For the majority of our title sequence, there is no sound that needs to be recorded. The video will be overlapped with some type of mysterious music to set the mood of the scene. The only scene that sound needs to be recorded for is the few lines of dialogue between the male and female detective.
This sound will be recorded with headphones, either wired or wireless AirPods. The AirPods will most likely be easier to hide during filming, so this is going to be our best option. My partner Taylor has AirPods anyways so this will work out to our benefit.
Above is our rough cut! We split our rough cut into two sections: the evidence and the office scenes. We actually shot the office scenes first at our school and we definitely had some complications. My partner Taylor asked permission the day before to shoot in our high school’s front office and they said it was alright at the specific time that we asked for. However, when we were getting ready to shoot that day, the office was locked. Luckily we ran into a past teacher and she was able to call the assistant principal who let us in. So problem solved right? Nope. So the assistant principal let us in, however he said “You’ve got 20 minutes.” At this point we were panicking. This was our first time shooting anything for the title sequence and we only were going to be given 20 minutes?? We quickly rushed everything and somehow got everything done. We basically made up the shots as we went along because we weren’t prepared really. We thought we were going to be given more time so we were going to plan more as we shot, but clearly that’s NOT what happened. After we shot the office scenes we went back to my house to shoot the evidence scenes. The setting up took over an hour long because we were really trying to make it appear scary and like a crime scene. We finally got to shooting and this went a lot better because we had more time here. We tried different types of shots and ideas and settled on which one looked better. Overall, it was a pretty average day.
The next day Taylor was editing and we realized that the office scenes were super rough. We didn’t have a plan, so going with the flow and just making up shots on the spot was not effective because the continuity was really rough. We decided that we wanted to reshoot these scenes because we felt that it could have turned out a lot better. This is going to be our next course of action.
In our title sequence, we needed to use two locations. The first would be the room where the murder happened and where all the evidence would be displayed. The second location would be more of an office where the two detectives would be interacting about the case.
The first location with the crime scene was easy to find. We both decided to use my bedroom to set the scene for the murder. The walls of my room are bright blue so this could contrast with the theme of the scene, but we felt that with editing we could make an easy fix to this issue.
Finding the second location was definitely a struggle. We needed an office building that would fit the idea that we had in mind. My mom has a work office near our house so we were considering filming there. However, my mom works in the medical field so they did not let us shoot there because it is apparently a violation of HIPPA. So we still had to keep our options open and scope out other locations that would work. We spent the entirety of the week trying to find something, but ended up with nothing. So we settled for the administration office at our high school and decided to shoot there after school. It definitely wasn’t our first choice, but with time and location restrictions, we had to make it work.
For our film, there were three roles that needed to be filled.
The first role was the dead victim, who we felt should be portrayed as an innocent teenage girl. We chose our friend/classmate Victoria Conn. She is a medium height and looks like she could fit the role of an innocent girl/victim.
The next role was the main character: the female detective. For this character we also chose our friend/classmate Rebecca Wolff. She is very tall and could appear as intimidating in our film.
The last role that we had to cast was the male detective who would be very sexist towards the female detective. We chose our high school assistant tennis coach Thomas Mitchell, referred to as Tommy. Tommy is quite short and kind of fits the stereotypical sexist authority figure.
Scheduling was also a struggle due to us casting other people. Rebecca and my partner Taylor play volleyball competitively outside of school and participate in several tournaments. They only had one weekend available to shoot, so we had to comply and work around their busy schedules. Tommy is a teacher at James Irvin Education Center, so he is pretty busy as well. Victoria does dance, but was also able to find time in her schedule to help us shoot. I do tennis and since I am a junior I am preparing for the SAT and take several other college level classes, so I also struggle to find time for shooting, but we have all made arrangements to get this project completed.
To get a better understanding of the business aspect of movies, I decided to follow a case study on a movie called Following. It was released in 1998-1999 and is in a similar genre to our movie, in the mystery drama genre.
The director of Following is Christopher Nolan, who is a very famous director. He is known for directing similar movies in the same genre such as Inception and Dunkirk. Nolan was also credited as the writer for this film.
The production budget for this film was about $6,000. This would be considered a low budget production. The production company for this movie was Next Wave Films. The film took one year to produce. Some complications would include Nolan requiring the scenes to be extensively rehearsed so that they avoid doing multiple takes. There was no lighting so that could reduce the quality and he had to manage locally with sets and props. Following was meant to be a very inexpensive movie which is why it was shot on film. Film was cheaper and allowed Christopher Nolan to buy it and stay within his budget.
The distribution company for this film was Momentum Pictures. There were normal film advertisements for Following and they were meant to be suspenseful to draw more attention to the film. Some other marketing strategies were in the movie itself because Christopher Nolan inserted hints and clues that were given to the audience for the story but didn’t show any real concrete or confirmed information through trailers and teasers.
