Month: March 2019

I won’t be talking about ALL of the technology that we used in this project as I already listed them all in depth. A lot of depth. You can see the detailed overview of what technology we used for this project in my post “Technology (in General)” which took me too long to make thanks to all of the research I had to do.

Anyway, here is one last piece of technology that we added to the mix from our first rough cut.

Word Document/Computer(s)

• My dad allowed me to use some of his computers for our shoot today after sharing my plans with him. It was planned shortly after the first day of filming to incorporate the Word Document that repeated “I Should Have Been There” that was prepared, but never used for our first rough cut. When thinking of how to end the opening, seeing as the last idea was nixed due to the crammed setting, I thought that using this to distract Robert while the mysterious girl attacked him would be the best ending that would leave more questions than it answered. My dad helped out a lot – he found two identical computers for us to use: one functional, one broken (it wouldn’t turn on). This helped to play out my plan, because I planned to make it as dramatic as possible and have Lionel drop the computer he was holding once he was grabbed by the girl. Of course, we wanted the functional computer to display the “I Should Have Been There” Word Document, but we didn’t want to break it, so we dropped the broken one and swapped them out in between scenes. Good thing we did too, because the broken computer broke more after hitting the floor several times.

In addition to the technology added, we also used some of our technology very differently on set compared to our first rough cut.

Relied Less on Phone Flashlights and More on LED Lantern and Yard Lights

• As shown in a previous post, my group relied heavily on our phone flashlights to light Robert to an acceptable level in our first rough cut. Without them, he couldn’t even be seen on camera.

• However, in our re-filming, we left the majority of the lighting up to the pre-installed lights in the Health and Science room. This allowed us to focus more on the lighting important to the opening: the curtain lighting and the computer lighting (on the opposite side of the bed).

Filmed more with the iPhone than the Canon Cameras:

• This was a large decision that benefited us greatly. We found that the Canon camera possessed too many drawbacks for its sub-par video quality. First off, it was bulky, meaning that it was hard to fit into smaller spaces. In the shot where the focus shifts from but it was also heavy. Shots took a while to acquire; we had to retake them multiple times and also get multiple variations if possible. This would make us hold the Canon camera for extended periods of time and cause our arms to become tired and the video to become shakier. Most of the time, using the iPhones were our best bets.

These changes helped production to run smoother and for us to accomplish more in the periods of time we were allotted in the Health and Science room.

I actually discovered this during the first day of filming, but didn’t wish to lump this information in together with other information as I felt that it was important to clear up this misunderstanding that has persisted with me about the Canon cameras

I briefly mentioned this realization in the post “What I Did Different This Time,” when talking about how I better understood the Canon camera the second time around. I vaguely stated that I was able to “better understand ISO” which had a large bearing on the quality of the re-filming.

To quickly recap, ISO adjusts a camera’s light sensitivity and is a camera setting that will brighten or darken a photo. As you increase your ISO number, your photos will grow progressively brighter (Photography Life). This means that ISO can artificially lighten or darken an image to get it to the photographer’s desired brightness. I used this heavily in the motel due to the near pitch black room that prevented me from even seeing Robert through the camera.

The footage from that filming turned out grainy and unpleasant and I simply blamed it on the poor quality of the camera and its inability to film in dark settings.

While it’s true that the Canon camera does not function well in dark settings, it was also due to my ignorance on a heavy consequence that ISO possesses.

Apparently, the “level of noise (graininess and blotchy colors) in the images” increases dramatically when ISO is increased. Look at these two images, for example.

Between the two, it is obvious that “the image at ISO 3200 has much more noise than the one at ISO 200 (which I brightened with a long shutter speed instead). This is why you should avoid high ISOs whenever possible, unless conditions require you to use them” (Photography Life).

During the filming at the motel, I not only should have first adjusted the aperture and shutter speed to accommodate to the darkness, but I also should have used ISO sparingly and tried to have improved the lighting of the surroundings instead. Honestly, it wasn’t very fair to expect the Canon to capture anything in a near pitch black room.

So, the beef is settled.

While Canon cameras still don’t have a great ability to film in dark settings, it was also due to my lack of knowledge on the drawbacks of ISO that led to the grainy images and struggle at the motel. Luckily, I was able to use this knowledge in the re-filming. This aided the decision to leave more lighting throughout the opening, significantly lower the ISO and tamper with the aperture and shutter speed before resorting to ISO.

