Creative Critical Reflection

Here is my reflection on our genre conventions, target audience, techniques, and distribution practices.

Final Project

We've finally completed our film opening! We can't wait for you to watch it and we hope you enjoy!

Fin!

Paty and I finished our film opening!!!!!! We truly can't believe what we've accomplished. I was nervous at the beginning of this project, especially when complications kept arising throughout the process, but it all worked out in the end and we're so proud of our work.
The main issue that we dealt with today was the wind in the background, but Paty, the GarageBand guru, fixed it as best as we could! We couldn't get it perfect, but we got rid of most of it. We also added the credits, which was simple.
It all come together so well, and we can't wait for you to watch it!!!

Editing!

We started piecing together our video clips and editing our film opening today!! We're including and layering all of the elements of sound that we wanted as well. We decided that all of our cuts will be jump cuts from scene to scene, keeping it smooth because otherwise the transitions will seem cheesy and amateur.
The lighting of different scenes wasn't continuous, and we want to make sure that we have continuity in our film, so we put a filter on almost every scene to make them all have the same colors and lighting to make sure it all flows together. We also layered the audio note of the screams and the eerie song to correspond perfectly with the scene of the blood splattering the window and the hand slowly falling.
Since we filmed outdoors, the opening scene has some wind that is a little too loud, so we're currently trying to figure out how to edit it out. Moreover, one of our scenes had to be edited to get the lighting right, which in turn made the image slightly grainy, so we also have to work on that.
We're almost done editing and plan to finish it all up tomorrow!!! We're so proud of what we've accomplished and can't believe we did it all on our own!

Finishing up!

The park at which Paty and I were planning to film was closed on Sunday for an 80s tribute concert, so we weren't able to film. Agh!! But alas, we got everyone together and we finished up filming!!!
We re-filmed our first scene and made it shorter to make sure we stay under the two minute mark, and it came out perfectly. There's a shooting range that's very close to where we were filming, and you could hear it on camera, but we had to film. We changed the dialogue in the opening scene to mention the gunshots so that it wasn't just extra sound. The boyfriend is discussing how he's going to miss the park, but not miss the gunshots, which then ties into how he's leaving his girlfriend for college (her motive for killing him and the rest of her friends).
We then had to do the murder scene with the blood splatter/bloody hand on the window, which was super messy.

We lined the car door with clear wrap and paper towels to prevent the fake blood from getting everywhere and staining the car. It worked really well!

We had a few trial runs with getting the right blood splatter, and figured out that the best way would be for Paty to flick blood onto the window, and then drag her hand down. It worked perfectly!
Filming in general went really smoothly! There were a lot of mosquitos eating us alive, but we dealt with it and got it all done.
We filmed everything first, and then did the audio of the murder scene last because it was the easiest and we didn't need any light for it. It all come out perfectly and we're going to edit it all today and are sooo excited to see the final product of our hard work!

Sounds are scarier than sights

As we're filming and editing, we're realizing that we need to start thinking about sound. We're greatly inspired by the movie Scream because the opening starts calmly and gradually becomes more intense, until the music comes in and makes the audience uncomfortable while the scene gets extreme.
We plan to do something similar in that once the couple gets into the car, the eerie music starts playing. It'll start gradually, pick up with time, and end with a bang that's synced to when the victim's blood splatters on the car window.
I found this website that has a bunch of options for eerie sounds that are royalty free, so we don't have to worry about copyright, which makes our lives a whole lot easier.
We chose the sound "Welcome to HorrorLand" because it has that high pitched, unnerving sound we were looking for, and it starts off slowly and builds, which is perfect for the murder scene because it starts out as a couple making out and ends in the girl brutally murdering her boyfriend. The gradual growing intensity will add suspense and leave the audience wondering what's going to happen and when it's going to happen.
We want a sudden, climactic high-pitched sound that will synchronize with the shot of the blood hitting the window that will make the visual even more intense, but haven't yet found a sound that we see fits. We're going to continue looking, but we might just create the sound ourselves.

Graphic design time

Paty and I are on hold for filming because the next day that we can get everyone together is Sunday, so we decided to start working on our opening credits/title scene today. 

