Movie Opening Blog Post #23

Group Meeting Summary-

In this blog pot I will be talking about the group meeting that I had today in class. In todays group meeting everyone discussed all about our projects, we showed each other a little bit of our projects, and we discussed about our ccr videos and what we plan to do for the ccr. Participating in this group meeting was so relieving because I managed to get a lot of info from people from other groups, and now I have good ideas of how other people think about their projects and what their process is/was for creating these projects. Listening to everyone talk in the group meetings was actually really intriguing because everyone just has all these different ideas and it made me think from many different perspectives. The main thing that I liked about this group meeting is that I got a ton of info and ideas for the ccr video, to be honest, I was stressing out like CRAZY about those ccr videos just because making a 5-6 minute script for four different videos sounds so hard, however, because of this meeting I managed to hear what everyone was doing for their ccr which gave me some idea on how I want to make it, and where I want to make it, all that is left for me to do now is to make my scripts for all 4 ccr's and everything else will just go by quickly since I know how I want to make my ccr's. I definitely wouldn't be able to come up with these ideas within one class period if it wasn't for this group meeting.

This is a picture of my group and I after we discussed everything that we had to discuss. (My teacher took this photo for us. Also, I'm the one in the red hoodie in the bottom left corner.)

Movie Opening Blog Post #22

Research and/or script for #1 question of CCR post:

Question-How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

I might have used the pictures that im going to add to this blog post in one of my other blog posts but the pictures that I add correlate to what im saying.

My movie opening uses a lot of common horror movie ideas but it also shows some new things. The mirrors and the doppelganger are used in most horror films because they get people feelin uneasy. I used different angles like the high and low shots to make my character look weaker and more scared. The lighting is also gloomy and that adds to a creepy environment, which is DEFENITLEY needed in horror films.

One of the things that makes my movie opening different is the way in which i build suspense. Instead of using jump scares I build up the fear slowly by making the mirror "behave" in a way that's for sure not normal, like my reflection disappearing or moving on its own, this makes the viewers more tense as they are just not sure about whats going to happen next. The fear comes from not knowing whats going to happen next which I think is scarier that loud noises or jumpscares.

My movie is also connected to real life concerns like identity and mental illness. The main character, luke, doesn't feel like himself and the doppelganger could be an example of what's going on inside of him. Hes scared and upset and then even goes off on his "mom" which kind of shows how fear makes people push away those around them.

My movie uses horror ideas that people are used to but I add a little twist of my own by using more suspense and mystery rather than trying to scare people with loud noises or jump scare scenes. Im currently taking psychology as one of my classes and we learn a lot about emotions, facial expression, etc, so I feel like the way the mirror changes and the way luke reacts make the story feel more psychological and that adds a little depth to the horror instead of the movie opening being only about quick scares.

Movie Opening Blog Post #21

Different Angles Used Within My Movie Opening-

Within this blog post I want to talk about the different angles that I used within my movie opening in order to make it more interesting and more captivating to the viewers eye. Im not going to be showing a lot of clips from my movie opening but I definitely am going to be showing an amount that will be able to show how my movie opening is going.

First I wanted to show this example of these 3 screenshots of my clips. The same exact thing is happening in all three of these clips except they all have different angles in order to make the scenes more suspenseful by continuously switching the angles for the exact same scene which makes people think that something scary is going to be happening really soon, (I'm not sure exactly how to show it but suspenseful music is being played during this scene which really adds to the fact that the angles keep switching and it hints that something eerie is going to happen soon.) 

This angle is a little mix of a high angle and a wide shot which is showing the character as well as the environment, the high angle making the character seem weak and vulnerable.

These two shots also correlate as its showing the same thing just at different angles so that different emotions can be shown, for example, the close up on the characters face is made to show the emotions of the character and it clearly shows extreme fear and makes the character literally look traumatized by something which scares the viewers as well as makes the viewer think about why the character looks extremely scared and traumatized and that reason is shown in the next angle which shows what the character was looking at, the character was looking at the mirror just to see no reflection of himself, which then makes the viewers think "Where did his reflection go? Why is there no reflection?" and that keeps the viewers both scared and captivated as they want to know the answers for their questions.

Movie Opening Blog Post #20

Credits Scene-

This blog post won't be that long as I don't have much to talk about this blog post other than my credits scene and how I made some changes to my original idea of the credits scene that I was planning on doing.

First, Im simply going to talk about how I switched my credits scene from being it's own thing for the first 30 seconds of the movie opening to me deciding on actually just adding the credits scene within the beginning of my movie.

So, originally when I first started mapping out my movie opening Ideas I decided that I wanted to make the credits scene a rolling credits scene and Its own thing for the first 30 seconds but then while I was making my movie opening I just thought about how boring that would be and how 30 seconds Is a little to long for my liking as I want to make sure that I can fit everything that I have planned into the 2 minute max timeframe that I've been given. What is my improvisation you ask? It's plain and simple, I just added my credits during the first little "introductory" part of my movie opening when no action is happening and the movie opening is just getting started.

This is a little example of what I mean, I added the credits to the "boring," starting part of my movie opening. Since this is a solo project all of the credits will be in my name, one of the credits will be a fake girls name as my moms voice is going to be heard one or two times within the movie opening and I just dont want to use my moms real name so that's why I will be using a fake name for her.

In the last blog post I showed my lighting/color settings and that just gave me the idea to show my text settings for my movie openings credit scenes. In these settings I'm showing the Font of my text, which is "Papyrus," I'm showing the Font size, which is 228, and Im showing the Font color as well as the outline of the text. 

