Padd Solutions

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'Gnossienne No.1' composed by Satie (performed by Myleene Klass)
This piece of music is played over the entire first scene, is entitled 'Gnosienne No. 1' and is composed by Erik Satie and performed by Myleene Klass and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. I chose this piece of music because while it is a romantic song (and is classed as one) it also has dark tones about it, therefore personifying Smith and Roselyn's relationship with each other. It plays for the duration of Scene 1 in it's entirety but decreases in volume when the news report is seen and decreases further when Smith turns the news report off.


'Do I Look Pretty?' composed and performed by Robert Rodriguez
This song is the first of two songs that I chose for the film that were composed and performed by Robert Rodriguez for Quentin Tarantino's film Kill Bill Volume 2. While the songs are effective in themselves they also bring with them intertextual referencing for fans of Tarantino's very popular film. If the audience realise the music is borrowed from Kill Bill, a story about a woman's revenge on those who have wronged her, this will give the scene a deeper meaning to them and they will see aspects of The Bride within my character, Ros. This particular piece was also very effective for my film as it starts off quite soft but then becomes hard and sounds almost dangerous, which matches the tone of the scene perfectly, in which Ros is poisoning one of the tea cups.


'Moonlight Sonata' composed by Beethoven (unknown performer)
This piece of music is played over the majority of scene 3, is entitled 'Moonlight Sonata' and is composed by Ludwig van Beethoven but is performed by an unknown performer. I chose this piece of music because, again, much like Satie's piece, it is a romantic song yet it also has dark tones about it, again personifying Smith and Roselyn's relationship with each other. It is also an extremely popular piece of classical music, one I'm hoping my intellectual audience will instantly recognise. And because they have recognised the song, the scene will be more powerful to them.


'Budd Twang' composed and performed by Robert Rodriguez
This song is the second of two songs that I chose for the film that were composed and performed by Robert Rodriguez for Quentin Tarantino's film Kill Bill Volume 2. While the songs are effective in themselves they also bring with them intertextual referencing for fans of Tarantino's very popular film. If the audience realise the music is borrowed from Kill Bill, a story about a woman's revenge on those who have wronged her, this will give the scene a deeper meaning to them and they will see aspects of The Bride within my character, Ros. This particular piece was also effective because it's quite melancholy and shows that even though Ros felt she had to kill him to keep her pride and dignity (not just the money) she is not extremely happy about it, after all she did love the man, he was the one who betrayed her.

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Once I had shot all the footage for my short film I then began the process of editing - I was able to shoot the film within a week or two, therefore I thought I would wait to gather all my footage before beginning editing. I chose to edit my short film at home as I own Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, the same software my college uses and one I was already familiar with, and because I used my own DSLR camera, the Canon EOS 550D, my footage was in the form of 720p HD .mov files which needed to be transcoded to a different format before I could work with them in Premiere (CS5 allows native editing with .mov files however CS4 does not). I chose to transcode them to the .mp4 file format using Adobe Media Encoder which did compress the footage to make the files a smaller size but didn't impact the quality.

Then I began a new project in Premiere Pro and added all of my source files to the bin and divided them into different folders based on whether they belonged to scene 1, 2 or 3. After this I then added every clip into the timeline and rendered all of the footage so each clip would play in the timeline without lagging and therefore would be easy to discern where I wanted to cut the footage or if there were any problems with the footage and I needed to re-shoot, luckily all of the footage was fine and I didn't need to re-shoot anything (once I had completed shooting - as detailed in my previous posts I did have to re-shoot a few shots from Day 2 of filming but I re-filmed them on Day 4). Then, because I knew I only wanted to add one colour effect to the entire of my video, I added a filter called ProcAmp and desaturated the footage slightly (Fig. 2). This was simply because the footage seemed a little too orange due to the incandescent lighting in my locations (Fig. 1) but I didn't want to change the colours drastically. I then re-rendered all of the footage with this new effect.


Fig. 1 & 2

After all the clips had rendered I went through each and cut them down to what footage I would actually need in my film using the Razor tool primarily, out of habit, but sometimes using the simpler option of dragging the end or beginning of the clip to where I wanted to make the cut. So after the lengthy, but simple process of placing every shot filmed in chronological order I decided to add titles to the beginning of my film to be superimposed in the first scene (but not over the news report as that would distract the audience too much from important plot details divulged by the news reader). To do this I created titles for every credit I wanted at the beginning of the film including Man of War Productions, a film by Louis Cochran, a cast list and lastly the title of the film itself. I used the font Gotham which I had installed on my computer by default and felt that this bold and striking sans serif font was perfect for my film as I didn't want to have a gimmicky font to do with rats themselves. I also like the font because it is the same font used for the promotion of the movie Inception (2010, Christopher Nolan) which is also a thriller. I made the font red to connotate love, danger and death, three elements common of thrillers and my own film and gave a it drop shadow to make sure it would still be visible upon any background (Fig. 3).


