Overall, the taster film isn't what I'd hoped it would be. Obviously the location wasn't right, but there were lots of other issues too. I have however been able to learn from these issues, so hopefully the final film will be improved as a result of having made this one.
Actors
I've mentioned it before, but I do have my issues with the acting. Obviously given more rehearsal time, I think the performances would definitely have been better. However, I don't know that the actors were entirely right for the roles and the performances were definitely too theatrical.
Alasdair played Ellis like a frail old man, which is an interesting take on the character, but not the direction I wanted to go in. Ellis is a hardened killer ad I didn't get that impression from him. I get that it might be a difficult character to get in such short time. However I don't think Alasdair was quite what we're looking for. I think we'll probably have to recast for the final film unfortunately.
Ryan really nailed the self-obsessed unlikable side to Kane. However, similar to Alasdair, I didn't get the impression that he was a killer. I think I'll try to work with him, but recasting for Kane might be necessary if it comes to it.
Cinematography
Unfortunately I feel that much of the cinematography was very functional in this scene. I think the lighting was a bit too flat for my liking and Aaron said something similar. Another issue I have is that we went to so much trouble making sure the camera was along the actors' eyelines during the standoff, but during their dialogue, it was below their eye-level and too far off to the side.
I do however think the grade was solid. It still is very functional, but there is a lot more room to experiment with it in future. Aaron even did a black and white cut of the film to see how it looked.
Lens-wise, generally I would prefer wider angle stuff, but I was impressed with the longer lenses on this film, so I'd like to experiment with them further.
Finally, I really liked the slow motion shot of Ellis, however this was actually done in post using Optical Flow, so for the final film, we should definitely look into shooting at a higher frame-rate in order to slow certain shots down.
Production Design
Production design suffered a great deal due to our time and budget. I'll not go into too much detail, because it's obvious it needs a lot of work, but the costumes weren't what I wanted and obviously we were just using toy guns.
Editing
I think the film edited together quite nicely in the end. We lost a few shots in the edit, Harris was great in establishing a pace.
Sound Design
The sound design for this scene was mostly functional, however Juliet did have an opportunity to go a bit more experimental at the beginning and I think she rose to that challenge nicely.
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