Tag Archives: assassin

Inspiration

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Let me just start by saying that I’m a huge David Fincher fan. Huge.
I would probably give away anything I own to be his (or his cinematographers) apprentice, including my cat. No, wait, that is a lie. Anything that isn’t alive.

So I guess it isn’t too surprising that I have found great inspiration in some of his work when I started working on the storyboard for our film. Se7en and Fight Club has been the two main sources, but also the remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. They are all gritty, dark and frightening, and has a look that I hope we can achieve in The Assassin.

What is it that makes it so good?

First of all, the lighting. Especially in Se7en, where we are stuck in a (whats the opposite of utopian?) city where the sun never shines, and the building and the people are dirty and corrupt. This shot is supposed to be in a hospital, but when were ever a hospital this grey and “poorly” lit? Brad Pitt and the dead obese man is both being lit slightly above from the right, and I think they must have used reflectors to light his face from beneath as well.
The lamp in the room is used cleverly, and functions as a hair light on Pitt.

Another feature in Finchers films is the use of suspense, often helped by close ups. In the intro sequence we se several short, extreme close ups of hands cutting out things, writing, etc, but because of the shallow depth of field we are unable to see what is going on. However, the music and the editing pace keeps us almost in a trance, anxious to find out what is going on.


Did you watch the videoclip? No? Why do you think I put it there?
Go back an watch it, right now!

In the video you can see, like I mentioned earlier, the specific use of lighting. We are being denied a full overview of the situation (also caused by the overlapping images and quick editing), and the restriction is making us curious; we want to watch more.
I’m not sure how we can do this in our film; I think we have to try an light our shoot as well and thorough as possible, and perhaps make it look darker in post production.

After all, it is an ambiguos film. We want to trick the audience into believing that the person we see in the diegetic world is the person who does the voiceover, hence a dark and gritty light could function nicely. However, it turns out that the person on screen is simply another victim, so we want people to be shocked and perhaps have a little sympathy with our man.

Perhaps a combination of both can be used.

 

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Rehearsal: done.

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Bet you didn’t think we’d be this effective, huh?! Or wait.. I didn’t think we’d be this effective. I guess we proved me wrong.

Oh my god, that sentence makes my head hurt. Actually, there is a slight possibility that the headache is caused by a lack of sleep: I’ve had 12 hours sleep since I got up Friday morning.. But not in vain! We managed to get a lot of work done, and I feel quite prepared for the shoot next Saturday (stay away Murphy, or I’ll kick you in the trachea, sucker).

We went through all the shots and did the lighting set up for almost all of them, and so far it seems to work out nicely. We are hoping to get the KINO light as well (we only had three redheads), so we can avoid some of the hard lights from the redheads. However, I’m pretty damn pleased by deciding to bounce the light of the white walls in Rebeccas apartment in order to create a softer light (yes yes, I know this isn’t a groundbreaking discovery that has never been used before, but as this is my first time using studio light, I’m pretty ecstatic and proud).

It is a quite daunting task, to make sure the lighting is good in every shot. Another thing to think about is continuity. We will have a fairly good idea keeping the same light just by looking, but we have decided to have a continuity photographer making sure the light matches the previous shots. The story tome of our film is perhaps an hour, but it will take us much longer to get all the shots done, therefore keeping the light natural and logical is going to be a challenge.

Lyall, who plays “the Mark” came in at 2pm and rehearsed a couple of shots with us. He’s a cool cat, just the type of actor we need! First of all, he was wearing this t-shirt:

GUESS WHO HAS THE EXACT SAME T-SHIRT BACK IN NORWAY?!
Thats right, my little sister I do!

Luckily, he doesn’t only have a good sense of fashion (I’m actually serious guys, t-shirts with comic references really tickles my fancy), he works really well with the crew and is a good actor. He brought some really good ideas up during the rehearsal, some which we have included into the script.

