Final Project

Creative Critical Reflection

We began our title sequence with our production company logo which established that the movie was about to begin. The logo consisted of red, creepy lettering beside an image of a dripping clapperboard which gave off a scary feel, much like our movie would. It begins with two scenes panning the house, both allowing the audience to get a sense of the main setting and with the combination of the techy and low music in the background, it gives off a creepy feeling. Next it goes to the kitchen where our main antagonist is cooking dinner. The alternating medium shot and high angle close ups throughout the dinner-making scenes allows for the “perfect” parts of the movie to be shown through the antagonist’s perspective. There are a mixture of other shots/angles/movements during the “kidnapping scenes” such as the over-the-shoulder shot when the kidnapper is collecting the tools, the downward pedestal of the missing posters, and the medium shot of the kidnapper dragging the girl, which all make it seem like it’s from the perspective of an outsider. This makes it known that the viewpoint of the kidnapper isn’t as reliable as an outsider’s perspective portrays the situation negatively. The scene at the dinner table is shot with a medium shot to make it seem as if it’s through the eyes of another person. The glitch edit allows for a shocking and eerie transition to show what was actually happening within the house. It transitions from the perfect and flawless image that the antagonist had of his quote on quote family and  shows the truth: That his daughters were actually kidnapped children. The next jump-cutted close-up shots  were rapidly made to make the audience feel the tension and seriousness of the situation. That these girls were kidnapped to satisfy the kidnapper’s fantasy of having the “perfect family”. The last scene started as a close-up and zoomed out to a medium shot which makes  the audience feel creeped out and afraid as the girl is trapped with her kidnapper and the audience can’t do anything to help. The scene with the title accompanied by the “glitch effect” continues on the eerie vibe and red lettering of “perfect”, shows that this flawless family isn’t as “perfect” as it seems and the red font makes the word seem sinister. We color corrected  the kidnapping scenes to be more darker to represent the dark reality of the kidnapping. To make it known that the bright and normal scenes shown from the antagonist’s perspective aren't that perfect when compared to the ‘reality’ scenes. We also transition our antagonist’s costume from a white and nice shirt to a black hoodie to differentiate the kidnapper’s “innocent and pure” vision of himself which is represented by the color white, and the “evil and aggressive” real-life personality shown by the black hoodie he wears when kidnapping. 

Within our original film, we did use similar social groups that are associated with psychological thrillers. For example features such as Split or Hide and Seek, have a white, male antagonist with the protagonists being young and female, just like our movie.

We decided to create our own individual company or be non-exclusive since we are just creating a single film. This  would allow our film to be more easily bought by a streaming service such as Netflix or Hulu which would allow our movie to be seen more rather than competing with other more popular movies in the movie theaters. We chose the name “Thriller Films” as it was basic and represents our film’s genre. 

Our film would be marketed to audiences by being put into film festivals and advertised on popular social media sites such as youtube, instagram and snapchat. We would also make teasers/an interesting trailer to get people to want to see our movie when it comes out on a streaming service. Our movie would be exhibited once all popular movies had already been released to avoid being overshadowed by them. A release date would most likely be times closer to creepy dates such as Friday the 13th and Halloween to make our film more popular.

Our target audience would be ages 17 and up because it’s a thriller that consists of heightened expectation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety and terror which is not really suitable for kids. They would watch our film because of the interesting story behind it and the peculiar psychological and intellectual aspects within the film.

I became a better filmmaker than I was in the beginning of the class since before I didn’t know or understand all the aspects that went into creating a movie. Before, I didn’t know how mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, sound, titles, or anything else creates different emotions or feels within a film or just of their importance. Now that I know how much work and details are put into a film to make them the amazing movies we see in theaters, I can better create a film and make it into something similar to an actual feature.

Having to make my own film, I understood more about the process. It all starts with an idea. Then it grows to planning which involves casting, figuring out your setting, and creating your storyboard or a shooting schedule. Next is Filming (production) where you have to have your actors rehearse, figure out how much footage you need for each scene, get the right framing, light, focus and sound, and get all the scenes you possibly need for your movie. Last is editing, which is when you have to trim/cut scenes, add transitions, follow the storyboard, add effects and continue to save and backup what you have or else you are going to lose everything. Basically I learned that it takes a lot of work, time and effort to create a decent looking feature.

