The Hunt for The

Campus Cat

Billie Williams

Connor Albinson

Adeleke Adewale

TJ Tvedt

Initial ideas and research

• Something different that

stands out

• How to work within the

brief (equipment and

shooting during a specific

week)

• Something challenging

Synopsis

• The original synopsis

- The Hunt for The Campus Cat, a contemporary, detective documentary, tells the story

of J. Callahan, a hard-working, hard-smoking, 1920s-detective, on the hunt to solve a

seemingly unsolvable case - who, what and where is the Campus Cat? A student

documentary team follows Callahan as he desperately tries everything to investigate

this mysterious feline, and it’s origins. After multiple interviews Callahan discovers that

there might be more to this case than he originally thought. Is the cat even real? Could

there be more than one cat? Or could it simply all be an illusion created by tired

students, desperate to feel a connection to anything living?

• What has changed? How is the final edit different?

Treatment

• Camera style – handheld and tripod

• Sound design

• Differences between vox pops and interviews

• Noir influence

Storyboards

Influence

• Film Noir

• Modern and classic

“The Big Sleep” (1947)

“Sin City” (2014)

The Shoot

• Challenges: Daylight, injuries, time management

and poor weather

• Anything is possible through positivity and team

work!

Post production

techniques

• Colour Grading - Use of the colour wheel to add

blue tones to each shot

• Brightness and Contrast – Brightness lowered and

contrast raised to create shadows for noir style

• Editing – Fast paced vox pops followed by slower

paced interviews. Title Sequence to match the

piece.

Sound

• Sound track and the balance of all the sound

elements:

• A film noir soundtrack

• Voice overs

• Ambient noise

• Challenges

The Final Product

Strengths:

• Made changes to make it more informative

• Better structure

• Added more personality of the cat

The Final Product

What could’ve been better:

• Time keeping

• Sound recording

• More archive footage

• More focus on shot framing

Summary

• Don’t make documentaries about cats

• Preferably have more time to shoot

• The mixture of the two styles may not have

blended together too successfully at some parts