Most movies start out with the actors names showing up at the bottom of the screen, usually in order of importance, then naming the directors and producers, and the main credits listing everyone involved are shown at the end of the film. Because we're only filming a film opening, we're simply listing our actors' names with the murderer's name first because she's the most important character in the film, followed by our first victim's name. We then listed our names as co-directors and co-producers.

 

We decided to go with a simple font and placement so as not to distract from the scene. 

With the title of the movie, Scream is a big inspiration of ours, so we decided to do something along the same lines as that opening title screen. 

This title screen is simple, but gets the point across. We decided to make ours similar to that, so we chose a basic font and edited it to make the title gradually get larger, intensifying the name.

We're excited to continue filming and finally edit it all and have a final product! 

Our story!

Paty and I have figured out our entire film story! While we're only filming the first two minutes, we believe that it's important to plan an entire film (albeit roughly) in order to realize what points we need to get across within the first two minutes to establish the rest of the film.

The plot is essentially that there's a group of teenagers who are all close friends who are seniors in college. Everyone in the group is moving away, except for one girl, who is going to college locally. She gets upset that both her boyfriend and all of her friends are leaving her, so she decides to kill them all so that she won't be abandoned. They all go on one last camping trip together, and this is when she kills them.

Since we need to get this idea across, our opening scene is the murderer and her boyfriend sitting on the hood of the car, reminiscing on old times and talking about how they're going to miss each other. She then lures him into the car to hook up, and this is where she ends up murdering him. She then leaves his body inside the car and walks down the trail to the rest of the friends, ready to kill them all.

We think this will be successful in getting all of the major points across because they discuss college and she mentions how they're all leaving, the murder shows her anger, and her walking into the forest with a sense of purpose will signify that she's not finished with her mission yet. 

We're actually so excited about this story, especially because we're the same age as our characters. While we DON'T want to murder our friends because they're leaving us, we can relate to the sad feeling that everyone is going off to college. This will also help our target audience of 16-25 to somewhat relate to our murderer, and, in my opinion, the best kind of movies are the ones where you sympathize with the murderer. 

Planning for round two

After continuing to edit our film, we realized that the intro was rough. The actors were great and it went as planned, but the lighting was a big issue for us.
We have to re-film the opening shot because we split it into two shots, but they don't edit well together, so we're going to redo it in one master shot to make the conversation flow better. This shot includes the establishing shot of the forest, the conversation between the killer and the victim, their kiss, and them walking into the car. We also have to redo the other shot of the car that shows it from the side because at this point, it was too dark outside and you can't really see the characters.
The shots inside the car are perfect because the lighting outside didn't matter, we just used the car light for the scene.
We haven't yet filmed the murder scene, and we still have to experiment with the fake blood to make sure it doesn't stain and we get the splatter properly. We're going to use the same shot of the side of the car as we used when they originally entered the car, but this time, blood will be splatter on the inside of the window and then the killer will walk out, with the victim's head hanging there.
After this, we'll follow the killer with a pan as she walks out of the car and walks into the forest.
We're hoping that our lighting situation won't be too bad this time, and we're going to go earlier in the day so that we have more time to film before it gets dark.

Better luck next time

Paty and I got together and began reviewing what we had filmed last Friday, and realized that a lot of our shots were unusable.  Because we're filming at dusk, we have a very small window of filming time when the sun is still setting but before it gets too dark. Filming outside changes a lot because every time we change the shot, we change our positioning and the lighting looks completely different, which we didn't notice until afterward.
The shots that we filmed inside of the car are fine because the lighting is consistent, and some of our shots that were outside are perfect, but there are some bits that we have to re-film because of lighting inconsistency. We now know that we have to pay special attention to that factor so we're better prepared for next time and can't wait to continue! We're hoping that we can get everyone together to film on Wednesday, and we'll start editing all of it together.

Here we go!

Paty and I have separately been brainstorming and jotting down ideas for our scripts and how we plan on doing our last few shots, and this is what I have so far.


