Creating the Misc en Scene

 Aloha! Due to my group’s change of focus genre, a few things in our misc en scene changed so today we’ll be discussing each and how/why they changed.

Costume: Due to our change of Jonathan’s character as Jasmine’s jock boyfriend to Jasmine’s killer boyfriend we had to chanfe his costume. Since Jonathan isn’t shown until after Jasmine goes outside and looks, his role significantly changes as he loses personality. To portray his now obvious dark energy, he now where’s all black and a ski mask.

Lighting: As spoken about in my horror conventions blog, one of the largest horror conventions is dark lighting/lighting manipulation. In order to achieve this given the story takes place in the day, we made sure to set up my house using curtains and no additional lighting to create a lighting that is dark but doesn’t feel like night.

Scenery: We changes our scenery from high light, natural scenery to a darker empty space. Originally, we were working in a bed room and a front driveway utilizing my house as a way to build a suburban scenery. Now we have some shots which portray this, but our scenery is focused towards the interior of my house. We also made sure my living room was plain and simple so that attention could be directed on the actions of the characters.

Props: We actually didn’t add any new props to our movie opener, but we just used them in different instances.

Framing: In order to maintain our “horror” aesthetic we utilized our framing in a different manner then we would before. We used close ups to show emotion before, but this time we used it to display confusion compared to solely joy. We also used more intimate shots such as medium shots, lose close ups, and cowboy shots as we wanted to focus towards to reactions of the characters.

Thank you for reading! See you next time

Life on Set: episode 4

 Howdy! Today we’ll be looking at my groups fourth day filming. Today’s filming was centered around finishing up our project with the new ending. As I stated previously, my group ended up changing the ending of our opener as we felt like we couldn’t fully convey the off-guard ending in the time alotted and with the quality we were filming at. So we decided to change the ending to Jasmine going outside, not seeing Jonathan’s car, coming back inside, sit on the couch, then either Jonathan kills her, or she kills Jonathan. With this being our 4th time filming, tensions among the group were running high as we were all losing patience with each other. Things got a little heated but nonetheless we continued filming.

We decided instead of refilming all the upstairs scenes to make them dark, we decided to just make are the downstairs shots darker and make the transition for upstairs to down in between. Our film occurs during the day so we set up my living room to be dark but still have some light through windows so that the time was evident. We then filmed Jasmine coming downstairs and running outside. Then we filmed her actually walking outside and noticing Jonathan wasn’t there. This was a fun shot to film as we tried many angles such as side profiles, front, and back. We then went back inside and shot Jasmine walking into the house and sitting on the couch. We then shot two endings. The first one was Jonathan popping out from behind the couch and noticing Jasmine wasn’t there and then she jumps from the curtain and stabs him. This was a little hard as Jonathan was scared of Jasmine accidentally hitting him with the knife but overall it came out as a good shot. The second ending was Jonathan popping up from behind the couch and stabbing Jasmine. This was also a little difficult to shoot as Jonathan kept aiming incorrectly in a attempt to prevent an accident. We eventually got him to aim correctly without hitting her and finished. 

Life on Set: episode 3

 Hi readers! So as you know at this point my group has experienced two main issues. Our main character having two different hairstyles from when started filming until now, and us deciding our ending needed to change as we couldn’t portray it at the quality necessary. For our third day filming, we decided to deal with the hair problem, reshooting all shots where Jasmine’s hair was visible. 

photo taken by Nyles during filming 

Filming this day went extremely smoothly compared to the first time. Since we were reshooting the same shots as before, we didn’t have to direct the actor as much. We also used a light this time, so that improved the lighting of the set helping our film quality. I think the only downside of this day was that as a group we all generally liked how the original shot looked over the refilm. We spent some time trying to make them as identical as possible but something just felt off. We ended up just doing what we could and letting Nyles pick which ones looked best in editing. We had filmed directly after school again so we had limited time, but luckily we finished ahead of time and was done by 4pm. 

Thank you for reading today’s blog! See you next time on “Just A Girl”

How to create a proper victim in a horror movie?

Ciao! Today we'll be talking about what makes a good victim. Throughout the horror-slasher genre, there's a few qualities which stick out between each character. Cluelessness and horrible escaping skills

Cluelessness: The victim is ALWAYS clueless to their situation in the movie. Whether it's not knowing the killer is behind him, or thinking that the threat is a joke until their actually chased with a knife. Personally, I think the goals of these victims is to make the viewer yell at the screen, "RUN! TURN AROUND! DO SOMETHING!" building emotion which supports the suspenseful atmosphere.

Horrible Escaping Skills: Another feature is that the victim never can properly escape. They decide to try to open a window and jump out instead of just running out the door. Even with hiding, they never fail to pick the worst spots. Even when they run, they stop to look at the killer or do unnecessary pauses. 

Starlight Starbright (Again)

 Hey! Today we will be looking at the new color we are utilizing in our movie. As you know we changed to a complete horror/slasher movie. This requires a few changes in color. For Jonathan's outfit, he's now wearing all black to help depict him as mysterious and dangerous. The color black is commonly associated with mystery in Western Culture, with important figures such as Batman, Darth Vader, and more wearing black consistently. 

