CCR question #4

 Finally, here is the last blog posts for the CCR questions and for this one, I'm going to be talking about question #4

In my last blog post, I talked about my idea for the video and just like for questions 1 and 2, there's a video for questions 3 and 4 as well so once I finish talking about my 3rd question, I'll transition to the 4th question being: How did you integrate technologies-software, hardware and online-in this project?

Software tools-

So to start off, some of the software tools that I plan to talk about that we used is Pixabay which is a free stock photography website and media website that lets us share photos, illustrations, sound effects, and film footage which helped us in making our film.

To make some of the sounds in our film, we used voice memos on our iPhone and soundboard tuna in the editing process of our film to help add more of an effect to it. The sounds in our film are a crucial part in not just our film, but in many horror films, sound is important to hear when the viewer is watching it as they want a realistic view of what is going on during a horror film to create a more scary, eerie and dark environment.

The last software tool that I integrated was how we edited the film. We edited the film by using Adobe premiere which is a great website for editing the process of our film as it gives us lots of different features and items to utilize when we edit the film. Another thing about adobe premiere is that it was honestly fairly a simple use and we could edit the film with minimal complications so I would recommend it to new filmakers like me who are starting out trying to make films

Hardware-

Our film did not utilize much hardware and I still think it turned out fine. Some reasons that our film did not use many hardware in it is the POV shots that we took as well as the handheld camera. as we did not use any sort of set-up device on the phone camera to help stabilize the shots. We did this since like I said, there are many POV shots of the phone camera on the person, but the many handheld shots also created the aspect of a real horror situation that way happening. The shakiness of the camera gets the viewers a sense of worry and a frightening aspect of the scenes in our film.

The other source of hardware was the phone being a lighting source for the shots that we made. We had some complications with filming due to the shots being too bright or being too dark but we adjusted the phone lighting and put the phone in different positions to get the right shot so it would look the best that we could possibly make it our too. 

Online-

Now this part is going to be short since we also did not use online that much but some of the stuff that we did that was online includes the Google drives we made to store the clips so we could get back to them and have them for editing and using YouTube for any type of sounds, music, and tutorials in order to make our film better. The tutorials I feel like helped us a bit since some of the shots were pretty tough to make so watching tutorials made it easier to shoot along with the music and YouTube which actually is where we got our instrumental for most of our film.

CCR question #3

 So now that I have talked to you guys about my last 2 questions and the video idea I have, I am going to talk about my 3rd CCR question and my idea for my second video in this blog.

The idea I plan for my second video is a slideshow/interview format where I talk to the viewers directly with putting up images of the film and what I am going to be talking about in the video and explaining to the viewers about my film with answering questions 3 and 4 to them.

Now like my other CCR blog posts, you need the question to make this post and the 3rd question is: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

So to start off, I feel like my production skills have not only evolved through this project, but with all the projects I have done so far. The process of us thinking we are going to just buy fake blood and us actually making it adds to the fact of producing props for the film to make it seem as realistic as possible and the locations we talk over about, the costuming, the lighting and the positioning for every shot that we need for the film feels like I was actually becoming a director while also being an actor when I was in the shots redoing certain takes to make sure that the film looks not just good to submit as a project but also as a sense of realism that would be present in an actual film. 

I started out on this project expecting for it to be a simple project that we could just do easily without much thought into it and this project has taught me on how to improve my production skills and work ethic by planning out an idea, testing the idea to see if you like it and if you don't, you can always try a new one and if you like it, roll with it and invest your time into perfecting it. 

Some examples of my production skills improving are retaking certain shots. We thought that just putting on dark clothes would be a good idea to portray the monster in our film but we realized that it didn't look as good as we thought it would when we looked back at the footage, so I improvised as I got my Halloween costume and cut of any necessary pieces to make the monster seem as realistic as possible and we retook it and the shots looked much better. The other production skills I improved was the angles and type of shots we took. In the past, the shots I tried to make looked off and I did not really understand the actual meaning of how to identify and replicate the different shot types but with this, I feel like we not only improved on the shot making, but also incorporated more shots into the film, adding a more wide variety of shots in the film. 