We decided that we're going to do the script on the spot because it's easier for us to think of lines that fit and get a true feel for what we're trying to convey when we're at the actual scene and in the real situation. We're going to continue filming some time next week!

The beginning!

Paty and I started filming today, which we realized may have been slightly premature...
We went to Markham Park at dusk in order to get the right lighting. We wanted to make sure that it was dark enough that the film has an eerie feeling, but light enough that we could still film and see our subjects properly. Since we wanted to make sure that we had enough time to film and edit our entire production and get everyone together at the same time in the same place, we figured today would be a good day to start. Because it was a sort of last minute decision to film, we didn't have all of the props we needed. Paty brought the fake blood (which we ended up not having time to use today), but we forgot to bring a knife (the murder weapon) or cling wrap (to be used to prevent staining Paty's car with the fake blood).
Paty and I had some shot ideas in mind, but because we changed our entire angle and plot fairly recently, we didn't have a storyboard nor a script. While filming, we had to guess and check which shots worked and which didn't. Some of the shots seemed decent while filming, but we later realized didn't get the message across properly. The entire filming was trial and error on our part.
Without a script, we had to improvise on what our actors would say. Once we started filming, we had to feel out the script as we went along. Lines that we thought would sound good ended up just sounding corny, and a lot of it was made up while filming by the actors themselves.
We didn't finish filming our entire opening scene tonight because we didn't have time before the sun went down and it was simply too dark to film, but we realize now that we definitely need to be more prepared next time we go to film with our props, storyboard, and script. But regardless of our absentmindedness for this filming round, we love what we have so far and are so excited to continue filming and seeing how it all comes together! Our actors fit the roles perfectly and work really well together, which makes this entire process much easier, and it's all going very well and coming together just how we pictured it.

Change of plans

Paty and I got some second opinions on our film opening idea and realized that what we were originally aiming for was just not plausible. So, we've cut down on a lot of our initial ideas and made the opening much more simple and refined.
We've decided that rather than having a third party killer, the killer would be a part of the main group of teenage friends that we already established. Not only does this require less actors, making our lives slightly easier, but also makes it so that we can have the initial murder earlier on and be sure to fit it into our two minute time frame.
Moreover, we scrapped the POV shot idea after realizing how difficult it would be to get a shot as if it was from the inside of a mask.
Instead of focusing on the background of the story and the meaning of the killings, we're going to focus on the actual murder itself and put most of our time and effort into making it gruesome and intense. We're planning on finally starting filming tomorrow, and we are SO excited to see it all come to life!

Slowly but surely...

Paty and I got together today and decided we really needed to crack down on what exactly we were going to do for our film opening. We watched a bunch of horror movie opening scenes, but actually ended up hating most of them.  Some gave us some ideas, though. In Halloween (1978), the scene is seen through the eyes of the killer (who just so opens to be a little kid... very creepy), and we thought this would be an interesting POV to put in our film.

We finally began finalizing our plot (don't take our word for it, though, it's still subject to change) and storyboarding some scenes we have in mind. We started discussing the actual filming of the project, and decided on filming at Markham Park and maybe even Tree Tops Park, which are both the perfect scene for a terrifying murder.



To get this all done, we have to have actors, so we recruited some friends who are up for the job. We decided on some names of our characters, who honestly aren't that important. The Top 10 Stereotypical Horror Movie Victims include the talkative girl, the comedian, and the couple. We're going for our first victim(s) to be a couple, which adds to the intensity and scariness of the killer because he can handle and kill two people at the same time. We also created a little to-do list to track the basics of what's left to do before we can start filming. I'm excited to see what we create!

