Seeing project from a different perspective

March 16, 2019

Group meeting

So each member from each group were divided into different groups where we shared our project and received/gave advices. This group meeting was this past friday which lasted about an hour and a half. I heard really cool ideas from other groups and ones that seemed quite interesting. Fortunately, I was happy to hear that all the members that I was assigned with thought our idea was delightful and compelling. I talked about the props we are working on, our film opening upcoming dates, and most importantly the beginning and the plot of our film opening. I discussed with the group the different shots we were doing and asked if they thought of ways I can improve upon them.

Recommendations given to me

-  The team and I were thinking of using Alexis (a girl in our group) as the mom of psychopath but one of the members in the group meeting said to use someone’s mom instead of Alexis to be more professional and for it to be easier to understand that it’s the guy’s mom.

-  Since our project requires a lot of time because of everything we have to keep in mind and work on, another group member said to use Youtube Audio Library for our clock ticking, water dripping, door slam, and pencil tapping sounds instead of actually making these sounds to save some time.

- I was also recommended to not put the title of the movie right after the cemetery shots to not create a trailer vibe which seems reasonable.

-  Lastly, someone else added that it’s extremely important to differentiate the flashback like scenes from the rest so that they audience is not confused about it and that it will be essential to make that differentiation very clear.

I actually found all these advice to be helpful and will be sharing them with my team and considering them for the future. However, I had received a lot of positive feedback. The people in the group were really agreeing with the ideas I was explaining to them. For example, they were saying the symbol is a really cool idea to have and the close up shots of the symbol in the dead bodies will be cool to see.

Is there any of these recommendations you think will not really help? Do you have any you want to share? Feel free to say it in the comments down below!

Stay tuned! :))

Changes to beginning that you need to know about

March 15, 2019

Hello guys! Today I want to discussed and further explain something I went over in my previous blog which I barely went in dep about. This is about our opening scene and establishing shot of what it was before to referred as a cemetary. We decided with the team that making these first scenes in a public cemetary won’t be the best idea for various reasons. Number one, we just find it a bit disrespectful to film in such places like these and isn’t a place to conduct a project on. Also, it won’t fit into our project very well for several reasons. Since we want to make these deaths special and different from others to differentiate that it has something to do with the psychopath, we believe it’s better to do it in some place isolated or hidden. Having this flashbacks in an odd place like this and not just any public cemetary can also be quite mysterious and appealing to our genre (thriller).

The new scene we created will take place on the family’s property. This will be shot in the back of the ranch where the family members died in. Something extra we have added to these scenes is that we want to make it with quick adds and also add some flashy police lights to create that murder crime that took place. There will be names showing of those who died and each one will have the symbol (backwards E) in their head to show it was done by the psychopath. As the cuts progress, we want to speed up into the turn back to days later.

The turn back will be illustrated by a message in the bottom thirds of the view saying something like for example “a few months later…” Someone in the team gave a really smart idea to have dates next to the victim’s names showing a date and then the transition will be shown by including some sort of calendar of that day.  We are still considering all the options we have thought about and I‘ll be keeping you guys updated on our final decisions as soon as we have them! Feel free to say whatever ideas you have in the comments below!!

See you soon! :))

Happy to announce this amazing movie title

March 14, 2019

Name of Film

Hey guys, I have great news for you guys. After an abundant amount of thought process to what the film name can be and reading the article The right and wrong ways to name a movie, I have came up with the name “Identity”. The article has tough me different  things like for example the shorter the title is the better. Also, that the title should have to do with what most of the film is about and that people should have an interest on that name which says the name has to be attractive. Since the film opening is about a psychopath who tends to murder people and leaves a symbol on them with blood surrounding the symbol, Identity would be a cool name to have since the identity of knowing who the murderer is identified based on the symbol. I think this name really appeals with the film and I think it’s a unique name which will bring a lot of attention. It’s really important to and highly suggested to come up with a creative name.

Symbol

The symbol of the mark that the psychopath leaves on his victims is a backwards E. It’s backwards so the guy can be looked as abnormal and different from everyone else. After dealing with his victims, the psychopath will efface this weird looking E mark somewhere in their body, with blood all over it. Below is a picture of how we want the E to look like

As you can see in the first E, it’s covered up in blood. The second E looks very mysterious and I think looks really cool. These however, are just ideas we are getting from Google. When it comes to actually making our name, we’ll be making our own symbol but basing them off these pictures above.

We want to display

    “IDƎNTITY”

right after the scenery of the flashback and the shot of the headstones at the beginning. We think it's the perfect place to add it so we can divide something that happened before to actual reality. What do you guys think?

Until next time everyone! :))

Sugarman, Jacob. “The Right and Wrong Ways to Name a Movie.” Salon, Salon.com, 25 Sept. 2011, www.salon.com/2011/02/11/just_go_with_it_movie_title_interview/.

Behind the scene!

March 10, 2019

Hello everyone! I have some exciting news which is that I started creating my props. The team and I think it's a good idea to have the items ready when the day of production kicks in. The pictures below show what the blood like substance that I created. I was able to refer to one of my previous blogs to see what I needed to go and buy to make this blood liquid. Thanks to my earlier research, I was able to go buy what I've needed for this to happen with not much time wasting.  However, I've noticed the fake blood needs more of a darker color. As you can see in this picture, the blood looks like a salsa color than actual blood. This preparation and the process of trying out this process has helped me to figure out that I will be needing less water or more water (more blood) but way more of the red food coloring liquid.

