Art Department

In terms of props and set, I bought five hats from a couple of two-dollar shops (cost was around $30 despite the shop title). The bb guns were borrowed from an acquaintence of a friend, but did not come with any pellets (though we never intended to fire them in real life). The other items of the film were the necklace, which was my mum's, the 'safe', which was actually a wooden bedside table that my parents already owned, and a phone which was already in my parents' bedroom. The cards and poker chips/money were lying around the house, as were the glasses and beer. I basically used anything I had lying around. The costumes were not mine; they belonged to the people wearing them. To avoid too many historical inaccuracies, the microwave was removed from the kitchen and the cars removed from the carport.

In terms of 'art' there weren't any differences from the house as-is. The paintings on the walls were already present, and nothing was changed dramatically. One thing that was unusual was the lighting. I had used a specific light which sits behind the wooden beam on the ceiling above the poker table, as opposed to the house's normal lighting. This was to create a dim, shady, low-light effect for the film. Another use of light was the open 'harsh' lighting in the hallway - the shade was removed, leaving the bare bulb, which creates shadows on Ed's face since it sits directly above him. The lighting in my parents' room was also reduced, so that it became darker the further the camera got from the hallway door. I chose not to turn on the main lights here in order to keep the lighting low and not bloom out the shot (because the walls are very bright).

In editing, I used Sony Vegas Pro 10's video effects to desaturate the image and manipulate the light and dark values seperately, this way I was able to brighten the outdoor shots and darken the indoor shots, but keep the highlights and shadows that I wanted to keep. In some cases, this even accentuated these highlights/shadows by making them contrast the rest of the scene even more. In making the film black and white, the green walls around the poker table became black, creating a very dark atmosphere with high contrast. The black suits blended in with the shadows, but the greys and whites stood out clearly. This is what I was aiming for with the black and white 'noir' style. The other art-related part was the blood effects, which were sourced from a friend. These were high-definition effects (actually recordings of flares and red liquid splashing in front of the camera with a black background to be edited out in After Effects). I used the same colour grading effects as with the rest of the video to make the blood darker, and then appear black.