Last night I saw the new horror movieUs, 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.
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:
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 calledUniversal Music UKand 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.
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.
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!
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.
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/
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.
