Planning for CCR#2

 Hey queenss, so this blog is actually a continuation from one I did last week. Remember how I talked about having to do a CCR for my project? Well, for CCR number one (which is a podcast), I am answering 2 out of the 4 questions. I already wrote the script for my answer to question 1 in the blog last week, sooo if you havent seen it you might wanna do that, orr this might be a little confusing. Anwayyyy question 2 asks " How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?" 

Script:

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Veronica: So Addison, I have to know more about this project.

Addison: Okay girl, what would you like to know?

Veronica: Well first of all, how is your film engaging, like is it going to make me fall asleep?

Addison: Haha, no girl, it shouldn't wanna make you fall asleep. My film is set at golden hour, in order to create a tense and spooky feeling for the audience. From the very beginning the audience should begin to feel uneasy, as if they suspecting a jump scare. Throughout my film, suspense is the golden ticket to keeping the audience hooked. I want the audience to feel that instant creepy vibes and engage with the mystery that builds throughout. Which is why I decided to film at night, to build up the tension and spook factor.

Veronica: Okay yea, my timbers are shivered. You put a lot of thought into getting the audience to feel spooked.

Addison: Yea, that's kind of the point of a psychological horror, if your not feeling a little bit uneasy or scared, something is wrong.

Veronica: True, okay another question, how are you going to make your film known to people? You're not exactly a professional film maker.

Addison: Wow, rude, but your right I'm not. However, lucky for me social media exist. I am able to put my work on platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo, where people can go and watch on their own free will. For marketing purposes, I can put little bits of the film on platforms like TikTok or Instagram, and this will get people excited for the film. There are also small film festivals which allow smaller creators to share their work. One of them located close to me is called Film Gate Festival Miami. They except films in any genre and welcome anyone. It is a non profit organization for local creators to express their work.

Veronica: Oooo that cool, is there any festivals that are more horror oreinted?

Addison: Yes! there is.  Another option that is more specific to horror films is the Crimson Screen Horror Film Fest in south carolina. It is South Carolina's first and largest film festival, and they are always interested in looking for fresh talent. Competitors have the chance to win a " Crimmy" ( which is similar to an oscar) in over twenty different categories. 

Veronica: Wow! I had no idea there were festivals specifically for horror. I think I am going to have to book a trip to South Carolina now.

Addison: Well that seems interesting, I say we make it a girls trip.

Veronica: YES! I can bring face mask and pop corn. OO and we can have cute matching outfits while we watch the horror films!

Addison: Okay vero, if thats what you want.

Veronica: It is, and you're coming. Anways, thank yall for listening to us yap, she's Addison.

Addison: And shes Veronica.

Veronica & Addison: And we're the demure duo!!

Music Fade Out...

Group Meeting P2

 Heyyy, sooo earlier this week we had our second group meeting in class!! Honestly, it was really nice to hear how far people have come with their projects and to hear other peoples ideas. As well as getting those recommendations on how I can further improve my project. Hearing from our instructor is good, but there is only so much she can do. So being able to get feedback from my peers allows for a different set of eyes and ideas. Anywayyyyy on to the group meeting reflection!

Lucia: Her film is about amber alerts, which I think is super cool. So lucia showed us her editing, which she is very proud of. She showed us multiple clips of her project, and asked on our opinions. On one of the main climax scenes, we mentioned how it was a little too dark, and it was hard to make out the charactes facial expressions. I recommended considering re-shooting, just so she can add some more lighting to it.

Me: I shared to my group how our editing is going and showed them my opening title. They mentioned how my title slide was a built difficult to read and I should tweak it a bit. The recs I got was to consider choosing a different font for the title or making it more bold so it's easier to read.

Sara: Her film is about how a girl comes to the states and has all these good memories and has accomplished a lot, but her life wasn't always like that. Her film is primarily in Spanish, we told her that it was a great idea, but to add English subtitles at the bottom so a wide variety of people could understand. She also shared to us the editing platform she is using, it is called Davinci Resolve. I personally found this helpful since I don't like editing, and she said it was quite simple to figure it out.

Isabella: Her film is about two bestfriends trying to complete a school bucket list. She was showing us her footage and she actually noticed that she wasn't going to have enough footage to reach the time limit, which is obviously an issue. We told her that she would have to add more scenes to her film, and we recommened developing the story more.

