Red Herring

Evaluation Question 7

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Voiceover Script

Due to the fact that our voiceover will have several thought processes running over one another in a disjointed, random way, writing the script involves choosing a few key statements and thoughts to use over each other.

 

I have to find out who killed her? No... How they killed her.

Think, think, think, think, think, THINK.

Weapons? None. Footprints? None. Blood.. None.

Where is her other sock?

Today was her day off.. Could it have been a co-worker? A Crazy Ex boyfriend?

How did they get in...? The door is intact.

Think, think, think, think, think, THINK.

Strangled to death? No, no throat marks. Hit with a blunt object? Perhaps...

There must've been a struggle, everything is askew.

There are several different routes this investigation could take
But of course... this is just the beginning.

First Draft Changes

After the first draft we analysed our product and decided to make the following changes:

• Add quiet tension music
  We decided to do this to add a subtle amount of sound and add a technical skill
• Change font to typewriter
  The cowboy style didn't really fit in with the genre of our film
• Remove Assistant scene
  The ambient audio that comes with the scene was of a bad quality so we decided to cut it altogether
• Focus on the eyes
  To draw the audience into the scene
• Redo voiceover~ change script
  The microphone was too close to our actors mouth, the script was not well thought out
• Add in more street shots (to make up for cut out scene)
  Cutting the assistant scene left our product at a very short length so we had to lengthen it.
• Change title name (To Red Herring)
  The surprising adventures of Mac Mayson was too cheesy.

Title Name Decisions - Final Adjustments

After our first draft, we decided that instead of conforming to usual conventions of a crime mystery film, we would subvert them instead. Instead of using the detectives name as the title we decided to use the words "Red herring" instead

The definition of a red herring is "a figurative expression referring to a logical fallacy in which a clue or piece of information is or is intended to be misleading, or distracting from the actual question". We chose this because its meaning connotes that the clues he may receive during the film may be misleading and distract from the true culprit.

Even if our target audience doesn’t know what the meaning of 'Red Herring' is, the colour red itself has connotations of blood, anger and danger; all of which will be included in our plot.

RED HERRING

Final Product - First Draft

This is the first draft of our film opening.

Audience Feedback

Title Name Decisions - First Draft

When deciding on the name of our film we looked at the titles given to products similar to ours. We saw a trend in which many detective films were named after the detective himself such as Sherlock Holmes and Ace Ventura. We decided to follow this style by naming our film after the main character. This meant that when choosing his name, we had to make sure it was something memorable that people wouldn't forget. Initially, using a random name generator, we found names like:
Billy Tipps
Lionel Merrywether
Gregory Harrisson

We decided to narrow down our search by looking for names that contained alliteration. These were some examples generated:
Henry Hothsford
Jed Johnson
Ryan Robinson

After generating quite a few names and testing them out verbally we came across the name "Mack Mason". This suited our character perfectly so we agreed on the name however we changed the spelling to "Mac Mayson" to add more personality to the character

The final title name is:

The Surprising Adventures of Mac Mayson

Production Logo

We discussed different production names and logos and came up with names such as:
-Waterfall Pictures
-Elite Studios
-Nova Productions
In the end we agreed on Vita Productions. Vita means 'life' in Latin and since our film opening is very similar to real life we made the assumption that anything else our company produced would have a high sense of verisimilitude.

Filming day - Photo collage

These are a few of the photos we took during filming to show the different techniques and angles we used to film. For most of our filming we used the tripod for stability. In one shot we put the camera on a skateboard to film a track shot of someone walking.

Filming Day - Plan adjustments

 

When we arrived at our location we saw a few more opportunities of things to film that were not previously planned out in our storyboard. An example of this is the hand crafted ship in the house. We thought the intricate design and attention to detail may be a good item to add to the list of 'clues' we have. We also filmed the sign of the street the house is on as we thought it would be a good idea to have it as an establishing shot.

As well as adding things we also took things away. For example, we had planned to film a shot involving a dining chair that had fallen over. Once we were at the location we realised that all the clues were in the front half of the room whilst the chair was in the back half. The chairs location wouldn’t correspond to the way the detective is facing. We filmed the chair anyway but after noticing this error we decided that it would be very unlikely that we would use it in our final product.

Another change we had to make was the actor we used as Mack Mason's sidekick. The actor we had previously planned wasn't available at the very last minute so we adapted to the situation and solved the problem by casting one of our team members. This did not affect the costume code we had planned and helped introduce racial diversity that we had not thought of before.

Filming Day - Costumes

Filming Day- Props