This is the second film we have made for film studies. It is about a police officer (Harry Smith) interrogating a criminal (Jack Oxley). It appears that the criminal is the leader of an illegal drug operation and the police officer is trying to find the location of these drugs.
At the start of production, I wrote a short script which Jack and Harry stuck to during filming. None of the dialogue was improvised as we needed to keep it the same because we were recording the same shot from 3 different angles. As Jack and Harry are not actors, we took several shots on the first day of filming; none of which could be used because there were mistakes in each of them. There may have been one or two rushes to be used but we just decided to re-film everything because it would ruin the continuity of the sequence.
In our final product three different shots were used these were the master shot and two different over-the-shoulder shots. The master shot is also called the establishing shot because it is used directly at the start of the sequence and shows the audience what is happening in the scene. We used this to set the scene and to show the participants in the dialogue. The other two shots were over the shoulder shots from each character, we used this type of shot to show who is speaking, also to let the audience see their expressions and reactions to what is happening in the conversation.
During the whole of filming we used the tripod on the camera to make the shot steady so it doesn't look chaotic or uncontrolled. Eventually we had enough footage that could be used to create the sequence. It took several different cuts but we managed to gather enough rushes that could be edited together to create the film. As neither Jack or Harry are actors, the dialogue is not great. At points the speech is very fast so it is hard to understand what Jack and Harry are saying. Other than that issue, the footage we used was fine.
In the opening title of the sequence, we imitated a typewriter and also added some audio to match with it to make it sound like it was being typed as the film opens. The audio we used throughout the film was 'In the house in a heartbeat' by John Murphy. We used this to create a very tense situation and create more suspense in the scene. We synced the song so it starts just as Jack starts talking and then escalates exactly as the credits start rolling. We were planning to use the Godfather theme song for the credits and opening title but the 'In the house in a heartbeat' went so well with the credits we decided to use it instead and discard the idea of the Godfather theme song. For our contrapuntal version of the sequence we would have used 'The Flower Duet' by Lakmé to create a peaceful, tranquil atmosphere that would be very contrasting to the tense mood created by the original audio and the scene as a whole. All of this music was non-diegetic so none of the characters in the film could hear it.
In terms of diegetic sound, we had one notable piece of audio which was when Jack banged his fist on the table and shouted "I'm Innocent!" This was edited so it was louder to emphasise the anger and rage in Jack's character during this scene.
In the last sequence we produced, it was very short because we spent most of the time recording the same scene from several different angles. This time we needed to do this to show who was speaking in the conversation and to show the master shot for example. There was no way to avoid this problem that we had last time so we still ended up with a fairly short sequence.
