MATTHEW HEYNS 

CANDIDATE NUMBER 1828

CLAREMONT FAN COURT SCHOOL 64680

My production team: Finn Hanley 1824 , Ben Richardson 1853, Samuel De Bruin 1815

My brief was to produce a film opening that lasted a maximum of two minutes. The title of our film was called Suspect. Our murder mystery places three random suspects who have never met before as the three masterminds behind the murder of Lottie Wilson. Although the genre of our opening sequence is a murder mystery, there are elements of humour within the opening sequence, this humour is generated through the direct contrast in our suspects personalities.

Editing

My main responsibility was the editing. I edited both the poster and our final production. The software I used to edit the poster was Adobe’s Photoshop. Whereas when editing our opening sequence, I opted to use Final Cut Pro X. My role was to piece together the storyline by selecting the right camera angles I believe we needed to make the result look good.

Directing

There was a good balance of ideas between the four of us in the production team. I started with the initial idea of a murder mystery, however, as a team we were able to develop that idea into our final production. When filming scenes if someone didn’t think something look right, they would often say something, this made it easy to come out with our best product.

Camerawork

Just like directing the job of who controlled the camera was also fairly distributed. As we were all in at least one scene, it meant that everyone got a chance to film when they were not busy acting.

 

 

 

HOT SEATING

Hot seating is a very good way for our actors to really get into the mind of the character role they are playing. This allows each actor to really understand how their character thinks, talks and acts. Hot seating also gives the audience an insight of how each characters acts on a day to day basis as if they were real people. Therefore, each character in our opening sequence will be interviewed by answering a few simple questions. 

Questions:

1. What is your name?

2. What do you do?

3. Do you know Lottie Wilson?

4. Have you heard of Munns Park?

Although these questions seem fairly basic, it is the way in which each character responds to the questions, which gives us a good insight on their personality traits.

Script:

Finn:

1. Kieran Tucker but the ladies call me KT.

2. What don’t I do? Some say I’m a man of many talents, but I say I’m a man that is a master of all. 

3. Eh I know the name but she ain’t playing the game you know what I mean ay.

4. Yeah, Munns park just down my road init, two lefts, one right and when you see the green bin another right ay.

Ben:

1. Alan Cork

2. Spend most of the day on the banks of the river Nile with my mate Benji, we do fishing.

3. Nah but I’m sure Benji does he knows everyone.

4. Yeah, Munns park where me and my good mate Benji go fishing, lovely spot, you can find me there all day.

Sam: 

1. Herbert Crafts 

2. I am the largest shoelace distributor in the south east county of England known as surrey. Yes, I know what you were thinking, my suit is Italian crafted, one day you could get yourself a nice suit mate even if you must rent it.

3. Look I’d love to stay and chat I really would, but Mark just called in saying he wants to try out one of my jet skis, yes Mark Wahlberg. I’ll get my receptionist to send you a postcard of me and mark down in the Maldives shredding the waves on my Kawasaki 3000.

Matt:

1. Detective Superintendent Thorne

2. I am the leading inspector for the Met police. I’ve done over 15 years in the force which has led to great success of over 500 cases solved by no other than yours truly.

3. Information regarding Lottie Wilson would be much appreciated; however, I cannot discuss any other information regarding this person.

4. Again, anything that is related to the crime scene is left for disclosure.

Barman:

1. Roger Pratters

2. I run the spoons down the road, don’t listen to what any no chap tells you none of our pints are watered down. You hear me?

3. Heard about her on the news, I think she was never dead, maybe playing dead who knows. has anyone checked maybe she’s just sleeping?

4. Yeah good old Munns park, back in the day me and Wayne Rooney used to have a kick about there, think it was him at least.

CONSTRUCTION: ALAN CORK SCENE

On the 19th of March, we filmed a scene which showed Alan Cork fishing on the side of the river in West End Recreational ground (Munns Park). My role was to film using my phone and the drone. I experimented with a variety of different shot types that ranged from a drone shot, tracking shot, pan shot, close up, over the shoulder and long shot. Using the drone allowed us to take shots of Alan Cork from various angles from far away and high up. The drone was also used to give us an establishing shot of the park, where the murder of Lottie Wilson is set.

Unlike our first filming session where we found little success, in this filming session we got exactly what we wanted: The location was exactly what we required, and we were very fortunate that there was no wind and not many people in the park which meant it was very quiet. To make sure we didn’t leave empty handed we ensured we had a variety of camera shots and angles, even though we weren’t going to use them all. Although it took some time to set up and get the right shots we wanted, eventually we achieved the shot we desired that helps tie our whole opening sequence together.

REFLECTION: INTERROGATION SCENE

We started filming on 10/12/2020 in the school drama department. For context this scene was the interrogation of Herbert, Alan and Kieran. The scene was set in an underground chamber with limited lighting. The three suspects were being interrogated by a hologram of Inspector Thorne. As this was our first time filming a scene for our opening sequence as expected not everything went to plan. With limited space in the drama room, we found it difficult to get a variety of camera shots and angle. Therefore, we felt this might hinder the look of our final production. As well as limited space we found that the lighting was also beginning to be a problem as we couldn’t achieve the level of lighting we wanted initially. Although we could have made the room very dark, the camera would not have picked up everyone very clearly.

Although none of the clips from this filming session will be used in our opening sequence, it does not mean that this session was a waste. This filming session allowed us to work with lighting and gain a better understanding of how to use lighting to good effect. We decided we want to use natural lighting to create a more realistic appeal to our film opening. Another positive that came from this session was the construction of our characters. Whilst filming we were able to critique and adjust how we want to represent each one of our characters. As a result, we are all far more confident in how we can portray a realistic representation of our roles.

After consideration as a group, we decided it would be best to no longer have an interrogation scene in our production.