Author: pierceth0m

The rough cut that we produced this time around had much more of what my group had initially planned for our project.

This rough cut is much closer to a final cut than a rough cut, due to the inclusion of sound and precise editing. This may be part of why it seems so much better, but it is also largely due to the plot elements and props that we were able to include in this new rough cut.

In the previous rough cut, many of the props seen in this one are not present, such as the picture frame, flowers and computer. Although this doesn’t seem like much, especially since we omitted some props, like the red cloth, this has a large impact on the clarity of our story.

For example, from the picture frame, the audience now surmise that Lionel and the girl are close and can assume who is following him without seeing her face. This was not present in the previous rough cut and, as a result, the audience was not given any clues as to who she was. Viewers are now presented with this bit of information in the opening for them to hold on to as other questions and mysteries begin to show.

I will talk about the importance and impact of props in a later post; this one is to detail what we need to alter to reach our final cut.

Don’t get me wrong – the opening is phenomenal. I extremely proud of how the clips came together and how Ben’s editing brought the title sequence to life.

Nonetheless, there are still alterations that can be made to make the clarity and poignancy of our project that much stronger. I have already notified Ben of these changes that hopefully can be made.

• Robert jumps back after opening the curtain on the dummy in the wheelchair as he attempts to leave his room, before calming himself down. After the crash and shadow of running feet, Robert opens the curtain again and closes it at the sight of an empty wheelchair. The camera remains focused on the top of his head before cutting to a wide shot that he eventually walks into. I felt that the opening should reveal Lionel’s second, larger reaction before he walked back to the opposite side of the room. There’s a reaction clip that Katelyn filmed of him falling back into the bed after opening the curtain. I think that this bigger reaction might work better as it might add to the impact of the empty wheelchair and give Lionel a more realistic reaction.

• When Lionel walks into the adjacent room with the old lady silhouette, the fact that the lady is suddenly gone and there is no one in the bed is largely glossed over. If we can, I’d like to see if we can use the over-the-shoulder shot we got of him looking into the room paired with a musical sting to emphasize the fact that the figure is suddenly gone before he walks into the room.

• I’d would also like to try to slightly alter the sound design. I really like the musical stings that were added to the opening and the small pauses and black screens placed in between the final action at the end; I feel that these were really effective! However, I’d like to try and replace the dripping with a more “echo-y” dripping sound that it’s much more notable and ominous sound. I would also like to try and alter some of the diegetic sounds so that they sound more natural. Some of the sounds don’t sound like they come from the world of the film.

These are the three main things that I hope to alter and improve within the rough cut. More minor details might be changed later on, but these are the essential components that need to be adjusted to aid the continuity and clarity of our opening as well as make sure the creepy scenes have the proper impact on the viewers.

Having taken around 170 different clips to choose from during filming, we should have a lot of different options to choose from when decided what to replace in our rough cut.

As previously stated, our school is currently on Spring Break and my group has been unable to physically meet up. Actually, I am currently out of town. My group has only been able to communicate over the group chat that we created in the social media app, Snapchat. We had recently been discussing our editor’s progress on the new rough cut that had been in the process of being completed over the break.

Ben had told updated us briefly every now and then over the break about his progress. One big thing that he discovered was an application that didn’t degrade the quality of our clips when converting the files taken on the iPhones from m4a files to mp4 files. This was a large accomplishment as the lowering quality of our clips when Ben downloaded and converted the files to put in his editing software was a large problem we encountered in our first rough cut.

I had even aided him in putting the clips in order and helping him overcome some speed bumps with the placing of clips. We had not only revised the plot several times shortly before filming, but we had filmed the scenes out of order, meaning that it was slightly confusing at time to get them in the right order and understand what was happening in some of them. Although it took longer as I was not physically there with Ben and conversation took place over text, we communicated effectively and understanding was achieved.

I had recently asked him how the film was coming since then and he had revealed to us that he was finished and the video was rendering. Shocked that he was so close to finishing, I wasn’t ready when he sent us THIS over email:

I was not only immensely shocked, but also wildly impressed! It had turned out even better than I thought, with Ben adding musical stings and a title card that I hadn’t even thought was possible with the technology we had!!

Of course, it’s still a rough cut and there are things we need to revise, but I’ll leave this post in positivity, commending our editor for not just a job well done, but a job superbly done! I am exceedingly more proud and excited about this rough cut compared to our last one.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Well, it was evident that we didn’t want the film to be without music and we weren’t going to be making the soundtrack in the film ourselves, so I took it upon myself to begin the search for the music we would use.

These posts have become pretty backed up thanks to the rush to produce the films and I haven’t seen an opening to post about the music, so why not now. This was, of course, settled a little while ago, but it’s better to talk about it now than never, especially since Ben in currently editing the film. As stated in the previous post, Katelyn and I gave him the flash drive with all of the clips to edit them together in Son Vegas Pro 13, as described in my post “Technology (in General).”

We’re currently on Spring Break and won’t be able to meet due to conflicting schedules, meaning that the editing is mainly left up to him for a while. So I thought that since I wouldn’t be directly interacting with the opening for a while, it was a better time than any to catch up on some details that were previously skimmed over.