Elias: His film is about a 16 year old who falls into trouble. He showed us his editing and mentioned he had an idea but wasn't sure what he was going to do. He wanted to use one song on one scene, and then cut to another scene with a different song. However, the songs had a different tempo and we said it might look off, so we recommended to just choose one song. But if he really wanted to do two, he had to pick two songs with very similar tempos.

Photos ->>

I am the blonde one in the photos, we're just gonna ignore what i'm doing. I hate my side profile and couldn't stop laughing. Also shoutout to the photographer!!

Editing P2

 Hey heyyy, welcome to part 2 of the editing process, my least favorite part. Literally hate this so much, screaming and crying!! Anwayyyy, enough blabbering, let's dive into the editing. So, when me and my partner were discussing which type of font we were going to use throughout our film, we decided we needed something that looks off and disturbing. We wanted everything from the camera work, allll the way down to the tiniest of details to be unsettling. So in result, we spent an unhelathy amount of time picking a singular font, seriously it was crazy.

Font

 So, when trying to find this messy and off vibe font me and my partner were in deep hunt for, we came across Nanum Brush Script. Let me tell you, this font does exactly what we hoped for. It's messy and jagged, which gives it an unstable appeal. It looks like it was handwritten in a panic and chaos, which plays perfectly into the theme of my film. 

Color Choices

 The title of our film is going to be " Till Death Do Us Part", honestly we went back and forth between a couple names, but this one just stuck with us the most. So, in the title, we decided to highlight the word Death in red, the reason for this is because the color red resembles fear and danger. Which is why we are highlighting the word Death, we want the audiences eyes to go right to it. We want them to know this is what is important and this is what is coming.

How it Relates

 The font feels personal, as if it was created in a panic. The goal isn't for it just to look creepy, we want the audience to feel the unsettling nature before the film even starts. Combined with the red on the word Death, it sets the tone for how the film is going to be. In the end, every little detail matters. Choosing the right colors and the right font can make a title way more uneasy rather than something plain and boring. Which is exactly what I wish to accomplish within my film. 

Planning for CCR#1

 Omggg, I can't believe we are finally almost to the end of the project. Time has literally flown by, and honestly, I'm kind of sad it's almost over, but, it's not over yet. The final step in our projects is creating a Creative Critical Reflection, that's a lot of words though, so for short a CCR. This is when I explain the choices I made, analyze my work, and connect how my film relates to the real world. This whole project wasn't just about making an appealing film, it's about understanding the decisions BEHIND making an appealing film. 

 Today I am going to be discussing my script for the first question of the CCR "How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues". For answering 2 out of the 4 questions, I want to create something similar to a podcast. My friend Veronica agreed to be in the podcast with me, and we are both really excited to create it. 

Script

Veronica: Hey girl!

Addison: Heyy how are you?

Veronica: Im good, so anything exciting happening in your life recently? 

Addison: Actually yes! Ive actually been working on a project for my Aice media class.

Veronica: Ooooo tell me more!

Addison: So basically it's about this women Christina, who murders her husband,  but we are not sure why.

Veronica: Oh wow! that sounds interesting. But, what makes your film different from other peoples? Why should I watch it?

Addison: Well, our film is a psychological horror, traditionally in horror films like these, they are mainly focused on the murder itself. There is a lot of intense music or intense scares, however my film builds tension more quietly. Instead of just directly showing the murder, I decided to focus more on the calmness afterward. The horror comes from how unsettling Christina and her actions are. This makes the audience feel uneasy, without using huge dramatic action. I also decided to do something differently by making the audience put pieces together. The viewers don't see the crime actually happening, just the aftermath of it. This forces them to engage with the story more, figuring out what happened instead of just being told.

Veronica: Ohh cool, it's like the audience gets to be a detective!!

Addison: Yes! exactly, they have their own little mystery to figure out.

Veronica: Well that's very fun. However, word on the street is your film also talks about deeper problems, can you clarify what this means?

Addison: Of course, so Christina isn't just a villian, but she is struggling with a mental disablility she's not even aware of having. Her wide and drastic changes of emotion, is all cause by a brain tumor she doesn't know she has. This is meant to represent how if serious medical conditions are just misdiagnosed or ignored, it can be detrimental to the patient.

It also plays into how womens feeling and emotions are sometimes not taken into full account. Luke is always there for her, but even he doesn't realize just how much she is struggling. The doctors in her life fail her by not catching the tumor sooner, and by the time they catch it, it is too late and the tumor has consumed her personality. It shows how womens issues are brushed off or ignored and not taken seriously. People make excuses such as mood swings, stress, or being on their period, instead of taking into account something could actually be medically wrong.

