Critical Reflection
This my critical reflection for our final task. I decided the paint while simultaneously answering questions about the film. My interviewer is Kyndell Baskin, my cousin and she asks me some very good questions regarding the filmmaking process and what impacts it may have on an audience. I hope you all enjoy the video and my painting!
Our Film
INSANITY
by Kassandra Davis, Gabriella McFarlane and Courtnie Williams
Editing Blog
Now that editing of the film is all done, we must add our credits. I would just like to mention how much of a struggle this was. This took the entire day to complete and through so many trial and errors, we finally got it right. We used a different editing app to create our title sequence, instead of VideoLeap, we switched to a very beautiful app called Videostar. The reason I switched apps was because VideoLeap doesn't have a sufficient font section like Videostar, when it comes to custom coloring, setting durations and the fonts. I copied our title sequence draft that we worked on a couple blogs back. I added our production company and the movies title just like we did before. One thing different about this part, was putting the movie title on the film instead of a black screen. I had to reproduce the way the colors faded and how fast they'd come and go. This want that looked like:
The next part was adding credits to the actors and crew, which was just alternating between the bottom left and right of the screen. The process is pretty difficult to explain but I'll try. The hard part was getting the placement balanced and timing their appearance correctly. I multi-layered the video, then picked where I wanted the titles to appear, then added the title a second before that timing. The for the first timing I lowered the titles opacity all the way down and turn it back up again that the time I chose prior. I reversed this process to exit the titles. I chose a placement two seconds after the title appears so the title would be readable. Then a second after, add another placement and lower its opacity to zero again. This is an example of how the processed looked in the app:
Editing Blog
We are super close to being done, we're just waiting for me to finish all the editing. There are two very minor things that I worked on. Those two things were adding background music and prepping space for our title sequence. In my opinion, the background music is the most important part, as it would determine the genre of our film. It was the other group members jobs to find music the music, then my job to add in the film. We looked through a couple of the suggested websites to find free non copyrighted music. Honestly, we didn't have too much luck with finding good enough, free music. So we abandoned the idea of downloading music from a website. So I resorted to screen recording free, usable music on YouTube, unlinking the audio, and adding it to the film. The audio was easier to find and far more easier to add to the film. The music is credited to InnerPeace on YouTube.
The scenes in the film are all done and edited so I saved the video, then added the music. Before I added the music I split the scene where I wanted to the music to start. Then I added the music where ever the scene started. The music starts after that transition between Jenna conversation scene and her arrival at grandparents' house. The music subtly plays in the background up until she enters the home with the psychopath, at that point the music heightens in volume. So I did another split between that section and turned up the volume. In the end, this is how that looked in the app:
The last thing I did was add two, two second clips of a fading black screen at both ends of our film. Those black screens will be occupied by our title sequence which is the very last portion of our editing process. After that we're all done!
Editing Blog
Today was round two of editing. I worked on editing our second and third scene. These are also the last two portions of our film. First, I had to cut, trim and merge the section of Jenna arriving at the home. This process was nearly identical to how I edited the first scenes. I did an action match for the shots of Jenna's arrival and her getting out of the car. One issue we ran into was the audio of the line "I think this is it... here goes nothing." Considering, we filmed this scene outside when it was windy, you can definitely hear an overwhelming sound of wind heating the camera's mic. There wasn't much I could do to fix it, reshooting would not change the fact that we've had a never windy week. So as the editor, I decided to best option was improving the volume as much as possible. I simply lowered the volume on this particular scene. Though it isn't perfect it's no longer a weird distraction in the film. Coincidentally, I had to turn the volume up on the scene prior to this one. This is was that looked like:
Editing Blog
I worked on editing scenes 1-7 today. This is the first day, I've gotten a chance to edit our film. I skipped to merging the conversation shot/reverse shot scene which goes back and forth between Jenna and Mom. I had to go through all the footage and pick out what was usable. Then I trimmed the videos so I wouldn't lose the section. The clipped the videos together and trimmed them so they'd flow as smooth as possible. For the most part I followed the storyboard but some angles were replaced. For the record, I recorded an extra angle which was a close-up on Mom's left side. I replaced our normal close-up with that extra shot, not a huge difference but an example of replacing certain angles.
