The foley stage:

This was the funnest part of the project so far. Mimicking sounds is very interesting because it can use the weirdest materials and actions to mimic a sound, to look for inspiration i watched this video, it's so interesting how they create sounds and the art and process it takes to record it, moreover the effect it has on the overall scene; it is an essential part of the whole film. By understanding the importance and the process we went and use our surroundings to record different sounds, here are the results:


1- Audio of shuffling (we took a pile of leaves and recorded the sound of someone shaking them)

2- 1st sound of running, (one grabbed the recorder and stated running with it, the ground had leaves and small branches we put.)

3- 2nd sound of running, (this time we recorded someone running stationed in a pile of leaves)

4- Heavy breathing (I ruined fast for a couple of minutes and then recorded my heavy breathing, we tried doing to without being tired but it didn't sound as good.)

5- 3rd sound of running (here we recorded someone running away)

6- Sound of hitting wood (we tried recording it directly as with the hand, but the sound wasn't crisp; instead we took a rock and threw it to the wood, that sounded much better.)


Im excited to see how does sounds come into play in the editing later on. We still are missing a couple of foley sounds like:

-Dropping something into water.

-Sound of sitting down in dirt.

-Sound of scratching

- Sound of dropping pills.

Also I'm sure when we edit we are going to come up with more sounds to record.

The roots of editing

Now this the start of for me the hardest part of the whole project, the editing. This is the part where all the ideas and thought process comes together, the crucial point that makes all the previous effort worth it, i had to start looking for inspiration and I found this article on why editing is important. It was a huge relief to read that editing is essentially the second chance in film, all the problems that we encountered can be fixed with this art.


Basically editing is what makes a film a film. It is a tiring and long process but hopefully a fun one. Here I want to start from scratch, to ensure the desired result, directly from my mind to the computer. First I have to pick the editing software i am going to use, quickly because of past experiences and knowledge on the program i am going to use Imovie pro. I know the basics of it, but i have to go really in depth on how to use the program to get my desired outcome, that's why i studied and watched this video, and now by knowing most of the features I can realistically incorporate them into the movie intro.


After knowing and learning the software i researched about techniques on how to develop suspense through editing. After reading couple of articles and seeing some videos i found this insightful text that made me realize some fundamentals of good suspense and i could gather this two things that i could incorporate into my film.

• Having to things happening at once: Here the audience experiences tension from a contrast of unrelated circumstances. 
• Provide a twist: the sequence should not end the way the audience expects.

I really think if I stick to those rules when editing I should develop my mood and genre accurately.

Filming! day 1

Today was the big day, it was filming day. We had already picked out our actor and frankly I was quite pleased with the acting. But like most of the time, a few things went wrong. First we had to change most of the story board we had created because the abandoned cabin we were going to use was shut and locked, so we couldn’t get inside. So we had to think quickly and use the other surroundings as our advantage. After a brief look, brainstorm and research we decided we were going to show the struggle in other ways besides the setting. Right and there we read this article which instructed us and supported our idea to use dutch angle to show the struggle to compensate for the mise-en-scene we had pictured earlier. Then we had to look for the setting we were going to film, quickly we found some woods with a stable, the stable could replace the abandoned cabin and the woods could show the struggle of the character. So it was a perfect replacement, the woods ties in with the genre and the editing possibilities with the shots we acquired are a lot. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, i have an uneasy feeling that the hardest part is yet to come; the editing.


After we filmed for about 2 hours, our actor had to go, i guess that's how no budget film works. We were only missing a few shots:


1. Shot of him throwing his medication the pill bottle (I have one and I'll bring that).

2. Shot of him running through the grass with the asylum outfit and then dumping it and picking up the clothes.

3. Shot of the wine bottle cracking.

4.Shot of the police sirens.


Then all we have to do is record the whispering and we should be good. For now….

Here are the critiques:

Our great teacher Mrs. Marchetti organized a critique session with other groups to receive constructive feedback on our ideas and blog posts. Honestly it was a great relief to talk and see how other groups/people were doing, since I really thought we were behind, but as it turns out we are ahead of the pace. Most people only had their ideas and were far from filming them. Back to the criticism, here are some notes I took when my peers critiqued my blog and idea:

• Make the blog more engaging and appealing, more pictures and include videos.
• Make a prop list.
• Use many close-ups to develop mood.
• Create voices using a foiling stage. 
• Instead using music, use a non-copyright heartbeat.
• Include elements in the video that ties with the background story of the character (Tom)
• Use effects to make the picture/video darker and more spooky.
• Have adrenalin and action scene in the video.
• Use jump cuts and a fast paced edit, to create rush and keep audience intrigued. 

These are my new thought processed for my project, since there is no better advice I can get that the target audience itself.

