Creative Critical Reflection Prep: Question #3

 For the third question, there are different things I had to take into consideration, my planning and production as well as my past experience. I already have very detailed accounts of my planning and production in my blogs, so I just have to put those into words that can be easily explained. For this question, articulating myself well is key. There are other things I want to talk about in my CCR that I didn't include in my blogs. So, as I work on my script I want to be sure to include those. 

For questions 2 and 3 of my CCR I want to incorporate them into a podcast because the sound elements are the most important and I want to emphasize them. So my script needs to be very understandable since there are no visual elements. The only visual I created was a logo for my fake podcast, Anything & Everything with Elisa Hernandez

Script

Intro Music Plays

Me: Hey welcome back to anything and everything! today we're gonna be talking about something different. I wanna discuss a film I made with one of my best friends - shoutout Lucia - for our Aice Media class. 

There's some specific things I want to talk about like our plan, production and decisions - both the good and the bad - and how I learned from all of this. We put a lot into this project and we're so excited and proud of it, so the process of it's creation wasn't easy. 

Transition Music

Me: When we first started, we had a really clear idea. It came to us really fast and all at once and we were sooo excited about it. 

Clip of idea

Me: As the weeks passed our idea got more solidified and we developed a story we really liked. I'd taken a film class in middle school, but never had to plan something out this detailed. We picked out lighting, costumes, and genres that we wanted and how they were gonna go together. The most important part of all the decisions we made though was sound effects. 

Our idea focused around this monster, so we had to make sure to get the sound effects just right. We had a good idea of how we wanted it to sound and it was something like this

clip of our monster noises 

Me: But we ended up finding something a lot better as a reference point, and I think it's much more believable. 

clip of actual monster noises

Me: I am someone who tends to do things very last minute, so having the schedule set to do things by specific times really helped me get this project done and in a the way we liked it. My planning skills definitely improved just by being forced to plan for the production of the opening. 

Transition Music

Me: The best part was the production. We had so much fun going out to film with our friend and creating out detective board. We didn't run into any problems until the very end where we realized we had to film a scene with a lot of people and we couldn't get that many people in the same place at once. 

After finishing, I realized how much I learned. I understand how much goes into making a movie and how hard it really is. Especially when making the detective board, we were making decisions and focusing on the smallest details that the viewers probably wouldn't notice. I started wondering how many times that happens in real films. After doing this I learned to appreciate every part of movies because I noticed the effort that goes into it after doing it myself. 

Transition Music

Group Meeting Part 2

 This is the second time we had a group meeting. I got a lot done during this one and I'm really glad we did them. I was able to focus on developing ideas for my CCRs and help others with theirs as well. I feel like without these meetings I wouldn't have been able to come up with the ideas the way we did. 

I received feedback about my credit sequence which was really positive and I gave feedback to the others as well. They basically told me to make sure they were evenly distributed throughout the scene because they didn't understand what we were doing, but once I showed it to them it made more sense. They really liked the concept and thought it was really well done. 

One of the girls in my group also gave me an idea for one of my CCRs. She told me to make it like an interrogation to go with the theme of the opening. Like the stereotypical bright light and interrogator thing. I really liked the idea and thought it would work really well. 

Overall I'm think the advice and suggestions I received are really going to help me with the rest of the project. 

Creative Critical Reflection Prep: Question #2

 For the second question in my CCR, I want to focus on audience and distribution. I did the same thing as my last question and created some notes that will help me once I develop my actual CCR. 

Audience

The audience for our film is young adults and teens. We came to this because first of all, they are the main group being portrayed and represented in our film. Audiences obviously tend to gravitate toward films they can identify with, so in a film with a primarily younger cast in going to attract them. 

The teens we are showing in our film are like stereotypical horror movie teens, stupid and naive. We wanted them to be portrayed this way so the audience we were focusing on would want to go against these stereotypes and see the film as a challenge. They would want to go see the movie to compare themselves to our characters, who would be similar and relatable to them. 