Listening to the clips, I noticed the major difference in sound quality. This was expected considering one is outside and the other is surrounded by home appliances. As quiet as we tried to get the set, you could still here a little background sounds. You could also hear the difference in sound volume. This is due to the actors distinctive tone of voice and particular acting. To fix this, I first tried to match the volume of the separate scenes.
I tampered with the audio's volume and decided what sounded good. This took a lot of tries and configuration. Even after I thought I was done with editing, I went back to tamper with the audio. In addition to tampering with audio, I did a couple audio overlays. Never thought I would've needed to do this but it made sense in the end. Overlaying audios helped make the scene and audio flow. Majority of this portion of our film acquires the dialogue to overlay certain scenes. Well, now that I think about it, overlapping the dialogue for action matches makes all the sense in the world. To do this I had to unlink the audio from video and place it on top of the videos clipped together. This is what that process looked like in the end:
Editing Blog
Now that we've filmed, we're starting to began our editing process. The first part we tackled was our title sequence. We already had a plan for how we wanted it to look so all we had to do was follow suit. I did the draft for the title sequence and met with Kassandra to see if she liked it or not.
At first I did no idea how to pull it off but I had a random memories of an app called Videostar. This is a mobile editing app that I haven't had a ton of practice with. I used because it was the only familiar app that I knew could create the sequence. The first thing I worked on was getting the movie title to transition colors. We planned for the title to appear yellow and fade into a black shadow. We kept the same concept but decided on fading the title into red instead. I did this by creating two masks, one was yellow, one was red.
Film Blog
Today was very hectic. It was our second day and filming and hopefully the last. We only had two other scene location to record and we did both of them today. The first section went very smooth. My aunt played the role of Mom in the film and she cooperated very well. She only had a couple lines which she memorized prior to recording which helped time-wise. We followed the same procedure we used during our first day of filming. We recorded multiple videos from different angles and had our actor do the lines. There wasn't any issues that delayed our production process. The only "issue" we had was the positioning of our camera. Since we don't have any fancy camera equipment, we worked very hard to get the desired angles and lighting. For example, one of our plans was to record from a high angle. To achieve this, I, the cameraman, stood on-top of a stool and hand-held the camera and tripod, while tracking the actor. This wasn't necessarily difficult but getting the camera still as possible took a couple tries. We also timed ourselves this time. This was such a great idea and helped us get things done faster.
The next part we shot, was Kassandra arriving at the grandparents' house. Majority of it was recording her walking up to the door from a different angle. It was very wind so our audios are foggy but I still think it turned out great. We also had to fight with cars passing through the neighbor and listening to make sure we didn't record a scene while they came by. We actually ended up reshooting the scene where she gets out of the car at the end of the day because we forgot the lines "uh i think this is it... here goes nothing." I'm glad we caught that, I would've hated having to spend another day filming.
Our third section of filming was with my uncle and Kassandra, my uncle is playing the psychopath. My uncle was more difficult to work with. Luckly, he did not have too much camera time and Kassandra was the only one required to actually act. He also delayed our schedule a bit because he wasn't on time but at least we made it before the sun could set. For this portion we followed to same procedure of recording the lines from different angles. This was one of the easiest portions to record, there were only a couple angles and no one of them were super hard to achieve. The angles were close-up, over-the-shoulder and mid-shot angle.
Film Blog
Today, Thursday 18th was our first official day of filming. We actually ended up changing our park location to a different park. The park is called Hamptons Park. We changed it because when we visited our original location we realized it did not have enough trees and nature to act as a forest. So we switched to a more suitable location. I picked Kassandra up, from her house and we drove to the park. At the park we ran into some difficulties. First we basically filmed in the parking lot. It was not very spacious and we had to continuously park and reverse. This took a lot of time. Another issue was camera movement. In order to get different shots of the same dialogue, we recorded the entire scene from different angles. Since we don’t have professional nor proper filming equipment, a lot of our mechanisms were makeshift. Our camera was mostly leaning on different internal parts of the car. This caused the camera to be shaky and move whenever we would start to drive. We prevented this problem by adjusting the camera or holding it, whenever this happened. I also realized all the preparations we did still was not enough to bulletproof plan our filming day. We had all the equipment but plans still ended up changing in the end. They weren’t major changes but we did have to adjust to the area and adjust to the issues that came along with it. I would say it was a very productive day.
