Group movie

Riordan Henry
11/06/2008
INFO 390
Group Movie Project

For this project our group decided to focus on the threatening note left in the bathroom of the Undergraduate Library concerning a shooting on Halloween night on Green street. We decided initially that we wanted to make a spoof movie of a horror movie, however our plans changed when we wanted the movie to focus mainly around interviews. So in essence we did not choose a genre, but rather we chose what elements we wanted and the genre followed. What ended up was something in between a spoof horror movie and a “mocumentary”. The process changed yet again as we began to film.

We began filming interviews within minutes of acquiring a camera, mostly of randomly asking people along Green Street if they were the “Green Street Killer”. We mostly ambushed random passers-by and threw the accusation in their faces. This was mostly a complete failure of a strategy because the “interviewees” had the opportunity to ignore us and simply walk by. We decided then that our next strategy would consist of asking people that were already seated, allowing them no opportunity to ignore us; they literally had to acknowledge our presence.

At this point we realized that we needed a plot, plain and simple. Our first attempt was to spoof the CBS show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. We filmed a few short clips of ourselves acting as detectives. This idea, upon further review was also a failure because it did not make any sense: we interview and pretend to be undercover? So we decided to act as journalists (very poor ones) and to interview some people on the streets. From there we took their answers, coupled with our own prejudiced interviews and spliced the responses into a montage of questions and answers. This is where I personally realized how flawed any filmed documentary is. Editing can take all context away from interviews leaving only an irrelevant skeleton that shows only the editor’s perspective. Many of the responses added into the montage are out of context and are actually answers to different questions altogether.

From the beginning we desired to make this movie a comedy and when we realized we posessed the power to manipulate answers we decided that was from where we should draw our comedy. From the answers we drew from the street, we realized we needed a bit more of the outlandish/offensive style; this is when we decided to interview our group members, keeping in mind we needed answers that gave us a comedic cushion.

With all the film we had, the editing process appeared daunting. Reducing 26 minutes of raw footage into 5 minutes of edited footage was difficult, but the immediate results were enough encouragement to make the process fun. Once I became more acquainted with the software, the process sped up a bit, but still seemed to be rather tedious and I gained respect for the industry as a whole.