Here's Where We're At.

       Next week my group and I plan to film on Tuesday April 2. We picked Tuesday because we all have that day off from school and we are all also available. We have our materials prepped: completed storyboard, doll, plain t-shirt, fake blood, and filming locations. I am really excited to get to work and see how our film is going to come out, I just know that it'll be great. The doll is really the star of the show and after seeing some of the pictures Taylor took of it, and just how creepy it looks in pictures, I can't even imagine how spooky this vintage doll will look on video. Although we are a bit behind in our filming schedule, I still believe that our short film has the potential to be incredible, because we have planned throughly, and preproduction is the longest, most crucial stage of creating anything, especially a film of sorts.

     Unfortunately, the music company that I emailed for the rights to the song we want to use has yet to respond, so if we don't obtain the rights for the song within a few days, unfortunately we will have to find another royalty free song that fits our film very well. Although, I did really wanted to use the song Tonight You Belong To Me, I am confident that we can find a similar royalty free song on a website called Fesliyanstudios.com/royalty-free-music. Kylie's sister, Taylor, gave us the name of the site for royalty free music, because that is where she was able to obtain the music for her short film. The website has a great range of different songs,  so I an happy that we now have this free resource to our disposal. 

        After filming on Tuesday, that week we will focus on editing the film, the site, and flyer. That weekend, I will focus on my CCR. That just means, answering all the questions beforehand on my blog, filming and recording it. My plan is to screen record it, because CCR's that were screen recorded typically are the best, and most informative. I will layer a voiceover on top of my video recording.

Inspiration

       Last night I saw the new horror movie Us, for the second time and it was a great film, even the second time around! Tickets were difficult to get since the movie is highly anticipated and Jordan Peele is widely respected, however, I got lucky and was able to score a couple of tickets. Jordan Peele is an extremely creative creator was is not afraid to go against social norms and introduce the masses to different concepts and ideas. Peele understands that in order to produce a quality horror movie in this day in age, you must go deeper than surface level jump scares and truly understand what makes consumers scared in 2019, especially horror film fanatics. He is a rare talent, and he inspires me. When the film ended, I  realized that there were elements in the film that are very similar to our short film.
     There's a huge plot twist at the end of the movie, similarly to our film, playing with the idea that someone or something is not what they were initially introduced as. The plot twist is obvious if you just pay close attention to all elements of the scenes leading up to the end of the movie, and that's exactly what I want our short film be like as well. Peele left little hints leading up to the plot twist and we're also going to leave small hints that show that the doll is actually a person being held hostage. Watching the movie aa second time, I noticed many symbolic elements and clues that I didn't quite catch the first time.I want our short film to be something you have to watch twice in order to see the hints and I truly do believe that we can achieve that, similarly to Peele, but on a much smaller scale.

Website pt. 1

      Last week, at the beginning of the week, my group started the website because we couldn't film, but we still had to be productive. In class on Tuesday, we did some horror website research, just to get an idea of what we wanted our website to look like and I have to admit, some sites were absolutely genius. The websites that we were drawn to had interactive elements to them. I believe that websites that are more interactive are just more fun to explore, and clearly we want our "audience" to want to visit our site.
      We decided to make the bulk of our site black and white because our film is in black and white. We will probably also add red to the site. The coolest website that I visited was Annabelle Comes Home. On the home page, there is an extremely creative interactive feature of when your mouse hovers over the page. Basically, a flashlight appears, and the consumer or visitor of the site can move around their mouse to to light up different parts of the face of the Annabelle doll. It is something that I've never seen before. Here is a screenshot of it:

We also started our site, so here is a screenshot of what that looks like also:

Song Rights

        My group wanted to use a song called, "Tonight You Belong To Me", Taylor remembered it from an episode of American Horror Story and she really wants to use it in our short film during the scenes that Amber is doing everyday activities to let the audience know that something creepy is happening. 

       
  Taylor and I have been struggling to find out exactly who the rights to the song "Tonight You Belong To Me". Yesterday in class, Taylor and I did some research about the song and we may have found which label now owns it, however, we are not completely sure.. The label is called Universal Music UK and luckily their email address was easy to access on the website . We wrote an email in class and sent it. Taylor and I also made sure to let them know that we want to use the song purely for educational purposes and not for profit. I hope that this message gets to the actual label/ and or owner of the song and that they give us permission to use it. Below is the email that we sent to them. Enjoy our polite, but desperate plea for song rights :) Oh and by the way, the message was send from Taylor's email account. Kylie and I were CC'ed on it though.

