FMP: PRODUCTION

Filming

SCENE 1

Scene 1 was one of two scenes that is focused on monologues. For scene 1 the main character introduces himself and talks about his obsession of killing people. This was the second scene I recorded and for this scene the set is my room is its convenient and depending on how busy the house is I can record this scene anytime I want. I recorded 3 takes in total as the first 2 takes I forgot my lines and had to restart. It was hard to remember my lines as there were alot and i wanted to have as little cuts as possible in between the main cuts to add more immersion to the film. I wore my characters outfit (which is just my usual clothes, makes things more convenient) and sat on a chair and talked to the camera. When it comes to the acting I didnt want to over do it so it looks like I'm trying hard and I also had to take into account the mental disorders this character has. In the end I found it most successful when I just acted like a slightly over exaggerated version of myself, this made the performance more believable and adds immersion to the film. This scene and scene 4 were the hardest scenes to record for me as it heavily relies on my acting which I'm not too experienced in. This is practice for future projects so at the end of the day this is a good thing. To end it off I intentionally wore a bright shirt to represent his mood during this scene, as his shirt is mostly white it represents that he is feeling happy or satisfied the very least. The red on the shirt represents the skeletons in his closet. His dark secret, the murdering obsession.

SCENE 2

This scene was the easiest to record but that also means there is really not much I can talk about when it comes to this scene. The scene itself is from the main characters perspective and he is monitoring one of his future victims. It's a short and simple scene. Halfway through the scene my character makes a noise with the leaves which causes the victim to notice and try look for the sound. Struggles to find the source of this sound then speed walks out of the woods. I got very lucky with the sound for this scene, throughout the whole scene there is a background noise and I think it's a saw or some sort of construction tool and you can hear it in the video then as soon as my character makes the noise with the leaves the construction noise stops which puts more focus onto the leaves sound and also makes it believable that the victim would hear the leaves. This was entirely unintentional but makes the scene alot more subtle and I love his accident as I most likely will not have to worry about the sound of this scene for when it comes to editing. The actor in there scene is a reoccurring character who appears in the final 2 scenes and this was intentional, they are the same character. Other than that there's not much else to say about this scene.

SCENE 3

Scene 3 is the first time we see the main character kill one of his victims, it takes place in a forest and originally it was going to take place in an abandoned building but we weren't 100% sure if they was legal and we also didnt think it was very safe considering it could be a place dangerous people go to. So in the end we decided to do it in a forest, not too far away from everything so that we're in danger from strangers but not too public so that we can film without us bothering anyone or anyone bothering us. For this scene the victim gets gassed, we were originally going to use orange smoke grenades but we didn't think it was legal so I used a deodorant can instead and will edit in the gas during the post production stage. We brought a wheelchair to use for the victim to sit on as we thought it stands out more as unsettling compared to if we used a real chair. In addition, it raises more questions for the audience. How did he get the wheelchair? Was he previously injured? Did he steal it from someone or from an asylum? Or did he simply purchase it online? The actor was camera shy so we improvised by placing a bag on his head which benefits the film anyway as it dehumanises the victims even more which was my original goal as we are watching the film from the killers perspective so obviously the victims would be dehumanised. We took a total of 4 takes for this scene, 2 on each part. Part 1 is where my character goes off track and randomly talks about penguins then gets the gas mask. Part 2 is the actual killing of the victim with the gas. The first mistake was when one of my actors phone went off during the recording and the second mistake was when the actor with the bag over his head couldn't hear me talk with the gas mask on so he didnt know when his cue to cough was, especially as he couldn't see. To solve this I made sure to speak loudly and even made him count down from 6 as that is how long my part would take. We didn't have long to film as the actor had to go to work in 2 hours so we had to set everything up then act it out and put everything back before he had to go to work. As for my acting I think I did okay, I did stumble a bit with my lines as I was trying to remember what to say but me stumbling works in my favour as it fits the characters social behaviour around other people.

SCENE 4

Scene 4 is the other monologue scene, scene 1 being the first. Scene 4 is very similar to scene 1 and this was intentional. Everything is the same except the characters mood. The character is feeling reflective during this scene and is very upset as he self pitys about being alone. During this scene he is mainly feeling negative emotion and negative emotions are considered bad and bad things are connotations to dark colours. This explains the lighting and the time of day this scene was recorded. This scene was recorded at night to get the dark background and to get the lighting on my character so he isnt in pitch black i sat in front of my TV and put a video on it so it was just a bright white screen which shot at my character so he is visible. His clothing also represents his mood. In scene 1 he wore a bright shirt to represent his positive mood but in this scene where he has a negative mood his shirt is mainly black. The white dots on the shirt represent the tiny bit of humanity the character is showing as this is the only scene where he truly shows his emotions unlike the other scenes which makes this scene stand out compared to the rest. I had trouble remembering my lines so I have 2 takes of this scene. Both in the same recording which I include on the website. This was the hardest scene to record as it heavily relies on my acting and for this scene in specific I had to portray emotion to a character who struggles to portray emotion. For the camera angle I made it so that my head is almost always slightly out of frame, this causes claustrophobia for the character and the audience as the character is feeling panicked and stressed which fits the camera angle, contrast to scene 1 where his whole body was in frame to the camera angle as he was feeling pleased and satisfied. This is my favourite scene out of the whole film.

