Recreating Movie Scenes
American Psycho
We have chosen to recreate the scene linked above for this project. The scene we have chosen is from the film 'American Psycho'. American Psycho was released in April 2000 and directed by Mary Harron, it is a movie adaptation of the book 'American Psycho' written by Bret Easton Ellis. The film contains a star-studded cast with Christian Bale, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon and William Dafoe.
The plot follows the life of Patrick Bateman, a wealthy investment banker, who is trying to hide his psychopathic ego. Later in the film, his psychopathic thoughts escalate and we watch the bloody rampage he embarks on.
There are many reasons why we chose this scene, it was a good amount of challenge for us but also easy enough for us to shoot. Another reason why this scene was good to recreate was because it only had two people acting throughout, this made it much easier to film as we we didn't need to find lots of actors and we could give out instruction easily.
The shots used didn't have a lot of movement, which made filming easier and meant we could focus on the other aspects of the scene (costume, blocking, props) a little bit more.
The costumes in this scene are quite simple, the actors that we used already had a shirt and tie to wear, so we didn't need to buy a new outfit for each character. The only purchase we made was for a raincoat.
We also picked this scene because it looked like a lot of fun to recreate, the dancing and murdering scenes were something that drew our attention to this particular scene.
Other Scenes
When we were first given the brief the first scene I had in mind was from 'Kingsman: The Secret Service'. I would've really liked to recreate this scene as it's from a movie I really like and I think it would've been quite fun to film. I think we could've filmed up to the fighting as this scene includes some really nice shots and uses focusing techniques to get the audience to focus on each character.
This scene wasn't chosen as it wasn't something the group liked, we had to make sure the group was happy with what we were going to make together. We also didn't pick this scene as we believed there were other scenes which could be more fun to make and exciting to watch.
Behind The Scenes
Photos
Above are some of the behind the scenes pictures of our shoot, most of this scene was set in one location which we filmed in a small studio space upstairs.
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1. In this photo we are setting up the camera for the shot of Luca.
2. This was our first day of filming the bathroom scene. We weren't happy with the results of this day of shooting so we re-shot this the next day.
3. I am comparing the shot from the film and what we have on camera.
4. This is during the shoot of the bathroom shots.
5. Comparing the scene from the film and what we have setup on camera, this is to try and make our recreation as accurate as possible.
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Setting
This scene was filmed in a small studio space located above our classroom. we had originally planned to film inside the classroom but after seeing the studio it was very clear that the studio was better. The studio had better furniture to use on set, had better lighting and was much quieter for us to film in.
We arrange all the furniture around in our set, as there wasn't enough room to film our scene. After re-arranging our new set we had to decorate it, I had brought in a few old sheets to protect the furniture from fake blood and to make our set similar to the one in the original scene.. Next, we covered the area around Luca (as Paul) with some old newspaper, this was also to make our scene recreation look as similar to the original scene as possible.
For one of the shots Patrick leans against a shelf with a CD player and some CD's. In our set we didn't have a shelf or any kind of props to recreate that shot, the best way to do that was to use the whiteboard to draw it. We drew a CD player on the white board and added the magnets to be used as buttons.
Props
We created props out of cardboard for this project as it was cheaper for our group. Firstly, we drew the shape of the axe head on cardboard and cut it out. We then rolled up a long piece of cardboard to create the rounded handle of the prop, we then stuck the edge down with hot glue. Next we glued both pieces together to create the resemblance of an axe, a member of our group took the prop home and used tin foil to create the shiny metal part of the axe.
We also made a cigar out of cardboard as we were planning to film a few more shots. I made the cardboard cigar by rolling up a piece of cardboard and hot gluing the edge down, I then painted it brown.
Costume Design
The costumes for this scene were quite simple and didn't require a lot of research and designing. Paul and Patrick are wearing similar outfits in this scene because they are both businessmen. We asked Luca (playing Paul) to wear a white shirt, black tie and trousers and we asked Noah (playing Patrick) to wear a white shirt, tie, trousers and a suit jacket to the shoot.
One of the main pieces of clothing we didn't have was the raincoat Patrick wears to protect his suit from the blood. One of our crew had ordered a similar coat online, but unfortunately it didn't arrive in time for day 1 of filming. This was a problem as we had planned to film the bathroom scenes this day which requires Patrick to wear the raincoat.
Make up
We didn't use a lot of make up for this project as it was not needed. The only use of makeup was during the shot of Patrick attacking Paul with his axe and having blood splattered over his face.
We recreated this scene by having one of the crew members holding a spray bottle of blood off camera, which was slightly awkward for the actor as they had to try and not hit them with the axe.
The fake blood we used stained everything, so we had to practice blocking our scene before doing the final take with the fake blood. Our first take with the fake blood didn't go as well as we hoped, it didn't show up very well on camera, we tried a second time and had the same results. We were running out of time and had to find a way around this, so I came up with the idea of using two bottle of spray fake blood instead of one. This helped see more of the blood on camera as the other bottle of blood had more of a deeper red colour to it, mixed together this created a more realistic effect on camera.
Blocking & Rehearsal
For this project it was really important to keep rehearsing each shot to make it accurate. The week before the shoot our group had planned to spend this time blocking and rehearsing in front of the camera, this was to give the actors and camera crew an idea of how to shoot the scene. Unfortunately this week Noah was ill and couldn't come in to college, this made it harder to rehearse as they were acting as the main character and were in the majority of scenes. We did a few rehearsals of the shots of Paul on his own, which helped the crew get an idea of how to shoot it and gave the actor a chance to learn their lines and practice their movements.
We didn't practice our blocking enough, so we it came to the day of the shoot we had to think of ways to help our actors. We did this by watching each shot over and over again and by also telling them to do a specific action when the character says a specific word.
Final Edit
Evaluation
The first issue we had with this project was the filming of the bathroom shots. Some of the shots we managed to get were using the wrong angle, which made it less accurate to the movie. I think the problem with the bathroom shots were because of the limited space the actor had to move and camera operators had to set up and film. If we had chosen a better location to shoot this, I feel as if the shots we would've captured would have looked better and more accurate. We didn't chose a different location because we were short on time and were unsure of other places to film this shot, our main focus was filming the living room scenes as they take up more of the scene.
Another issue of this shoot was having a few shots that were out of focus, which was caused by not focusing on the subjects properly. If we had checked everything looked good on camera before pressing record this issue could have been easily avoided, we could've also re-shot the scenes that looked blurry. Unfortunately I didn't notice the out of focus shots until the editing process when it was too late to reshoot. Next time I'm on a shoot I will double check the camera setting and focus before filming.
In some of the shots the timing and blocking is slightly off, this is due to our team not rehearsing enough before the day of the shoot. Although we didn't get to rehearse and block out each shot we had originally planned to do so the week before filming, due to a member of our team being ill this prevented us from practicing the blocking. During the filming we should've checked our shots more often to double check if they were good enough and done a couple more shots if we weren't happy with them. We didn't do this because we had a lot to film in one day and were running short on time.
Overall I think this project went really well. I am really happy with final results of our scene and I also enjoyed the process of recreating American Psycho. I am most proud of how accurate we managed to get the actions and shots of the scene, when the original and recreation of the scene are played together, they are almost perfect.
Pre-Production Documents
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