 Hello, my name is Taylor Wolf and I am a senior at Cypress Bay High School. I am currently in the process of creating a short film for my AICE Media Studies class. This project is worth half of my Cambridge final exam grade. I am interested in receiving permission to use the song “Tonight You Belong To Me” by Patience and Prudence. I would like for it to be played as the background music for my short film. I want to make it clear, that I will not be making profit off of this and it is purely for educational purposes. I will make sure to credit your label if given permission to use the song. The song would be in the background of our video, the video would be on our sample website and private YouTube page. Please contact me back when you have the opportunity. Thank you for you time.

- Taylor Wolf

Filming Issues

      My group had the original plan of filming before Spring break because we wanted to had plenty of time to edit and enjoy spring break as well, however we ended up not being able to because we were constantly realizing that we needed more information and preparation in order to film. We should've honestly came up with a proper filming schedule and done more work outside of the classroom so that we could be ahead, unfortunately we did not do that. We were actually planning on filming this week, the week before spring break but the three of us have a lot of school work to do (granted, it is the last week of the 3rd quarter) plus Taylor and Kylie are going away for Spring break. All three of us being in separate during spring break surely would make it very difficult if not impossible. I'm starting to get worried because I know we need to film asap, I do not want to be scrambling to edit all that we shoot last minute, I am pretty confident that we will not have to deal with that, however, it is my worst nightmare for this project.
       We plan on filming right when spring break ends, and we are sticking to it. Kylie has started our postcard and we're going to start working on the website. I am happy that we are being productive in other areas of this project, even though we can't film. We're using the website Wix for our website and I'm sure that it will look absolutely incredible. 

Poster Samples

         Today in class, Taylor, Kylie, and I were brainstorming ideas for a promotional poster and ideas for our postcard. Taylor is the one who has the doll at her house, so she went home and took some photos of the the doll. Kylie edited some sample posters, so that we can get an idea of exactly what we want for our final poster. The samples are really good and also definitely very creepy. We all loved the simplistic but beautiful nature of the poster. When Taylor took the pictures, she emphasized on the eyes of the doll, the last poster is my personal favorite because it shows how weirdly lifelike the dolls eyes truly are. I just know that the poster is going to turn out amazing and I can't wait!

Conventions of Film Noir

        Since most of our short film will be in black and white, I've decided that it is essential to research the conventions of Film Noir, or 'black film' in French. Classic film noir developed during and after World War II, taking advantage of the post-war ambience of anxiety, pessimism, and suspicion. Psychological thrillers and crime fiction plot lines take viewers through vile storylines featuring adultery, lies, instinctual fears, and murder, etc. Our film deals with 3/4 of these concepts. All classic Film Noir’s most distinctive qualities include: The anti-hero protagonist, The femme fatale, Quick-witted, no nonsense dialogue, and High-contrast mise-en-scène. Our film is set to include all of those elements.
        Darkness, gloom, and fog is also associated with film noir. More technical elements associated with film noir include: blocking shots (typically through shutters/blinds),  Low key lighting, shots through mirrors, low angles, high angles, shadows, silhouette, and darkness. Lighting, especially helps with the feeling of tension, gloom, or potential danger. Common themes of film noir include: jealousy, anger, greed, betrayal, lust, revenge, murder, justice, corruption, etc, Psycho and Double Indemnity are two a great examples of film noir.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WtDmbr9xyY&t=21s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKrrAa2o9Eg

Sources:

10 great American film noirs. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-american-film-noirs

Emmahowe345 Follow. (2012, October 18). Conventions of film noir. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/Emmahowe345/conventions-of-film-noir-14784407

Film Noir. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html

Sehayek, M. (2016, August 18). The Dark And Distinctive Elements Of Film Noir. Retrieved from https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/california/articles/the-dark-and-distinctive-elements-of-film-noir/

Black and White

       So, it seems that we've run into a small dilemma. The doll that we ordered, Tatiana has orange hair and green eyes, she also wears a green dress. Unfortunately, we do not know anybody with orange or orange-ish hair (a red head basically) with green eyes. Really, the fact that the doll is wearing a green dress does not matter, because we can always go out to find green clothing. However, the hair and eye color of the person should match the doll, if the doll is really a figment of Amber's imagination and is instead a human being. The doll and the human being is essentially one in the same and should look exactly alike.

          We tossed around the idea of dying the doll's hair brown so that we could easily find an actress that looks like her, or even buy new doll clothes so that we could find clothing similar to what one of us already owned, if we could not change the hair or eye color. But, we did come up with a simple solution that is an all around good idea. The film should be black and white in all scenes with the doll so that the audience will not be able to tell what color her features are. When the film comes to color is when Amber finally sees that the doll is actually a human being, the second that Amber's mind realizes this, the audience will see the Tatiana in human form as well. 