Another color change is the scenery color. As Jasmine moves down the house, we notice the living room is decorated in blue. Blue is known to depict comfort and security, heavily associated with police, the ocean, water, etc. This plays into the comfort of Jasmine within her house as she leaves her guard down throughout the film openers.

We still utilized white to portray Jasmine as pure and oblivious, and just removed red. Thank you for reading today's blog!

Revised Storyboard

 Hi guys, today we’ll be looking at the revised storyboard for our group.

This storyboard was down by Janelle and the pics, the new storyline that we are portrayed as well as the angles and frames that we utilize in order to portray it. She uses both visuals and words to depict the movements of Jasmine and show her actions in order to the depicted how we planned on shooting the story. The first frame depicts the montage of Jasmine, getting dressed into her phone call with Jonathan. The second frame shows her moving throughout the house. The third frame pics are going outside and realizing Jonathan isn’t there which is a vital part of our transition to complete Horror. And the last frame shows Jonathan sneaking up and killing Jasmine ending our story

Let’s try this again

 Soooo as stated my blog post “Back in The Lab”, when editing Nyles noticed some issues with the flow of our story and felt like we needed a change. He felt as if us trying to mix teenage dream with horror was something that was do-able, we just couldn’t do it with the time we had. Us attempting to start with such a strong upbeat and fun montage and then spontaneously switching to a slasher horror movie was just too random and not appealing.

He brought this to the group’s attention and at first, I was a little reluctant to accepting this change because I had worked so hard on envisioning and portraying this project. I also was upset about the time that was technically wasted in filming the ending. Originally it sounded like he was suggesting to refilm the whole opening but we all talked about it for a while and came to an idea. We were not going to start from the beginning or refilm what we already had. We decided to film an alternate ending and then in editing work on color grading, sound, and overall style to portray a more horror themed opening. Since Nyles was the one who brought this issue to our attention, our group’s dynamic shifted as he took on more of a creative director mode. So that we were on the same page, we looked at some references and verbally planned out how filming was going to go.

Follow along to see how this change will go!

What would you do if you had a million dollars?

 Hi readers! Imagine, you were producing a movie and they gave you a unlimited budget. How would you spend it? In this blog, I'll be discussing how I would film my movie differently if I had a major movie production budget. 

Firstly, I would hire more people to work on our team. Don't get me wrong, my group is great, but sometimes it's better to have a plethora of heads working towards an idea. For example, our movie possibly could've better in plotline if we had a mix of people working to give a unique way of portraying our base ideas. I also would hire people to work on lighting and sound. We didn't have too many issues in that department, but us constantly losing daylight made filming longer then it needed to be. If I could hire people and buy technology that would replicate the lighting we were going for even at night filming would've been done much soon.

Secondly, I would upgrade the technology used to produce the film. The camera we used, a , did a good job for what we had, but there are many shots where the camera lost focus resulting in us having to ditch good shots in editing because the were clear. We also struggled with the camera dying often so I would buy extra batteries. 

Lastly, I would most likely hire actors. Using someone who never had experience acting in front of a camera resulted in us spending a lot of time directing the actor on simple things. For example, we had to refilm a shot of her putting on lip gloss (even after showing her a reference video) about 6 times because each time didn't look natural, or attractive, or happy. So I would hire a experienced actor that knows how to look natural when in front of a camera. Also, using someone from our group as a actor took away from the film crew as he was one of our main directors so I would hire an actor to play his role.

Thank you for reading!

"Get my good side"

 Hi! Today we're looking at specific shots and angles we use within our movie. This blog post will contain shots from our refilm which will be discussed in my next blog and shots from our outside scene. 

Close-up

For our opening montage we used a lot of close-ups to display our main character getting dressed for her date. This is one of the most vital shots with a teenage dream/rom-com movie. We used this in the beginning montage to establish a sense of joy, encouraging our viewer to let their guard down. In these close-ups, Jasmine is smiling painting her as relaxed and happy. 

Low-angle Medium Shot (MS)

When Jasmine hears her phone ringing, she turns (while sitting)  and faces the phone. In this shot, there's two things noticeable. Jasmine's phone and Jasmine's excited reaction. We placed the camera at the phone level in order to create a low angle which helps us move the focus of the shot from the phone screen to Jasmine. This was important as the proximity of the phone to the camera places attention onto it, but the low angle paints Jasmine as important and emphasizes her reaction as she becomes the center of the shot. We used a medium shot for this so that we could display her body language and facial expression. If we would've used a full of her, it would've included her legs which play no significant role in interpreting her body language, since in the shot she's sitting and then leans forward. 

Wide shot

To show Jonathan arriving we used a wide shot of the car turning on to her block and then parking. We used a wide shot to both convey the environment and focus on the car. In the shot the background is houses, so it is somewhat eye catching due to the way the light was hitting the roofs and etc. This made the car contrast as it's grey and dark in color. This wide shot specifically was to prepare the viewer for the scenery change as we're now about to see Jasmine move from inside the house to outside.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this blog post and see you in the next one. 

