Written and directed by: Hannah Livingston
Why a Murder Mystery?
I wrote and directed The Drama Society Presents: MURDER. It is a short film about a group of college students in the drama society when during their annual halloween party student Victoria Expiry dies. Detective Sleuth has to solve the case that night or the killer runs free.
The concept and idea for this story was inspired by shows like Psych and movies like Knives Out. I also really enjoyed playing Clue as a kid and watching Scooby-Doo, so I wanted this film to not take itself too seriously much like Clue and Scooby-Doo. This lead to character names like “Detective Sleuth”, “Victoria Expiry” and “Alec Blindsplot”.
Pre-Production
All good films need pre-production. It’s the least glamorous part, in my opinion, but it’s also the most essential.
Pre-production for me consisted of a lot of different things, and I spent about thirty-eight hours on this stage of the film. I did a lot of writing and re-writing the script, scouting out the location for where we should film, helping to design storyboards so we know what all our shots will look like, pitch planning, crew meetings, set design, and so much more. As a director, you have to be pretty involved in every step of the process.
Production
After a good long pre-production process, it was time to film! Our short film ended up being eleven minutes long (three more minutes than we originally planned for). We quickly realized that this story couldn’t be told in eight minutes in order for all the character’s arcs to be fulfilling. Because of this, we had to shoot a ton of scenes and content. We totaled about thirty-five hours in shoots.
During production my main job as director was to work with the actors and make sure that I was communicating my vision to them. Because we don’t have a giant Hollywood crew, I also made sure to help out with set design and any issues that arise during the shoot. I also worked with the cinematographer to make sure the shots were looking how we wanted them to look.
Post-Production
This stage consists of editing, coloring, sound, and feedback. I was not the editor, so this was the phase where I had the least amount of hours (twenty-seven). But, as director I still needed to be very involved. This stage consisted of me working with my editor and giving feedback on her cuts. Occasionally we would get together and I would make small tweaks, but mostly the editor would edit then send me the cut, I would give feedback, and she would make the changes.
In this stage I also colored the film. This proved to be more difficult than I originally thought because we used real colored lights on set to give the film a “halloween vibe”. I had never worked with colored lights before and matching color for each scene was something I had to take extra time and care into during post-production.
I also helped with sound design along with my editor. We had some long nights to make sure the video could be the best it could be.
Overall Lessons & Feelings
This project helped me to learn a lot. I learned about hard skills, like working with colored lights and directing large teams of people and grand scale productions, but I think even more beneficial were the soft skills I learned. I learned a lot about how to lead people. The most important thing you can do as a leader is get to know and love those you lead.
If I could do the project over again I’d do a million things differently, but I learned a lot of valuable lessons and made a compelling narrative film through this project.