Distribution

Our film will be made available through different platforms to ensure that it reaches the largest audience possible. We will show it at film festivals like the school film festival and the Sundance Film Festival (the largest film festival for independent films) and have it shown at a small theatre. After this we will post it on YouTube for anyone to view everywhere. 

Creative Critical Reflection Prep: Question #1

 I am trying to work on my CCRs piece by piece so I can be sure to incorporate everything I need to in a short and concise way. For the first question in my CCR, I wanted to make sure to look at both genre characteristics to reflect on my openings use of them and the representation choices we made. 

I created some notes on things I want to discuss in my CCR which I will be putting together into my script later on. 

Horror

The horror genre has very specific conventions that we knew we wanted to incorporate as well as stay away from like content and production techniques. 

In our opening we wanted to use the element of the unknown which is one of the major conventions of horror. We did this because we wanted to have the freedom to create any storyline without having to actually worry about physically creating what we were talking about. The element of the unknown helps us achieve this. It also helps with another convention, fear. 

The element of fear is developed through the suspense created by the unknown piece of our story. This is then enhanced by the different production techniques that give the audience the visual and auditory cue that there is something to be afraid of. 

The Production techniques we primarily relied on were lighting and sound, which are the biggest conventions in any horror film. In our film we used flashlights and filmed in the dark to have better control of the lighting. This helped us create a focus on what we wanted and hide the rest of the scene creating the shadow and, as a result, more of the element of the unknown. 

The final push towards all of these conventions is our sound. We wanted to use a very specific monster sound effect and incorporate it with the dark of the rest of the scene to now generate mystery with the unknown as well. This will leave the audience wondering, but also afraid of what is out there. 

A convention we didn't incorporate was a plot twist because we decided to rely more on suspense, the plot twist would've, in our opinion, overdone it and maybe been confusing with our plot. 

Representation

We chose to portray children in our opening because stereotypically, children are often called out on lying or making things up. We felt like if we made the primary "targets" of our monster children, it would be pushing these stereotypes. 

Our main protagonist in the scene, Benjamin, doesn't speak throughout the opening. The obvious is because he is alone, but it is also because of the idea that most protagonists in horror are really dumb and tend to just speak or make unnecessary noise, leading to their death. We thought if we made sure to limit the sound he made it would be like showing how his death would be inevitable. 

We also put thought into Benjamin's costume. He wore a white t shirt, but the rest of his outfit was a pair of black jeans and black jacket. This is showing how even he, an innocent child, is never fully separated from death or evil. 

(I don't have a very clear picture but you get the idea)

These are some of the points I want to cover in my CCR and I'll probably add on to it in the final thing, but I wanted to give myself time to think about it and figure out exactly what I was going to discuss. The points on representation doesn't exactly go together, but they are all things I want to mention, so that is something I will work on. 

Editing: Sound

 When we started adding the sound the first thing was adding the music. We ended up picking one of the ones I had shown before from the YouTube Audio Library called Missing Persons (It is in one of my previous sound blogs.) It was a very suspenseful and mysterious song that really fit the aesthetic we wanted. 

Our main goal with our music was to be sure it had an appropriate volume to fit both the credit sequence and the scene without overtaking any other sound. We had to be sure to properly adjust all of our sounds to get the audio just right. 

Editing!

 We finally started editing! For right now we've began by first placing the detective board clips and plan to build the scene around those, so thats what the timeline was consisting of. There was a lot of empty space for us to work with for adjusting different clips to make sure it flows the way we want it to. 

As we were in the process of figuring out which footage we wanted where and how we wanted it to go, we realized we had to do some reshooting to get the perfect look, so we're happy we planned to give ourselves more time. Thankfully, it won't take more than an hour and the other people we have acting are reliable and we know that they will be more than willing to come and film again for a little bit. 

 Once we were able to figure out where we wanted everything to be, we started adding our footage in and working on the transitions and we think they're going really well! The first one was the one we were most excited for and we're really happy it turned out well.

