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Here is my final critical reflection script:
Hi everyone! Today I will be talking about my film opening titled The Leroux’s. The film falls under the Crime genre and the Film Noir sub-genre. Film noir is a stylistic 1930’s/40’s crime genre characterized by stark lighting effects and the common plot of a murder investigation. The Leroux’s is set in the 1940’s with two main characters named Adele Leroux and Detective Briggs. I play Adele and my partner Alex Medina plays the Detective. The story follows the investigation of Adele’s deceased husband. Detective Briggs is responsible for the case and places Adele as the leading suspect whom he questions. Adele is uninterested and emotionless throughout the questioning which infers the idea that she may have something to do with her husband’s death. The ending is both ominous and suspenseful as Detective Briggs leaves Adele’s home and the final shot focuses in on her smile and quick wink just before she shuts the front door.
The Leroux’s challenges the conventions of a typical old fashioned crime film in which the victim is a helpless female and the criminal or murderer is a dominant male. In our film, the roles are reversed. Adele Leroux is the killer and displays a high level of confidence throughout the film, while Detective Briggs is somewhat subordinate as he attempts to investigate the case. We thought it would be unique to create the film in this way because typically, crime or suspenseful films revolve around the so called damsel in distress.
Our film was inspired by director Wes Anderson’s common stylistic approach. His films are quirky and weird in their own odd way. Anderson has a distinct style that is prevalent in all of his films, a style that is recognizable from the first shot of the movie. We took heavy inspiration from him in terms of his camera placement. He uses symmetrical framing to engage the audience in the characters and the characters only. His shots, especially in conversations, place the characters in the center of the frame, drawing all focus to them and their immediate surroundings. Since our opening has a conversation at the forefront, we wanted to make our shots lined up perfectly symmetrical to give that feeling and personality of Anderson’s films.
Because of the era we wanted to portray in our film, we chose specific costumes for the characters accordingly. Our film is set in the 1930’s/40’s, so this tasked us with the problem of finding a wardrobe for our characters that matched the era. Luckily, my mother had many vintage pieces in her wardrobe including clothing and jewelry that I was able to borrow. My character, Adele Leroux, is a woman of high class during this time period, so I made sure to incorporate key pieces like pearls, heels, and leather gloves to convey the typical rich 1930’s female. Alex’s outfit had to portray a detective from the era. Typically that meant, a long trench coat and a fedora as the two main tropes of the typical detective outfit. Fortunately, Alex was able to find the whole outfit for just under $15 at Goodwill and Burlington Coat Factory.
My house was the set for the movie, we used my parents bedroom/office, the dining room and my front porch. For the opening credits, which were filmed on the office desk, we shined two lamps on either side of the center image to brighten the shot. We cut out the letters for the credits ourselves from magazines because it contributed to the crime genre, as if the mismatched letters were put together by the detective. We had to place the letters individually each time for each shot, which was the first struggle we faced while filming. Also, we did not have a tripod for the Nikon camera we were using, so that called for intense improvisation on our part. We took about ten to twelve textbooks and stacked them high on my dining room table. We were able to successfully place the camera on the books and add or remove any to raise or lower the shot.
The entire editing process took place with the iMovie software on my Mac laptop. iMovie is a simple to use editing program that Alex and I are familiar with from using on past projects, so we agreed it would be the best tool to use for the film. Apart from video edits, iMovie contains many filters to choose from that can be placed on each clip. We went with the “old world” filter because of its dark shadows and old fashioned look, similar to the film noir style.
I would first submit this film to an independent film festival like Sundance Film Festival or South by Southwest to capture the attention of a smaller audience which will promote the film to a much larger audience in the long run. If it is picked up by a distributor at a festival, that would allow us to commercialize the film at Movie theaters across the country.
This film opening project has truthfully, improved my production skills tremendously. I previously never created a film and the entire process of this project taught me so many valuable film techniques and editing skills that I will cherish for a long time. The majority of this lessons learned I must thank my amazing partner Alex for. Without him, none of this would have been possible.
Until then,
Thank you for watching!
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