In producing Bad Faith, we started production with knowing we had a farm location in which we could film. Initial ideas were towards the horror genre, however, I felt that the horror genre was something in which was rarely done right. Thus, I proposed the idea of creating a genre hybrid between the western and noir genres. I felt the location we had was quite fitting for a western, with the open fields, buildings from the late 1800s and country setting. On top of this, the noir genre is one in which I am very interested in due to its story elements such as the femme fatale and flawed protagonist yet I was also very intrigued by the noir production elements, so we could utilize chiaroscuro lighting and scenes with unique and interesting lighting setups. In creating a story with these elements, we utilized the western story of a wanted suspect on the run from a bounty hunter, along with the costumes and props to communicate it was set in the time of westerns. On top of this, we included noir character traits such as the previously mentioned femme fatale and flawed protagonist. We wanted to create a femme fatale that subverts expectations, appears to have good faith, yet in reality, she is a duplicitous woman, who uses narcissistic means to achieve her own goals at others’ expense.
In terms of communicating the western genre, we made this very clear, as your first introduction to a character is a woman with a cowboy hat, collared shirt and belt accompanied with traditional music, very similar to those of western cinema. Alongside this, both other characters were dressed in traditional cowboy hats, vests, black suede jackets and boots. We also immediately establish that the woman is on the run from a bounty hunter, so we use our audience’s understanding of cinema in hope that they will establish a connection between the costume, location, props and story elements, that it is a part of western cinema. The western trope in which I was proudest of was the extreme close-ups of the bounty hunter during his gun stand-off with Jason, I felt as though there was genuine tension between the two characters through these intense close-ups and the bounty hunters acting ability. As per noir, I made a late decision to change the film to black and white in order to capture hard lighting and silhouettes to their best potential. We used Fresnel lights on shots with narrative intensity, similar to those of noir cinema, as the lighting wasn’t realistic in terms of its direction, yet communicated emotion through its usage in the shot, adding emphasis on the characters’ facial expressions along with hard shadows in the background. Another noir element I was proud of was the shot of the shadow on the wall of the woman shooting the man, I wanted to communicate the darkness of her character through this hard lighting, similar to that of noir cinema.
A difficulty my group and I experienced was the organizing of the actors, we used Star Now, however, not to much success, most would not respond or had no availability as we left it a little bit too late. It seemed like there was no luck, yet when we stumbled upon a Facebook audition group we were bombarded with messages in a number of minutes. For future assignments, I would like to organize a production schedule immediately rather than deliberating and postponing it before it is too late. Something in which I thought I did successfully was that I had written a detailed script and a detailed shot list, so on the day of filming, we didn’t find many difficulties as everything had been planned. An issue we encountered was that there were several shots that were a little bit shaky, or our use of the zoom was not smooth. I used a warp stabilizer to stabilize the scene and take away the shakiness, this worked to great effect and converted unusable shots to the exact shots we originally planned on taking. Something in which I also explored during the creation of this short film, were my use of long and uninterrupted takes of dialogue. Rather than shooting a scene with cuts back and forth, in scenes of higher emotional value we shot long takes and got our actors to recite the scenes from start to finish, not only giving us more potential footage but it also meant that we could simply use entire takes in certain dramatic scenes, such as when the bounty hunter arrives. One of our biggest strengths in this piece was the music. Rather than choosing music off of the internet, one of the members of my team Jack, made the music himself, and through this, we were able to perfectly time the intensity of the music with the intensity of the film. Thus, creating a much more engaging and intense film.
So finally, we ask ourselves, if genre works and is established in this piece. When we look at the western production elements, such as the traditional western outfits, country/farm ranch location and intense close-ups we can establish that there is a direct connection between our film and the genre on a physical level. We also did this with noir, as there are the traditional, strong silhouettes are featured throughout, alongside dark shadows and the high contrast black and white theme, allowing for shots to appear both lighter and/or darker than they may appear, a very common noir element. Alongside this, we have story elements from both, including the archetypal bounty hunter from westerns, and the flawed protagonist and femme fatale from noir. When we look at these as a whole, they do not work as a single genre as a whole, rather a genre hybrid of both, as the above story and production elements from both genres are explicitly represented and referenced throughout.