Production Diary

Production

The production of the film trailer was decided to be done over the course of 4 days, (not consecutively) I will be keeping this production diary in order to keep a record of what I have done and what still needs to be done.

Day 1: Today we filmed the last scene of the trailer which will be the scene where I am tied up and have a gun pointed at my head. Everything went according to plan but there was a small problem in that the room we chose to film the scene the window didn’t have a curtain or a way to cover up the window so to remedy this we had get a lot of bags and coats to completely cover the window and make it look darker, but other than that everything went according to plan. 

Day 2: Today was the day we started filming the opening scene and the confrontation scene. Since we were filming school after hours, we wanted to wait till it got dark before we started to film and since the school has to be closed by 6 we were a bit constrained for time. We felt a bit rushed but we still got it filmed nonetheless. However the time constrained was felt even more when we decided to film the confrontation scene whilst we were there anyway. There was a problem in addition to the time constrain both the protagonist and the antagonist were both still wearing the same clothes so we had to make one of them wear a jacket from someone else and the other one turn his clothes inside out. But we overcame that predicament and kept the continuity in the film.

Day 3: Today we decided it would be good to film the poker scene. We gave this scene the whole day because it was the longest scene we were filming and a lot of preparation was going to need to go into it. We needed to put together a realistic looking poker table and get the room empty and get everybody ready for it. For the most part everything went according to plan and there were no major complications.

Day 4: We waited a week later to film this because there was a lot of other stuff we had to do for various parts of the production piece and also we couldn’t get a free time when all of us were available till a week later. This day we filmed the crime scenes/montage. Besides a few outtakes the filming went as planned before.

The next part of the production was the editing of the film trailer. During the editing process we had to take out a couple of extra scenes and cut down a lot of scenes to makes it much shorter. There were two different versions of the trailer the first edited version was scrapped because the timing was off on some of the scenes and the wrong footage was used in a lot of places. So instead of taking a few steps back we thought it might be a better idea if we were to start the whole process again.

During the editing we had to think of a soundtrack to add to the trailer we made a mind map of different ideas but when it came down to it we chose the song “POWER” by Kanye West. Then after that we had to decide on the name for the film, we basically did a brainstorm of what the film was about and different titles and finally decided that the best name for it would be “Playing with Fire” because it hinted to a less than literal reference and more to the connotation behind it. When you play with fire nothing good comes from it and in this the protagonist plays around with a lot of things he shouldn’t be playing with and messes with the wrong people, so in a metaphorical sense he is in fact playing with fire.

Ancillary Task Production

For my Ancillary Tasks I decided to produce a film poster and the front cover of a film magazine advertising the film.

I decided to start with the magazine. Firstly I had to come up with a name for the magazine. After making a brainstorm of different names that related to cinema in some way I came up with ‘Preview’ I decided this would be a good name because it was simple and it related to the showing of a film before its official opening which is what the magazine focuses on, reviews before film come out officially. I then decided to make some enticements. Not only did I do a couple of giveaways but I made it so that this issue was the 100^th and some people will look at a magazine which has reached a milestone and buy it anyway not because they read it but simply because the fact it has reached a milestone is reason enough to pick it up.

For the poster I decided to have 3 of the main characters displayed as if they were playing cards on a backdrop of what is meant to look like fire. As a play on words for the title “Playing with fire”. At the bottom of the poster I put hash tag #PWF to advertise the film on Twitter. The images of Josh and I were taken at a low angle shot to make us both look powerful.