Changes

     I decided to start changing the plot a little. So at the very beginning the plot was supposed to be two cops walking down a street and then one cop has to take a call from his wife, and while that happened the other cop died. After that cop dies the other one dies as well but i decided to make some changes to that. Like I said before I changed the cops to teenagers just to make it more believable acting and the wife to the girlfriend but now I decided to change the wife to one of the cops little brother. I did this because my friend who was going to help me film couldn't go the day I planned and I wanted to speed up the process so I changed it to my little brother. My little brother can hep me with this part when I decide to film. Since he is little and the sibling it'll make the character seem vulnerable.

    So far that is all the changes that I plan to make because I think that I have a solid plot and I asked for some opinions of my friends and any changes and they believe that it's a good plot. So if I think of any other changes to make to the plot I'll ask others for their opinions to get other peoples perspective into my head.

More Planning

     So I'm trying to plan everything further ahead because of the conundrum I got into last time filming. To help film I'm going to tell my brother to help record it. For the lights I'm going to get my friends to help me out hold the flashlights in different places because that was a major problem i had last time. I'm gonna film at 8 so we still have time to film and the neighborhood lights are on, which are perfect to help out with the lighting.
     To help me edit I'm going to get my brother to help me, I am familiar with iMovie but he uses it more often since he films a lot so he can help me use the cuts I want. I'm trying to perfect everything as much as I can because this is due in a couple of weeks and I'm trying to make sure there are no flaws this time and nothing can go wrong.
     For the sounds like I'm going to try again once again but if that doesn't work I might do a voice over for specific scenes, I still have to see. Even though there are a couple weeks left and I can film I want to try and film as much as I can this weekend in order to have time to edit throughout the week. I kind of regret choosing thriller because it involves filming at night and that's a little complicated but I enjoy the challenge and think that my movie is gonna come out good.

Ideas 4 Problems

       I finally figured out what I'm going to do about the volume and the tone of the voices and also about the flashlights. First of all for the flashlight not only am I going to bring more but Im going to place them at different angles, to show the people but at the same time not make it too bright that the scary effect is taken away. Second with the volume I'm going to give the recording on scene another shot, if not I decided I'm going to record the whispering afterwards and add it in. But that's a back up plan, just in case the first plan doesnt go as well

     I plan on filming again next Friday or Saturday (whatever works best for the rest of the people helping me) and continuing. I say film again because I basically had to delete most of the scenes since the lighting wasn't too good and the other problems we had. I hope to be able to fix this problem and have a successful shooting day.

Filming Problems

    Yesterday I began filming and it did not go too well. We decided to do it at my house since my house has a little alley in between my house and my neighbors but we ran into a few problems. The first problem was the lighting and I expected this. The camera didnt capture the peoples faces as much as I hoped too and didn't bring enough flashlights but I think if next time I bring more flashlights it would work out better.
   Another problem we had was the script. I didn't like a lot of the way we were saying thing, what I mean by that is the tone in which we said it. I noticed that while filming but when we started to whisper to make the theme scarier you could barely hear from the specific angles I wanted each shot to be. After this I searched up different scary movies in which they introduced the idea of whispering and this came up. Here it shows a scary short film in which whispering contributes to the scary effect of the film. I want to do something similar to that in my film but was having trouble with the volume of the voices.


Dannyfdonahue. "The Whisperer-Short Film." YouTube. YouTube, 28 Mar. 2016. Web. 26 Mar. 2017

Criticized

       Today I got criticized on my movie opening and got their ideas on what they thought of my ideas. I think this is helpful because it opens up my mind onto different views. They told me that the idea about cops was too difficult to do because it wouldn't seem right if two teenage boys were cops, the maturity level wouldn't be where it should be. I want the movie to be scary since its a thriller and the fact that teenage cops might affect that isn't good.
      I am going to start filming this Saturday so when I start I'm going to make sure I incorporate that aspect. Since they told me that I am just going to make it two teenage boys just hanging out. The fact that the are not cops doesn't change much but I'm glad I got criticized because I did not think of that and their tips were helpful.

Storyboard

 Here I began to plan out how each one of my shots I'm going to use and a basic layout of how the scene will look. I used specific shots and cuts to portray specific meanings or for specific purposes, for example I used at the beginning the zooming in into the two characters to establish the main characters of the scene. I later added different shots of the same conversation (two shots) to keep the audiences attention and make the movie interesting. Something that I used for financial purposes was that I didn't include a shot of the monster that supposedly eats the two cops but is never shown. I did this because it is not in my budget to make a good monster costume or edit one into the movie, so because of that I am going to use different shots to avoid showing it while also displaying suspense. There are some things that I still might change but I will wait till we start shooting in order to see what is going to work and what isn't.

 

Shooting Schedule

    I decided that I needed begin to plan out how exactly I'm going to shoot the movie and some other specifics, like where I'm going to film it and at what time. In the previous blog I stated that I was planning on doing the shooting at night because of how the night time helps with the thriller factor of the movie and how it's a common factor in in scary scenes, so I decided that I want to begin shooting as soon as possible so I have time to make changes if I choose and/or have time to reflect on what I did and how I can improve it. Since I decided on that I decided to begin filming next Friday night since the next day there's no school and we can retake shots if needed.
   I plan trying to film most of it by the end of Friday but if I cant then I will film the remaining scenes on the following night, again being at night because of what said before. I think that most of the film opening can be done in one day but I have to see how the shooting goes.