Veronica: Wow, that's very deep, and also very relatable. This sounds like it took you a lot of thought to come up with.

Addison: I mean yea, as a women, I think it's important that we share topics like this.

Veronica: Well that is very cool, and good for you!

Addison: Thank you

Veronica: Nowww for our sponser!

COMERCIAL BREAK...

Editing

 Hiiii, so for this blog I am talking about my least favorite thing on the planet, editing. My hatred for editing is so deep, it's crazy. Personally, I find it an annoying process, and it easily frustrates me. However, in any film or production, editing is a step that can not be avoided.

So, we were in class right, and I have IMovie pulled up infornt of me with a tutorial on how to use it. When I say I wanted to chuck my computer, the people in the tutorial made it look so easy, but whenever I tried to do what they did, it just didn''t work. Thankfully, my partner was aware of my hatred for editing, and decided to save me the trouble, and edit our project. Honestly, she is such a life saver, when I say I hate editing, I hate it. 

This is th video I watched to try to help myself: 

 She also had to watch some tutorials, but she is figuring everything out a lot better than I was. She is using Adobe Premier Pro, and this is what she has done so farrr!

Moral of this blog, I really dislike editing and can't wait for it to be over!! 

Production: Body

   Heyyy, so this post might be a little, uh, interesting to say the least. So, I did a blog a while ago about creating a fake body in a bag. Well, that corresponds to this blog!! Basically, for one of our probs, we needed a fake dead body. So, I did research on how to create a realistic looking one, so that way we can fool the audience into believing it is real.

Soo me and my partner took my research, tried it, and uh failed. We decided what I found was going to be to time consuming, so we came up with our own method. We used blankets, pillows, and rainboots to create our figure. Let me tell you, this thing wass heavyyyy, I kid you not we were struggling to carry it around.

I present to you ( drumroll) Luke!!

If anyone needs help creating a body I got you, and i'll do it no questions asked! Plus, I also have a really cool halloween decoration now. 

Planning: Audio

 Heyyyy, oh my lord, actually being in the filming part of this project is unreal. However, for this post I am going to dive deeper into what audio I am actually going to use for my project. I already did a post last week explaining how audio plays into horror. In this post though, I am going to further explain what sound I actually plan to use.

Car scene 

Christina is sitting in her sound doing calculations, however we are not sure why, it is meant to be mysteroius.

Pencil writing- This is fast and messy, her thoughts are rcing through her head.

Breathing - Supposed to be calm, however still have a tense feeling.

Hardware store

Christina is walking through aisles, in search of different tools, but we are not sure what for. Sound is calm, and meant to start building tension.

Heels- Her slow walking demonstrates how she is intently thinking about which items she is going to need.

Cart- Squeaky noise, meant to build tension.

Store Sounds- Represent how she is doing this is broad daylight, however, nobody is aware of her intentions.

Parking Lot

She begins to tape up her figure, there is no going back, she has to continue with her plan. The sound is supposed to bringing tension to the viewers.

Tape- She is securing her victim, biggest tension moment.

Trunk Slam- It is done, there is no return. It is meant to be unsettling.

Wind- Brings even more chaos to the situation. Creates a more unsettling mood.

Digging

The tension in this scene is at it's highest point. The sound is meant be unsettling

Dragging- The body is being moved to its final place. It provokes questions, "where is she going to put it". Creates and anxious feeling.

Digging- It is it, finalized. The body is gonna be where the women digs. There is no point in return, it is over.

Birds- Meant to be a calming factor with all the tension and anxiety.

For the part in the beginning, where we show the name of our production company, as a bit of background noise I chose the following sound:

Beginning

Remember, the sound matters because our film isnt about her doing the murder, but rather her thought process behind the murder. The music is supposed to be able to build tension within the audience, and make the whole thing feel personal. As of right now, this is our plan, we might decide to tweak it while editing. However, I am pretty confident these will be the sounds we use. 

I got all of my sound from Pixabay.

https://pixabay.com/music/

Anywayyyy, time to start the editing process!! Yayyy ( just kidding, I hate editing with a passion and it literally makes me wanna cry anytime I see a editing platform) Regardless, see ya in the next one! Bye byeee.