Film Opening: Development

In this development, we discuss film opening details, the filming process, and typeface development. This is all written by Nayana.

Film Opening Names

We had a few names in mind which includes:

Liebestraume
Harmony
A reignited Harmony
Reignite
Perfect Imperfections
A Musical Match
The First Verse
The Duet
Two Halves make a Whole
Moonlight Sonata

These titles all convey a sense of passion, connoting romance, and also incorporate subtle hints that music will play a role in the film.

Moonlight Sonata was our final choice; we chose this as our title as moonlight is commonly connoted with subjects of love and romance. While a sonata often is a long song that tells a story. Furthermore, Moonlight Sonata is a well-known song that may attract audiences that have an interest in music/more specifically, classical music

Credits

Production Company: Regents Media Production
Distribution Company: 20th Century Studios
Production Team
Cast

Production Team

Producers: Timothy Sulaeman, Maxi Gehlen, Sharon Tan, Nayana Sumaniaka
Director: Timothy Sulaeman
Screenplay Writer: Maxi Gehlen
Casting Director: Nayana Sumaniaka

Actors/Characters (Cast)

Present Hazel: Danny Budiada
Harmony: Jasmine Riadi
Hazel’s Mother: Hawila Eva
Teacher: Benjamin Whitaker
Adolescent Hazel: Matthew Tan
Young Hazel: Timothy Mulia

Locations

Regents Secondary School Bali
Jalan Belanjong No.14

Filming Process

Pictures of Behind The Scene can be found here

Timothy as mentioned, is the video producer and editor which means he is in charge of the majority of our production. He prepared all equipment needed for filming (camera, lighting, sound) through rent or things that are already his. We decided to split the whole filming into 3 days:

- Friday, February 10th in school

- Saturday, February 11th in Maxi’s house

- Sunday, February 12th in Maxi’s house

Day 1

Starting on Friday, during our media class we prepared the setting and the equipment and revamped a classroom to be our music room as we found the actual music room to not be suitable for the shoot.

After setting everything up, we tried to do some mock shots to be used as reference later on using our phone, and from then we discuss on what to change and what to not change.

In the actual shoot, we also experimented with the actual shots to reach a variety. We didn’t follow the screenplay as strictly to see if there were any more types of angles that could possibly not be in the screenplay, this includes:

- Teacher yelling for Hazel while sitting down and standing up

- Shots focusing solely on Hazel’s hands playing the piano

After around possibly 70 takes, our first day of the shoot is over and all the actors did a great job and were really cooperative.

Day 2

On the second day of the shoot, our main goal is to tackle all the scenes with younger Hazels.

Our day starts at 11, with us setting and revamping Maxi’s living room and changing the furniture set up to make sure it fits with what we want and need. We moved a lot of stuff, from the things on top of the piano, around the piano to the sofa.

After we set everything up, we went on a little brief of what we are doing, hence we started from the youngest Hazel’s scenes to the second Hazel.

We did a lot of shots and experiments and trials for all scenes, even those that we don’t plan nor write in the storyboard/screenplay. We made sure to get more than enough shots so that during the editing, Timo can try some stuff.

After multiple takes and reshoots, our second day is over, and big applause for the kids who were our young Hazels and worked together seamlessly.

Day 3

On our last day of the shoot, we just had to finish the rest of the shoot which was just a few scenes with Danny (Hazel) and Ms Lala (mother).

For this shoot, we experimented a lot with the costume of the mother. Some things we did were using baby powder on her hair to create fake white hair to indicate her age and layering her outfit to make it more structured and shaped. For Danny, we just did a simple, formal outfit with a white button-up and long pants with an image of it being a competition outfit.

We had an issue during this shoot for the final parts, our camera stabilizer died and stopped working. So we had to improvise and worked with a lot of prayers so it lasted through the shoot. We also focused a lot on the match cut of our opening so Timothy was very detailed about the positioning of the actor so it lines up as perfectly as possible.

Typeface Development

For the credit text typeface, we used a combination of typeface IBM Plex Serif as the names as well as DejaVu Serif for the roles

Our research of fonts movies of the genre “teen romance” uses

We started researching and developing the typeface for the title card as well as the credit text. We opted for a serif font to show a more classy and elegant touch to the title. We also chose to have a highlight neon-like effect surrounding the title to symbolize the “moonlight” of the moonlight sonata. We took the “Black Swan” movie font as inspiration.