Timeline Update

    Now that my group has filmed a majority of our movie, I thought I should update our previous film timeline, as the dates previously mentioned are completely different from what actually happened. Due to timing issues, unexpected plans/events coming up, as well as our own laziness, the filming dates were pushed back to March 9th and March 10th. Also, we encountered multiple issues with our cast members backing out right before production, so we took almost 2 weeks to find new actors.

    On Wednesday, March 9th, we finally met up with our mobsters and filmed every mob scene. We met up around 7:00pm and finished production at around 10-10:30pm. Although all the actors were quite upset with the late finish, we still banged out half of our film, and only needed to film the detective scenes.

    On Thursday, March 10th, my group finished up the later half of the film with the detective scenes. Casting for these scenes was much more difficult as we couldn't find someone that fit the role we were looking for perfectly. But we found one of our friends that matched it the best, and we finished up all of the filming. We started a little earlier at about 6:30, so we could prepare our scenes better, giving us more than enough time to film, we finished at around 8:30. There wasn't much of a challenge filming these scenes, but all of us being close friends didn't help it go by any faster.

    Next is the editing portion of the project, which we will complete on March 15th. My partner Aidan will do most of the editing as he is more skilled at it, and has done it for our past projects, but I will be right by his side for moral support.

    Thankfully we have already finished all of our filming, and hopefully, nothing comes up to delay our scheduled editing times.

Set Design / Mis-En-Scene

    Mis-En-Scene is important for our film as we need the set and actors to look the part for the roles we gave them. 

    For set design we decided to go with a dining room table and chandelier for the mob setting. We didn't have many resources to make huge changes to our set, so we decided this would fit the mob meeting the best. With dimmed lighting and a simple background, the dining room was easily our first choice for the set. As for the police station set, we found it best to film in a dimly lit room with paperwork scattered on the tables, as we couldn't find a suitable location for our detective scenes. 

    For costume design, we needed to take inspiration from other mob films that resembled our plot and theme.

    The mobsters were much easier to design as we had tons of examples and movies to go off of. We decided the mobster would be wearing unbuttoned shirts dress shirts, with wife beaters underneath, while wearing accessories such as gold watches, chains, and earrings. We wanted the mobsters to look much less professional than the mob boss, to set the tone and difference between the two. The wife beaters gave the perfect look of a kind of New Jersey mobster, while still not being to trashy.

    For the mob boss, we decided they would be wearing a simple black dress shirt, and dress pants. As we knew we wouldn't be showing his face, we decided to go for a much more basic yet intimidating look. Dressed in all black, it was easy to see the importance, as well as the ill intentions behind them. Costume design for the main antagonist is a very important process, which is why we wanted a more plain and mysterious look, not revealing too much about them. 

    For the detectives costume design, we wanted them to be much more professional and well dressed, to show their level of importance and motives. Simply wearing business casual attire, with a badge clipped on was enough, as we didn't want to complicate the design. Taking inspiration from multiple shows and movies, we noticed we needed to show a working look, maybe having one of them with their tie undone and shirt untucked, could show they were hard at work, and not taking a break.

 Color Grading

    Color grading is something that we could easily utilize, as it fits our genre and film style. We are making a detective/crime action movie, so using a grey-styled color grading over our film could help us achieve the look we are going for. Color grading is a widely used technique used in many films just like ours, so it was quite easy to find inspiration.

As seen above, color can play a big part in a scene's mood or overall feeling. Giving a film a grey or green color grading can give a much more dark and mysterious feel to the entire film. In our case, we want to give as much a mysterious feel as possible, which is why a grey or maybe green color grading could help our film exponentially. While lighting may be important, digitally altering the overall color of the film is the easiest way to achieve a dark and sinister look. Making sure to not over saturate the colors is important, as it can quickly make a high quality scene look subpar.

    The best example of good color grading is Twilight, in this case, the entire movie was given a grey/green color grade. This effect gave the film an extremely dark and shadowy effect, which is perfect for a movie about vampires. Without this color grade, I think the film wouldn't have been nearly as good, as it completely changed the way I viewed the movie. It made the characters fit their roles much better, giving them a more pale and vampire look. Using a color grade in our case could give us the old-time, detective look that we are striving to achieve. 

Film Music

FIlM MUSIC

    Film music is a very important part of any film, it can add a lot to any scene, whether it is suspense, action, or fear. Some of the best films feature extraordinary artists and producers responsible for the film's score.