CCR question #2

 Following-up from my previous blog post on my CCR questions, I talked about CCR question #2 and my plans and thoughts of how I was going to answer and describe the question and my film opening. Here is a follow up since I explained how I am going to format this video since I'm going to answer both CCR question 1 and 2 in the same video. Questions 3 and 4 are coming soon with new ideas...

To make this blog post, I have to list the question that I am going to answer, so the 2nd CCR question is: How does your project engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

After transitioning from question 1, I'll start talking about my audience that I would be getting my movie out too and then talk about how I plan to get the movie out to my audience.

Audience- 

The target audience I'm going to aim for is 16-34 year old's and people who are into psychosocial-horror films like the Shining and American Psycho.

From American Psycho(2000)

How I plan to get these types of people to my film?

I plan to market in both physical and digital distribution ways with physical I would put up flyers and host a meet-and-greet where I would have some of the actors which you can meet and tell you more about the film. With digitally, I would use mainly social media as that's a great way to get attention from people especially if they don't want to get up from there room to go see it. I would use TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to promote the movie. I would put the trailer up on YouTube so people would get a better idea of what the film is going to be like while on TikTok and Instagram, I would post videos about the production of the film, the actors in the film, and some clips from the movie without spoiling the main point of it.

My production choices would engage with the audience because a lot of the scenes in my movie are dark, eerie, and create the horror aspect that you would want when seeing the film. There's some bloody scenes so the people will be warned before watching but I think the idea of the kid being traumatized throughout the film is going to get some people invested especially if they can relate to losing parents and not just at a young age. 

How I would make this available to my audience-

I plan to make this film available to my audience in lots of ways such as:

Streaming services- I'm going to get them onto streaming services by partnering with film distribution companies to help me get this onto streaming services. Some of the streaming services that I would want to put my movie onto is Netflix, Amazon prime video, Hulu, and as many as I can get them onto. If I add subscription services with this as well as getting my film out to as much streaming services as I can, I feel like my movie will become a big hit.

Online platforms- While streaming services is the main thing I plan to use, I can also utilize some online platforms like YouTube and Vimeo as some ways to get my movie out to more people

Social media presence- Just like how I plan to get people to draw attraction to my film from social media, I also plan it for a way to get people to my film. I'll set up dates and where my film will be released and where you can find it. This can help reach a wider audience and engage with some media outlets and journalists assisting me and building the public image of the movie more higher.

Group Meeting #2

Hey blog! Today in class, we did our 2nd group meeting with the same rules that followed last time. Mrs. Stoklosa got us into random groups of 5 or 6 and we had to discuss all of our ideas that each of us had. During the 1st meeting, it was a lot of ideas and suggestions instead of actual project work. I thought this meeting that we did was a lot more impactful and everyone had pretty much got the memo of what to do for this project and many of them ACTUALLY got their filming done unlike some people(me). I got paired up with Amparo, Beatrice, Kalel, and Santina today and they had lots of creative ideas but they were pretty different from might so I was excited to see what they had in store for me and share their ideas.

The first did we did was share our blogs and we all were pretty impressed with the blogs we have posted about. I looked at their blogs and Amparo stood out to me.

Amparo's idea of girls at the beach and they get reckless sounded pretty interesting. She showed us some of her shots and they looked well made with the positioning of the camera and the lighting they used. 

We also talked about the project with things like the CCR, showed footage of our films, and our overall thoughts on the project. 

Many of them liked my idea of doing an interview as my CCR video and I think one of them actually took inspiration from it which made me feel good about my ideas for making the films. Others talked about doing a podcast like on of my group members Hannah, and I also thought that was a good idea but a little more complex to actually set up and roll with unlike the idea I had for an interview, but nonetheless, a great idea. Another idea I heard was reporters interviewing you. Similar to mine but I plan an actual sit down and talk one-on-one while this one people would be asking you with the public seeing it. 

