Brendan's AICE Media Studies Blog

1. Our film does not challenge any conventions - not intentionally at least. The way it challenged conventions traditionally though is in the demographics of the mob along gender lines. Typically, those who are in the mob - especially those within the more powerful positions - are men. However, in our film both the mob boss as well and the "minion" are women. This is a subversive representation of a typical mob as instead of men, they are women. 2. Our movie attempts to engage with audiences by creating a suspenseful story where a mob boss and minion play a match of chess to death. Where it does lack though is in some sort of lesson or message. However, this is not pertinent to audience engagement though as plenty of great movies and stories in general don't teach a lesson or have an overarching message. 3. Now that the film has been completed I feel as though many of my production skills have been improved upon. Firstly, now that I've experienced planning a film and ...

 

With the film finally being finished today, we've finally concluded the final stage of filmmaking - post-production. In this part of the filmmaking process, I was not heavily involved. As the editor, Sophie was essentially entirely responsible for this part of the film. Despite not being very hands-on in this part Sophie consulted with me a handful of times both on her progress as well as her ideas. The only thing I really did during these check-ins was just ensuring the film remained on the creative track and vision we had discussed for it. Thankfully, Sophie did an amazing job at preserving this vision as well as creating a beautiful film. I wish I was more involved in the editing process though. Firstly, since I have no experience using Adobe Rush being with Sophie or even just observing her edit would help me down the line when it's time for me to create my film. Simply put, it would've been very practical. Secondly, I feel as though I could've done more to help her...

Initially, we only had two days to film. This did not worry me because I believed that for a 30 to 60-second film, two days - nearly 3 hours - were more than enough. Following filming, on the first day, I believed this was the case. However, on day two we began to run into problems resulting from poor planning. Thankfully this issue was generally negated by being granted a third day of filming. Going into the second day we felt confident in what we had so far as we had shot a good chunk of our film already. Most of what we had left was coverage and a handful of scenes. However, as previously mentioned, a lack of adequate planning and poor recording by myself we struggled to film day two. We knew what we had filmed on day one, but lacked properly written recordings of what was shot and what needed to be shot - or even how we'd do so. Because of this, we spent nearly 60% of our time shooting unusable footage and/or planning how we'd play the game - something that should've be...

As the planning phase of our film began and I was assigned the role of director. This was not what I had initially desired as I believed it would've been better for someone else to be in charge. Additionally, beyond just "being in charge," I had no idea what such a role would entail. However, once the roles were explained to me I was optimistic about what my role as the director would be. As we began to start the planning of our film my outlook began to become more optimistic. Our group worked well together, and we all thankfully had similar ideas for films - eventually settling on the idea of a mob film. We were able to collaborate well in coming up with ideas for the mob film. What made my life a lot more simple is that even though I was the director I was not solely responsible for coming up with everything, and allowed decisions - such as storylines - to be run by the whole group first. This helped promote teamwork and communication, allowing for a smoother workflow. ...

When planning out the film and putting together the project proposal I realized we had never come up with a title for the film. I didn't want to deal with group discourse or other options, and since I was home over break when this occurred I unilaterally decided upon a film title. The first thing I came up with is what I wound up selecting - The King and the Pawn - without putting thought toward coming up with other ideas. This title fits extremely well for our film. Firstly, the film has to center around chess. Due to this, the choice to include the names of chess pieces in the title - "King" and "Pawn" - is well-fitting. Additionally, the genre of film we're creating is a mafia/mob film, where the story centers around the chess game of a mob boss and his "minion" as they play to the death. The title helps to illustrate the vast power difference between the two; one is the mob boss (King), the top of his organization/most important, whereas the mi...

With filming the chess match itself out of the way, we could now film the final parts of our film. Thankfully, upon reviewing my notes there was really only a scene or two we'd have to film. Since we had extra time we'd be able to experiment as well. Once we began to film, it thankfully was only the one ending scene. Since this was arguably the most important scene, it behooved us to have so much extra time to experiment with angles and perspectives. We shot that one scene 8 times total from 3 different perspectives. Though all 3 could work well, I believe one of the over-the-shoulder shots would work best.  Afterward, we had some more time to kill so we just spent it filming coverage of various close-up facial expressions. Though the prior day of shooting I felt stressed about possibly having too much to film, the final day eased my concerns. We worked far more effectively (partially because we simply had less to do), but also because we had a far more solid plan laid down.  ...

Going into the second day of filming, we initially thought it would be our last day of filming, but we were luckily given an additional day of filming the following week. This caused a substantial reduction in the collective stress felt by our group, but we still would have a good amount to get done that day. Though we had a general idea of what needed to be done written down, we had no solidified plan. The primary aim for the day was to film the scenes of Kim and Sophie playing chess, as well as film some coverage to create a double-exposure effect. The issue was that we ended up not having a plan for how we'd film various chess moves and parts of the game. Because of this, we ended up spending a lot of time aimlessly filming - what I'd consider - essentially useless footage. Eventually, we figured out how we would conduct the game and the moves. By the time we had figured it out, there were only about 10 minutes left until we had to strike set for the day. Though it took us a...

Starting off during the first day of filming we went out to the patio and began to set up. While Bella was setting up the tripod/camera and aligning the benches to be centered, I ensured the costumes were all in order by fixing Sophie's dress shirt and tie, and drawing a goatee onto Kim. Once all the stuff with costumes was squared away, we started filming our first scene.  Our first shot was a simple establishing shot of Kim sitting on the bench as Sophie walked in. We purposely had Kim sitting on the right and then Sophie entering from/sitting on the left in order to show the good guy vs. bad guy dynamic between the two - a film concept demonstrated in dozens of popular movies. After a few takes for scenes that are done from the front, we began shooting coverage. The purpose of shooting so much coverage is to give us the versatility of angles for different scenes. These varying angles can help to emphasize the suspense or emotion of certain scenes and in order to successfully exe...

Going into our week-long Thanksgiving break my group had nearly none of our official project proposal completed. To simplify the process of completing the proposal each of us was assigned roles - in part based on what our overall role would be in the production of our film. I was in charge of the cover page, storyboard, and recce report/risk assessment, Sophie was in charge of the genre statement, call sheet, and casting report, Kim was in charge of the sound design statement, and Bella was in charge of the shot list.  The break began and there was not much communication between us. I had the expectation that everything would be completed and sent to me so I could submit it by the deadline, and I expressed that to our group. Between the wifi at my house being broken for the first 4 days of the break and then being out of town/busy most of the week though, my time and ability to complete my part were limited. However, I managed to find the time toward the end of the break and comple...