    A good example of an amazing film score is Batman Dark Knight, which we have been taking a ton of inspiration from. This film's music was composed by Hans Zimmer, who is known to be amazing at producing film scores. Hanz Zimmer's composition in this film allowed for much more intense and intimidating scenes, as well as bringing the action up to another level. For me, the music in this film transcended filmmaking and opened my eyes up to just how much work is put into these movies. Each track is purely unique, and fit for the scene it was placed in, which shows the dedication some people put into these films. Without this tremendous film score, The Dark Knight would not be as critically acclaimed as it is.

    

    For our film, obviously, we cant compose entire pieces fit for each scene, but from what we learned in our last film project, we don't have to. Just simply finding audio on the internet that is royalty-free is just enough to enhance the suspense in our film. After seeing what a good score did to our last project, we will be sure to take our time in finding good music to fit the suspense of our movie.

Film Timeline

 Thursday, February 24th, 8:30am

• My group sat down and began deciding on filming/editing dates as well as film locations. We planned out the order in which we would film what scenes.

Saturday, February 26th, 6:30pm

• We arrive at our first location which is one of our members homes. We will film all of the mobster scenes as they all require that location, we expect to be finished by 9:30pm.

Sunday, February 27th, 7:00pm

• We will meet up at our second location which will be         . We will film all of our detective scenes, where we should finish at around 8:30pm. Afterwards we will review all of our footage from both days ensuring we have gotten everything we need.

Sunday, February 27th, 9:00pm

• We will all make our way to a sidewalk of our choosing to film the final detective scenes. We should finish at around 9:30pm, which will conclude our filming process.

Friday, March 5th, 4:30pm

• We will all meet up at a designated location and begin the editing process. This should take up to 3 hours, hopefully finishing at around 7:30pm. We will finish the entire editing process today to ensure we don't forget.

An issue we encountered in the planning process was what props and costumes we would use. We as a group couldn't decide on what the vigilante should wear, as well as the detectives. While the mobsters should be easy to dress as they are almost completely covered in darkness, the detectives will be fully visible every time they are on screen. We didn't have much time to plan the costumes out which is why it is so difficult.

Film Sounds

Film Sounds

    When it came to sounds, we already had a pretty basic idea of what we would do to further improve our film. Sound is a much more important feature than many think, especially when it comes to our action/adventure film, where sounds can make or break a scene. For our film, we want to further express the mystery and action as much as possible, and try to use sound to make the antagonist much more intimidating. We will do this by adding in background ambiance to fit a dark and dim setting, maybe creaking floorboards, heavy breathing, or slight gusts of wind could add a little intimidation factor to our scenes. While the ambiance may be important, these will only be subtle additions, as we don't want them to distract the viewer, and only want to add to their viewing experience.

    For a much more noticeable and important effect, we will add weather to the background, like rain and thunder. Much of our scenes will be indoors, which can be great for weather sounds, like rain hitting the sides of a window, thunder rumbling the skies, or lightning crackling down. There will be no visuals for these sounds, so we can pretty much add any extreme weather effects that we feel will fit the scenes. Again, we don't want to distract the viewer from the actual scenes, but adding these subtle effects of rain and thunder can help tremendously in achieving a much more mysterious undertone.

     For voice audio, we plan on using the microphone on our cameras/phones, as we don't see a need for an upgrade. While this is just an assumption, it won't be necessary to upgrade equipment, as most scenes will be very close shots of the speaker, where we should be able to hear them very easily. Just in case of emergency, we do have backup microphones and spare equipment on standby, but in the meantime, there is just no need to use them.

 

Lighting Research

    Lighting will be an extremely important aspect of our film as it will enhance the feelings we are trying to portray, as well as give the viewer the feel we are looking for. Using some clever lighting tricks, we can turn our antagonist into the scary mob boss into someone to fear.

    

    We wanted our film to be very heavily based on old school mobster/gangster films. To enhance the noir type experience, we want to have a very villainous mob boss as the antagonist. To make the antagonist more intimidating and mysterious, we want to shroud them in darkness. Not revealing their true identity by covering them in darkness is a very clever way we can make them more intimidating.

    For the protagonist of our film, we want them to be in a much brighter setting, showing the contrast between the two. This would be easier, as we would just have him in a bright setting with many lights. We plan to provide lighting from above the character, like a street light shrouding the charcter in a dimmed yellow.

    Despite the fact that we wanted the protagonist to be lit up, we still wanted to maintain the noir feeling of the film opening. Due to this, we found it best for the film to still take place at night, further illuminating where the protagonist is, and further contrasting the light from the dark.