CCR Question #3

 Now, since we need 2 videos, 2 answered questions each, and since this is the 3rd question, I need another video idea!

Now the 3rd and 4th question, they focus a little more on what I learned and what I used, so I think a job interview would be best as a fun and efferent way to get across those questions.

I would start the scene with me in a tank top and shorts, something dirty, then I walk into the bathroom and get all ready then walk out with slick back hair and a suit ready for my job interview.

I don't want it to take too much time out of the information part of the video so I'll try to compress it as much as I can, then I can move to the interview scene of the CCR.

There are going to be 3 characters, me, the boss of the company, and the receptionist.

After the getting ready scene it'll be a quick scene of me stressing after the receptionist pointing me into the direction of his office and giving me a few tips like "Hey man, quick tip, talk about your experiences. That's what boss man is all about" 

Then I'd walk in, greet him, and answer his questions.

The question I'll be focusing on during this blog will be "How did your production skills develop throughout this project"

Now, if there is one word to describe our filming process, its definitely "problem". It felt like just about every 10 minutes we were running into something and we had to figure out how to get around it. We encountered problems like:

Non-functioning drone(made us pick a different film date)

Next drone not being up to our standards either(tree solution)

 

CCR question #1

 So! CCR questions are already here. Honestly I didn't even know about this part of the project up until this week when our teacher talked a bit about how it was gonna go and usually I wouldn't like this too much but honestly it gives us a lot of creativity and I know we just got to do a whole opening for a film which is like ALL creativity, but this is kind of different. In this, you get to be yourself and talk about your experiences. Its like all the cool parts of an essay minus the writing!

Our teacher showed us some examples and one was based off this show where some interviewer knocks on the door of a celebrity and they ask a few questions. The bit is called "73 questions with Vouge" and one of my favorite episodes of this series is the one with Kim and Kanye back when they were together.(look at cite 1 in the bottom)

My first idea, which I think is hilarious is a sort of talk show(post the movie being in theaters and doing good) where  I get asked all these questions about the movie in a chair by another chair with another me in it, just with a mustache.(this is an example)

But all of this is a problem for another day, I have focused way too much on how its gonna be and not what I'm going to say.(sorry, I'm just a little excited)

So, time to lock in 

Question 1: "How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?"

First thing I do with a question is break it down, so lets do that. Lets look for the "and" and look before it, now we only have to work with "How does your product use or challenge conventions"

Now an even better way, a simpler way, to put this is "How is your film use common or uncommon horror film techniques", or even better "Film different? How or how not?"

Now we need to look at techniques, I used cite 2(look at the bottom) and while reading through this, this is kind of exactly what our horror movie brings to the table. Dim lighting, low angle, Dutch shots, kind of like looking into a mirror. Now that doesn't mean its a bad thing, just not different and that's fine.

Now the second part, this part focuses on how does the movie have to do with social groups or issues, and I'd say that's simple enough to work on. So, main character, Leo, he is a teen and he is giving that depressed vibe. Now you don't have to search it up to know that teen depression has recently been on the up and up, but if you wanted to anyway, don't worry! I did it for you! 

Cite 3(look at bottom) gives some symptoms of teen depression and talks a bit about it and how it isn't super uncommon and what you should do. A top thing on that list is therapy, which we know Leo is in and all those symptoms like sadness, Leo's also got. might as well make him the poster boy for teen depression!

I'd say this covers that second part, mostly tackling the "issue" side of "represent social groups or issues" and makes that first question complete and gives me a break till probably Tuesday or Wednesday when I talk about the next one.

Cite 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaZ93sibpk0

Cite 2: https://www.elratonmediaworks.org/northern-new-mexico-film-tv-blog/30-horror-making-techniques

Cite 3: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/teen-depression/symptoms-causes/syc-20350985

(Sorry, the little text to link feature wasn't working)

Editing #2

 I mean THANKS for that little buffer week I added into our schedule am I right? We couldn't finish editing this week sadly and while we do want to get done fast, we also got 6 other classes to focus on and the weekend isn't exactly for home work, am I right! 

Anyways, we got done with about half and we have TONS of footage. Between all the reshoots and just extra film we got, time is no problem for us. I'd say we have about 80% of it done and talked it all through with the group.

For some reason, the font was a big thing for us. I mean the color was pretty easy...red! We had a whole lesson on color theory and red and black is exactly what we are trying to give off, blood, scary, mystery, all you need to a horror movie. I mean there are a few other things but I mean that's the main stuff next to all that phycological stuff. ANYWAYS...font. Mia found this photo from American Slasher:

 We all settled on this being the best type of inspo to go off of with other contenders like eurocine and others.