Decisions, decisions

We've decided we're doing horror, and the more research we do, the more we're discovering how many different kinds of horror movies there are. To further narrow down our many plot ideas, we've decided on narrowing down what sub-genre we're going to focus on.
 Since we don't want our film to be too cliche and do want it to be realistic, we've decided on either psychological or killer.
Within psychological, we have:
Phobia: deal with general fears among common people (ex. IT, Buried, Birds)
Madness & Paranoia: deal with the main killer and the insanity of them; deals with the paranoia and uncomfortableness of the victim (ex. Rosemary's Baby, Shutter Island)
Within killer, we have:
Slasher: aggressive, gore-y murders, with the murders usually in disguise (ex. Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street)
Home Invasion & Survival: deal with victims being targeted in their own homes; especially scary because it takes away the comfort of your home (ex. You're Next, A Clockwork Orange, Cape Fear)

Narrowing down our sub-genre to these few with help us to narrow down our plot ideas. While we do want our film to be realistic, we really want to scare our audience, so we're thinking about incorporating some more gruesome ideas, like cannibalism or otherwise. This leaves the audience shocked and terrified, just how we like it.

Barone, Matt. "The 25 Best Slasher Movies." Complex. N.p., 25 Oct. 2015. Web. 12 Mar. 2016. 

Corel, Jim. "Phobia Fest: Matching 25 Films with Fears." Pastemagazine.com. Paste, 27 Oct. 2014. Web. 12 Mar. 2016. 

"Horror Genres and Sub-genres - Popcorn Horror." Popcorn Horror. Horror on Screen, 16 Mar. 2014. Web. 12 Mar. 2016. 

Lambie, Ryan. "Top 10 Paranoia-filled Movies." Den of Geek. N.p., 13 June 2011. Web. 12 Mar. 2016. 

"9 Terrifying Home Invasion Movies You'll Never Forget." Indiewire. N.p., 10 Sept. 2015. Web. 12 Mar. 2016.

We're not exactly professional directors...

When Paty and I were bouncing ideas off of each other, there were almost too many that were too good. Since we are high school students with limited resources, we realized we needed to be more realistic about our film opening. This helped to eliminate a lot of our ideas that were definitely great ideas, just too far fetched for our abilities. 

Once we were like "oh, wait, we've never made a film opening before...", we realized we needed to do research on how to be successful in finally making a film opening! I read a list of 11 Pro Tips for Movie-making, which divides the movie making process into three parts: pre-production, production, and post-production. This helps us try not to figure out every single aspect of the movie at once, but instead pace ourselves and space it out. 

The article also mentioned thinking of locations that are available to film the movie in, which is actually something that Paty and I had already discussed. Since our genre is horror, we wanted to film in a place that had a creepy, eerie, uncomfortable feeling. Pity mentioned filming at Markham Park, a local park, at night, which is the perfect place. Because the park is so big and so dark with no one else around you, it doesn't really feel like no one else is around you. It's the perfect place for our film.

We also found a list of 10 video-making apps, which will come in handy later once the actual filming process begins. 

Graves, Stephen. "How to Make a Short Film: 11 Pro Tips for Movie-making." Stuff. N.p., 29 Oct. 2013. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Cook, Benjamin. "10 Video-making Apps That Help You Make the Best Home Movies." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 19 Sept. 2014. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Let's do this!

Today, my partner, Paty, and I started discussing and researching different film genres and found this list to narrow down our ideas. We decided on doing something along the lines of horror, thriller, and suspense. Upon deeper investigation into the horror genre, we found this article explaining how horror movies started off with monsters and supernatural beings, but have since changed and now involve mostly people murdering other people, which honestly just makes them even creepier. Because we only have two minutes for our film opening, we have to be sure to establish a sense of horror within those two minutes. In order to ensure that the audience gets the idea of horror within the first two minutes, we have to make sure we include The Six Most Important Things That Make A Good Horror Film

We're running plot ideas by each other and trying to narrow it down, but we have almost too many good horror ideas. We want to make sure that our film isn't too cliche, but still follows the important conventions of the horror genre. Horror movies such as Scream, that start with the victim all alone in a place far from other people, are too cliche and predictable, so we want to create something that the audience will truly be shocked by. Tomorrow, we're hoping to brainstorm more and create a definitive plot and begin working on our storyboarding and creation process.

"Film Genres." Film Genres. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.
"Horror Films." Horror Films. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.
 Kriegshauser, Will. "The Six Most Important Things That Make A Good Horror Film." ScreenCrave. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2016. 
"Scream Opening." Vimeo. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.