Thanks to this, the video taken on the Canon camera is actually usable.

Sources:

• https://photographylife.com/what-is-iso-in-photography

So, you’ll probably see this whole situation popping up on Katelyn’s blog as well since it was a pretty needlessly difficult experience that we both encountered.

Having completely finished our filming (finally!!), Katelyn and I were gathering all of the clips that we had captured. After I had Robert send me the clips that we had recorded on his iPhone 8, I AirDropped all of the clips to Katelyn’s phone, which we then proceeded to AirDrop to her MacBook computer.

It was a task. There was more teamwork involved than you’d expect. When AirDropping the videos to her computer, Katelyn manned her phone, sending the videos five at a time and I was in charge of sorting them all on her desktop into a folder that we could then easily place onto a flash drive that we could give to our editor, Ben.

We repeated the process with the Canon camera, uploading the SD card to Katelyn computer before transferring them all into a folder to be placed on a flash drive. Easy right? A well-oiled machine.

We then encountered a speed bump that completely halted the progress of our machine.

“Not enough disk space to copy “Media Clips”

After inserting my flash drive into Katelyn’s computer, we found ourselves “out of storage,” a large number of unavailable gigabytes standing in our way. I immediately suspected my flash drive to not have enough storage to hold the folder of media clips, but after placing megabytes worth of files in the Recycle Bin, we found that the number of gigabytes that we had to free up did not change.

“It must not be the flash drive then,” I concluded, “It must be talking about your computer.”

You wouldn’t think it’d be possible to come to such a poor conclusion, but that’s the answer that was reached.

Katelyn and I began to rant and rage about how it was literally impossible for Katelyn’s computer to be out of storage, but the suggestion to “delete files” was still staring back at us, so we decided to give it a try and empty the contents of her Recycle Bin. When we looked back, we had found that the number of gigabytes that we had to get rid of had substantially decreased!

Emboldened by this, Katelyn and I began to delete more stuff that she no longer needed. This excitement was quickly crushed, however, as the gigabytes once again refused to budge. We didn’t give up, for some reason, continuing to delete more stuff, hoping for something to make the number go down once again.

Finally, at our wit’s end, we called over our Media Studies teacher, Mr. Engle, relaying our struggle to him. He leaned down, took a quick glance at the screen flashing the dreaded gigabyte limit, and simply told us what we had once tried – “your flash drive is too full. Delete some stuff.”

Wishing that our school offered a “Common Sense” course, we finally began to realize that the previous drop in gigabytes was due to the emptying of the Recycle Bin. The files weren’t technically gone until the Recycle Bin was EMPTIED. This is also when I realized that my flash drive only had 2 gigabytes of space on it, for whatever reason. Who makes a 2 gigabytes flash drive?

So, after two hours of meaningless struggle, having worked all through our class time, lunch time and the entirety of 5^th period, we finally simply used Katelyn 24 gigabytes flash drive to easily upload all of the necessary files.

Albert Einstein once said that “the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

I think that it’s safe to say that Katelyn and I are now officially insane.

P.S. We went through all of the trouble uploading the clips to a flash drive so that they wouldn’t have to be sent by email and downloaded by Ben, potentially dropping the quality of the clips. Out struggles were not baseless at the very least.

Partner’s Blogs:

• https://katelynwagne.blogspot.com/
• https://benisaacs102501.blogspot.com/

I definitely feel much more accomplished as a director this time around. This filming turned out to be much more productive than the first! Previously, we had thrown ourselves into filming without enough preparation or experience to discern what the best path to take was. I can say for a fact that all of us stepped up our game this time. Although I can’t speak for the other group members, as the director, I know that I was able to fulfill my role this time around.

Shot List:

• This was the first step in the right direction, in my opinion. Last time, I led us into the rough cut without a concrete plan that we could make deviations off of as we pleased. Instead, we had to decide everything essentially from scratch and spend much of our time figuring out the sequence of the opening.

Joking:

• This time around, it was kept to a minimum. Since we’re all friends, there was inevitable laughter and banter, of course, but I made sure to be much more firm on time efficiency and reminded the group of our goal and to not let ourselves become too sidetracked.