We all showed each other the footage they made. Kalel showed us really good shots that he took at Markham park with the sunset setting and the sky looked beautiful in the back round, adding that nice touch to his film. A lot of the members in my group talked about also using fake blood for some of their films and they were impressed with how my group did mine since they all had unsuccessful attempts. 

Finally wrapping this blog up and the meeting, we talked about our overall thoughts on this project. We all had mixed feeling about it. Some actually enjoyed filming the scenes and honestly, some of them were pretty cool to create, while some felt very stressed at times with getting the blogs in on time. Some of them like me had the problem with procrastinating and completely not going on with the schedule they created, so I'm kind of glad I was not alone with the schedule procrastination.

Overall, I think this actually was a good meeting as everyone in the class could of just gone back to their groups after the meeting was over but we all chose to stay and discuss more about the project which was surprising to me and it helped me put this blog together better. The idea of the meeting was a great way to see how everyone has been doing their project and share some thoughts or recommendations on how they should improve or what they did right.

Post-production process #2

So for this post, we have not edited much of our film since we don't have all the footage yet since we did not finish filming but we have set up the editing process. In my last production post, I talked about the things that are going to be added in the post production such as fonts, music, and editing techniques. Sadly, once again, we are in this situation where we are behind on schedule and cannot keep up with our project. This project has made me realize that not only my teammates are not managing their time wisely, but more importantly me as well. This project is a really good indicator on how I should approach many things in the future during my life and after this project I hope to apply what I have been doing wrong to improve how I manage time.

Here is a photo of us starting the process of editing on Adobe premiere of what we got, But I can assure you I will finish this project for me and my team!!

CCR question #1

 So we are officially getting into our CCR questions to answer and we have to make 2 videos since there are 4 questions, answering 2 questions per video. For this post, I will go over what I plan to do for question 1 and what kind of video that I will make for it. 

For the kind of video, I am going to do this in a interview format. I plan to get one of my siblings or my friends that are going to help me in making my video. The person who is interviewing me is going to ask me questions about my opening and I'm going to answer the question during this which is: How does your products use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

To start this off, I'm going to get interviewed by a small journalist who's looking for a story to write and I'm a new director trying to get attention from our newest release. How I am going to answer this question is I'm going to talk about the elements that are going to be in my film, discuss genre conventions and explain to the interviewer how my film is challenging issues that are in the real world.

Elements-

So some of the elements that I will say in this is that your going to see dark scenes in every shot, the parents are going to be portrayed as common people who are scared of this monster coming to kill them. The narrative world that this is in is a dystopian world where the zombies are greater than humans, trying to kill every last one of them and this opening is a family getting invaded by one of them when they try to escape and die, as the son watches this while hiding. During the opening, there's going to be this creepy, ominous music in the backround to help portray the genre of horror more. 

How it represents social groups or issues-

What I'm going for in my film is to describe to the viewers of the trauma of some kids who lose there parents at a young age, especially when seeing them parish right in front of there eyes. The film is representing the lives of people like the kid, Owen, and he is going to develop traits of him wanting to get back and stop this world from destroying him. This film is also going to describe issues of crime such as burglary and murder. This is portrayed as the zombies breaking in and killing the parents with no remorse which would describe how bad some parts of the world are actually like.

A similarity that can be deferred from our movie is movies like zombie land, as they do have the horrory aspect while also adding comedy compared to ours being horror and psychological

Post-production process #1

So now that the production posts are done, I'm going to make 2 posts telling you guys about our post production. Now before I start this, I do want to say we are not finished filming all of our shots but we did get a lot of shots done, so to match up with our due date, I'm going to make posts about what we are going to do since we have started the editing process and next time we meet up which would be Wednesday, were going to finish the film opening and directly focus on post-production and planning and making our CCR for the next 2 weeks.

-Lighting usage

Lighting is probably the most important element in our film as the film, the lighting is going to create meaning to every aspect to our film opening. What we did was use our phone flashlights and put them in certain positions when making this to add to the level of affect to this to add the element of the light being from that narrative world and make them seem like it's from windows. During the editing, were going to add any type of brightness or darkness needed to make the film feel as realistic as possible.