Overall I was pleased with the comments it definitely opened many views on myself and my group. I was surprised with the choice of genre of people, psychological thriller was very popular in the class, maybe because of low budget and increasing popularity in the big screens of these types of movies. Right after the criticism i joined back to my group and we started coming up with the logistics for filming as well as props and clothing. Our limited resources played a huge factor in determining our mise-en-scene, but nevertheless here are the props we are planing to use friday when we film:

• Glass bottle. 
• Pill bottle. 
• Asylum clothes. 

We don’t have many props because our setting has most of the things we looked for, so we don’t have to manipulate it as much.

During the critique I saw it was interesting when people talked about their inspiration, and what I noticed was that most inspiration came from school events or subjects learned in a class and since this was the same for me, I found it interesting.

This is how we pictured it

So here is the plan for our movie opening:

Its going to start of with an establishing shot of a field with a small ruined wooden cabin at the far end of the shot, then a zoom in is going to reveal the house with a quick cut of the door of the cabin. Next take is going to be inside, slowly in a hand held camera shot is going to reveal the details of the inside of the cabin, scratched walls, bottles laid down on the floor, pills, dark room, uneven paintings, broken glass and chairs. When then revealing a pair of dirty feet, slowly then tilting up to reveal the character sitting down on a corner hugging his shins, with an almost frightened look shaking. On the distance there is only the faint light of a candle lighting partially the room.

That's the plan of the opening for now. This is all subject to change.

The Setting first steps

So here is whats next. Now that we have the specific genre with our ideas organized, we have to establish the setting and the characters. I know for a fact is going to be hard to find a place that fits our schema for “creepy” more so when you live in Weston. So that's when we started brainstorming from our experiences. When we started to brainstorm we realized we have many things to discuss first before coming up with the setting, so we had to take a couple of steps back. We had to establish the time period before picking the place. We looked up information on steps to come up with setting and we found this useful website The Fundamental Elements of Setting, and for our surprise we only had two things of the 12 it lists in the article. After many mistakes and fails we were in square one. According to the article we have to first come up with the locale, here we looked for inspiration in famous thriller movies such as: The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, Inception and Zodiac. Each with unique settings had one specific feature: They each showed distress and settings that expressed non-conformity in society; in other words they all showed unique and remote places that were characterized by their unusual nature. That's when we started to realized that mise-en-scene is going to be huge part in our opening.

We looked everywhere for a place that reflected our genre, we also wanted to heavily tie up the personality of our character with the setting. At least now we have an algorithm and specific plan to come up with the place. Fortunately for us one of my partners had a very cool place we could film in, it had everything we looked for. It was isolated, was ruined down and it was a huge mess, Perfect! Now we have the locale, the next step is to come up with the time frame, we instantly knew we had to pick the future, mainly because of two things, if we did the past or the present we have to develop our story using reality which narrows our possibility, if we do the future we can come up with our own reality and it gives us more possibilities to explore. The time of day is also crucial for creating visual orientation on the screen, night time suits our genre better and will aid in the mood. Opening Scenes: An Overview, this article also helped us enlighten our ideas by showing us the “set up” for our opening scene. Here I learned two important rules, don’t open up with dialogue and force the reader to “backtrack” to make sense of what’s taking place in the scene.

This is the setting we are trying to create.







Carpenter, Courtney . "The Top 10 Elements of Setting In a Story." WritersDigest.com. N.p., 02 May 2012. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

"Opening Scenes: An Overview." WritersDigest.com. N.p., 12 July 2011. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

Here is Tom Tucker

Now that we have the concept of our setting complete, the next step in our agenda is the character. Basically we have to look for someone who looks like the role (schizophrenic) but as I have experienced with this project it sounds easy but its not, just as the setting we have to go in detail. The characters in psychological thrillers focuses on internal conflicts, in our case the struggle of fighting with an antagonist (the mind) who prevents the character from differentiating reality vs fantasy, and a struggle of right and wrong will be portrayed in our character. All these characteristics were inspired by this awesome prezi presentation about psychological thrillers. These bad/good experiences would be mainly combined with the themes of mystery and obscurity, which commonly crosses with elements of thriller or horror. Also in the setting, in a psychological thriller, is commonly used to portray and outline a character's life and since we can easily manipulate the setting via mise-en-scene and not the character we can make the relationship setting-character work really well. Now back to the description of the character, first its going to be a man, mainly because of this article  sex differences in schizophrenia. We researched the differences of schizophrenia in men and women and we decided that it seemed more fitting to do a man than a women because men are more likely to experience schizophrenia and their symptoms are much more severe. After developing the conflict on the character here are the physical characteristics we are looking for:

-Long hair

-Tall

-Skinny

-Ruined down look

-baggy eyes

-Colored eyes 

-Dirty

Our group is planning to do a casting on the sunday march 26 and we are filming the establishing shots talked in the setting. I will keep my blog updated with the results of this day.

