Rook Studios Presents…

Our film was inspired by older, black and white silent films. These films usually feature male detectives and leads. Our film features a non-male detective, which already challenges conventions. We also included actors of many different backgrounds, each playing a significant role, which is more than what these films could say. We treated everyone here as equal, regardless of race, gender and sexuality, and didn’t cast based on these elements. Our main reasons for casting these people was based on pure talent. We hoped to create a sense of irony and suspense with our story. We gave our audience information that our main character, Investigator Rook, needed in order to fully solve the case. For example, in the beginning of the film, the audience can see who really committed the murder. Our Investigator, however, lacks this bit of knowledge. We deny our audience the satisfaction of getting to see this case get resolved towards the end of the film. However, we do deliver on the expectatio...

After quite some time, Rook Studios proudly presents: Black, White, and Red! Thanks to everyone who supported and worked on this project! Special thanks to:  -Mrs. Zangre, who provided our King’s glittery cape and Rook’s interrogation backdrop -Mrs. Krantz, who provided Sean’s crown and great actors -The actors, for being incredibly talented and fun to work with -Kate and Jackie, for buying and making props for the film -And of course, thanks to our crew, for working so hard throughout the entirety of the project!  

On our final day(s) of production, our film had all filters needed, and after about half an hour, I successfully got the footage down to one minute… and 27 milliseconds.  Recently, Nya, our sound designer, worked with Kate to find audio and insert it. They succeeded, and found a very interesting, and fitting, audio. Kate worked today, 12/15, to get rid of those milliseconds, and work on credits for the film. I tried to help, although she did end up finishing the product, as she had better ideas. Also, it was her job to begin with. :) Some problems that occurred were Rush being glitchy today, and me not fully knowing how to insert credits. Aside from that, it was pretty smooth sailing! All that’s left is finishing adding the credits, and we should be good to go! We’re so excited to finally have finished our first film!

On the next day of editing, we started to add filters to our footage, along with attempting to finish getting it down to one minute. Rook’s realization scene along with Kammy’s interrogation can be scene below.  I had fun applying the filters to the film, it was a simple, yet entertaining task. We decided to leave our beginning scene in all colors, which not only worked as a transition, but also to ‘establish’ the inspiration for the rest of the film. All our characters are the human embodiments of chess pieces. For example, Sean, the King, was the King, piece. Investigator Rook was the Rook, and Kammy, our suspect, was a pawn. The black and white is also inspired by old black and white silent films. We aspired to achieve the feel of black and white movies, and I think we did a good job at doing just this. 

I must have gotten extremely lucky to have gotten group members with the same study hall as me. For day 2, me, Jackie, and Kate met up at study hall for fourth hour.  We were able to trim and upload missing footage, we got it down to around 2 and a half minutes. As we edited the film and gathered ideas, we watched the World Cup, so overall, it was a good editing day. We still have quite a bit to go before we’re ready to submit the final cut, but I feel we’ll do a great job! :)  

We finally finished filming! We started with assembling all our footage, which turned out to be more than three minutes total, with slating included. The first day was spent figuring out how to upload footage, along with playing around with some features. We discussed ideas we had, as well.  One problem we had was uploading footage. Our editor spent quite some time uploading footage. The rest of the group assisted in trying to trim down footage with the remaining time we had.  

 Day three was our final day of filming! We worked on scene one, our opening scene on day three. This scene required a chess board, and two actors. Unfortunately, we didn’t have our actors. Although, re-using our actors didn’t make much sense either.  So today, everyone had a different hat to wear. I shot the scene, while Jackie (our cinematographer) and Kate (our editor), both acted in the scene. We were able to shoot this scene in around 4 takes. We had two different shots for this scene. The first shot is shown below. The second scene (shown below) is a close up of our queen falling over, which serves as foreshadowing. This took multiple takes, more than five, to get a ‘natural’ feel of the piece falling over.  We were able to achieve this, and it looks very well done. Jackie shot this scene, as she wasn’t needed for acting here. Next up, editing! Final cuts are due soon, and we have quite a bit of footage to trim down. 

Day two of production was Rook Studios most productive day out of the three. Out of the eight scenes we had to shoot, we got five done on day two, scene three was shot on day one.  We shot the following scenes: Two, five, six, seven, and eight. Throughout the period of production, I made the decision to cut scene four. This was a montage, a group of scenes put together of Rook investigating and interrogating the other pawns. I knew we wouldn’t really have time for this in the final cut, so it had to go.  Another scene that gave us some trouble was Kammy’s death scene/Rook’s interrogation scene.  We had actors holding up the black fabric behind Kammy. Our original plan was to pin the fabric up on one of the walls. However, the fabric was too heavy. We also needed a table for this scene, and we couldn’t drag the tables around. So, our actors who weren’t filming were given the job of holding up the backdrop. They did quite well, as can be seen in the still above, it looked s...