SCENE 5

This scene is very similar to scene 3, in which there is the main character who has a victim captive, tied to a wheelchair in the middle of the woods. This goes to show that the killer has a specific routine that he follows for each victim and we only see a small part out of the whole process. As we see this scene again it shows that its repetitive and as its repetitive it proves that the process he follows to murder people actually works as he hasn't been caught yet. In reality we needed to film this scene along with scene 3 within a limited time and we also didnt have access to an abandoned building which was the original plan. The victim in this scene is the same character that the killer stalks in scene 2. This scene does end differently compared to scene 3, during this scene the main character forgets one of his torture equipments so he had to leave the victim unmonitored. This was a big mistake as the build of the victim is strong, strong enough to break out of his binds and escape, minutes later the killer comes back but sees his victim is gone and goes into a slight frustrated rage and immediately picks up the camera to search for the victim until he gets jumped by the victim, making the killer drop the camera. I have to give praise to the actor who plays the victim as he does an excellent job at acting afraid of me, especially when comparing both of our body builds. His facial expressions are so well done and he improvised his facial expressions and even came up with an idea where he trips as he walks out of frame from the camera. Again I think my acting here is mediocre at best, I was mainly concentrating on remembering my lines. The goal was for me to go for unnatural behaviour so it shows that he doesnt fit in with everyone else which links back to a dialogue he said in scene 1 "I'm not really a people person, I dont fit in" for the scene where the victim attacks the killer while filming I genuinly got afraid as I turn around and see this massive guy charge at me at full speed. My genuine reaction is in the recording which is great as it'll add more believability to the scene and increase immersion for the audience. This scene leads to scene 6 which is the finale of the short film. Overall scene 5 is meant to be contrasted to Scene 3. The same way Scene 4 is meant to be contrasted to Scene 1. This is intentionally done as it shows routine and cycle and the difference between the contrasts for when things doesnt go the way the killer wants it.

SCENE 6

So this is the final scene in the short film and this scene can be summed up with a short fight scene with a bird's eye view panning out of the main characters face, for this shot I took huge inspirations from the final shot in breaking bad and the bird eye view shot at the end of taxi driver. The fight scene took the most attempts to record with a total of 6 attempts which is the most out of any other scene I've recorded for this short film. This scene features the same character who appeared in scene 2 and 5. This whole scene is a direct continue to scene 5 which stands out because all of the other scenes can be watched in any order really as they all take place in different places at different times. My favourite feature about this scene is the fight me and the other actor choreographed. It was fun to do and to act out. We had to plan out the fight scene around the camera angle as we had to do the whole fight in 1 still shot and I believe we did a fantastic job with it. Loved every second of making this fight scene. This scene was also the final scene we recorded. One problem is that it was starting to get clowdy and rain so we had to be quick near the end so we could get the shot we needed before the weather got really bad. When it comes to the editing stage I want to add a song at the end and then make it transition into the credits. Overall I loved making this scene but there's not much to say about this as it was mostly improvised on the day as we didn't have access to an open indoors area so we used the woods and just came up with the fight scene and how to transition into the fight scene from scene 5 to 6 on the day which was really good in my opinion as being able to improvise is a good skill to have.

Set design, costumes

SET DESIGN

As for my room i just left everything as normal but placed a chair facing my TV and put the camera on the TV. For Scene 4 I recorded when it was dark then put a video on my TV of pure white screen so that it lit me up. That was my lighting for my room. For the Forrest Scenes we brought a wheelchair with us for the scenes that required it then used the surroundings of the woods that we thought would look good for the camera.

COSTUMES

For the other actors who played the victims they wore their casual outfits as it doesn't matter too much plus it would fit their characters more. As for the main character he would wear a fancy button shirt with a waistcoat. He would wear this to adress his formal side of the character and possibly wears it as he feels some sort of superiority from it compared to other people but he also wears jeans which doesn't match his top half which shows how disconnected he is from everything social related. This combination of clothing makes his appearance look like a walking contradiction which can fit his personality and his actions, he complains that he is alone yet spends his time killing people when he could be befriending those same people he kills.

Uncut Scenes