Editing the CCTV Effect

As our film ends with Mohamed being interviewed by a police detective, we researched how a typical police procedural takes place. Firstly, the location tended to be a small box room so we used a corner of our media suite to do this. Below is the section of the media suite we used.


Secondly, dress code was key. Through research we found that remanded prisoners are able to wear their own clothing, so we dressed Mohamed up in a sand yellow coloured tshirt to mimic the bare essentials he has in prison.


The shots for the last scene are as follows:

1. Over the shoulder medium close up of Mohamed
2. High-angled medium over-the-shoulder shot of Mohamed being interviewed by Aram
3. Close up of Mohamed

The idea behind the second shot was that this would mimic CCTV as in interview rooms we found that the detainee that is being questioned by the detective is being recorded, so a high angled shot would be ideal because it would allow us to create a convincing CCTV shot as well as putting Mohamed in a position of vulnerability. So to accomplish this we needed to add a CCTV effect but iMovie did not offer the option so after undertaking research on how to use green screen, this is the steps taken to create a CCTV look for this particular shot. 

Step 1 was to obtain a CCTV green screen add on that was found on the Internet and was free for public use.

Step 2 was to import the file into iMovie. This was done simply by dragging it in.

Step 3 was to drag the selection of the greenscreen required over the shot. It then gave several options to select but the chosen one was green/blue screen. This then replaced any green sections with the shot we wanted, hence creating the desired effect.

This was then cropped to remove any excess effects such as frame count and exposure levels, giving it a clean CCTV feel to it without overcomplicating what the audience will be seeing on screen.

This is the end product of our CCTV shot.