sure it didn't over power the voices of the actors in each scene. When it came to the second scene at the marina, I wanted to switch up the pace of the music in order to build suspense to the scene as the detective had entered the lions den of Big Boss. We researched different types of suspense music that could fit in with the time depicted. We feel as though the music we chose fits the scene well.

PLANNING: Risk Assessment

Risk assessment: 

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.

CONSTRUCTION: Shooting our Film

On the day of shooting our film, we used our Call Sheets to ensure we had all the props and people we needed to have a successful day of filming. We decided to film our short film opening in chronological order to ensure that everyone was involved in the narrative. This meant that the scene in the alleyway where the murder takes place is the first scene to be shot. Charlie was behind the camera, getting many shot variations with different camera angles. 

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. I thought that Charlie and Alex did very well in achieving such a smooth shot and left enough time to be able to transition to the marina scene. We also had to film 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. We also achieved a focus pull shot from Alex to the bridge in the distance which I thought looked very professional. We made the decision to film most of Big Boss's shots at a lower angle in order to convey the mood that he was much more powerful than the detective and had a more overpowering sense.

We also decided to use the green screen in our film to show our expertise and skills in order to integrate this. We thought the end product looked very professional and was an overall success and Nathan (Detective Swanson) looked as if he was outside the alleyway in the green screen shot.