The Great Gatsby is a film I have loved since I was a child, from the elegant costumes to the rich, extravagant scenery, it tells a normal love story in a magical way. This is why I decided to recreate a scene from this film for my scene creation project. The genre of the film is a romance/ musical, I took inspiration from other film such as La La Land and Bugsey Malone for the musical aspect and Ian Sommerhalder’s character in The Vampire Diaries and Rachel McAdams character in The Notebook for inspiration of the romance aspects. There are 5 characters in this scene, Tom and Daisy are a married couple who are very unhappy in their relationship and are both having affairs, Daisy has fallen in love with Gatsby, a rich man who is friends with her cousin, Nick. Nick is dating Daisy and Tom’s best friend Jordan who is more mature than everyone else and doesn’t like to get involved in the drama. Tom and Daisy have invited everyone around to their house for a dinner party. There is a lot of tension in the air as Daisy and Gatsby’s affair is becoming more and more public but no one chooses to talk about it. Knowing that his wife is cheating on him, Tom gets very frustrated at the pair when they share a very intimate moment together, he manages to keep calm however as he is planning to ruin their lives forever in the near future. The most important thing to me when starting this project was planning everything and keeping my paperwork organised. I put out a casting call immediately and found it very easy picking the actors and crew members. I chose people both from within and outwith SAE Institute, Glasgow as I thought it would be a good opportunity to network with new people. At the beginning, I was very excited to experiment with the different aspects and possibilities that come with making a musical. I knew I wanted to focus on the visuals and the production design aspect the most even though I had no where near the budget they had when making the film. I managed to find two hair and makeup artists and sent them some images of the look I wanted to recreate. My sister, Ellie, composed the song and once this was done, I found a group of musicians and an audio student who started working on it straight away. There were some problems along the way when recording the song, for example we had to take out the male singing part as it did not fit properly. This being said however, I am very happy with how the song turned out as it includes elements of Jazz and the 1920’s which is exactly what I was looking for. For the cinematography aspect, I sat down with my my director of photography – Matthew Mace and we planned out every shot, sometimes taking inspiration from the film and other times coming up with completely new idea to put our own twist on it. We decided to use alot of close shots to make the audience feel more involved in the situation and a lot of shots which follow the characters about the room to give a greater sense of adventure. From start to finish, the day of filming was really long but also very enjoyable. Everyone kept to their own roles and got on with the work straight away. We stopped half way through to tuck into a buffet which I am very glad that I decided to arrange because it helped everyone stay positive and provided a chance to relax and for everyone to get to know each other. After the filming was done, I then had to edit it. I wanted to bring out the red’s and gold’s to enhance the aspect of wealth and love. I also added a slightly blue hue over the full thing and created a vignette around the sides to make it fit better with the 1920’s style. Overall I really enjoyed working on the project as I gained a lot of knew experiences. I am very grateful for everyone who took part as they all done a fantastic job, there are a few things I would do differently if I ever done a musical again in the future but for now I’m very happy with my first attempt.