Back in the lab

     Hello readers! Today, we're back in the editing lab with Nyles. This time we're finishing up the beginning montage. During this time, Nyles focused heavy on color grading and connecting our shots in a way which seamlessly flows. When it came to coloring, I definitely had a strong role in determining how we were going to color grade our film. I am probably the most well-versed in the genre of teenage dream compared to other in my group, and I have some experience adjusting color in videos/picture so me and Nyles worked closely on this specifically. For coloring I wanted to utilize the color palette already within the shot by utilizing warm colors but semi-cool tones which resemble daylight lighting. 

Color reference

    Additionally, at this point Nyles began notice some issues about our plot and we we're conveying it. As mentioned in my last blog post, "Life on Set: episode 2" We began to film the outside shots for our film, so that's what Nyles was editing. At this point, Nyles was starting to put everything together and noticed that the change between the upbeat montage to the devasting ending just wasn't good and felt overwhelming to watch. After this, he expressed to the group how he felt and we discussed.

Thank you for reading this blog post! Read the next one to see if the opener will change for the better or remain...

Life on Set: episode 2

     Hi, today we will be discussing day 2 of filming our project. Before we actually began filming, we noticed a problem in our film which was going to have to be fixed. Our actor for our main character, when filming on day 1 had a different hairstyle then day 2. We debated on whether we should refilm or not, but nonetheless the shots we filmed on day 1 were all close ups, so if we didn't refilm it'd be noticeable that her hair changed. We decided on refilming those shots the next time we filmed or if we had time before the sun had set as we were filming after school and losing daylight. 

    For day 2, we decided to film the outside shots as that was what we already had planned to film. We had 3 main things to film this day: the car pulling up and Jonathan getting out, Jasmine and Jonathan's dialogue, and Jonathan killing Jasmine. One of our biggest issues on this day was time. After we solved the hair problem, we had to move the cars out my yard, Jasmine and Jonathan both had to get ready, and we had already wasted an hour on doing all of that. Once we finally got outside, we had a different problem. Acting. Since we are not professionals, our actors had to work with us directing them and attempting to portray what were saying without knowing what they look like from an outside perspective. We filmed Jasmine running outside the house about 5 times because each time something in her body language looked off. This film-redirect-refilm sequence happened multiple times throughout the rest of the shoot as both Jonathan and Jasmine are now acting and both needed assistance. It even got to a point where me and Jonnele had to act out what we wanted the shot to look like so that they could have a visual reference. By the time the sun set we got up until he kills her so we just stopped filming. 

Thank you for reading today's blog and I hope you enjoyed.

I see you

     Hello readers! Today we'll be discussing representation in my film and who we're attempting to show our characters to be. Honestly, our story is not anything deep and is honestly stereotypical. We did this to fit the teenage dream genre of our movie. One thing we did represent is people of color as our characters are both black and our main character is dark-skinned. In most rom-coms, it's unusual to see a dark skinned main character, but in our opener, our main character is having an average experience that's cannon within the teenage dream genre and is darker in the complexion. This also disproves the racial stereotypes placed onto black women as aggressive and unhappy. In our opener, our character is extremely happy.  Her boyfriend/date is also black, which displays black love.

    For the character herself, she is indeed stereotypical, fitting into the average popular girl stereotype. She doesn't get to show this much as she lacks many opportunities to show her personality but in her dialogue scenes we made sure her tone was always excited and joyous intentionally, to fit this stereotype.

#shakinginmyboots

 Hello readers. BOO! Did I scare you? I hope so because today we will be talking about the horror film genre. Horror is a versatile genre with many branches, but for today we will just look at the main conventions of horror movies overall and how they affect the story.

Sound

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

    One large element of horror is the use of sound. Horror movies are very intentional when it comes to sound placement, utilizing silence heavily. In order to properly build suspense, horror movies use uncomfortable silence which builds anticipation for what's next to come. Horror movies also use sudden sounds to create jump scares. A random glass breaking, screaming, or a door shutting aggressively are all instances of this. Another example, is in The Conjuring 2, there's a scene where Lorraine is in a dark room with the Nun. When she first enters the room catholic music is playing, she then turns it off and begins looking around the room. The music then suddenly turns back on causing a jump scare as we know the spirit is in the room, but she hasn't attacked yet, instead using music to scare Lorraine. 

Sudden and mixed pace

    Another convention of horror movies is a unstable pace. Horror movies use jump cuts, smash cuts, cuts on action and more to speed up and slow down the pace of a movie. Horror movies generally begin/are slow pace up until a moment of horror. This is so that the horrific event is shocking to reader and has a affect on them as the pace is suddenly changed from what their use to. This can activate fight or flight as the sudden burst scares the viewer.

 Wide Shot

The Shining (1980)

    Another major convention of horror is wide shots. Wide shots are used in horror both to isolate the character within the shot by emphasizing their surroundings and also to create a sense of unease. Wide shots in horror usually display the character/subject in the center of the frame or isolated and then show the background to build suspense as it's vast, large, and has the ability to hide a lot within it. Though a wide shot leaves the scene exposed, other elements like sound and context can result in the exposure in anticipation and suspense.

Thank for you reading!