Film opening

We finally did it!! After all of our hard work and planning, here is our film opening for the movie "Step by Step". I hope you enjoy :)

Google Drive Link To Video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WREgEYDVREKlZTffYAA1PqgnHD5GjTjn/view?usp=sharing

CCR (Creative Critical Reflection)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8jy1p5mokho87uh/CCR%20MEDIASTUDIES.mov?dl=0

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changesssss!

When creating the final masterpiece for this project, there has been many changes that occurred throughout the process. My partner and I have changed many things in order to get the perfect film opening. Some changes have been switching the stalker from being a guy character to a girl character. This way, we do not need to follow the typical genre convention "guy attacks girl" storyline. Additionally, something else my partner and I had changed was that we were thinking of having the kidnapper wear darkish jeans, casually strolling through the park until she sees the victim. But instead, we crossed that idea out and wanted to make more of an excuse of why the kidnapper was at the same park as the victim, so we thought....why not make the kidnapper wear dark running gear? So now in the film opening, the kidnapper is pretending to use the gym equipment in the park when she sees the victim, which makes more sense as to why she's there in the first place. For our script, we ended up changing most of the lines and condensing them because we realized that we need to have time for our other scenes that we need to film, and the dialogue would just take up too much time in our video. 

Also, for our first woods scene we filmed, I noticed that we had to fix some parts in our video. It was to the point where we actually had to go back to Markham Park to re-film a certain scene. The main problem with the scene was that there was no continuity, which made the video look inconsistent without any flow. The scene was the one where the victim and the kidnapper are on the bench together and the kidnapper put her arm around the victim. After the kidnapper put her arm around the victim, the next shot shows her arm placed down besides herself, making it look like as if she magically placed her arm back down without anyone noticing. My partner and I had to re-shoot that same exact scene but this time with the murderers arm still around the victim. 

Another change that was made was the whole flashback idea. If we were to incorporate the flashback idea, that would mean that the very first scene of the film opening would be when after the victim is kidnapped and put in a white random room (which will be Arianas closet) that the victim should look down at her scars, and try to remember how she even got them, and her trying to remember will "flashback" to the scenes of her at the woods. The flashback idea also changed that instead of having the scenes leading up to the kidnapping, (like the dialogue and the part where the murderer is looking and walking up to the victim) it will take up too much time. After discussing the flashback idea with my partner, we changed our original script and wrote another script that ties in with the entire flashback idea. It was great until we realized that it was getting too repetitive to be throughout the entire opening, and it was a bit cliche. We also thought that we could just use the shots we have from when we previously filmed, but we then realized that we couldn't even use those shots because the flashbacks will need to show a point of view from the victim, and we took shots from a third eye view. We also crossed out some of the scenes on our story outline for our whole flashback idea. Each flashback that the victim was supposed to receive is now crossed out. This works fine because we can just skip over those scenes, and the overall video will still make sense. After figuring that out, we decided to make ANOTHER script to go along with a new story line for how and why the murderer wants to stalk the victim. We decided to make the murderer "in love" with the victim, and act out as a reason of jealousy when she sees the victim with her boyfriend. This storyline makes more sense and could be very realistic. 

Additionally, in our story outline, we included a beginning scene of the murderer stalking the victim at school. This way, we can develop a story for why she wants to stalk her. We are trying to make a notion that the murderer is low key in love with the victim, and that is why she stalks her up to the woods scene. We even added in a shot of the murderer stalking the victim at school, then getting angry when she sees the victim walking with her boyfriend. This added scene makes it less confusing and makes it easier for the audience to know why the murderer is interested in the victim. 

Some key moments while making this project was not making the storyboard. If my partner and i spent time making the storyboard, it would actually be the biggest waste of time in history. If we were to make our storyboard, we would of had to re-write it so many times because we weren't planning on changing our scenes that much, and also, my partner and I already wrote down out storyline and script for everything, so having a storyboard will serve as redundant information. Also, writing down a schedule to follow through for the weeks leading up to the due date truly helped plan things out. Even if something were to go wrong, we would try and fix it for the following week. 

