Done Murder Scenes

Today we have done three murder scenes, which are quite fun. I was trying to make that fake blood that drives me crazy to get that color. But finally made that “fake” blood, anyway, it is a nice experience of doing the fake blood stuff. Most importantly, I understand how important organizing all the things before filming even though you have a million of essays to submit at the same time. We were planning to do the murder scenes on last Sunday, but unachieved. The reason is that we didn’t have time to organize all the things like the place, props and actors. In the second times, we were all well organized, and have done it fluently.

Because of the limited time for the flashback scenes, we did not pay attention to have more actions in the scene. But I have a fantastic idea of murder scenes; there is a guy who is sitting in the office room, reading the cases or newspapers. the criminal is showing up (using the exaggerate shadow to create the moody environment, and showing the victim’s calm expression and the criminal is holding a knife or gun, and then shot the victim, the blood is splashing on the wall.)

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Last TV Class

This is the last week of our TV/film class. To be honest, I do enjoy every class in TV, because I love the way of making and knowing the stuff I like. We did the self assessment and peer assessment today. I gave myself 79/100, I cannot say that I did a fantastic job in our film, but I do enjoy it and tried my best. From the pre-production to post production, I was trying to involved into everything. When I was dreaming about when can make my own film, this course do achieve my dream, from the complicated filmmaking progress, I have learned how to write synopsis, make auditions, organize place, find suitable props, research for the film, set up lighting, working with people and editing. Every progress I have involved and really learned a lot.

Even though I still have no idea what I want to do in my future career, but I have an awareness of what I like to do, such as DOP, cinematographer and production designer. I love making the visual things as nice as possible. This is one direction I would like to achieve. I will keep going and try different things to make things possible.

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ADR Thoughts

In this week, we have to focus more on the ADR part, the sound effect is quite important in our film.

I have an idea that when we doing the ADR part, actors are able to watch the scene of their acting and then refers to the sound recording. It would be compatible to the actual scene and make it like a real conversation.

For the flashbacks (murder scenes), I came up with idea of every individual scene, should only showing that black gloves, and creating the mysterious of this criminal. We came up with some murder scenes

•  A women is murdered beside the broken wine glasses and dragged out by a person who wears the black gloves (only close up of the girl’s high heels and that black gloves)
• A guy is being killed by food poisoning, lying down on the table
• A guy is almost being killed and falls down, using his blood to write PATON on the floor. And the criminal erases the words with his black gloves.

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Inspiration in Post Production

• Audio part, change the lines

This is so true that some of our film lines sounds a bit of weird in 1970s, I was totally unaware of this problem until Robin      pointed out. To be a cinematographer in this film, even though the lines are not my job, but in some points, it does matter i terms of decreasing the style of film and destroys the continuity of what our film is trying to express.

What can we do about the lines? We have to cancel the lines in interview part, when Alexa says, “ it is tedious, I know”

Make the lines simple is important.

• The sound of typewriter can be continued before she picks up the phone, make the sound much faster when she is pacing around in the hidden office.

• In the phone conversation, Paton is only showing in the scene at the end of his lines. “but you come alone and I wont show”.  All the other scenes only showing Alexa.

• Change the scene of she comes to office and panic showing in her face, because there is another scene more dramatic.

• Flashback: when she flips the pages, showing the different flashbacks of these people who are being killed or murdered.

I am thinking about that Paton wears the black gloves when he is talking with Alexa in the phone, we can create the close up of dead body with his black gloves in doing some actions, like drug the dead body or the action of killing the people. All those flashback should show his gloves. And at the end of the phone conversation, Paton is showing and audience realizes that he is that criminal in the flashback.

• Phone recording

We have to record the phone conversation or maybe we can achieve it in the audio filter, because we just wanna show the face of Alexa in the scene and showing her emotion. The sound should come from the phone.

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FCP Reflection

Finished the rough cut of our film, it occupied my weekend and just wrapped. Basically, I haven’t done the audio and color correction yet.

I do enjoy the process of editing; because I am always learning and reviewing the knowledge I have learned through FCP and put it in the real film we made. It is kind of amazing feeling for me.

I think the most important thing I gained in this rough editing is that I am always keep doing the experiment and tried different ways of editing, and then satisfied by one of the experimenting.

I am quite good at organizing all my bins and sequences, it makes me comfortable and not panic about losing the clips or aren’t able to find the clips.

I am really not good at audio level, for some parts already have been cut, I cannot make it sound smoothly. And also sound weird that even the scene looks smooth but for sound, just cannot keep it continuously. This is what we are going to put much effort in it.