-Shots

We have a good amount of different shots in our film and plan to use some editing techniques with these shots. 

              POV shots- Lots of our shots are being shots from the perspective of the parents more so of the father. This shows the perspective of what he is going through for most of this film opening and creates a connection with this character until he inevitably dies, showing the kid at the end. The editing in this will be many cuts in-between the monster chasing the father and him running away. 

               Shot/Reverse shot-  This will be shown when the parents escape to another room talking to each other when they escape the first zombie.

Music- I have shown this music from a previous post of mine called the audio usage in our film that we could of possibly used and thankfully, it's non copyright! The owner is giving us full permission to use the music for us in our project. We're going to use this as our instrumental throughout the movie that solidify's the meaning of the project. Link to instrumental

Fonts- Right now, we don't have a set font to use but I do have a selection to choose from here: 

             https://www.1001freefonts.com/horror-fonts.php              

I am eyeing towards the 3rd one personally but these are some ideas that we have for the font for the title and credits

The music and fonts are all non copyright as we have full permission to use with the YouTube video listing in the description that we have permission and the photos above having free for personal use.

Production Post #4

 I'm happy to say that we are making more progress into making our film. Today, we came to my house and we made the fake blood instead of just buying it. The first attempt of making the fake blood did not go to well but I was not there when they tried to do it. The second time we tried to make it was at my house and it went a lot better. We used food coloring, corn starch, powered sugar, and water to create the blood with the help of my parents as well to make it. We also used gel which really helped us make the blood even more as it could stay on our skin easier. 

Another part of our making in this is my costume. I cut out the excess parts for my costume to portray the monster easier and it turned out well with retakes of shots like when I was walking up the stairs to kill the parents.

During our production, we tried many different lighting poses and we found out it was not going to be that easy to get the lighting angles but we did many different takes on the shots and I think they turned out pretty well. I did learn that when you're going to make an actual film, it's not just going to be this easy and you can't just film and get great results, it takes some time. But I also feel like that filming could also be kinda fun with the scenes that you do and the people you're around. My brothers also helped us film some of the shots that we needed lighting for so I also want to give some credit to them for helping us with the lighting. 

Here is some of the pictures that we got during our production process that we did today:

I'm excited for you guys to see the final results coming soon...

Production post #3

So a follow-up from yesterday's blog, we've talked and we were not able to film this weekend. BUT, we have a good plan when we are going to film together again on Wednesday. As long as we actually stick to this, we will be fine.

Pretty much the first time our I was originally just wearing all black with a black hoodie and black sweatpants. When we went to review the footage, it looked very bad and just poorly created costuming designing. I then got the idea today that for Halloween, I had a reaper type costume, dressed in all black. With me remembering this, I wanted to recreate the scenes of the film with me in it with the costume on. I'll show a picture of what the costume is going to look like.

What I plan to do with this is cut of all of the sleeves and any excess material that would hinder the potential of the costume, I would also remove the gloves and this would portray the costume the best.

Production post #2/complications

 So, for this week, we are supposed to have a planning post and 3 production posts that's illustrating our process. I have already completed two of these 4 posts for this week but I have to be honest, me and my group have not completed filming, especially the main/important parts of the film.

What I mean by this is that we don't have any of the props needed to create this film opening. Without the fake blood, it's not possible to create most of the scenes for our film opening. 

We have some of the shots that do not require any props and just the dark atmosphere but lots of our shots need the props. We started the shooting this Wednesday and we planned to finish filming next week with the props. What we did not think about then was that the production should of been done by now due to not only the blog posting schedule that we have to do, but also our schedule that we created. The schedule we created has been disastrous and we really did not follow through with it and that got us into the situation we are in currently.

I've been trying to contact them about when we can shoot again and what were going to have to post with the little footage we have but sadly the only person that has been giving me replies is Luis and we have not been able to figure anything out. The other 2 Hannah and Shira have been silent and it's getting to a point where I am worried about how we are going to complete this project. 

I'm going to have to update you guys tomorrow about what we are going to do for the future of this project and hopefully we can get something positive out of tomorrow with a good blog post on the continuation of our project.