Here is the backstory of my character: 

My main character, Tom, is male born Cincinnati, Ohio. He had a good relationship with his mom; She was very loving and understanding. Nevertheless, his dad was very abusive and serious. When he was 9 years old, his parents started to realized there was something strange with his attitude  and personality. When they went to the doctor, he was diagnosed with mild schizophrenia. Ever since, their parents didn't let him out of the house as much except for school, where he had no friends. One day when he was 15 years old, there was a kid bullying a girl that he liked, Sarah. He tried to defend her but all he did was make it worse. He approached the bully and kindly told him to stop, but the the bully said "look, the weird kid is trying to tell me what to do. Go cry with your sick mom, no one wants you here" He gets so upset that hit him multiple times in the face until he was unconscious. After this, teachers were so alarmed they called the police and had no more option than send him to a mental institution. 

PD: i just came up with this idea, i will have to present it to my group, so it can all possibly go down the drain. UGH the effort....

Psychological thriller?

Now we have to develop the story, let's start where we left off, we have to start with an intriguing event. My thought process for this was very insightful and simple. I am currently taking AP psych and conveniently i'm seeing the chapter of abnormal psychology which explores all the disorders and diseases of the brain, and I was immediately intrigued by schizophrenia, which is when you lose touch with reality. What a great idea! the endless possibilities I have to develop the opening with a character suffering schizophrenia are amazing. As i told my team, they were very excited and we started engaging how to develop schizophrenia in a character, when you think of schizophrenia you think about vices in the head, so we looked up what schizophrenic hear, very creepy no? but it's perfect! and it will aid the genre very well. Again my inspiration came again from "Shutter Island" An interesting film which shows the impossibility of getting over guilt and the psychological effect that has on the schizophrenic. Here schizophrenia is the bogeyman.


Now that we roughly have an idea we need to tie the theme, thriller and schizophrenia with a story, this is the hard part, let's get on again with the research. After an extensive search, as it turns out schizophrenia is not a popular subject in movies but I managed found one movie called a "beautiful mind" here an intelligent man suffer from his own blessing, his mind. This raised an eyebrow in me. I have watched a lot of movies that end up as it's started, so I think it could be a very awesome idea to do the same, some sort of psychological thriller. Research time! 5 Tips for Creating a Believable and Captivating Psychological Thriller made me realize that plot twists are essential and that they have to be accurate and true. Now we have finally established the specific genre psychological thriller and that schizophrenia is going to play a big part on our story. I'm excited for what's next.

This is my inspiration

Well obviously we started by coming up with the genre/story, thankfully I had seen this awesome video before How To Brainstorm Ideas For A Short Film to be kind of prepared for this task. In this video Darius explains you need to start with a routine; give a few of minutes to write as many ideas you have every morning or before you go to bed, this is going to let me have many options even if more than half my ideas suck. Next is to look for inspiration on my past experiences and write about those, that's when i knew i had to write about thriller, as i'm a huge adrenaline seeker and most of my favorite movies are thrillers such as "Shutter Island" and "Donnie Darko". After this probably my favorite task, Darius said to watch many movies, and that's what I did, sat down in my couch, grabbed popcorn and had a movie marathon, there I was thinking this was going to be a fun project after all :). The last step to come up with ideas is to do research, look at interesting facts and scenarios that can be turned into film ideas.


Back to talking with my team, I already had my thriller theme stamped in my head, and to my surprise it was a unanimous decision, maybe because it is a trending theme right now?
Now and probably the hardest part is to develop the story. After we chose the thriller theme we took individual time to do some needed research to support our ideas and start coming up with the plan. It only took me a couple of minutes to find this eye opening article: 10 Basic Ingredients of a Successful Thriller. Here it explains that thrillers is probably one of the hardest themes to come up with, because you need to develop an extensive and well thought plot filled with suspense (I already knew this, but i think since it is my favorite genre it is going to be easy in the long run). The idea of starting with a surprising and eye catching event leaving the audience with uncertainty is what I focused on, since i'm doing an opening.

Well this is the start...

Well this is the start of the awaited and hopefully fun project. My name is Carlos Willson an eleventh grader from Cypress Bay High School, and I am ready to start this long journey. When I first met up with my team in class I had many ideas, but as I worked along the school year with many different people I knew it wasn't going to be an easy task to get my ideas through. So, why did I choose to work in a team...? Well honestly, it was a combination of being scared and needing help. I am a centered and charismatic person and I know I can make the team the best blessing for this project. As we started brainstorming I realized this was going to be the hardest part of the project, coming up with an idea and a plan. When you think about a movie you think how hard it is to act, compose the mise-en-scène or the editing; but now I realized the hardest part is how to come up with the idea for the movie opening. I want to create a movie opening that reflects my personality, one that expresses all my ideas. My biggest scare is to fall in the cliche story line, I want my film opening to be unique and true to the story. I am extremely excited to embark into this journey as watching movies is one of my favorite hobbies, ands that's why i exactly enrolled in this class, I am now at the other side of the screen.