Production Blog
Once again my group planned to record our first scenes with dialogue this week. Thursday is the day we picked. We are very determined to get this filmed because we want to be on time with everything. We will meet at the park on Thursday and do our first recordings on Kassandra AKA Jenna. The next set of recordings will be at my house for the scene with Jenna and the psychopath.
The scenes of Mom will also be recorded on this weekend. Basically, we expect to finish filming this week and spend the rest of our time editing. I will be doing the editing and I really don't expect take that long. It should not take me too long considering we planned the scenes and storyline on the storyboard.
As you can see we've pretty much been playing the waiting game. Our group has continuously rescheduled our film days due to inconvenience. The wait has caused us to spend more and more time preparing to film. This preparation included: gathering equipment, recording establishing shots, meeting to schedule film days, think of ideas for editing and looking into how we will achieve our title sequence. This is both a positive and a negative. Though we will be very prepped, we have compromised our time for each other continuously.
Personal steps that I would take in order to keep our time consist is carpooling. Clearly, transportation is our biggest weakness and I'm willing to help each other out if needed. I am a very busy person just like everyone else and waiting on each other is taking a toll on things I have planned. I hope our group is able to work collaboratively again. Can't wait to begin this filming!
Film Blog
We ran into a slight inconvenience, Kassandra who also plays our main character, was not able to film today nor will she be able to film this upcoming weekend. We were determined to get some shots done by this week so we revised our plan. We decided to go ahead and film all the shots that are in extraneous locations, including all of our establishing shots. These shots do not have any dialogue or actors in them, meaning Kassandra's absence won't be a problem in this case. There are only two establishing shots in our film, the beginning title sequence and scene 40, the grandparents' house. Since the "grandparents house" is my house, I took the responsibility of getting these shots. I waited till evening to capture shots of it and I tampered with multiple angles and movements, hand-held and steadicam. One issue I had was deciding whether or not I would allow cars to sit in the driveway for this shot so I did some with a car in the drive and without. I referred to my group members to decide if we should include the car. Another issue was my family being in the way of shots, they were a bit disruptive but it was not a big deal. Here are some the shots:
Production Blog
Today we prepared for our upcoming film day. We went over all the equipment we would need to began our filming process. For the first day of filming, we need a vehicle to capture Jenna, our main character in. The vehicle will be provided by one of our parents. We made sure the parent would be available to chaperon while we use there car. Also, the actor who will be playing Jenna is reliable enough to drive the car, as it is required in order to carry out our storyboard. Another piece of equipment would be a tripod to stand a phone up, which is what we will record our film on. We don't have a tripod but we do have a ring light that will do the exact same job as a tripod. This are the only pieces of equipment needed to film in our first location. I am responsible for bringing the ring light and the car will be provided by whoever is available. The other pieces of equipment includes a framed photo to act as the grandparent and cellphones. We wouldn't need reminders to bring cellphones because I'm pretty they will be on-hand anyways but I included it because it is an important prop. I just want our group to be prepared as possible because we've done so well with managing out time and due dates so far. If anything goes wrong it wouldn't affect us as much considering we've planned every other aspect of our film process. One issue that has arose, that I was afraid would happen is the conflicting scheduling. We've had to reschedule filming days multiple times due to lack of transportation, other plans being made and personal dilemmas. We still have much time left so I'm not to worried yet but if this continues it will take a toll on us. Other than that, I don't have any real worries, but of course we have to expect the unexpected. Another step I took to prep for filming is deleting unnecessary photos from my gallery. Since we will use my phone to film, I didn't want to run out of storage in the midst of recording. This is a small part of preparation that may or may not be needed but I like I said earlier, It would be helpful to prepare for as many scenarios as possible.
Production Blog
This is the week we began the filming process of our film. My group and I met to discuss what days worked best and we agreed to start this weekend. We did create a schedule but we had to rearrange film days to accommodate the already busy schedules we all have. One change we made to the schedule was postponing the second week of filming to the week after. So far we have still been finalizing our script and filming crew. I think a problem we might run into is getting all the members of the group to the same location, at the same time. Considering, we've already began rescheduling our dates and we haven't filmed anything yet. I just hope it doesn't take a toll on our organization nor our film. I do have an announcement though. We are no longer a group of two but of three! Recently, we added a new member to our group, Gabby. She is another friend of mine and I am excited to work with her. I haven't done many group projects with her but she has helped with designing scenes in both the shoot script and storyboard. We've gone over our participants list and gave Gabby the role as co-director and co-editor. Having an extra hand during this process will benefit drastically. We as a group with back to our intro & group blog to reintroduce our group members, including Gabby. The last update is where will begin our filming. We only have two filming locations and we will start at the park. We thought it would be a good idea to start with the furthest location first. The park is in a nearby city, not local.
