AICE Media Studies

Mamma Mia! A rough draft of our fully realized concept for a film opening? On MY blog? It's more likely than you think!   It's done! (For now)

We filmed  a short clip after we finished our first editing session outlining what we accomplished and set up a brief outline for our future efforts on the project. Then,  we put together a short little interview with Mickey, our Creative Director (and resident film noir expert) showing how we hoped to maintain aesthetic clarity and directness of vision throughout the editing process. During the second editing session we discussed what order we wanted the clips to play, we worked on color correction and basic grayscale conversion of the color footage, as well as transitions between shot to shot. All that's left to do now is fix the music, incorporate our voiceover, and review to ensure our plot, tone, and mood are all cohesive!

Well, we finally did it. We got all of the footage we needed, and now all that needs to be done is throw it together in a somewhat cohesive manner, and voila! That's a little bit harder than it seems, much to my chagrin, and we spent our first editing session doing not much beside figuring out the exceedingly  complicated editing software. That being said, we did of course manage to get some work done, and primarily focused on the more practical elements of the film - like the title! Kiley and I debated endlessly over which font style to use, going between some dozen or so fonts before we finally picked the one that we both liked and thought fit the tone of the piece well enough to use. Too creepy! Too fancy! Just right! After that was figured out, we explored a few options for sound and audio beneath the yet-to-be-created voiceover, decided on responsibilities to be allocated before the next meeting, and adjourned our first editing session with anticipation for...

We came back to the Ave. fresh-faced and ready to create a masterpiece. Kiley -who will NOT be shown here to maintain suspense -was dressed to the nines in a borrowed blazer, a loaned belt, and some slick shades. We modeled her after a hypothetical combination of the two biggest film noir archetypes: the grouchy, cynical private inspector meets femme fatale. Here, we were able to film the most important shots, demonstrating her actual character arc, showing her motivations and establishing the very beginnings of a storyline as the camera follows her from  her car along to a crowded, cosmopolitan boulevard. Of course, since the finally footage is going to be in black and white, we decided to film in a slightly lighter setting than the film will actually take place, since we can always lower the exposure and raise contrast in post. I was the primary cinematographer in this case, though we all contributed, and we brought two cameras and a dozen ideas to the scene this time around...

When my group and I first started filming, we didn't really expect to get much usable footage out of it - we were mainly location scouting, physically checking out the places we had discussed and getting a feel for some of the shots we might decide to utilize in our final project. We had decided on filming some of the more cosmopolitan areas of downtown Naples, after coming to the conclusion that industrial cityscapes were, in fact, pretty boring backgrounds. We headed out a few hours before sunset, when we were all free at the same time, and got some good shots that fit and expanded upon our initial storyboard. Mickey, our principal photographer, is shown here getting some good establishing shots of the stairwell we were later going to use in our establishing shots! Overall, we got some good landscape and interior footage, and at the end of the day as the sun began to set we decided to meet again next week, assemble our costume, and get some good old-fashioned private di...