Director's Commentary

  For my set task in creating a film opening, I decided that i wanted to attempt to make a serious story that making it comedic for the audience, as a individual who can't take anything seriously this would become more of a challenge for me. The idea for a law & order film was my initial idea as i liked the idea of drama being included, as at the time of my first ideas being generated i had a large psychological thriller phase which included a bunch of interrogations : hence the movie's plot. I figured an interrogation to be an audience expectation as it is these scenes where usually there is a slight showdown between good and bad, right and wrong. Originally, i started with two characters being the detective Sterne Harper and the criminal Henry Silva, the names were generated from an online website from descriptions that matched their personas.

In this scene, I used an effect that merges sound in shot transitions. The idea was to present what the character Henry Silva was feeling on the inside during the detective's arrival, as teenagers usually share a tough exterior to hide their thoughts i had to use a new tactic. So i downloaded a copyright free heartbeat sound effect and captured it into a set of 4 beats. Every time i used this in a shot. i would cut to a new shot from a new perspective so that it was in sync with the beats. We used carefully focused close-ups of the character's faces so that the slightest facial expressions were visible, these shots would bounce between one character to the next, in the case from when the detective enters to the room.

This shot was filmed a lot later than me others, as we noticed that too many of them were similar and there wasn't enough diversity to show the audience throughout the whole opening. Then i came up with the idea to illustrate the character's words into new scene's as they were describing a conflict between two more characters that weren't suppose to be casted. This shot specifically shows that dealer "Tony" who is the closest to an antagonist within this story. The idea for this shot was open to focus strictly on his clothing as a character's costume can usually show their true nature is movies but also i was hiding the characters face all through the opening as i didn't want them to be seen by the audience to make them seem more mysterious. 

I mentioned that a lot of my interactions between these two characters were formed by two shots flicking back and forth at various stages, this is because on our only filming day for this portion had only two run-throughs from either angle so when it came to editing i didn't have many angles to work with. I resolved this issue by changing the pace and length of each shots, the pace would often speed up when the tension increased as fast-pace signifies drama and urgency whilst if i was too slow down the transition speed it would usually represent the tension easing off.

There was a few shot variations that wouldn't include any of my cast members such as this shot of a tricycle in a rough alley-way, it may not have a direct link to my narrative, however it breaks the repetition. This style of filmmaking is intended to show a encoded meaning through an object rather a person, the tricycle for example is a signifier for the lower class as that is where Henry and Luke reside in society.

The street that we filmed on for the drug dealer between Luke and Tony was filmed across the street from school, so we could film during study periods and not have to travel far with equipment. We set up to the camera to have an initial focus on the sign that would then transition that said focus onto Luke as he walked passed. These shots would eventually build the journey to deal and it is these separate shots that would be displaced through the whole opening in different areas of the interrogation to loosen to constant flickering of shots between Sterne and Henry. We filmed in many landmarks in the ally so when trick the audience to think the distance was further than we actually travelled.

During the deal, i decided to speed up the pace of the cuts intensely compared to the other points of the film opening, as at the point and illegal action was taking place and the fast-pace cuts matched the tension that was forming during this mistake. These cuts went from close-ups and medium shots of either characters.

The drug deal part was originally suppose to take only a small portion of my movie up, however i had a complication which my raw footage of the interrogation. The issue was that my cast member for Henry Silva, had to stand up in one scene and we ran out of time to film shots that had her face onscreen, as a solution i keep the usable audio running as an overlay to the footage filmed for the deal that was then placed in a linear order to build an entire scene.