Planning Blog
This is our storyboard. We, as a group, worked collaboratively to complete all the drawings and planning of the scenes. Our storyboard is detailed, showcasing angles and facial expressions of the characters. This will help tremendously in our filming process. We are excited to begin.
Font: Our title font will be analog and our other titles will be in Euphemia UCAS Italic
Contrast: the titles will be in yellow, casting a faint black shadow / our movie title will be relatively large and the other titles will be in the size 57, according to Phonto.
Spacing: all titles will remain in there default spacing. The movie title may be enhanced as far as spacing
Working Title: we like the name "INSANITY"
The first scene of the film is a shot of the car driving across the scene. When the car dashes by, the movie title will appear in the middle of screen, nearly at the same speed of the car.
The other titles will appear and disappear faintly. We want to try casting some of the letters of the titles in black as they fade away.
Titles will remain on the screen for 2 to 3 seconds.
Planning Blog
I wrote the script and my group members let me know what I should and should not change. Our storyline pictures, Jenna, our main character, being on the phone with her mother at the being of the scene. The first half of our film goes scene to scene of Jenna and Mom having a conversation. The beginning builds the story. It covers why Jenna doesn't know what her grandparents look like, why she's in a forest, why she isn't in contact with anyone, and it starts the suspicion for the rest of the film to carry out. The other half of the film is the face-to-face interaction between Jenna and the psychopath that she thinks is her grandparent. Our shooting script included all the angles and expression our cameraman and actors will portray in the film. The shooting script will be used to draw out our storyboard and overall help us with organizing our filming process.
Planning Blog
Schedule
3/4/21 – 3/6/21 | These will be our filming days. The 4th and the 5th will most likely be spent filming in the park. Then the last day we will spend filming at the house. |
3/13/21 – 3/14/21 | We will finishing any form of recording that needs to be done on this weekend. |
3/15/21 – 3/19/21 | These days will be spent editing our film. We while use the app VideoLeap and Imovie, our alternative will be an online editing software. Courtnie will do majority of the editing and she will constantly send scenes for Kassandra to approve. |
3/21/21 | Our film will be finalized by this time. We will finish any extra blogging that needs to be put in for this day on, until the final due dates. |
Location
We will have two filming locations, my home and a nearby park.
Participants
Actors
- Kassandra Davis - Jenna / Barbara Smith - Mom / Lance Baskin – Psychopath
Filming
- Courtnie Williams
Editing
- Courtnie Williams / Kassandra Davis / Gabriella McFarlane
Directing
- Gabriella McFarlane / Courtnie Williams
Safety Team
- Theo / Carrie
Health & Safety
To ensure safety, the amount of people involved on set will be limited. When not on camera all participants will where protective masks. All participants are COVID-19 negative and has not been exposed to the virus.
We have a safety team that will be on set. Incase of emergency cellphones will be on-hand to dial 911 and any important contacts.
Title Research
I found this movie on Arts of the title. It is a psychological thriller about an injured woman is trapped in her private elevator during a power failure, while her home is ransacked. I've noticed title sequence happen to reflect the current state of society. For instance when this film was made the country was experiencing a state of fear and unease due to the testing of nuclear weapons. In our case, I'm thinking we could give reference to the global pandemic we're all experiencing to reflect in our sequence or film. First they displayed the production company, then the movies title, then the starring actors and their characters, then the writers/ producer and director. This film is from the 1960s so the movie title were more minimalistic than it is today. The opening Paramount logo encased in vertical stripes — we’re made aware that this is a film envisioned as a whole, as an amalgam of parts fused to fit just so. The rest of the opening goes on to keep the momentum of animated stripes surrounding disturbing images. Images like a dead dog in street and a young girl gliding her roller skates on a guy's prostatic leg. These images are very uneasy and disturbing, which is prevalent to the country's state at the time. Obviously this images have a negative connotation. We gotten to a point where we understand a good thriller intertwines with the anxious feelings of discomfort. Considering the title sequence is supposedly foreshadowing the movies plot, I think they've done a great job at creating the apprehensive atmosphere. Also the music plays a part fitting the genre. The music is very untraditional to what thriller non-diegetic sound is now. The music is jazzy yet unaware of what is to come. From the music I would've grouped this movie under the mystery genre. There's a lot of zoom ins and close ups in this sequence, which is one of the elements of thriller films. You will also find establishing shots of the disturbing images we mentioned earlier.
