Here is the video:
Concept
For this assignment, a theme was not provided in the beginning so I had decided on doing an action espionage film.
After which, the theme of “Home” was provided and thus I just shifted the setting of the espionage film to Singapore as a country in general.
Here is the pitch for the movie that i presented in class:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SdOGFpQ_lOgxOlAxXfhpcT17BNdg7aL_
Pre-production
Here is the Storyboard:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1S27U3jRuWwqKTZwPAHDZszMFmSUg2aUQ
Production
The shooting process was done in 3 phases due to the number of locations used.
- The Carpark
- The Mall, flat corridors and the interior of the house
- The agent’s personal room
For simplicity in explaining the production process, i shall use screenshots from the video.
Names that will be featured:
Joseph – Central Intelligence Agent (Main protagonist)
Ming Hai – Joseph’s colleague
Jennifer – Joseph’s colleague
Spy – Foreigner engaging in espionage activities (Main antagonist)
Resident – Owner of a flat that will be featured
The agent’s personal room
- For the set design, i basically just stuck random notes around a desk and have a computer set up with documents displayed to create a working space for Joseph.
- Online Documents of the death reports for Ming Hai and Jennifer are created to lead in to the information that they were murdered by someone.
- Flashback sequences for Ming Hai and Jennifer then provide details on the relationship between them and Joesph: how close they were.
- Joseph is then shown jotting down some timings, a shot that will be revisited later
- As notes that were written in a hurry, i purposely had many more scribbled across the paper to show that it is just part of the thinking process that Joseph is having while researching on the case.
- A map of Singapore is then shown to indicate that Joseph is trying to pinpoint the next location that the spy might be.
- I edited a map of singapore to a black-and-white picture to provide emphasis on the red markings drawn over afterwards
- Here, Joseph is seen finding out that he has a clue to where the next location the spy might be in, and also finding out that the timing is soon from observing that of past cases.
- I used this as a reason to why Joseph has to leave his apartment right there and then
- For the mall scenes, we literally just took the camera, got ourselves to the different locations and shot the scenes while letting the crowds move freely.
- I used this to my benefit to give more interaction with the outer world for the video and provide movement to the scenes.
- Here i had the spy look at Joseph discreetly to give the audience the information that the spy knows he is being followed.
- The place that the spy is going into is actually not a pathway but just the entrance of Watsons. However, due to the speed of the clip, this fact is hidden from the audience.
- Once again, the crowd was used to its fullest to provide an environment and obstacle that is hindering Joseph from engaging the spy immediately.
- Due to the fact that the fight happens in a carpark, i used a mall exit to link the two locations together.
- Here, simple after effects was used to create a gunshot which hits a metal bar, causing Joseph to flee temporarily,
- In the shot that directly follows, we actually shot this in the other end of the carpark as the actual location where Joseph would have stumbled is the front of a lift.
- And the carpark scenes that follows are basically the manipulation of non-existent space in the video using separate segments of the carpark.
Close-up of spy with gun- Here, an establishing shot of the spy (whom we see up-close for the first time) was used to state the fact that he is holding the gun that was shot.
- A tracking shot of the spy was used to establish the fact that he was searching for Joseph
- i had Joseph get rid of the gun as early as possible as the fight would ended pretty quickly with it around
- I had the gun disappear into the underside of a car to tell the audience that: “it’s gone and is not appearing again”
- Here, a pause is given to allow the Spy to state that he was not willing to engage in the fight in the first place.
- The “Knife” is actually just a envelope cutter, as a ballistic knife would have been hard to conceal in the spy’s disguise outfit.
- Here, i had Joseph remove his jacket and use it to counter the spy’s attacks.
- This is due to the fact that Joseph had came unprepared from home and does not have weapons on him, a trend that will follow through the rest of the video
- Next, Joseph uses a broom he finds as a long weapon to counter the knife from a distance, effectively pushing it out of the spy’s hand.
- Five minutes for a video is a pretty good time for multiple fighting sequences so i had the characters shift the fight to another location for a cleaner brawl.
- Knowing for a fact that connected carparks and flats do exist, i decided to implement it here. (Although the characters enter into the 10th floor of a separate building from the carpark)
- The characters wouldn’t have had to enter a flat if they were to exit into the outside streets
- I’ve added a resident watering his plants outside his apartment to give a reason for the opened door.
- More information about the spy is given here to allow the audience to understand his point of view of the situation.
- i like clean endings, and the death of one of the character is a good way to end a video, so i had Joseph finish the spy off by strangling him with a towel he found.
- I had Joseph regret his actions of killing the spy in the heat of the moment in order to produce a conclusion where characters are not just generalized into “good” and “bad” individuals and portray them as people who are just doing things because their own reasons.
I decided not to utilize any tripod shots for the video to provide movement to all of the shots.
Lighting could have been better done for the slow-motion parts of the video as the output turned out darker than expected.
Here are the royalty-free music tracks used in the film:
https://www.sonicliberty.com/en/royalty-free-music-library/destructive-trailers/ready-the-gears-1.html
I edited the music tracks accordingly to fit the different timings required for the video.
All in all, it was quite a fun process making this short film.