Filming Out of Order:

• I’ve already mentioned this about 20 times already, but what’s once more? This really helped us during the second round of filming as it helped us shoot scenes more efficiently and saved a lot of time. Thanks to the plan beforehand, I had a good grasp of the route out film was going to take and made sure to get all of the shots necessary to stitch everything together.

Filming with Titles in Mind:

• This was something I wasn’t even considering during the first shoot because of all of the other things I was worrying about, like what shots we needed and how to work the Canon camera. This time, with all of my thoughts laid out before walking on set, I was able to think about how the shots should look for the editing process and how shots should be structured for the titles to be easily placed in the final cut. The first shot we plan to show in our final cut in an insert shot of the clock in the room ticking.
• This should work perfectly for a title, as it has shallow composition, meaning that the image is staged with very little depth. The figures in the image occupy the same or closely positioned planes (Film Analysis). This not only allows the audience to focus on the clock, but it also prevents the title appearing onscreen from fighting for attention with things in the background. This shallow focus was employed in other shots as well, such as the aerial shot of Lionel lying in bed, which only has the white bed behind him. This is also an opportune clip for a title.

Understanding the Canon Camera:

• This was less what I “did” per se, and was more of what I understood before going into re-filming. As stated in previous posts, I had only begun to research how to use the Canon camera before the day of filming for our first rough cut. This put me at a large disadvantage as I was still trying to understand how to operate the camera while on set, which spent a lot of time that could have been used filming. This mistake was not made again, as I took more time to research and understand the camera before filming with it again, even being able to better understand ISO, which I will go into depth about in another post.

Directing Our Actor Differently:

• As stated in a previous post, giving our actor more direct instructions aided his performances. Although I initially thought this would be counterintuitive and giving him too specific of directions would harm his performance, I later learned that it was the opposite and giving him specific directions was the best way to go. It’s all about knowing your actor.

These changes served to greatly improve the filming process and I believe it will make the final cut turn out far better than the first one. A lot of hard work went into this re-filming and I’m hoping that it will all pay off in the end.

Sources:

• https://filmanalysis.coursepress.yale.edu/mise-en-scene/

We came, we saw, we conquered the beast of re-filming. We are completely done re-shooting our film as of today! I was a long process that was mentally exhausting, but well worth it. A lot of changes and hard work led to the completion of production stage.

The Plot Issue:

The large, overhanging problem of the setting not coinciding with our plot that was presented in the last post was one that I thought through carefully last night. What was a way to continue the flow of the film logically, without Lionel leaving his room? I thought of his simply remaining in the room and the silhouette/girl coming to him, but I also thought that it probably wouldn’t be as compelling of a film opening due to lack of movement. There was also the possibility of Lionel pulling the curtain back and seeing that the silhouette was only a dummy, but I felt like that would be too straightforward and wouldn’t lend to the creepy vibe of the title sequence. He would have to move to the other room, but how?

I thought that having the silhouette and the dummy completely disappear when Lionel entered the adjacent room to answer and my group members agreed. Not only would add to the creepiness of the opening, but it would also leave the question of why the dummy could move and where it had gone. A subtle, yet crucial alteration. We proceeded with this in mind.

We also altered the ending a bit. We planned to show a silhouette, the girl from the picture (a.k.a Katelyn) coming from the room that Lionel just exited to enter the dummy’s room. It would watch him as he had his backed turned. Then, using a prop from way back in the “First Rough Cut” era – the “I Should Have Been There” document – the light on the opposite side of the bed would distract Lionel. He would walk over, unaware of the silhouette behind him until he got to the other side. When he looked at the curtain, the silhouette would be gone. Lionel would reach down and grab the computer, looking at the document, not noticing that the silhouette was now behind him. It would grab him from behind the curtain and the opening would end.

Other Issues and Resolutions:

One of our group members, Bianca, was unable to make it to this shoot, so we were down a person. This left us with only three people to work behind the scenes. Unfortunately, our group member, Ben, also needed to leave around 4:00 pm. This would leave us with only two people to film and work any lighting or props. This was problematic, as Katelyn, who would be the only one left to help with filming, was an actor in the film as well. The majority of her acting took place near the end of the title sequence as well, meaning that if we shot sequentially, we would most likely not have enough staff to film the scene properly.

So, making an executive decision as the director, I decided to film the end of the film first in order to have enough people to film the scene. All 3 of us had roles in the scene we filmed where Katelyn grabbed Robert: Ben was holding the light behind the curtain, Katelyn and Robert were acting and I was filming. Had we not filmed this first, this scene might have had to change or be rushed.