Title Research
The Final Destination on Watch the titles is about enjoying a day at the track, Nick O'Bannon (Bobby Campo) has a horrific premonition of his friends and him all dying in a freak accident involving many racecars. Mere seconds before the vision comes true, he manages to convince them to leave. Although they cheat death then, the survivors each begin to meet a grisly end, and Nick tries to figure a way to escape a similar fate. They all see horrible fates of death and try to escape it before it actually happens to them. The Final Destination is the perfect introduction to the fourth instalment of the successful horror movie series. The Hollywood “design boutique” aimed for maximum impact and effect. The best way to see this would be in a movie theater in 3D.The main appeal of the movies is the grizzly and gruesome, but very creative death scenario’s of the characters. X-ray idea took care of that problem, and conceptually it seemed authentic to the spirit of these movies, to show deaths in new and innovative ways. They display the actors and some death scenes along with their name. When they gave credits to actors & film makers they used everyone in a different aspect of death.
They used X-ray images in the opening sequence, to showcase a death scene. The images show a unique way to display a death scene, they showed a preview of how the movie is. They broadcast how the characters all suffer weird deaths and incorporated that into their sequence. The film establishes the feeling of genre by showing weird ways to die. It gets you curious and excited on how they die by a pole, or stairs falling down on them. The strategies they used were the client’s brief was to create a sequence for the fanboys that used the equity that existed in the deaths of the first three movies within the franchise. The technology was used very efficiently, they used a new way to animate death scenes. The X-ray idea of images being portrayed like that was never done before and it showed a new aspect to the viewers. They used all different angles and transitions throughout the sequence, such as wide shots, pans, high and low angles. They used these angles to show how the character died and what happened when they did, showed if they looked up or fell down before falling from the angle it was viewed
Title Research
The movie hostage found on Watch the titles featuring Bruce Willis, places the viewer right in the center of a high profile crime scene taking place in one of L.A’s upscale suburbs. The action scene rendered in stark black-and-off-white contrasting colors, with deep blood red as the only supporting color- is frozen is frozen in time. As the camera pans across the scene, alternating between wide and close shots, the tension builds slowly but surely, culminating in the film’s climactic opening scene. The opening sequence displays credits to the film makers and cast. The sequence helps the audience establish the setting in which the film will take place and what will happen. The opening sequence is like a brief summary of the movie with detailed pictures and credits. The sequence takes place in a crime scene with cops around it and a sniper above watching everything. The film establishes a feel of thriller by showcasing a crime scene and showing them trying to infiltrate the building and a sniper watching over them to make sure nothing happens. There is a hostage situation and the person inside is on the phone crying but the audience doesn't know what is happening on the call to make the person stressed out. When making the opening sequence they use images that appeal to the audience that is interesting and has a background story to it.
Technology has been used very effectively, the sequence is very divergent in its angles and transitions. It uses close and wide shots from different angles in the setting to show the audience where the sequence is taking place. The angles help to give meaning along with the transitions to develop the story behind it. The transitions were pans from different angles from the crime scene and different building in the suburbs. When establishing an action/thriller sequence you wanna show some action taking place along with a suspense of what exactly is happening in those scene's. This helps to attract the audience and want to actually find out what's happening and watch the movie. One of the viewers said "I think this sequence is one of the most incredible I have seen! Love it." You wanna have a unique sequence that's different from all the rest to draw the audience in. Hostage opening sequence gave a preview for what happened in the actual movie it helps audience get some background knowledge. The complexity of it all is what makes it so unique.
Critical Reflection This my critical reflection for our final task. I decided the paint while simultaneously answering questions about the f...