Research

      I decided to continue researching to find other factors of scary movies that are commonly displayed in films. I found this website and here it talks about the standard characters that are found in scary movies. Here it talks about different type of characters like antagonist who makes the the protagonist use self defense or the ditsy friend who doesn't make it. These are two types of characters that I am going to try to incorporate into my own film.
      In my film opening I'm going to have 2 cops as the beginning main characters and I know that one of them is for sure going to die, in order to add the fear factor, but I am still undecided if both characters are going to die. But making them both die, or just one of them will add to the main characteristic of an antagonist of a thriller and making the main protagonist try and use self defense. Right now all I need to work out is a couple more details and then I'm ready to plan out my film

 Jardine, Jackie. "7 Standard Characters in Almost Every Horror Movie ..." All Women's Talk. N.p., 15 Aug. 2013. Web. 18 Mar. 2017

Planning 3

     For my movie I decided to ask my friends for help in both filming and acting. I already asked them to help me for the filming considering I need more characters. I am also going to need help filming because I am going to be one of the main characters.
     The movie "Nightlight" by Scott Beck is a scary movie that is all filmed at night and uses a flashlight throughout the whole movie. To help film this movie opening I am going to need flashlights for the filming because its going to be at night. I decided to make it at night because a majority of scary movies add make the filming at night to make it more scary such as "The Blair Witch Project" "The Ring" " A  Nightmare On Elm Street". In order to make the film good I'm going to have to add lighting to focus on the main characters and to see what is going on but not too much lighting to make everything visible and to take away fear from the audience. I have not worked out how I'm going to limit the lighting but I will test out different ways when we begin to film to see  what works best.
     To film this I'm going to use my phone and iMovie since I am familiar with how to use each one of them and have used them for previous projects. I am going to try out the iPhone camera to see if it films well at night or else I'm going to have to use an actual camera. There are a lot of little factors that I have to work out still but I am going to see how everything goes and if there needs to be changes.

Planning 2

    Now that I decided what type of movie and what genre I want to do I decided to start planning what's going to happen in the movie. One aspect that I have seen is common in scary movies is the movie opening being scary itself. Instead of the opening establishing the characters a lot of movies begin the opening or introducing certain aspects of the movie a lot of films make the first couple minutes scary to introduce the main scary aspect of the movie, whether it being a person, a house, or an animal. In the movie "Lights Out" the first couple of minute it introduces the main scary character and already has scary parts in the first couple of scenes. Instead of establishing the setting or background information it began with the horror part immediately. So thanks to this knowledge I decided to introduce this aspect into my own movie. I thought to add something similar but unlike the movie Lights Out I'm not going to show the main scary character because that requires a budget that I don't have.
    I decided the plot of my movie is gonna be about two cops who were killed by a monster and that specific monster later goes for the wife of one of the cops. I'm going to incorporate quick changes of camera shots to avoid showing the monster. I'm also going to try to add high pitched noises while the monster is attacking the cops to make the audience feel more scared. I haven't decided in specifics about where I'm going to do this but I know that it has to be somewhere dark in order to add a more "horror" feel for the movie.




Here was the first scene of the movie in "Lights out" where already in the first couple scene there is a murder. This is something I hope to incorporate into my movie.

Planning 1

      To begin with, I was undecided whether I was going to do an adventure film or a thriller but I decided to make the film a thriller. I want to do a thriller because the I've watched a lot of movies under this genre so I'm familiar with some of the strategies that these type of films use in order to attract the audience. But the theme "thriller" is a broad genre, so there are many sub genres to this. I wasn't sure what the different sub genres were and which one I was going to use, so I researched the different sub genres to them. I looked up the genre and  this article came up explaining the different sub genres that go under thriller. It mentions genres such as Action Thriller, Crime Thriller, Psychological Thriller and a couple more. After reading the description of each of these I thought that it would be best if I used action thriller. I think that since I have a limited budget and resources I think that I could make the best out of this.
   
     I searched up what makes thriller movies scary and this popped up. Here it talks about how specific noises make the scary movies, well... scary. During the research on this website they used the example of Jaws and explained how they used the orchestra They talked about how those high noises stimulate instinctual response that a mother gets when her baby is in danger. Because of this research I decided that I want to add some high pitch and sharp noises into my film opening. One movie that I remember this attribute being used is in the movie "Pyscho" by Alfred Hitchcock where he used high pitched noises at a scene of distress to emphasize the horror aspect and to cause the audience to feel the main factor of a thriller which is to scare you.


Citations=
  
Buffam, Noelle. "Genre Thriller." The Script Lab. TSL, n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017 

Patience Haggin. "Why Is Scary Music Scary? Here’s the Science." Time. Time, 19 June 2012. Web. 12 Mar. 2017