         My group came up with the idea that Amber should "stab" the doll in a fit of rage at the end of the short film, and when she looks down and sees blood on her hands, she will look up again and see a human being, finally realizing the horrors of what she's done. When she looks down at the blood on her hands (get the symbolism, haha), she snaps back into reality, which then is signaled by the switch from black and white film to color. This idea will cover all of our bases and it has actual meaning, which is extremely important.

Schedule Changes and Finished Storyboard

         Today (Monday)  me and my group were supposed to start filming for our short film, unfortunately, that couldn't happen because we need more time to plan and complete our storyboard. Our goal is to get everything filmed in one day so we need to figure out all of the props and equipment we may need. If we start filming and then realize that we do not have all that we need to make our film sensational, that would be extremely irritating. For now, we know that we need duct tape, we've decided to use duct tape over the dolls hands or maybe mouth (not completely sure yet) to show that she is being held hostage.
        We have also decided that at the ending of our film, Amber, the main character is  screaming at the doll and asking it to speak to her. All of her anger and frustration is ultimately going to lead up to her stabbing the doll and then, the scene will transition (through the use of camera movement, and angles) to reveal that Amber realizes that she has actually stabbed a girl that she was holding hostage. For this stabbing scene, we will need fake blood and Taylor has a friend who has fake blood left over from Halloween , so she is able to get that for us, thankfully, because we've already collectively spent over $20 on this project, and we are on a budget!
          Today in class we had lots of time to work in our groups on this project, so me and my group were able to successfully complete our storyboard. We worked on the scenes where the main character, Amber, is doing daily activities with the doll because we wanted to emphasize just how  lonely she is. This whole scene is going to be shot kind of like a montage paired with creepy, somewhat upbeat music.

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Sound Research

          I've decided to do some research on sound elements and what proper sound elements to incorporate into our short film, especially because it is a Thriller, and Thrillers do rely heavily upon sound to induce fear and create anticipation or suspense. Thriller music typically is an eerie sound track leading to an event in the narrative, this aims to keep viewers on the edge of their seat and is used to create suspense.
              An important sound element that is very important to include is high pitched sounds/orchestral stabs, also known as screeches. Screeches are used in thriller hit films such a Psycho, when the main character Leigh, played by Marion Crane, in which her character was slashed to death in a motel shower in what may be one of the most memorable murder scenes in film history. The screeching of violins creates discomfort in the viewer, thus allowing them to feel the tension that a certain character may feel.
"33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music" - Alfred Hitchcock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WtDmbr9xyY

          Other sound elements which are used to give the films their thrilling effects are: diegetic/ non-diegetic sounds, synchronous/asynchronous sounds, ambient sounds etc…
 There are many different sounds used in psychological thrillers and they are usually used in context, for example creeking floors would indicate that there is an unwanted guest sneaking around in a house. This is what my group want to use in our film to indicate that the doll is alive and is moving around within Amber's home, by herself.



Sources:

Importance of Music in "Psycho". (n.d.). Retrieved from https://dallocca.weebly.com/importance-of-music-in-psycho.html

Adamscovell. (2015, October 12). Analysis of Sound and Music in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) – Part 3 (Acousmatic Concepts). Retrieved from https://celluloidwickerman.com/2014/01/23/analysis-of-sound-and-music-in-alfred-hitchcocks-psycho-1960-part-3-acousmatic-concepts/

Essential Prop

      We got the doll! Taylor, Kylie, and I all pitched in to order this creepy doll online that could be the doll in our film. It was important for the doll to be here this week before we film next week. In reality if there is no doll, there is no film. We envisioned a porcelain doll, that does not have cartoonish features, because after all, this is not a comedy. We've been brainstorming since the beginning of this project, where we could get an inexpensive, creepy looking doll. Places like the thrift store and the Dollar store came up but we figured that it would be very hard to find what we are looking for in those stores.
        Instead, we ordered a doll off of an Etsy store because it was cheaper than Amazon, it looked great and the doll's delivery date was perfect for our shooting schedule. We narrowed it down to two really creepy dolls. The seller of the dolls is called HauntedYardSale and they sold viintage, creepy, realistic looking dolls for reasonable prices. The seller named the dolls Carrie and Tatianna. We chose to buy Tatianna because she was cheaper than Carrie, about half the price actually. Fortunately for us, the doll was a little over $20. Tatianna is pictured on the top and Carrie is on the bottom.

                                                                                       









                                 

Plot Diagram

        We were having issues with organizing our storyboard, so it was hard to finish storyboarding, as a solution, we created a plot diagram for our film. This should get us back on track and make storyboarding much easier.