Fig. 3

Now that the video editing was complete, it was time to add music and adjust the sound, which probably took a longer time to perfect than the actual video editing of the film. I began by placing the musical soundtrack where I wanted them, using 'Gnossienne No.1' composed by Satie (performed by Myleene Klass) in the first scene, 'Do I Look Pretty?' composed and performed by Robert Rodriguez in the second scene and 'Moonlight Sonata' composed by Beethoven (unknown performer) and 'Budd Twang' composed and performed by Robert Rodriguez in the third and final scene. I then cropped them and used audio transitions to have each of them fade out when the scene changed/when Smith dies in scene 3 (Fig. 4).


Fig. 4

Whereas the music for the first, third and fourth songs was primarily designed to be background music, the second song, 'Do I Look Pretty' had a direct impact on the editing of the second scene as I wanted the song to match the action perfectly. So I decided that although the editing was technically finished on the video I would cut it down further to fit in with the music, particularly the flourish towards the end of the song which I synced with Ros pouring the rat poison into the tea cup (Fig. 5).


Fig. 5

Another aspect of this scene, earlier on just after Ros has listened to the voicemail, is that there were no ambient sounds whatsoever which is exactly what I intended, I wanted the audience to engage with the emotional shock Ros has just been through. However when Ros drops the phone, it felt odd without any sound at all, so I included the recorded sound of the phone dropping but I lowered the volume and didn't include any other ambient noise past this point for this scene (Fig. 6).


Fig. 6

Another element of the sound that was imperative to get perfect was the sound of coughing being played over two points in the film, when Smith assumes Ros is dying, and when Smith is actually dying as Ros speaks to him. The first occasion was easy enough as I had recorded the sound of Leann (Ros) coughing again and again for this exact purpose Fig. 8), however when I tried to get Scott (Smith) to cough again and again he seemed to be struggling to breathe afterwards so rather than put him at risk I went with what I had so far which was repeated several times but because of the gaps between (Fig. 7), only someone looking for similarities in coughs would notice (which of course not many audience members would).


Fig. 7 & 8

The final thing I had to do in regards to the sound was edit the sound levels of the clips as the ambient noise was sometimes distracting. I simply created audio keyframes on the sound clips in the timeline and raised them there was speech and lowered them when there was only ambient noise to be heard.


Fig. 9

Then it was simply a matter of exporting the footage to create a working movie file ready to be uploaded to YouTube and burnt to a DVD, however it wasn't as simple as that for me as I will detail in my next post.

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I was originally going to shoot Leann reading her final lines to Smith on Day 4 however the shoot had gone on for a few hours and my actors were getting restless so I decided to call it a day because I needed these last few lines to be delivered seriously.

Drawing influence from Kill Bill Volume 2 (see my previous textual analysis) I chose to have Ros' last lines in upside down CUs and MCUs (upside down because they are from Smith's point of view as he dies on the floor)  and I think they work very well. Her first few lines are spoken in MCU (Fig. 1) but as Ros gets more intense and emotional with her speech (asking Smith when he stopped loving her) the view cuts to CUs to make the audience empathise with her (Fig. 2).


Fig. 1 & 2

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Thankfully, the majority of the filming had been completed on Day 2 so Day 4 wasn't too hard going. I got Scott, Leann and myself together at Leann's house again and continued on with the filming. However, before I could film any new scenes I needed to re-shoot two shots which I discovered after filming had gone wrong. Both involved pivotal lines being spoken but I accidentally had my finger over my camera's microphone holes. Luckily it only happened twice and I have learnt from my mistake and didn't let it happen again on Day 4.

The shot below (Fig. 1 & 2) is a simple but effective shot as it begins with Scott out of focus but then he leans forward and comes into focus and the camera tilts upwards as he drinks from his tea cup. It is also noteworthy because it, again, brings angles into importance. At this moment in time, the audience may believe that Leann is dying and Smith still has the power here so the camera is low angled making Smith seem dominant.


Fig 1 & 2

This dominance is then immediately taken away from Smith as the second he drinks from his tea cup we cut to an extremely high angled shot which makes him seem small and takes away his dominance (Fig. 3). We still do not entirely know what has happened so the shot of Ros' smile (Fig. 4) is straight on rather than high or low angled.


Fig. 3 & 4

Once Smith has died on the floor, after Ros tells him how she managed to outwit him (scenes to be filmed on Day 5) the next important CUs are those of the rose (Fig. 5), Ros' new solo calling card, this is why I purposely included the rose in the frame behind Ros every chance I got, to foreshadow the coming of a new solo criminal, Ros, who leaves a calling card of a rose on the bodies of her victims (Fig. 6).


Fig. 5 & 6

The final shot of the film was influenced by Psycho, however it was originally going to be very similar to the slow zoom in to Norman at the end of the film however, this shot didn't work practically because my camera's lens range wasn't large enough so I settled for a simpler shot but more haunting than a slow zoom may have been as Ros drinks her tea and then suddenly breaks the fourth wall and stares directly into the camera.


