CATFISH

OUR FILM

AGATA

Our second movie, catfish, was relatively easy to film. 

For this one, again I wrote the script. I wanted to create something that could be a scene from a sitcom and I'm happy with how it turned out. People on the screening also liked it, almost everyone was laughing. I just wish it was longer, but I didn't think everything through good enough when I was writing a script. Now I know that I should have visualized everything in my head before we started filming.

This production had to be filmed on the campus. It was a  Mise-en-scène exercise (the word comes from French and means “putting in the scene”), so we had to make sure everything in the frame looked good and had its purpose.

I think we did it pretty well. Thomas, playing Amy, had to wear my clothes (he didn't like

them, but in my opinion, he looked amazing!). For the props, we got some chocolates. I also had to create a fake tinder profile for out catfish. I used the pictures of Shay Mitchell and Angelina Jolie for that.

This time we remembered to check if the location we wanted to film in was available

for us. We were filming in the Ibers cafe. Unfortunately, it was a public place so the cafe was really crowded, there was a to of people who were really loud and were interrupting us. They were also staring straight into the camera and at Thomas wearing the dress.

I draw a storyboard for everything, but the dialogue. We just decided to record the conversation of the characters from different perspectives and make everything look good while editing the footage.

There were a few shots in this movie that I didn't like, and I really regret that we didn't record a close up on the tinder profile but I'm still happy with how the film turned out.                             HARRISON

Catfish was relatively easy to shoot and less of a hassle compared to the last film, “The Chase”. My role for this film was being the cinematographer and or the sound guy. As there are only 4 members in our group, we needed to act on more than 1 role. Dan and Thomas, who were groupmates and were the actors for this film. I mentioned that it was less of a hassle to shoot this film because this time the plot was simple and easy to understand, therefore the complication of shooting a film were greatly reduced. A lot of the shots were stable and fixed, and focused on similar angles so there is not a lot movement for the cinematographer. The tinder profile, the box of chocolates, being in a café, and Dan’s position are part of the scene’s mise-en-scene. These are the typical codes and conventions of a date setting. In the next few shots we see angles of a what it looks like to be a person in a dress. This was intended as we didn’t want to reveal the face. We used the element of surprise by showing angles of a person that looked like a woman. We also wanted to capture what Dan would probably be thinking of before his date arrives, so this could be looked through his point of view too because he wasn’t exactly expecting his date to look as what she appears to be. For the close ups, we had one medium wide range shot on a tripod, and the over the shoulder shots handheld. I suggested to do handheld because it adds emotion. One of the few flaws in this film was the sound, as we were filming in public, it was hard to capture clear and crisp conversations from the actors. The colours were also inconsistent as there were shots that the characters were just heavily overexposed and shots that were darker than normal. Editing the film was hard too as there were people in the background moving around, which made continuation of clips difficult to patch together. Towards the end, when it cuts to the title, you can hear the actors going off character. This was intended because it was to add senselessness to the film and that it wasn’t serious. Other than that, the costume was brilliant, the acting was good and the location was spot on. The film turned out to be decent in my opinion.

                        EXPECTATIONS VS REALITY                       

THOMAS

Going off last week we had high hopes for this film. All of us really liked the idea, mainly because it
involved me having to wear a dress. Due to this film being based on mise-en-scene we wanted to
get the costumes and location done right, the costume for the catfish (me) came out very well and
allowed us to get some nice shots of the costume before you could realise that is was me underneath it.
Along with that the location had a balcony that allowed us to get a really nice shot of our location and
our protagonist(?). We also managed to weave the use of the fake tinder page into the film and that
worked really well into contributing to the narrative. 

During the pre-production I didn’t have that much of a role in this week due to my job being entirely on
the day of shooting. The filming of this went relatively easily, however it was an entirely public area
which meant that we had to take short breaks when it became busy as to be able to hear what we
were saying, along with this I had to overcome my embarrassment of walking around a full IBERS café
whilst wearing a dress but I believe my performance within this film was acceptably good and that the
outcome was overall very good. The only issue with this film was that it lacked in length to a certain
extent, we could have extended the narrative further to account for this.

DAN

For this film, our task was to only use one room to create a back and forth dialogue scene, making it take place in only one location. We thought of a few ideas, but then decided on the idea of a failed tinder date with the woman turning out to be a man, looking nothing like the photo. This would have a build up with the man waiting for his date, a conflict with the woman turning up completely different from the man, and a resolution with the man walking out from the date. In terms of acting, I decided to be the guy on the date, trying his best to be appealing, and the woman being portrayed by Tom, due to him having a beard and looking the furthest away from looking like a woman. We decided that this would be best as a parody/extreme of a catfish, demonstrating how it could happen to anybody. As for other roles, Agata would be doing the sound and Harrison would be doing the cinematography for this film. During pre-production, we decided that the café in IBERS would be a good place to shoot this film, as a café is a great place for any date and the social aspect makes it seem appropriate for this type of film. Before filming, I decided to buy some chocolate to use as a prop, to show my character as trying his hardest to make a good impression. Agata also made a fake tinder profile for this shoot, which I used during filming as the main prop. During filming, we went through Toms scenes first as he was under heavy makeup and we decided it would be best for him to go first so he could change. In terms of acting, Mine was alright I felt but I sound a bit too monotone overall. This was my first time acting ever and I thought I did an okay job, but there was still room for improvement. On the other hand, Toms acting has fantastic and had great emotion as well as voice throughout the entire shoot. The camera angles came out looking great too with Harrison adding a shot from above as he moved the camera to the balcony above the café. For the post-production, we made fairly straightforward edits and made the whole thing flow well. The feedback we got was overall okay, however the duration was a bit short, only being a minute. Overall, this was one of our weaker films, however it still felt well -made and I am proud of it due to it being something we had all never done before.