I will leave the class a more skilled and knowledgeable filmmaker than when I first started because the Media Studies class taught me many valuable elements of filmmaking that I didn’t know before. I successfully was able to create a decent opening to an original film which allowed me to utilize key skills I learned in the class. I also figured out the intricate process of filmmaking including planning, filming,and editing. These skills are valuable and something I could use in the future if I were to go into a career involving film and television production.

Planning: When planning our film, it was a process. One of my partners had come up with an idea and we all attempted to build on it. We all had different ideas with what we should add to our movie. And ended up creating multiple storyboards to try and fit everything. Once we had finished figuring out our scenes, we tried to figure out our cast. We had different expectations for who our actors were going to be. In the beginning we wanted a boy and a girl being kidnapped but we couldn’t find anyone to play the boy so we had to work with two girls. After casting, we then created a shooting schedule. This was the hardest part of planning since my partners and our actors all had tight schedules. This left us with limited days of filming and editing.

Directing: When directing the actors it was somewhat difficult. Since some of the actors were younger, it was hard to get them to stay still or cooperate during scenes. But overall most of the scenes came out the way we wanted and everyone did a great job.

Shooting: Shooting wasn’t that difficult. We got a ton of footage with different angles, settings and movements during the first couple days we filmed, which gave us a lot to work with. When using the video camera, it didn’t take us long to figure out how to use it and filming was fairly easy.

Editing/Revising: Since we all had different ideas on how we wanted each scene to look, we cooperated a lot with editing. We color corrected the “kidnapping scenes” to give the end a dark and creepy look. We also cooperated on creating a glitch effect on IMovie which involved downloading the glitch overlay, splitting clips and changing overlay to Blue/Green Screen. For the majority of the scenes we left them alone unless we needed to trim them to make them seem less dragged along or create a sense of intensity.

Sound: We left the sound alone within the original clips because we thought that they were necessary and enriched the audio. We then downloaded the techy and creepy background music off youtube since we thought that it would fit best with our genre and the glitch effects we added.

When filming, we alternated using a video-camera and our own phone cameras. When editing we used the IMovie software. We also utilized a flashdrive in order to backup our progress.

While doing this project, we learned a lot of new things regarding technology. We learn how to edit a “glitch effect” within IMovie, download music from Youtube, create an animation for our production company using certain apps and how to darken certain scenes within IMovie. We also learned how to work a video-camera we had never used before.

The AS Media Studies class was an amazing opportunity for me to step out of my comfort zone and learn something new. I would’ve never learned the secrets of the film industry without it and am really glad I took it. The whole journey of creating this project has had its ups and downs but overall it was a wonderful experience where I had fun and learned a lot.

Obstacle #5: Covid-19 and Social Distancing

             

So in my previous blogpost, I discussed how I was worried about not being able to finish our film opening final in time due to schedule conflicts with both my partners and our actors. Last week I was able to finally figure out a good schedule for everyone so we could finish the project during spring break but this week the Corona Virus began to spread more and became a big epidemic. Then one of our actors (my partner's dad who played the most important role as the kidnapper) had to work the whole week. So we, as a precaution and due to conflict in schedules, didn't come together to finish the project. Now I am really worried about this project and for our grades as with the Corona Virus and urges for social distancing, we wont be able to finish the project before the due date.

Obstacle #4: Limited Time for FIlming/ More Schedule Conflicts

My partners and I have had difficulties struggling for a production day, as I have mentioned before in a seperate blogpost. As the due date for the film opening comes closer the pressure is on to create and complete our project in time. There has also been the new addition of difficulties with schedule conflicts with the actors which overall has limited any chance we have had to film. We are hoping that since we have most footage recorded and editing software at home, that we will be able to finish recording over the upcoming break.

Deciding on the Title

 

So far, my group and I have come up with a decent name for our film opening: The Perfect Family.

It's a pretty good name because it's short and simple and highlights our main antagonist's want for the perfect family shown by him kidnapping children in the opening.

Production: Planning for Day 3

As I have recently said, an obstacle that my group and I have had is conflict in our schedules which has effected our ability to finish recording. So in order to make up for that, I have decided to plan for a day, sometime this weekend, where we will shoot.

To Do List:
- Shoot the major "glitch scene" at the table
- Shoot the major dinner scene (man making dinner, setting up the table and sitting down)
- Shoot final scene (shows kids being tied up and that everything is an illusion)