 

Movie Opening Blog Post #19

Movie Opening Blog Post #19

Coloring Of My Movie Opening- 

For this blog post I will be talking about the coloring of the clips/scenes in my movie opening, what my settings are, why I chose this coloring, and how it fits with my movie opening.

Im pretty sure that I mentioned the fact that my lighting in my movie opening is going to be dark in order for the scenes to look more eerie as my movie openings genre is a horror movie and within horror movies lighting is a MAJOR factor as it really makes up the horror within the horror movie because what would a horror movie be if it was made solely in a light environment and nothing else; It would be a horrible "horror movie." 

                        

The image that I have presented below won't be incorporated within my movie opening because its only an image that I've created. The reason that I created this image of multiple replicas of me and my movie openings name is because I want to publish my movie opening on YouTube for when I have completed my movie opening and I just had the idea of creating a thumbnail with it as well. The reason that I incorporated this picture in my blog post is because of the lighting, this picture gives a really good idea of what the lighting for my whole movie opening is going to be like since I used the same color setting for this image that Im going to use for the whole movie opening.

 

These 2 images that I've added are the EXACT color setting that I have been using for the development of my movie opening and I didn't watch any tutorial on how to get a specific lighting for horror movie using premier pro, all I did was use the strategy of trial and error. The "trial and error strategy" isn't really a "strategy," I just call it one because It took me at least 40-60 minutes to find the perfect lighting that I wanted for my movie opening and I had to go through a lot of trial and error with my lighting to get, in my opinion, the perfect lighting. These coloring settings perfectly fit my horror genre by creating a dark, scary setting which creeps the viewers out even more that they would be if I were to just incorporate my cameras normal lighting.

Usually I wouldn't use Curves to change the colors of my clips or scene but while I was playing with the color settings I thought, "why don't I check out the curves and see if they are any good," which they are. The only curve that I changed was the white curve because If I moved the white curve upwards It created a darker setting, which I liked, so I just kept it. However If I were to try and play with any of the RGB curves then it would make my movie opening look horrible because I DO NOT want my scenes to look more red, green, or blue, so that's why I only used the white curve.

The main things that I changed with the lighting section was the contrast, highlights, and whites, because these were the only things that created the lighting that I wanted, unlike exposure, shadows, and blacks, which made my movie opening clips incredibly dark to the point where not a lot was visible in my scenes.

Movie Opening Blog Post #18

Shooting Process-

This blog post is going to be about my shooting process and me showing what I'm able to do. The things that I show within this blog post isn't my actual movie opening but rather me practicing for the development of my actual movie opening.

First I want to show the basics of how the "Mirror Doppleganger" is going to work within my movie opening. What I will be showing is a video of my mirror self doing something completely different than my actual self. Keep in mind, this IS NOT the clip that is going into my actual movie opening.

With this little example clip of that's going to be in my movie opening I wanted to show that I can do what I've said that I will do during the planning process of my blogs, I also just wanted to show a little example of how my scenes are going to look. (of course not with the lighting or the acting that I have in this clip) Just wanted to show the development of my shooting process as well.

I've told my mom to "secretly" take pictures of me while I was working on my shooting process and she did so im going to be showing 2 picture of me setting up my tripod with my camera to shoot some PRACTICE scenes, which mean the scenes that I've written in my script but I want to make practice shots first so I can see what I should improve for my ACTUAL scenes.

Finally I'm going to be showing the lighting that will be incorporated during my movie opening.

This is the best picture that I could get of the lighting that I will have. This lighting may look to dark but it's only because of the phone picture camera, It makes everything look either lighter or darker than It actually is. For some reason when I click on the video mode it doesn't have the same effect on the lighting that the picture mode has, so when I will be filming the lighting will look lighter than it is in the picture.

Movie Opening Blog Post #17

Editing Process-

In this blog post I will be talking about me practicing my editing with the "mirror doppleganger" and I will also be kind of showing how it looks to create this effect in premier pro.

What I did is I made 2 recordings of myself in front of the mirror but with the first recording I was doing whatever in front of the mirror and in the second recording I decided that I want to look at the camera for the fun of it and the fact that I just needed to do something different that the first recording is I could capture that "mirror doppleganger" effect that I want to incorporate into my movie opening.

This is what I've done with my first recording, I've made a mask using the draw tool so that I could cut out the part of the clip where it's not showing my mirror self because what I do after cutting out the mirror part in the clip where I want my normal self is I drag the recording of my mirrored doppleganger right over the recording that I used the draw tool on. What happens is both of the clips end up overlaping, however, because of the fact that I removed the mirrored part in the first recording, once I overlap the two, only the mirrored doppleganger clip gets shown alongside the normal clip giving it that effect.

The highlighted pen is the draw tool that Im using to create the effect.

This is what happens with the draw tool and when you connect all the dots with the draw tool, the area within the connected dots remains and the area outside disappears 

If you look closely at this picture you will realize that the me that is not in the mirror isn't doing the same thing as the me inside the mirror, which is the effect that I wanted to get and this is the effect that Im going to use for the majority of the movie opening. Well..... That is until the mirror doppleganger escapes the mirror and ends up "in the same world" that I'm in.....

PS: I WILL BE SHOWING THE FULL EXAMPLE CLIP IN THE NEXT BLOG WITH WILL BE MY PRODUCTION PROCESS.