Revisions to the Film

We received plenty of feedback from our classmates and teacher on our film. Our film recieved plenty of compliments on the quality of the shots and editing. However, we discovered that from the viewer's point of view, the film was hard to follow and didn't make much sense. Our group decided that we would need to re-work certain aspects of the film. One thing that the audience didn't understand was why the contact on the phone said "Madison" as she was supposed to be kidnapped. We have decided to change the contact name that appears to just a phone number as the main character is supposed to be receiving an anonymous tip. Another aspect of the film that didn't make much sense to the audience was who is calling the girl in the intro and who the main character is. To fix this issue, we decided to include another scene in the intro. After the plane lands, we plan on going to Sarasota International Airport to film a scene in which Sam is walking out of the airport on his cellphone. This would make a connection with the voicemail and it would indicate that the main character just arrived to town.

Final Product (Film Submission)

Here is our group's edited version of the film. Overall, I believe we did a good job and I am happy with the final product. Our group enjoyed shooting this film together, as well as learning filming and editing techniques along the way.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N0-Rahh-Wo&ab_channel=AustinKuster

Researching Box Office Results

For our film project we decided to go witha film that would fit into an action and dram genre. Researching these, we found on IMDB.com that these genres were included in the list of some of the most popular choices. From there, we thought of movies we had previously watched or we had heard of. One movie I had watched was "Die Hard" which fit into the genre of an action and thriller film. I decided to look up the box office results and found that this movie made $81,350,242. This proved to be a successful platform so we continued to research other movies. Another movie that shared the same genres was "Taken". This movie has a similar plot to ours as it involves the kidnapping of a girl and the main character attempting to find her. According to boxofficemojo.com, "Taken" had a box office of $165,410,000. This movie spawned a franchise that saw success on a global front. Based on our findings, we can predict that if our film was to become a feature length film, it could see great box office results.

Casting

Throughout the development of our film, we went through a number of people to be included in the film but ended up settling for four in the end. During planning, we first chose my personal friend, Zach, to be the main star in the film. However, due to scheduling complications and . We then decided to look at Andre James' friend, Nick. He was a good choice but unfortunately he caught a flu a few days before our set filming dates. Instead in an almost last second decision, we decided to have Sam Herndon star in the film. Sam turned out to be great fort the role and we were very satisfied with the results. For the man who was shot, we chose Austin Kuster as he had a suit which could get sand on it and be washed out. Originally for the girl in the photos, we had chosen Austin Kuster's mother as we had a Polaroid picture of her that would work well for the shots we needed. However, these shots did not turn out well and we ended up using a girl named Madison McGrath who was younger and would fit the main character better. This was due to the re-shoot we had to conduct and that he had obtained a Polaroid photo of her.

Researching Other Films

During our research, we found many examples of intros from other films to be of great use. For our opening, we wanted to show that the main character was arriving from out of town. We looked to the movie "Die Hard" as a perfect example. In the intro of "Die Hard", the sound of jet engines and a mid shot of a plane landing is seen. We took inspiration from this scene as our intro included a shot of a plane landing at Tampa International Airport. Another idea we researched was a way of clarifying the point of the film to the audience. In the intro of "Pulp Fiction", a definition of what pulp fiction is pops up on the screen. We considered including the text "The hunt for love" in the credits to have the same effect as the example seen in Pulp Fiction. However, we ended up not including this as we believed that audience would be able to gain their own understanding. We also ended up having the credits run through the entirety of the film as it is the opening of what is supposed to be a much longer film.

Our Film

"Die Hard"

Schedule Filming

Our group ran into a few hiccups while trying to schedule for filming dates. At first we chose Sunday, December 18th and Monday, December 19th to have two days of filming. However, we wanted to use the Osmo Raw X 5 and the Osmo + cameras. Not everyone was available on those days as well so we had to reschedule for the following Monday, December 26th after Christmas. Another problem we ran into for shooting on this day was that our star actor caught the flu and was unable to come. Instead we used Sam Herndon as our lead role. We all met up downtown at 11 AM to begin filming. We ended up filming from 11:30 AM to 5:30 PM and we were able to film all of the necessary shots for the film. However, after editing we discovered 2 shots we wanted to re-film due to errors by Sam Herndon or quality. We decided to meet on January 6th to re-shoot. Overall, we were able to shoot the entire film in two days.

Scouting Locations

For our film we included 4 separate locations in our local area. We needed a shot of a plane landing and we knew that Tampa International Airport had a spot to film them from. For he shot of the Skyway Bridge, we knew we would have to get the shot during the day for the beginning of the film. We looked at a few parking garages to film on top of and found one with a view of the bay in downtown Sarasota. We shot at this location around the same time of day as the shot of the Skyway Bridge so they would correspond with each other. When we decided we wanted to film on a beach, we chose Casey Key. Austin Kuster had a friend with a private property on the beach in which we could we could film at without interruption. We filmed at this location at sunset to be in chronological order with the rest of the film. These locations proved to be eye appealing at the colors stood out. We only had one issue with the garage as we couldn't connect to the drone.

Shot List

For our film, our group decided to use conventional shots and some interesting shots that we could experiment with. We originally planned to have 19 shots but ran into problems with connecting to the drone at the parking garage. We also chose to leave out some shots and we came up with shots while on location. Some shots we had to leave out of the film were the aerial shots of the city and parking garage. This was due to the problems we encountered with the drone. The shots we added in or left out ended up improving the flow of the film. These shots also made it easier for the viewers to understand the plot. Through the editing process we also found some shots that either didn't look visually appealing or didn't improve the plot. One shot we noticed was a close up of the gun firing. The man was supposed to be holding it with his right hand but was with his left. After cutting down the number of shots we finished with a film that we're proud of.