Additionally, we had popped the head off of a dummy in the Health and Science room and put it in the dummy’s hands as he sat in the wheelchair. We ended up not liking this blocking and ultimately decided to reposition the dummy and leave him with his head on this time. This didn’t take precedence, though, so it was one of the last things we filmed.

Beneficial Decisions:

Directing Robert was much easier this time around as I had learned how to better direct him from trial and error during the rough cut shoot at the Super 8 Motel. I had initially tried to direct his acting by giving him visuals of how to act or scenarios to “put him in the zone” to give a proper reaction. I quickly learned that this had the opposite effect that I had intended, prompting him to take the scenario less seriously than before.

I learned that giving Robert direct instructions with little context was more effective to get him to have the reaction I had hoped for. For example, in one shot where we were above him filming his reaction as he “woke up” in the hospital bed, I told him directly “you wake up confused. You look to the left, then to the right, before sitting up, thinking “what is that silhouette in the room over?” Directions like these, although seemingly restrictive, turned out to be most effective in giving Robert guidelines in how to act the part of Lionel.

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One of the best decisions made this filming day was the decision to film the opening out of order. Not only did we film the ending first, but we also filmed all of the scenes that occurred facing the right side of the hospital room. After filming the scene where Katelyn grabs Robert, I decided that it would be more efficient to film all of the scenes facing this side of the room first. After yesterday’s filming, I thought about how we didn’t plan to present of source of the light, like a spotlight behind the bed within the film to give a reason for the bright light and silhouette. This would suggest that this light was naturally occurring within the room. Because of this, I felt that the continuity would be stronger should the bright light be emanating from every hospital room.

However, we only have one light and there were two hospital rooms bordering the room that Lionel wanders into in the second half of the opening. To pretend that this light was “coming from every room,” we would need to light up both sides of the room. This meant that if we wanted to film chronologically, where the camera would flip point of view to view either side of the room at points, we would have to move the light from one side of the room to the other side of the room depending on the shot.

I determined that this was too time consuming and inefficient and decided to simply film all of the clips that faced the right curtain first and the clips facing the left curtain last.

General Review:

These decisions made during filming were greatly beneficial to the filming process of the second day overall. Katelyn and I ended up having to work overtime and Ben left before us. We had planned to be done filming around 4:00 pm, but ended around 6:00 pm. However, since all of the most important pieces that required all of our group’s cooperation were already filmed, Katelyn and I were perfectly capable of shooting the rest on our own.

We were able to re-film the scene of Robert opening the curtain before seeing the dummy in the wheelchair and have it look just like we wanted.

I feel much more proud of this filming process and believe that our final cut will be changed or the better.

Today was the official day of the re-shoot of our opening, ladened with the daunting task of re-filming all of our material.

Issues and Resolutions

The first problem we encountered today was the unexpected time constraints. It was previous knowledge that our actor, Robert, had prior commitments that he had to attend to later today and needed to leave at a certain time. However, due to a mistake in communication, I believed that he would have to leave around 5:00 pm instead of 4:00 pm. Because of this mistake, we had scheduled our shoot today thinking we would have 3 solid hours and perhaps overtime to film. Instead, we had one less hour to shoot our title sequence. Luckily, we learned of this early on and worked to make the most of the two hours we had (2:00 pm – 4:00 pm)

As stated in the previous post, I didn’t have the media shot list completely finished, so we decided to start filming the beginning of the title sequence first as we had that part mostly figured out.

We experienced issues with capturing footage of the clock on the wall. We wanted to take a mid-shot of the clock ticking away on the wall above Lionel, but with the iPhone camera, which we decided to use more this time around, was TOO high quality and captured a reflection of itself and everyone in the background. Luckily, the Canon camera’s lower quality came in handy. Since the image produced on the Canon’s video wasn’t as crisp as the iPhone X’s, we could film the clock without worrying about catching anything in the background.

There was a lot of clutter in the background when we initially tried to film the dummy in the wheelchair when Lionel opened the curtain. We had to meticulously move this out of frame so it would not distract the viewer, to take away from the world of the film.

Beneficial Decisions

 We decided to leave the lights in the room on this time, after seeing the results of the rough cut when the room was too dark. Leaving the lights on also created a juxtaposing feel to the film, with almost high key lighting in a film that is supposed to be creepy.

