Hagan TV: Director's statement

I decided quite soon after being given the brief for this unit that I wanted to recreate something by Steven Speilberg and I wanted to do a period piece. I was struggling to decide between doing 'Bridge of Spies' or 'Catch Me If You Can', both period pieces based on true stories, but ended up doing 'Catch Me If You Can' as I felt it was more action driven than 'Bridge of Spies'.

'Catch Me If You Can' is a well-made film with a very interesting story. I decided pretty quickly that I wanted to do the hotel scene as I find it one of the most interesting scenes in the film. I decided to add the tailor scene and police office scene because of the storytelling which would give the audience a bit more of an insight to who the characters are and make the clip more like a short story with a beginning, middle and end.

The clips I chose from isn't very Spielberg-typical in the sense that they don't have a lot of his trademarks in them (such as reflection shots (Jurassic Park), framing within objects (Duel), shooting stars (Jaws) etc.). My intention with the three scenes that I chose was therefore to use other techniques and ways of filming than what had been used in the original e.g focus pulls, different lighting etc.

I decided to change the script from being set in the US to Britain, which naturally made me change the locations and the look of them. The biggest change I did from the original film was the bedroom scene which I changed from being set at a hotel to a Bed & Breakfast. Before making the change I had to do some research on whether I could use it or not since I was unsure if B&Bs were around in 1960. I found out they were and decided to use Medway Little Townhouse B&B as the location as it has a very "vintage" look which made it easy to make it into a 1960 B&B, by taking away some lamps, modern electronics, swapping some decorations etc.
The office I used for the police office scene was the first aid room at Medway Council. This was the scene that required most prop work.
For the last scene, which was the tailor scene, I used Penguin Suits which is a family business based in Chatham that has been around since 1834. They also had a lot of old props that I could use, so the prop-work for me on this set was very minimum, although I had to be careful with the framing in this scene since some part of the store had very bright colours and I wanted to have the colours quite dim in the scene.

For this project, I needed 5 actors: Frank Abagnale, Carl Hanratty, B&B Owner, Tailor and the Chief of police. I did the casting through Castingcallpro and asking people directly on the locations where I was going to film if they were interested in acting in the project. I'm always more comfortable directing people that I don't know as they tend to be more serious on set and not joke around as much. I chose to follow the character description in the original script on most of the characters because I wanted them to be believable for their roles.
I wanted Frank Abagnale, the main character, to look like an "anybody", a normal teenager, not someone with a typical "bad guy" -face. With Carl Hanratty, I changed the age to be slightly younger than in the original and make him a bit more unsure. I changed the sex and the personality of the B&B owner to be a slightly dumb and naive woman, as I found her more interesting as a character than the male in the original film. It also felt more natural to have a woman owning the B&B with the way the B&B looked and was decorated. With the tailor and the chief of police, I went pretty stereotypical, having both of them old, experienced and calm characters.

I spent quite some time researching into the costume of the characters. How the suits should look, what sort of ties should they have, what sort of colour would be right. What hairstyle should the B&B owner have and how should her normal, everyday clothes look like. I also looked at the props, what kind of lamps, decorations, pictures etc were normal at that time.
The main movies I used for inspirations was 'Smashing Time' (1967), 'The Fast Lady' (1962), 'The Bullet Machine' (1970), 'The Intelligence Men' (1965) and 'Danger Route' (1967).

For the sound design, I decided to add quite a bit of sound effects to create more atmosfere, such as a clock ticking, room noise and people talking in the distance. I also added some foley and sound effects where I felt the sound we got in sett wasn't good enough.

Music wise I worked with my composer Harry Evans and researched into different soundtracks such as the one of Shaft (1971) to make the music sound right. On the music, I got from Kevin MacLeod I had to run it through Adobe Audition to get rid of some of the bass and make it sound like it was coming from a radio.

I had originally planned on having a lot of coverage and go with quite fast cut's in the edit, but because of limited time on all location I had to change my plans and go with longer takes. I decided to use a lot of pull focus for this project ad to have a low f/stop on the camera to create more depth in field. Because of my love for depth in field, I decided to shoot the film on DSLR and use my own lenses as it allowed me to have f/2.8 instead of f/4 which is the lowest you get on the Sony EX. I also decided to use more close-ups than what's being done in the original film and using pan reveal, cross tracking and breaking the 4th wall in the last scene (tailor scene).

It's important for me that the props, costumes, location and music give the idea that it's a period piece set in the 1960's, but at the same time I decided to do the grading and colour correction more realistic like what you see on films today, having the scenes less yellow-y and "vintage"-looking, having more of a blue tone. similar to what you can see in 'Luther' (2010), 'Himmelblå' (2008), 'The Office' (2005).