Set it & Edit

I went over my partner Arianas house today and together, we compiled all of the scenes that we took into our final project. After placing all of the videos together in the correct order they are supposed to be in, we viewed our film a couple of times and made some foleys to go along with it. We only needed three foleys for the video, and we only recorded two. For the last foley, I am going to record Vernie, our actress, panting as if she was in the woods scene again. I have the select video that we want her to continue panting in because there needs to be continuation within the video. In the video that I will show Vernie, it does not show that continuation of her panting and the video is just silent. That way, I can add in the recorded panting of Vernie to the scene for more flow. Here are some videos of Ariana and I creating some of our foleys.






During our editing process, even when we finished editing (or thought we finished) our video stayed at around 2:35 which is way over our maximum time limit. My partner and I kept trying to find space in certain scenes were we can clip off to save more time, we even sped up some scenes too. Additionally, we thought about a couple title names for our film opening (such as: Obsessed, Wheres Veronica? and Eyes on You), we figured the title would be in big red letters and we still need to figure out which font matches thriller genres. Next step, we are going to try and find the right music to go along with most of the scenes in our film opening.

The Mom Scene

Today, I had filmed the "mom scene" with my own mom, playing the role of the victims mother who is in sorrow for her daughter missing. I had filmed the scene in front of my house, and made my mom act as if she was hammering a "missing person" sign of her own daughter, then crying and walking away. I made my mother dress in dark, plain clothes showing that she doesn't care about the way she looks/presents herself in public because of her daughters missing. I also put some dark black eyebrow makeup under her eyes to make it seem as if she has been crying for days. To make it seem like she doesn't care about the way she looks, I also teased her hair to make it look raggedy and uncared for.


For the mom scene, this is the missing person flyer that my mother (the victims mother) was hanging up. My partner and I made sure to put the word "missing" in big red colors so that it can really stand out in this scene.

Makeup, Murder & Madness

Ariana and I went back to the same exact spot in Markham park as we did before when we filmed our other video that we are now not using anymore. We directed Vernie to run into the same area that we filmed in before, and this time we were pretty familiarized with the area so it was easy to know which spots would make good shots in. Down below are some pictures of my partner and I filming in the woods again, directing Vernie to run through the woods for the woods scene.




The make up:

 .                                                The makeup we did on Vernie for the closet scene turned out to be so good and looked realistic!!!! To make Vernie seem like she had bruises and cuts on her body, we simply melted bright red lipstick from a microwave and put it in a mixture with black eyeshadow and blue eyeshadow on a makeup brush and BAM!! We also put coffee beans all over Vernie's body to seem as if she was dragged in the dirt through the woods by the murderer. This make up is for the final scene of Vernie, when she wakes up in Arianas closet and discovers that she is somewhere she is unfamiliarized with and is scared.






The location:

For the location of the scene where Vernie is supposed to be in the murderers lair, we cleaned out Arianas closet and put in an old mattress so she can lay on in there to make the lair seem disheveled. We liked how the lighting (towards the right of Ariana) is bright in only one area, making the rest of the "lair" seem faint and dull.

 

Tomorrow, I am filming the "mom scene" where my mom is playing Vernie's mom and is hanging up a missing person sign of Vernie. 

Getting ready to film....again

Today my partner Ariana and I are going to meet up at our first location of our film opening today: the Library by Cypress Bay High School. For this scene, we need Vernie (our actress) to pretend like she is walking out of school with a backpack on with her "boyfriend", which is actually going to be played by Ariana's boyfriend. After we film that scene, we are going to head to Markham Park to re-film the woods scene, since we didn't like the other woods scene that we filmed previously. After were done filming in Markham Park, we are going to go to Arianas house to film the "closet scene" where Vernie is pretending to be trapped in the murderers lair. For this scene, we are going to incorporate fake blood, raggedy clothes and other props that make Arianas closet look stingy and used. We are going to try to finish filming today as soon as possible so that next week, we can start editing our film opening.