Starting the Storyboard

               On Tuesday, my group started our storyboard. I am relieved that we started storyboarding this week so that we can film next week, and have a few weeks to edit. We are going to start filming on Monday March 11th and if we can't get all of the shots we need on Monday, we will finish filming on Tuesday, so that we can begin editing as soon as possible. We would not be able to film during Spring break because Kylie will be out of town so the sooner we can film, the better.   

                We are starting the short film with Amber eating at a restaurant alone to establish early on, that she is lonely. I suggested that we use Panera as our restaurant, so that is the establishing setting of our film. One of the most important shots that we will get in Panera, is a shot of Amber sitting alone quietly whilst being surrounded by people conversing with their friends, family, peers, etc.

               The rest of the shots will be filmed at Kylie's house. We decided to have Amber's mother leave her a voicemail basically saying that she is sad that Amber was not able to attend Amber's sisters' college tour with the family due to an obligation that she can not get out off. We will make it clear that Amber is lying and simply wants the house to herself, because she is the black sheep of the family and does not have a strong connection to them due to her own issues.

Official Summary + Title

 *Title: Pupa
 *Underlying message: Loneliness will drive people to do crazy things
 *Main character: Amber (Female):

   +Lonely:
     -In the house by herself
     -Getting upset that she lacks a lot of human interaction
     -Watching TV by herself
     -Walking by herself
     -Has a dog to try to cure her loneliness

Summary: Amber is a very lonely individual who operates independently in everything she does. She is very awkward when she does converse with people, and feels most comfortable at home. She even got a dog to try to cure her loneliness, but it didn’t work because she is truly lacking human interaction. She has a doll that she has had since she was little. This doll is creepy looking, and seems to randomly disappear. Amber becomes scared when the doll seems to have a mind of its own.  Amber hears noises in her house and even her dog starts barking at nothing. One day when she walks into her room, the doll is sitting on her bed staring at her. Amber is very scared and runs out of her room, but the doll then appears in the living room where Amber ran to. Throughout the film, there are shots of the doll being there, then a girl who is tied up and looks scared. At the end of the film we find out that the doll is what Amber is hallucinating, and the doll is actually someone Amber kidnapped. Amber kidnapped this person to combat her loneliness, by forcing someone to be her friend. The film ends with Amber finally realizing that the doll is really the person she captured.

Schedule:
Next class: Storyboard
Film hopefully by next weekend

Concrete Story Idea

              On Friday, after the group meeting, my group came together to discuss the plot of our short film. We had to figure out the introduction, rising action, conflict, climax, falling action, etc. We have been bouncing around ideas for over a week now and the group meeting and plenty of discussion time helped us cement our idea for the short film. Basically, our short film is about a young woman who feels very lonely and not in control of a lot in her life. The woman has a doll in her house that always seems to end up in places that she was not placed at. It is almost as if the doll has a mind of it's own. 
             Throughout the film, sounds can be heard in the young woman's house, we also see the POV of the doll. Natural diegetic sound paired with the point of view of the doll and also the switching of the doll's stance or location, will all allude to the fact that the doll is in fact inhuman. It is revealed in the end whilst the female character is sitting across from the doll of the floor, that the doll is a human being. The woman still believes that she simply has a doll in her house but at that point it is clear to the audience that the female antagonist has abducted a woman to feel less 'lonely' and more in control'. 
          The main character does not understand what she did, because mentally she is not okay. The young woman is in a state of psychosis, she is delusional. The underlying message of the film is that loneliness will drive people to do crazy things. We wanted to show the woman doing everyday activities by herself throughout the film to further push the narrative that she is alone, in life, in general. I understand that this is very rough but for now this is just a base, it only gets better from here.

Group Meeting

          On Friday (today) my teacher split the class into three groups with the hopes that as peers we could all bounce ideas off of each other, critique everyone's work so far, and overall just get outside opinions about how everyone's projects are coming along. My peers gave me some great ideas that I know are gonna make my short film better. I took down some notes on google docs during the meeting. Here they are:

-POV of doll to show that it is human

-Human arm appearing in parts of film to show that there may be someone else in the house

- Woman telling doll that she’s been so lonely to show she is not completely okay, mentally.

-Audience realizes that its a real person in the end, villain does not

-Black and white to color or static when doll turns into human with camera trick at the end

-Humming in kitchen to add eerie effect

-Camera goes around antagonist head in the end when she's confessing her loneliness then its revealed to audience that the doll is a human

-Research the dynamic between humans and dolls

- Criminal Minds episode about human obsessions with dolls (S5E12)

When I brought these ideas/suggestions to Kylie and Taylor they agreed with many of them. I am relived and super grateful that we had group meetings with our classmates this early in the project because it allows for many mistakes to be avoided early on. I know that this post may seem a bit confusing especially because it is not the same story that I was describing in my last post, but everything will be explained in the next post so stay tuned!