We also did a bit more planning in terms of production design; we refurnished the lounge room and added paintings and some small tables. On Thursday we’re buying a pot plant and a bouquet of roses, and we’re also bringing all the male shirts we have at home (to fill up the closet).

I really love to see how this group works, we are starting to get settled in our roles, and already during the rehearsal we naturally did tasks that were suited for our roles; Rebecca and Amirah went and bought shirts for the actors while Ian and I continued working on the different shots. Ed helped me out with the lighting and added important details to the storyboard as we looked at the shots.

All in all, it was a good day! Next Friday we’re having a sleepover at Rebeccas house, and getting up at 6am to prepare for the shoot. It will be glorious.

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Audition day!

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We had our auditions in the nucleus space today, and it went great! I mean, not like great in a way that we settled for what we got (Pauls advice was that whatever you get is the best, no matter what), but really really amazing, fantastic, superb, breathtaking great.
I guess I should give Ed a big thanks and a pat on the back for making a script that attracted such great actors to the casting.

And while I’m at it, I have to mention that Rebecca is probably working as a producer full time, but haven’t told us yet, cause she is rocking this assignment. Today all the group members were handed a manilla envelope each, which contained a schedule for the casting, the script, the additional monologue that I wrote, and a folder of papers with information and a picture of each actor. And guess what. Each sheet of paper had room for comments underneath. Gah. Can you believe it? Oh and she also brought a cooling bag with bottles of water for us and the actors.

I’ve asked her if she would be interested in organizing my life, but she didn’t seem to keen.. I guess I’ll settle for a quintessential producer.

Then over to the actors. We had 7 candidates for “The Assassin” and 4 candidates for “The Mark”. I don’t think any of us had too high expectations, as it is a no-pay job and a student project. Just to put it simple, our minds were blown. We are now in the position of having to choose between two or three amazing actors for each part, and let me tell you, it is NOT an easy decision. I would love to shoot this movie twice, so we could explore the potential of our favorites, but unfortunately we don’t have time. Sadface.

We are meeting on Monday to do the final decision.
Really happy with this group.
The next stage of the production will be production design. I’ve startet working on a storyboard, but will finish the shot list before I start on the final one.

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Production design

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If we are using Rebeccas house (which would be really good, it’s a lot of space), we need to do a looooot of thinking on the production design.

Our character is a very tidy person, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a lot of furniture/objects in his apartment.

Before we go crazy and bring all our stuff and furniture into the apartment, we should maybe decide on a “colour code”. If we want a dark moody look on our film, most colours would be soft and not too distinct. However, it could be really cool if we had one colour really sticking out. We talked about using red earlier, as an omen for the blood that will come in the end, so we could try to find items such as:

-  Some paintings (not exclusively red, but maybe without other striking colours). I have a painting, which isn’t great, but nice, and it is made with red tones only.
- Pillows for the couch
- A red Tivoli radio
- Cereal boxes or other kitchen products (we discussed having out character chopping tomatoes, then spilling it on his shirt, for then changing it again)
- Red flowers (roses with thorns could look amazing for a close up with shallow depth of field, and the character moving in the background) in a vase

Watch Amelié again, the use of red is amazing. It is very deliberate, so we have to decide if we want to play on the subconsciousness or if we should dominate the frames with red.

However, if it becomes TOO much red it might seem tacky and too revealing.

What kind of objects to you put on a wall? Could we try to find dark curtains to use on the windows to loose some of the white? Bookshelves?

Other options:

We might need to find someone with a car that can drive furniture back and forth. We want to avoid the look of a student apartment like Paul mentioned in the lecture, so in order to make it look more established we could try to fit in another couch, a tablecloth for the dinner table, a CD-shelf, or even better, a record player. My housemate owns one and I’m sure we could borrow it if we treat it extremely gently.

Noticeboard with news clippings on it?

We might have to consider finding a house that is less white. I personally prefer apartments with white walls, but maybe we have to look at the option of finding something older.

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