We got all the clips in order and got almost exactly 2 minutes with all the top clips we wanted but the audio is still off. Things like the breathing, the footsteps, the car engine, the forks, and a bunch of other  stuff weren't exactly loud so we are gonna focus on audio and we are as good as done with the video!

For now sadly, we will be having to work on our CCR questions so our time will be a little diverted but we will definitely be done with it by early next week.

Editing #1

 So, Nico is very versed in apps like premier and honestly seemed excited to work on it. We were all there for him and helped him when he needed it like for opinions or tips but he definitely carried us on that part. Now, from the last blog where I was talking about that very hard to film car scene, I realized that the video wasn't working so the best I can do is show around where it starts and where it ends.

Now these 3 photos really do not give it justice like this is a super good intro to the opening, the letters start going in behind the car, letter by letter, then when the car is out of frame, the back goes black with super eerie music and those weird words start to pop up.

The "EREBUS" also starts flicking on and off with a creepy lamp click also playing. ABSOLUTE CHILLS when Nico first showed us.

Shooting process

 Now, one thing I wanted to point out is that the shooting process had wayyy more bumps than I thought and every time we encountered one we said "Oh great, we can put this in our blogs" but if I wrote all of them, this blog would be as big as a harry potter book, so I'm only gonna write a few. We got to Mia's house a little late, around 5:30, and spent the first hour  or so just scoping it out, cooking up a few ideas, and testing out the drone. In this time we also decided to film the outside parts first, then move to the inside of the house.

Now here came the first problem, the drone recording. so first we just wanted to video off the drone, a higher quality than the last one that we tried out, but it still wasn't too good and while we tried to tape a phone to it, it wouldn't fly with all the weight. Luckily, Nico just didn't feel taking the L and fearlessly climbed up a tree to get this beautiful, birds eye view shot of a Sebas' car going by. Here is the video pre-edit, and while it might not look like much, this is perfect and maybe in my next blog post tomorrow you can see it after the editing.

Now, I don't want to make this too long of a read, but another problem we worked through was the time of day. We started recording at around dusk as we thought that was the best time but recording took a little too long and as we finished, it was full on night so we had to rerecord ALL of the early scenes which in reality wasn't too too annoying as it was mainly the scenes inside the car which only needed Nico and Sebas so they could do those while me and Mia set up the inside of the house like the table and explain to her family how the acting was going to go as they were also part of it.

And if it wasn't enough, if you see that second paragraph, I said we used Sebas' car to record but we were first going to use Nico's. Sadly, it broke down, I'm not sure if it was the engine or the battery or whatever as we asked around the neighborhood for those car cables but even after we connected them to a separate car, it didn't work and he had to come back to her house very late at night to pick it up. I have no idea how he made it work but happy he did! Here is a photo from when we were trying to fix it.

Costume creation

 The 2 main people in the opening which is Erebus and Leo.

We wanted Leo to look like your average, sorta depressed, droopy teen. We went with an all black outfit in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, something like this:

We want a leave me alone, and sad vibe and I'd say Sebas played that role perfectly, while we did have to retake a lot of shots because he was smiling, the final scenes with him were played very good from terrified to antisocial.

Now for Erebus, I was dreaming a little big with the backwards ski-mask and all black suit like this one:

But Nico, our teammate that played Erebus, had all of it! I'll be honest even during filming, we were terrified to walk near him. he played the role well too giving that silent killer and mysterious aura which is exactly what we were looking for with a character with the name Erebus. (here is a photo of how he looked, sorry for the quality)

Problems!(there was a big one🙁)

 SO, you might've noticed in my last 2 blogs I've been talking about filming like we are going to do it later, and this is weird because this was supposed to be our filming week. Now we thought to do half of the filming on I believe Thursday after school and the other half either on Friday or Saturday and this week to be all about editing, but we hit a little obstacle. So Nico saw this thing on the popular show "The Boys"(an amazing show on Prime Video) where the name of the show was written on the floor and a car went over it and it transitioned out of that scene into inside the car. He showed it to us in class but I cannot for the life of met find that scene on YouTube or anywhere else. 

 Regardless, Nico borrowed a drone and filmed that whole thing and all the scenes we needed for inside the car and we were all fine, ready to film the next day, and get to editing, but he realized that night that ALL off the stuff that their filmed on the drone and inside the car was SUPER bad quality, like 260p.(this was kind of how it looked and the angle we wanted). 

So we deleted all of that and scrapped that cool little opening and we will now be filming on either Tuesday or Wednesday of next week(3/4 or 3/5)