I also brought the industrial lights to today’s shoot. It was initially thought to light up our character as much as necessary. But, since we used the lights already placed within the room, this was not necessary. Instead, these were used to create the silhouette of the woman lying on the bed in the adjacent room. These bright lights worked perfectly for the purpose.

Because of the lights’ heat, we did not want to have someone lying in the bed the whole time with it pointed at them. Instead, we utilized the dummies present in the hospital and had the old lady dummy be in the bed in place of a group member. This also maximized the amount people to help with filming and production. We did have to move the bed closer to the curtain to get the desired shadow on the curtain as it did not produce the desired shadow while in the middle of the room, but this was an easy fix.

General Review:

The shot list I created before filming turned out to be largely beneficial. We were not only able to work at a much faster pace, but everyone was much more confident since we didn’t have to think of what we NEEDED and could think more about what they WANTED for a shot. With the burden of thinking of the necessary shots that would be needed for the title sequence to be completed, my group became much more creative and lively, suggesting different shots that we could take and being more energetic towards filming.

Additionally, leaving the lights on was a great decision. I believe that leaving the darkening of the film for the editing stage was the best choice. Not only will it lead to an inversion of expectations for the audience, but it was more practical for our sake as well.

Not to mention, we’re about halfway through filming the opening already! We will have to ask for permission to film again tomorrow, which will hopefully allow us to wrap this up!

In the meantime, though, I’ll need to do some thinking. We took some shots of the dummy in the wheelchair as Lionel opens the curtain today, but Katelyn and I felt that these were a bit cheesy and didn’t have the creepy effect that we wanted. I’ll have to think of how to make this scene creepier and try again tomorrow.

Also, do you remember the clutter I mentioned earlier that we had to move out of the way to film said dummy in the wheelchair? Well, this clutter is prevalent throughout the entire area outside of the “hospital rooms.” Our original idea was to have Lionel walk outside of his hospital room and past the dummy where he would essentially be walking in “a hallway.” This will not be possible due to the clutter. I will have to rework the plot once again to fit with the setting so that it progresses in a logical way that still upholds the feel of the opening.

SO

Now might be a better time than ever to look back at the many drafts of ideas we’ve gone through to come to this one.

We’ve been through a lot of drafts of ideas as it is. Honestly, there were a lot of detours to even get to the idea that we reached for the rough cut.

Actually, the first solid plan that we planned to make our opening about was centered on a girl. She was planned to wake in her bed and traverse her dark house, unknowingly being stalked by a killer. She would be eventually killed and someone else would wake up; not the girl, but another character, who had dreamed this murder. The next morning would come around and the character would see that the murder actually happened on a news report on television, bringing into question what kind of ability this character possessed to be able to see people deaths first hand in their dreams.

This plot especially sticks in my mind because of the excitement it caused in our group. We had been struggling to form a solid plot idea for weeks before coming upon that one. Unfortunately, that plan fell to pieces once concerns about the location, timing and 2 minute limit came into question. The time limit was the main concern, with group members worried that we couldn’t properly portray the sequence of events properly in two minutes and the idea was eventually dropped.

But, it was the start of the idea of having the opening occur completely within a dream.

We continued to research thriller conventions and inspiration until I was given the responsibility of writing a script. I began messing with ideas that had been thrown out in our group discussion, specifically the idea of water, drowning, and a red dress. This gave way to the idea that became our first rough cut.

It’s interesting to think that our opening is now on an entirely different path. I did not be make another extensive script, like the one for the first rough cut, but I was not going to be left without a concrete plan of what the film should look like.

After the experience of the motel, I knew that even with a script, without a solid plan of what shots we needed to take, we would probably be floundering about until it was too late. I took it upon myself as the director to create an extensive shot list to plan out what shots we would need for our opening.

I ran these by the cinematographer, confirming and altering some, and ultimately came to this list. It’s a bit hectic and does not cover the shots near the end of the opening since it was done quickly, but I believe it will be more than enough to keep the group on track.