My partner and I started storyboarding our ideas for the evidence sequence. We are going to have shots of the dead victim on the floor and the evidence lying around her. This will be the shots that we shoot at my house. As of right now, we’re either considering doing one long shot for all of the evidence or slow pans. We’ll firmly decide on this when we actually do the shooting. The next two panels of the storyboard are the office scenes. The middle panel displays the interaction between the male and female detective with the newspaper. She will be reading about the case in the newspaper and the male detective will come by and take it out of her hand. They will exchange dialogue and it will be something to the effect of him scrutinizing her for being a woman and trying to solve the case. Then she will go get a spare copy of the same newspaper and then she will figure something out. The ending card will be a black screen with the words “Into the Truth”.
So we have run into a slight issue. The production company that we were originally pitching our film to, Next Wave Films, no longer exists. Apparently their company was closed down by the Independent Film Channel.
This was a little bit of a setback for Taylor and I because we had to go to our backup options and find another production company that still fit our envisioned brand of our film and that was within our expected budget. We then decided to choose MGM, or Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as our production company. This is more of a well-known company in the film industry than Next Wave Films. We still had to stick with our own certain criteria for picking an effective production company for our film. Some of the reasons we decided to go with this production company is because they have worked with both low and high budget films. Our film, being very low budget, would still be accepted into a larger-scale film company such as this. They have also worked in films across several of the genres that we are researching such as, horror, crime, mystery, thriller, drama, etc. so they would probably be more accepting of a film such as ours. Some of the films they have produced are Se7en, Final Destination, and Murder at the Gallop. MGM can also serve us as a distribution company, so this is a great advantage of choosing them.
The video attached is our film pitch to Next Wave Films, the production company. Within our film pitch we discussed the title of our film and gave a basic synopsis of our plot. Next we talked about why we decided to choose Next Wave Films as our production company and how we felt that our movie would have flowed well with this company’s production style. Our budget was also covered and how we would classify our movie as a no budget film. We also found a couple different distribution companies that we are considering to go with for our movie. The options we are thinking of are Momentum Films or Artisan Entertainment. We also felt that these distribution companies would suit our film and our vision for it. The last portion of our film pitch was a statement of why people should see our film and why it would be an attraction. This was to emphasize the selling point of our film to the production company so that they would agree to produce our film if they know that it would be a favorite among the audience.
The date that we are planning to shoot our title sequence is February 22. We felt that this would work for everyone’s schedule because Tommy is a teacher at a school nearby to ours, so the afternoon worked for him. Rebecca also agreed to this time as well. We agreed to go to the front office of our high school and shoot for about 2 hours. We don’t know how long it will take but we figured this would give us a rough estimate and give us extra time to get everything done. Then later we will plan to go back to my house and Victoria agreed to meet us there around 6:30. We will shoot there for a few hours maybe until 9 or 10. We think that this will take longer than the office scenes because we have to set the scene up. We have costuming, props, and things like this that need to be set up in order to create the intended look that we want for this portion of the title sequence. This schedule is tentative and could definitely change, but this is what we have planned for as of right now.
Murder on the Orient Express has been a major inspiration for our title sequence. It has the genre conventions and characteristics that we are also after within our own video. This was an interesting choice to do because there are actually two versions of the film so this could allow for more research into the genre conventions but also more information as to how the genre has changed over time. Since our film is taking place in the 1990s, this was an important part for us to consider, as we are not that knowledgeable about films in that period of time.
1974 Murder on the Orient Express
The introduction of the crime is made through newspapers. This was an idea that we wanted to replicate because we felt that it really captured the feeling of mystery and crime. There are a lot of different cuts and superimpositions that we noticed which showed the transitioning of different pieces of evidence. We also wanted to incorporate these transitions into our sequence. The lighting of this opening sequence was obviously very dark to create the disturbing mood and some color correction was used to add more of a blue tint to the scene. The sound in this is purely non-diegetic because it is a sound track layered over the clips. This also contributes to the mood of the title sequence. Cinematography was also used to establish this title sequence’s meaning. There are tracking shots of the murderer and long shots of the car driving away. Mise-en-scene was also relied on with the props such as the teddy bear and damaged toys to give off the feeling that it is a child who is the victim and it also reinforces the creepy theme even more. All of these elements were used to create meaning.
2017 Murder on the Orient Express
Instead of introducing the crime itself, this version instead introduces the detective and the audience is expected to make more of an inference about the murder mystery. The cinematography is very similar in nature to the older version of the film, with a tracking shot of a child running, There is then a close-up shot of of an hourglass to show that the eggs are cooking, and there is a mid-shot as well of the back of a man’s head, which creates some suspense as to who the man could be. Mise-en-scene includes the child being dressed in clothing that represents their current location, which is Jerusalem. Other props include the eggs, decor of the kitchen, the hourglass, the egg cups, and the paintings hanging on the walls in the background. The use of these props are to set up the scenes and make them resemble more of the location that the film is taking place in.
Into the Truth 