Fig. 7

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Day 3 of shooting consisted of obtaining a voice recording of my sister, Tassia, reading out her lines over the phone to me. I filmed nothing but let my camera's microphone record her speech. I had to do it this way because she was currently in Whitby when I wanted to obtain the recording, but it actually worked out extremely well. Originally I was going to record her reading her lines while she was in the room with me, and then edit the audio in Premiere Pro to make it sound like it was coming through a telephone (the reason behind this was to make sure I got a high quality recording of the lines no matter what) but when I realised I couldn't do that with my time constraints I decided having a high quality version wasn't important when it would sound great coming from a mobile phone on loudspeaker anyway.

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For Day 2 of filming I gathered myself, Leann and Scott together at Leann's house and began filming. For the opening I wanted subvert general film conventions (not specifically thriller conventions) by not showing my main characters in the film first. Firstly I show the Newsreader reading the news (Fig. 1) (slightly expositional but necessary for a short film with a need-to-know backstory) and then the first thing we see of a presumed protagonist is his thumb (Fig. 2), not even his face. Then the audience do see his face, but it is obscured by a balaclava, which he does then take off. If my film was feature length, I would draw these shots out in length to increase anticipation in the audience.


Fig. 1 & 2

Then the character of Ros is introduced, she is wearing a balaclava too (the same one actually) but she also takes it off to deliver her lines. The shot below (Fig. 3) is important because it features a subtly placed rose behind her, as she talks about using a rose for a calling card instead of a rat.


Fig. 3

The shots below are OTS (over the shoulder) shots of Smith watching television, the aforementioned Shallow Grave clips for intertexuality and foreshadowing.


Fig. 4 & 5

When shooting these shots, it was important that I shoot from a high angle to make Ros seem weak to enhance audience empathy later (Fig. 6). I tried to reshoot the CU of the mobile phone several times (Fig. 7) however every time I tried I still got the same glare from the phone so I decided to use this shot anyway, as even if you can't see that she's calling voicemail, the impending message makes it clear what she's doing anyway.


Fig. 6 & 7

Again the high angle is employed in this shot is used to imply how weak Ros feels right now but the reason I'm including it here is because to achieve these shots which make it appear as though Ros has dropped the phone from ear level to the ground which would most likely break it I had her drop the phone (my own phone actually) into a colander which was held just out of shot, and then dropped from just out of the frame's view to the floor.


Fig. 8 & 9

The following two shots (Fig. 10 & 11) are an example of an eyeline match and take place just after she notices the rat poison in the dish next to the dropped phone. I could have just assumed the audience would know that the little green pellets in the dish were rat poison but I needed to include this just to make absolutely sure the audience knew what she was dosing the tea with.


Fig. 10 & 11

This shot is an extremely low angle to make Ros seem highly powerful and dominant (Fig. 12), because in this scene she is. She's taking control and poisoning her deceitful partner. I also intend to make the shot slow motion in which Ros pours the poison into the tea to emphasise her actions to the audience.


Fig. 12 & 13

In this shot (Fig. 14 is at the beginning of this shot, Fig. 15 is at the end) I have placed the camera above the table and will keep returning to the table at this viewpoint. I originally wanted a round or square table because I wanted to make the table with the tea sitting on it seem like a game board, as after all, it is a very deadly game Ros and Smith end up playing with each other.


FIg. 14 & 15

For many of the following shots (Fig. 16 & 17) I drew upon Mr. and Mrs. Smith for influence during the dinner scene in which close ups and high/low angles are utilized almost constantly to indicate who has the upper hand in their subtle confrontation, a technique I have emulated here.



Fig. 16, 17, 18 & 19

I would've continued filming the scene and finishing the film however this was when my camera's battery ran out of charge so I was forced to call it a day and resume filming another time soon.

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For the first day of shooting, I filmed Jenny reading the news section of my film in my college's green room (Fig. 1). I shot her reading the news a few times in a MCU as this is conventional for news reports. After importing the footage into Premiere Pro I used the chroma key effect to replace the background with the image of the Humber Bridge I posted previously. However, I decided it looked too amateur and so I used a Windows Vista default wallpaper (this kind of backdrop is heavily utilized in news broadcasts), tinted it blue and placed it behind Jenny in Premiere Pro (Fig. 2). I preferred the effect a lot more and felt it looked much more professional. Then, emulating Calendar News, I simply put the title of my news broadcast in the bottom left corner without a clock or a scrolling banner (as a scrolling banner is more common to national broadcasts whereas this is only a local broadcast).


Fig. 1 & 2

I also shot two scenes that I also need before I shoot the actual film itself, and they are recordings of two scenes from the Danny Boyle film 'Shallow Grave.' Smith will put this film on the television as Ros leaves the room to make the tea and it will be used as an intertextual device foreshadowing the betrayal about to take place in my narrative, similar to the multiple betrayals seen in the final scenes of 'Shallow Grave' itself. I decided to film the film being played on my computer monitor as importing the film itself into Premiere Pro would've been complicated and time-consuming and I like the grainy, weathered effect when a film is filmed, it made Shallow Grave seem a lot grittier than it already was.


Fig. 3 & 4

After editing the news report and the 'Shallow Grave' footage together in Premiere Pro, I then burnt the video file to a DVD, ready to be played during filming, when I shoot my actual film.