Moonlight Sonata Development

This blog post shows our development for our final product, written by me. (Timothy)

Our inspiration for Moonlight Sonata came from a discussion with our music teacher, who expressed her desire for her children to learn to play the piano. From there, we conceived the concept of a film centered around a child whose mother's greed and abuse of his musical talent extinguished his passion. To resolve this conflict, we envisioned a girl who would reignite the character's love for the instrument. The title of the film was inspired by Beethoven's famous piano composition, which our music teacher played in the classroom. We agreed that the name would be a perfect fit for the movie.

10 Possible movie titles:

• Liebestraume
• Harmony
• A Reignited Harmony
• Reignite
• Perfect Imperfections
• A Musical Match
• The First Verse
• The Duet
• Two Halves Make a Whole
• Moonlight Sonata

The selected titles suggest a strong emotional connection, possibly linked to romance, while also hinting at the importance of music in the film. After considering various options, we settled on Moonlight Sonata because the name evokes notions of love and passion, and the sonata is a form of music that tells a story. As our target audience comprises teenagers, both male and female, and those interested in music, the name aligns with their interests and is likely to capture their attention.

The credits will include information about the production company, Regents Media Production, and the distribution company, 20th Century Studios, as well as the production team. 

The producers are Timothy Sulaeman, Maximilian Gehlen, Sharon Tan, and Nayana Sumaniaka. 

• Timothy Sulaeman as the director
• Maximilian Gehlen as the screenwriter
• Sharon Tan  as the creative designer
• Nayana Sumaniaka as the casting director

The cast features:

• Timothy Mulia as Young Hazel
• Hawila Eva as Mother
• Mathew Tan as Adolescent Hazel
• Danny Budiada as Present Hazel
• Benjamin Whitaker as Teacher
• Jasmine Riadi as Harmony

Additional extras include Nicholas Mawardji, Elvina Ryanto, Nayana Shantacita, Michelle Darmawan, Eileen Milano, and Charlene Crestella Wijaya. 

The casting choices were based on the team's vision for each character's personality and appearance, and the cast members were contacted by the casting director, Nayana.

The film will be shot at two locations: 

• Regents Secondary School Bali
• The address of the writer's house, Jalan Belanjong No. 14. 

These locations were selected for their accessibility, as filming at the school allows the team to gather easily after class, and the writer's house features a piano and a spacious, homely environment that is suitable for shooting. The school's facilities also align with the film's aesthetic requirements.

Day 2 & 3

We rearranged Maxi's living room to maximize our camera movement, to allow for more smoother tracking, pan, and tilt movements. On the second day we came across a few issues as our actors Matthew Tan and Timothy Mulia had 0 prior acting experience. This became a problem as we couldn't get them to express the proper emotions we wanted to convey our message. However, after a few takes and examples from our screenwriter Maxi, they successfully acted their part and perfectly captured their emotions using our shots.

Room Arrangement:

On the third day, we shot the present Hazel (Danny Budiada) where he is seen to be stressed under pressure as his mother becomes more strict. We gave Hazel's mother a makeover using baby powder to create an aging effect on her hair. Furthermore, near the end of the shoot we struggled to make Hazel's cry realistic. However, this was then fixed as we gave the actor time to prepare, and with the help of eyedrops, we perfectly captured his emotion.

Typeface Development

Post-production started with choosing a typeface or font we could all agree captured the proper message. I researched other movies with similar genres and these are the typefaces that are most commonly used, as shown in the picture below, most movies either use simple typefaces or handwritten fonts, I believe this is done to connote love and romance.

We then used the design website canva, to come up with drafts for our title screen and credits, these are a few examples:

We also experimented with the layout for the credit screen.

The final typeface we chose uses the font Source Serif Pro. We believe this typeface captures the perfect balance between romance and professionalism. The use of all capital letters make the title stand out more. We also added a glow effect to mimic the moonlight glow, which can connote romance.

Post-production

3rd March (First Draft) written by: Maxi

Timo had finished the first draft of the film and from that we as a team gave feedback along with our teacher Mr Nick. Some scenes needed a bit of pace-changing, including the credits scene, and some transitions. Timo also experimented with adding a filter in the first shot, that made it look like it was shot from a old film camera. We decided this looked unprofessional and told him to change it. Some scenes like the teacher telling Hazel to stop playing the piano also needed to be edited as he was meant to be initially out of focus, and then move into focus, which Timo hadn't done yet. As well as when the teacher starts the class, the ambient noise of students talking in the background suddenly disappeared, which we told him to keep - but just slowly fade out as the teacher keeps talking. Some lines were also cut out, including Harmony's "I love going to parks, reading books..." line, which we all agreed should be included to better the overall flow of the opening.  Hopefully by the next draft, all these issues will be mitigated.

9th March (Second Draft) written by: Nay

Timo finished the second draft after editing to match the feedbacks given from the first draft. Both Mr Nick and the team gave more feedbacks and comments to ensure top quality. Mr Nick suggested to get rid of black screens between Hazel sitting down and Mr Ben standing up as in his opinion it doesn’t work well so Timo will experiment on that to see what is best. For Hazel’s head turning part, we caught on a small time detail that messes the continuation hence Timo will have to push back some scene by a few seconds to improve the continuity. We also realized for the mother scene at the beginning, the audio is very loud so he will have to change audio level for Ms Lala’s scenes. The lighting in some of the teacher’s scene is also very white and cool which contrast with the warm tone of other scenes so to fix that, Timo will attempt to color grade Mr Ben. During the names of actors, the text of Timothy Mulia is not right as in it got cut off so he will have to fix up the text alignment for Timothy Mulia.