A major issue we had was the different levels of brightness because of the street lamps or other uncontrollable lights, so we have to make sure to fix that so everything looks good together. Other than that, we're very happy with our progress so far and can't wait to see the finished result!

Production: Creating the Detective Board

 We want the detective board to be as authentic as possible, so we are creating the board ourselves. We made a list of the things we want to incorporate into the shots as well as other things to include in the background: 

• missing posters
• pictures of different settings/people
• news paper clippings
• post-it notes/index cards with detective's notes
• names (film credits)
• string connecting all the elements

I had some cork board material left over from an old project from years ago, and my partner had string so all we had to go was print out pictures and create the notes. We were going to use the school's newspaper to fill in the background. The missing posters will be the same used in the actual filming. 

We want to have as little empty space as possible because all the boards we look at are full of notes, papers, and more. We don't want to only include what we will film because it takes away from the realistic vibe. 

Decisions

Before we started, there were different things we had to consider. For example, we had to pick a color for the string. We chose purple because it represents mystery and we knew it would stand out compared to the other things we were including. 

In addition, we wanted to incorporate blood in some way, so the danger in red would already be brought out. We had to carefully consider what would be emphasized by the blood to be sure the audience would notice it in comparison to the background. 

Recipe for Blood

When we were creating our opening, we had to use fake blood in one of our scenes. The blood we used wasn't the most realistic, but it worked since it was in the dark. Because we knew the detective board would be filmed in a brighter environment (taking place indoors) we had to make the blood look a little more realistic. 

We mixed together maple syrup, red and green food coloring, and coffee to create a deep red color and thick consistency that made it look the best it could. It didn't smell the best, but it worked how we wanted it to!

Incorporating the credits into the board wasn't difficult, but the hard part was deciding how to put the elements into the board to fit what we wanted the film to be like. 

Details

We had to put a lot of thought into the specific elements of the board, not knowing where the audience might end up looking, to make sure all pieces matched the overall theme. We highlighted words and phrases from the newspapers to be sure those were the things read, we wrote times and places on papers, we even used the blood to make fingerprints for different characters (which took a lot of failed tries to get right). We wanted to make sure it would follow the story, so we didn't use the string randomly, connecting the elements we displayed with those they were supposed to connect to. 


Lighting

We decided to film outside, away from any harsh lights and shadows. However when the clouds came over it cast a grey tone on the video that didn't fit what we wanted. We had to use our phone flashlight to follow the other filming to give the best results. 

Overall we had a lot of fun and really enjoyed making it. We don't want to throw it away because it turned out better than we could've expected. We're both so proud of how it turned out and I personally think it's one of the best parts of the entire opening. We put so much work into all the details and I'm so proud of it. 

Pictures of the creation process!

Production: Filming

 Throughout the project, we've done a really good job with time management and we're really close to finishing our filming. We've been taking advantage of different things and making the most use of our time and materials. 

For example, we needed to use flashlights in the scene itself, but we ended up using them as a light for many other scenes to help us manipulate it better. One example is the backlighting we did of one of our characters, Benjamin. we used the flashlights to give us the look we wanted and could easily control them. The time we chose was also great for what we were trying to do since there were no natural lights getting in the way. Overall, the flashlights came in handy outside the scene itself. 

In this clip, we were testing out the lights for the scene, adjusting the flashlight's different brightnesses and settings to what we needed. 

Me Filming!

There were different scenes that made it harder for each one of us to do, so we took turns and made it so that the clips we were getting were the best we could get. We work well together and can understand what we want out of the scene, so it isn't a problem allowing the other to do it. We knew it would work out better and it did!

Lucia Filming!

It was a great day of filming. Because we filmed at night, there were no people to worry about, our actor did amazing even helping us out when one of our phones died, and we finished in the time we wanted to. We had fun and were able to include the details we wanted, like the fake blood!

Fake Blood!