Since it may be hard to follow the shot list story wise, I’ll give a brief description of the new plan for the opening:

Lionel wakes up in the hospital, awakened by a dripping sound. He turns to see a leaking faucet to his left, and he leans to turn it off. Lionel sits up in his hospital bed, noticing a silhouette of a lady lying in a bed in the adjacent room.
Confused, but not disturbed, Lionel walks to the front of the room, where he can exit the curtain without going into the silhouette’s room. When he opens the curtain, he finds a dummy in a wheelchair on the other side and is slightly startled, but steps around it.
As he walks past the room with the silhouette inside, he comes across another room, which is empty. A crash sounds behind Lionel and he turns around. The dummy in the wheelchair is gone. A dark figure flashes in front of him and he turns back to the room, which is now filled with flowers, candles and a picture of him and a girl.
Lionel walks to the picture, which is on the side of the room farthest from the silhouette’s room, and holds it up his back to the silhouette in the other room. Lionel does not see the silhouette sit up behind him.
Lionel sets the picture down and looks back at the silhouette’s room, freezing once he realizes that she is gone. He looks around frantically, but is not able to see that the silhouette is now behind the curtain directly behind Lionel. He is grabbed and pulled backwards and the title card shows.

Sources:

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv6zYTxwAmJZx0uXkODMCf1GwZQ_XiDq806L62vsDMo/edit?usp=sharing (Shot List)

The wish to reshoot the opening completely in the post “Rough Cut Woes: The Final Verdict” was only my thought on the matter of the rough cut and what I thought was the best plan of action. I recently talked the matter over with my group to convince them of my hopes to reshoot the film and reorganize the sequence of our opening. Needless to say, it was a hard fought battle.

They at first all stood opposed to the idea due to its seemingly difficult appearance. At a first glance, this idea seems like an impossibly and needlessly difficult task to accomplish. But on further discussion, my group members began to see the merit in reshooting the film entirely and how it actually held the possibility of being easier. Not having to worry about continuity or finding the “perfect location” to continue where we left off were large bargaining chips. Additionally, I presented the argument that our film plot is based within a dream sequence. Our film starts out with our protagonist “waking up” within a dream. This allows us more ‘free reign’ when it comes to openings we can do compared to other genres and plots.

Negotiations on what we would change and what we would keep the same began and we finally came to the decision to completely reshoot the film and scrap all of the previous clips. Of course, we will still retain the memories of our experience to show us what to do differently this time as well.

As previously stated, we will be far from changing EVERYTHING about our film and actually, there will be a lot that we are keeping. Here’s the list.

What We Will Change:

• Setting: The setting is the first major thing that will change drastically within our opening. As stated in a previous post, our production designer, Bianca suggested the Health and Science room or “hospital” room to us and we all scouted it together. We ultimately decided that this location would be the best for our film, not only because it would provide more opportunities and possibilities, but it was a much better alternative to that of a cramped, dark room.
  
  
• The Sequence of the Opening: the opening will follow a different sequence of events than that of the initial rough cut. We initially had Lionel wake up in a motel and the opening was centered around him finding the source of the dripping sound before seemingly supernatural events occurred in the bathroom. This will be altered, since the setting is now a hospital. He is planned to solely wander in this area and experience creepy events here
  
  
• The Dripping: Although discussion occurred about omitting the dripping element altogether, we still wanted to use this to emphasize our brand of water. However, in this opening, we only plan to have the dripping occur in the sink next to Lionel’s bed, waking him up before he turns it off. This will have the dripping, and thus, the brand of water, act more as subtle foreshadowing than the centerpiece of the opening.
  
  
• The Costuming: The pajamas will certainly no longer work in this setting, as it might only serve to confuse the audience. Instead, Lionel will be dressed in a hospital gown to accentuate the hospital setting.
  
  
• The “Red Dress Girl”: While we are still unsure how it will unfold, the plan it to have her not appear on camera. During the rough cut, it was difficult to configure a setting that had the proper creepy vibe and still work practically in revealing the character. We might still change our minds and take this route during filming, but the plan it to have her shadow appear from behind the curtains around the hospital “rooms.”

What Will Remain the Same:

• The Plot: The plot of the film is remaining intact. As previously stated, we will not dig our opening up from the roots and will keep the character of Lionel, Lionel’s backstory and the idea of the opening being a dream sequence intact.
  
  
• The Actors: We will be keeping the actors the same: my brother, Robert, and our cinematographer, Katelyn. These two fit well with the role, and since the roles are also not changing, there is no need to change them either.
  