This fake blood will help my team and I with scenes like for example the one of the room with knives and blood everywhere as well as the symbol. The group and I will be going all together to buy the items we will need to create the headstones. Also, we will be going to Party City sometime this week to buy all the cloth that we will be using.  We have also discussed where we want to have the credits placed in the film opening, in which scenes, and with which font. We want to have a font that gives a thriller vibe but keeping it professional at the same time. One of the fonts we are highly considering for our credits looks like this, OPINIONS? Feel free to leave any feedback down in the comments! 

I don't want to say any more because I'm going to leave the rest for the production process... I hope you guys are as motivated as I am!

See you soon! :)) With interesting information and content you don't want to miss!!

Important update to know about

March 9, 2019

What’s up guys? It’s good to be sharing my thoughts and ideas with all of you again. Today, I wanna talk about some updates that we have and the changes we made to our storyboard. In the past days, my team have went over over each of our scenes and changed a few things throughout the process. Believe it or not, this part of our project is one of the most important since it is really what we’ll shape up and structure the rest. It’s important to double check the storyboard and tweak it in whichever way possible so you don’t run into bumps or make errors and realize after. Here are our recent changes to our project and we truly believe this is going to be our final changes to the storyboard and have a lot of confidence with what we have brought together for you guys.

Changes to Storyboard (IN RED)

I went over in the previous the location of our film opening which is Marham Park. We decided to add that to the storyboard. Something that was not mentioned in the storyboard before which now is is that we want to show the names of the people who died and expose them on the headstones. The whole point of showing the third scene of a high angle of the gravestones is to show their weak power. We decided to also place a flashy transition, which we’re planning to do in black & white to have that past aspect.

As you guys know since I talked I talked about sound two posts ago, we added the foley sound (clock ticking sound) to our storyboard. In between this shot of the clock and the next shot of the dripping water, we have recently decided we want to have fast transition to create more intensity.

In the rooms where we want to show where the psychopath was, a good way to show that is by having killing knives somewhere in the room, possibly with blood on them. This was something we’d like to add that we didn’t think of before which is a great prop to include. Even though we had stated in the storyboard that we wanted to have a medium shot of the mom looking at the written symbol in the paper, we forgot to add how we want her reaction. So in this new version of the storyboard we stated we want to show her shocked/disappointed.

Until next time! :))

Preview of start...

March 8, 2019

Today I’ll be sharing with you guys the location the team and I found for the project. Since we want it to start with a headstone of someone with the people surrounding it, we decided to do it on an isolated place. This isolated place will create a mystery vibe to our film opening. We chose to have the headstone in the middle of the woods sort of like place. Below shows picture we took of where we're thinking we will do it in.

Location

The lighting here is key for our film opening since it fits really well with our topic as well with what’s going on in the film (the death of one). Later on there will be other locations like for example inside the house but this is how the opening is gonna start so it’s very important that we start focusing on it.

See you soon! :))

Props & Foley's 'rehearsal'

March 3, 2019

Hey guys, I have very exciting news to share with you all! Now that the team and I have constructed our outline and storyboard, we want to move into the next big thing. This jump consists up the development of props and foley sounds that we’ll be essential for each scene in our film opening.


Foley Sounds
Sound is extremely important. It’s not about just including sound, but when, around what, and how it sounds (how it’s created). I was able to get valuable information from Recording Foley and Sound Effects: The Fundamentals which explained to me that microphone selection for the creation of these foley sounds is extremely important. We are going to be using a hyper-cardioid condenser microphone which was recommended by this article which will allow us to get the best sound. This type of microphone will allow us to not pick up any other type of irrelevant sounds that will interrupt our production process.


Clock ticking/Pencil tapping
A close up shot of the clock will be shown which we’ll create a ticking sound that lasts up to the shot of the psychopath sitting in his deck. He will be sitting there with a pencil tapping on the desk with a tapping noise of the pencil as well as the ticking in the back that my team and I will be able to create. We are still not sure how we want to create this specific sound.


Water dripping
A shot will be placed in between the the clock scene and the person in his desk that will show water drops. This will help our film opening have more intensity with the help of the clock sound. We will be creating this foley sound by flicking my cheek during a certain mouth movement.






Door SLAM
As in one of the scenes the mom leaves the room of the psychopath teenanger, she slams the door in her way. We want to create this door closing hard sound by letting a book fall from the chest height to the floor and hitting the floor with the book’s full surface. This will really help us create that type of tone where things aren’t going alright.





Props

Headstone
The team and I have recently gotten the idea of having a headstone during the first shot of the film opening. To challenge ourselves, we want to be able to create and design this headstone by ourselves! This video down below will help us with that whole process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUYWzxHRUyo





Fake blood
For some scenes in our thriller film opening, blood will be essential. Thanks to How to Make Fake Blood we found the one of the best ways to make fake blood.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon of flour


1 cup (240 ml) of water


2 tablespoons of red food coloring






Dark cloth
For this we will be going to Party City store or any other store that we can purchase dark clothing for the actors which will be extremely required for the whole family with the same clothing.


Until next time guys! :))