Positives and Negatives

Vlog Positives and Negatives from Matthew Levesley on Vimeo.

In this video we outline the positives and the negatives of the Film Noir experience.

Actors Profile

After casting the Actors (as stated in the previous blog post)

Josh Coe:



Date of Birth: 16th November 1998 (aged 17)

Height: 5'9"

Hair Colour: Brown

Gender: Male

Role: Tony

Reason for Hiring: We needed someone with a great deal of Film Noir knowledge to perfectly fulfil the needed role; I therefore decided that the leading role should go to either me or Joshua. After an informal audition, Josh suited the character's role better as he was able to be serious and portray emotion almost effortlessly.

Positives when filming: 

• Took directions well
• Acted with a straight face, never broke character
• Suited the clothing and props

Negatives when filming:

• Body position at times could have been more appropriate

Heather McDonald:

Date of Birth: 14th May 1999 (aged 16)

Height: 5'5"

Hair Colour: Brunette

Gender: Female

Role: Victoria

Reason for Hiring: As stated before, actors were needed with strong Film Noir knowledge to perfectly portray the characters. A female character was needed and Heather met the criteria we were looking for.

Positives when filming:

• Effectively used the props appropriately and realistically
• Took directions well
• Looked like a genuine Femme Fatale

Negatives when filming:

• Many scenes took more than one take to complete

The Secret First Draft Unfinished

To complete the film by next week, we decided that we need feedback. The unfinished version does not include a gunshot foley sound but we would like as much feedback ready for next week.
Here is the embedded video for viewing from the class:

The Secret RabbitHole Productions Draft 1 (unfinished) from Matthew Levesley on Vimeo.

Please take your time to fill out this questionnaire (created by myself):

Unfortunately, after embedding the survey within this post, it closed after 24 hours and it was not able to be viewed. I have simply included a screenshot from Google Forms and the feedback will be posted at a later stage.

Voiceovers Playlist on SoundCloud

Attached is the voiceovers that me and Josh recorded on my iPhone. Me and Josh found an empty classroom and, with the script on his phone, Josh spoke into the microphone on my phone sentence by sentence. To easily place them into our movie, I set the name as the sentence number in order (other than "Hey Victoria"). This went well as there was minimalistic distractions and Josh was able to easily read off the script from his phone. From this, I have learnt that if you prepare well (by effectively producing the script) then the rest of the production will be easier and less stressful; in future tasks, I will ensure that the planning has been done to the best of our ability.
On the day of recording, this is the blogpost where I outlined the recording of the voiceovers.

Creating The Studio Ident

The production company name was created by shuffling my playlist and choosing a song title which would be suitable; the song Rabbit Hole by Jamie T came up and we decided to use this.
Heather used her artistic skills to come up with what the ident should look like.

I drew the rabbit head for our ident as shown below:

The swirls around were an idea for what the hole should look like, this was cropped out in photoshop.

Heather came up with the idea of a light in a dark room to represent a hole; we used an empty classroom with the light off, a phone flashlight and my iPhone for the camera. Below is the photo taken by Heather:

I cropped both photos, put them together and added a downloaded font from DaFont. With the help from Heather, I adjusted the text shape and style to create the finalised studio ident:

Production Log 12/01/2016

In today's lesson, the three of us went out and took still photos for a storyboard. This allowed us to visually display how we intend the production to go. Heather and Josh edited it and put it onto SlideShare whilst I added to the script to try and finish it. We aim to film and record the voiceover within the upcoming days.

The Storyboard

The Script