  
• The Brand of Water: As previously stated, this will remain a part of our film’s brand and will still be presented in the opening. However, it will function more as subtle foreshadowing instead of the core aspect of our title sequence. It will be easy to look past as nothing is planned to follow up the dripping sink, but it will be used to suggest the importance of water to Lionel’s head trauma “later in the film.”
  
  
• The Overall Genre/Feel: Of course, there was no way we could change the genre of our film at this point, but we still plan to present the creepy, paranormal vibe that was present in our rough cut.

If all goes to plan, we will secure permission to film in the room and film there Tuesday, March 12^th!

In order to prevent from interrupting the flow of the “Rough Cut Woes” series, I postponed the posting of this post. This occurred two days ago, on Friday, March 8.

Presented with the discussion of how we might be re-shooting our opening entirely, our production designer and location scouter, Bianca, brought us to another location that she thought would work. The Health and Science room located on our own school campus.

I was amazed, unaware that such a room existed on school property. It looked very close to a real hospital. Since hospitals are a popular place for thriller movies to take place, I thought that such a scene would not only benefit us in terms of a fitting location, but it would also fit the conventions of thriller.

Of course, there were some objections and concerns to be discussed. This new location is  vastly different from the previous motel and will most likely require a complete reconstruction of our previous idea and script. Concerns for time and the possibility of pulling this off were brought up.

Concerns about brand were brought up as well. The brand of water was big (or at least SUPPOSED to be big with the submersion in the bathtub scene) and a central aspect of our last rough cut. In the hospital location, it would not be possible to emphasize this brand of water nearly as strongly. Talk of “transporting” our protagonist into a bathtub full of water to end our opening in a similar way began to satisfy this. We still have not come to a decision about this.

There are faucets and sinks in the location, so we still might be able to suggest the brand of water through those.

We left the location without having come to a solid decision due to the heavy importance of the decision. We still plan to converse in earnest about this to come to a decision as soon as possible since, currently, time is of the essence.

Personally, I already have a lot of new ideas of how to go about this hospital setting buzzing around in my head. Whatever my group ultimately chooses, I’ll be ready, equipped with the experience I gained from the first rough cut to better direct our film.

No. No we shouldn’t.

Now, with all that said and out of the way, the biggest questions among my group are: what will we do instead? What will we change? The answer that I’m advocating for is –

EVERYTHING

I want to change everything.

Okay, that’s a little bit dramatic. I don’t wish to dig our project up from its roots, but we should probably dig a little bit lower than what we might deem comfortable.

I don’t wish to change our plot, but changing our setting is almost a must and the sequence of our opening will most likely change. To me, it doesn’t make much sense to go back to the motel. The first and largest issue we face is the price. $120, or $20 for each of us after my dad took on $20 of that cost, was already at the limit of our “budgets” that we wished to reach. Going again would be of great expense to us. This might not have been as big an issue had the spot been an exemplary film location that presented the possibility of us to get all the shots we wanted and more. In reality, it was sub-par, uncomfortable and completely different from what we imagined, which leads me into my next point.

Creativity. I think it’s safe to say that it was violently stifled. We were all uncomfortable in that area, with it being much dirtier than we had expected. Jokes were what we used to lighten the mood and feel a bit better about dealing with what we were stuck with and when it was time to get serious, the discomfort showed. We struggled in our filming due to the difficulty of working comfortably in such a location. Why would we want to go back there?

And finding another similar room doesn’t really seem like a possibility either. When deliberating about the bathroom scene, we did come up with the alternative ending, as stated in the previous post – however, the group wasn’t too stoked about changing the ending and filming it elsewhere. Worried about the continuity, one of my group members adamantly opposed the idea of changing the bathroom scene. I was able to convince them otherwise so that we didn’t leave the motel too far into the AM, but I feel that I will find much trouble in finding a bathroom suitable for our film while also convincing that group member that the continuity is sound based on the immense length of time and discussion it took to find the initial location. Consequently, this also means that reshooting any crucial shots in the bedroom will be virtually impossible lest we wish to absolutely disgrace the continuity of the opening.

Frankly, I don’t see any other way to go about this. Especially in such short a time.

Although it probably seems like the hardest route on the surface, but when considering the quality of work my group wishes to put out and the increased effort it will take to keep the continuity intact, re-filming everything in a new, better location seems like our best bet. This way, we can also be sure to learn from our mistakes and include everything that we wish to include.