Cinderella: Final Production - Skupina Studios

cinderella SKUPINA STUDIOS from Matthew Levesley on Vimeo.
This was our reinvented version of Cinderella, retold to fit the conventions and typical story line of a 1930's Film Noir, modernised to become a Neo Noir. Our choice of fairy tale was Cinderella; a classic story known by all from a young age, with a small cast and a story line that was very easy to remake. We chose to keep the basics of the story in tact, keeping Cinderella, played by Niamh, as the unfortunate girl, but this time under the care of her cruel step-father, played by myself, living with her evil step-sister, played by Heather. The story begins at the end, with Cinderella, or 'Cindy' talking to her psychiatrist following the traumatic experience of losing Prince Charming, played by Matty. The scenes that were in present time were edited and left with a very dull filter over the top to create the feeling of darkness and gloom in Cinderella's life. In the flashbacks, all scenes are in black in white to create the feeling of looking back in time, and also to stick to the most typical convention of all classic Film Noir's. If we had more time, I would have liked to make all of the red items, such as Heather's clothing, the only visible colour on top of the black and white scenes, however we unfortunately ran short of time and had to leave this idea out. We unfortunately lost a number of key scenes during the editing process, which meant some parts of the short film didn't make as much sense as they should have done. For example, when Prince Charming finds Cinderella, we lost the scene where he forcefully shoves the Step-Dad away from the door, which left a large plot hole that didn't make much sense. I was the narrator during the voice overs, which we filmed on an iPhone 6 and imported onto the computer. The Step-Father and Prince Charming were dressed in what we felt were stereotypical Film Noir costumes, complete with ties and even cigarettes and a drink we used to look like whisky. We reinvented the idea of the fairy godmother allowing Cindy to go to the ball by replacing her with a street drug, called "fairy". During the film, Cindy meets a dealer to buy a "gram of fairy" which we filmed using a freehand camera from the dealers point of view. When Cindy takes the pill, we use a slow motion effect to create the distortion effect that the character is feeling as she falls. The freehand camera rising slowly away from Cinderella is to represent the idea of her floating away from her normal body and becoming someone new, whilst the effect of the pill lasts. A modern remix of "That's Not Me" slowly begins to fade into the scene, and becomes loud and intense during the party scene. The party scene contains a lot of transitions to create the distorted effect of drugs once again, which was achieved by cutting the 23 second clip into a lot of smaller pieces and rejoining them with the transition we wanted. We used Niamh's Venetian styled blinds to create a strange lighting after the party, another typical technique of a Film Noir. The remainder of the film is very basic, we use a number of different camera angles and use the slow motion effect once more when the Step-Dad shoves Cindy to the floor, and a fade to black is used as we return to the present time. With all things taken into consideration, I feel that our end product was a lot better than expected and, despite losing scenes, we still managed to make it work out rather well.