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Working With People

This is such an amazing experience to work out with other people. I do appreciate to my TV group members. They give me too many spaces to talk about my ideas in this film. Sometimes we have different perspective which cannot be avoided, but we still an figure it out and the result would tell us who is right or wrong, but we never judge each other before the result came out.

I love working with people, but also I am afraid that I am also a very aggressive person. I am quite confident about some of my thoughts, they give me a chance to speak it out, for the disagree part, they are always so generous to accept and prove it to me that it might be wrong.

We were facing a millions of problems when pre-production, and I think it is normal to have problems, because it gives our encouragement to fix the problem, this is the way of making things perfect. We dealt all the problems together and finally the shooting time.

Luckily, with the full preparation in pre-production, we did not have any big problem like missing gears, lighting and scene schedule. For some small problem we have, one is the audio, there is a construction near the office, and so we have to record all the conversation in the quite office after finishing all the shots. Fortunately, we did not have too many dialogues. Another problem is that we were spending too much time and 1hour behind the actual filming schedule, but it is also not a big deal, because we left the footage at the end of all action shots. Actually, at the end, we finished much earlier than we thought.

I have to special thanks to all the people coming down to our film. They gave us too much inspiration and encouragement. Really appreciated. Sebastian, Scott, Jeffrey, Charmaine, Vanessa and Kai.

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Filming Reflection

FINALLY WE DID IT!!!!!

I was so nervous before the filming, because I did not have any lighting experiment in the actual filming place, and addition to the lighting is the most important part in our film, anyway, nothing to say but so stressful.

I have been preparing all the lightings and props since 9 o’clock in the morning. I feel a little bit guilty to remove all the files from the Benji grandpa’s desk, and replace our props. I know it is quite hard to return it back like exact same place, but I tried.

For the lighting, there is one thing I have to demonstrate is that lighting really can change the whole situation and circumstance. I was so worried about that our filming office would not be like 70s style, so still worried about it even u have a fully plan of how to organize the lighting in the plot, but in the actual filming, everything would be changed through lighting in your mind, but the idea is still there, the only thing changing is the position, because I didn’t have lighting experiment in rehearsal.

The cookie lighting, the harsh door shadow and the soft window lighting from the small office, those are all in my control and exact the same visual as I imagine in my mind.

I have faced with the problems of that cookies board. For the board I was going to make, I thought it should be as thick as stable in the stand, but it would be very hard to cut into shape, so I chose that less thick one. But the problem was happened during the shooting. I used two arm hands to control it, the thing is solved, but I have lesson of understanding the situation of the board, it could not be stable if it is thin. Another problem about this board is that the shape is quite blurring to display on the wall that it’s different from what I thought it would be. Finally, I have addressed this problem with the help of other peers. It takes a long time to deal with it and the actors and crews are all waiting for me to finish the set up. To be honest, I am such a bad lighting person.

With the deep progress of filming, I was getting more confident with the lighting set up. The redhead was awesome tool for our 1970s color temperature, we used it for different set ups, because it is really useful and the color looks perfect in the camera.

There are three lighting set up which are my favorite and really appreciated with the help of Sebastian and Scott.

• The harsh door shadow. I am using this shadow when Johnson knocks the office’s door, and creates the mystery of this person. The idea is there, set up this lighting is not easy. We were using the 1k Fresnel, which can be the very strong lighting source.  Sebastian was helping me with the position of Fresnel. There were many tries of different shape of shadows, and finally we made the most perfect shadow with everyone’s appreciation. This is such a prideful moment that you got the affirmative with the result.
• The cookies lighting. This thought I was taking out from a video from YouTube that is teaching you how to created the window effects on the wall. I was putting the situation in our filming office, the wall is blank and nothing can be decorate except the wallpaper and painting, but for public office, we are not allow to do it. Therefore, I came up with this idea of cookie lighting.
• The phone call from Paton

In this scene, I would like to make it as dark as possible in Paton’s face, because it would be easy for the audience to figure out who the person is. We were using two dedo kit, one is the right parallel position with Paton, and another one is at his back, to light his edge of left face. That takes a long time to set up because it is such an important scene and I was trying different position to make the lighting perfectly in the camera. Using the board to cut the light from his above face and only light in his mouth, with the light from his left face edge and the floating dust is showing in the light. I have to say it is such an amazing shot.

Precious things I have learned in this lighting experience

• Calm down, and have confidence to achieve your visual mind.
• Flexible to the lighting. Lighting is being controlled by your mind and the lighting atmosphere can be exchanged when you change the lighting position.
• Lighting continuity (most important)
• Perfectly corporate with the camera operator. Check the monitor or screen, and to see what the actual looks in camera. It is different to see between your eyes and the screen.
• Be safty. Do not trip the crews in the plot by those disorganized lines.

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