When dividing roles when creating the group at the beginning of the year, I was quick to call creating and finding the sound that we would use for the film opening. Having taken band for all three years of middle school, I was very familiar with the sharps and flats, the crescendos and decrescendos of music and how they affected listeners. I felt that I would be able to have a keen ear for the music we should use and be able to pair it up with the feel that we were trying to achieve in the film opening.

I immediately searched horror type music and listened to all kinds of creepy melodies created by synths and sound effects that created an image in the minds of the listeners and sent a chill down their spine. It had to be instrumental, that I was sure of. The issues that I began to have with the “horror music” that I was searching for, was that it didn’t fit the feel of what we were projected for out opening.

Songs like this one were better suited for traversing through the forest at night, with a stalker following the protagonist. These songs were better at making the audience fear the protagonist’s current situation.

This was not the goal of our film opening. We wanted to have Lionel’s awake in the hospital confused at his surroundings, unbeknownst to him that he is being followed the entire time. The protagonist was not planned to be feeling fear at all throughout the opening, instead a sense of confusion and melancholy. A more somber melody with creepy undertones was what I was looking for.

That’s when I found Lucas King.

A talented pianist that uploaded all sorts of piano pieces to his YouTube channel, from depressing to downright terrifying, King’s songs played within a range that I could pick from that might our film.

He had so many good pieces. Sometimes, I was tempted to use a song that he had made simply because I enjoyed it, but had to reign myself in and remind myself what I was looking for.

After searching through his impressive collection of songs, I finally settled upon three that were especially striking. From the Dark Piano series: Deranged, Liar and Psycho.

These were all very similar, but very different at the same time if you listened closely. They all told different stories.

Of course, the one that you didn’t have to listen all that closely to was “Deranged,” which is the loudest and fits its title to best, with its erratic chords and harsh notes. This had a certain appeal and subtly fit with our protagonist, Lionel’s, current state of mind. However, it didn’t fit well enough.

Although, after presenting the three options to my group members two of them said that they like the song “Deranged” best, after a while I felt that it somewhat clashed with the plan for the title sequence. All of our scares and spooks were planned to be subtle and Lionel’s demeanor stoic. I felt that a harsh, violent soundtrack behind this scene would be unintentionally jarring and confusing for viewers. I decided against this choice.

“Liar” was next. It was the first song that I had found and what put me on the “Dark Piano” track in the first place. It had so many interesting notes and tunes that were soft and subtle, yet poignant. I felt that this playing softly in the background would help portray the struggle within the protagonist – somber, yet desperate for answers. This was what I had initially hoped for us to put in out title sequence, until practicality clashed with creativity.

There weren’t enough lulls in the song to sustain any transitions should we plan to cut the song and play it again at a different interval that fits better with a different section. There were many pieces in this song too that clashed with the somber tone of the opening. In the end, though, I simply didn’t think it fit as well as “Psycho.”

“Psycho” was the last song I found and it surprised me how much I liked it. I at first thought it was boring, having been presented with the harsh tune of “Deranged” and many intriguing sharps and flats of “Liar.” It was also very long and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to listen to 17 minutes of the song in its entirety. Nonetheless, once I started listening intently, I unconsciously listened to the song all the way through.

There was even more subtlety than that of “Liar,” possessing small changes in tune and key that was sometimes a smooth transition, like a wave, and other time jarring, like a rollercoaster. These changes embodied that of the psyche of a psychopath, constantly changing, nearly inscrutable. And to top it all off, the song still held a somber and soft tone with creepy undertones, like a brewing storm; calm and quiet, although we know it is a facade, and that something mysterious and dangerous is lying beneath. Something that the person may not even be able to uncover themselves.

I felt that this fit perfectly with not only the feel of our opening, but also the story. I discussed this adamantly with my group. We will be using “Psycho” in our opening, and although I doubt that all that I felt when listening to the song can be felt in the few seconds that we might play the song, I know that it’s a perfect fit.

I decided to wait until we were done filming to make this post since revisions to the plot were still occurring during filming. There was not a concrete plot until the very end.

The plot of the opening has changed more than I thought possible, honestly. Although I will not be making another “official” script for this final opening, it’s difficult to keep up with our plan of action without at least a synopsis of what our final plot is. For this reason, I feel that the plot should be cleared up at least one last time with a semi-detailed overview that’s close to a script. Also, you can be sure that this is the last revision of our plot since we’ve finished filming now and have no desire to go back and re-film.

I’m going to have a bit of fun with this, by the way and get a bit descriptive writing-y in this overview, so it’ll be kind of like an actual script and kind of not.

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The final Plot

There is an insert shot of a green clock propped up on a will, its red hands ticking as the seconds pass by. We are then presented with a faucet, dripping slowly in the foreground and we see a character lying on a bed in the background. He is Lionel. Dressed in a hospital gown, it seems like he was admitted into the hospital.

He begins to stir as he hears the dripping faucet, looking over to the source of the sound before leaning to his left to reach over and turn it off. He returns to the bed, facing upward as his confusion shifts from the dripping sound to his surroundings. Lionel sits up in his bed and looks once again to his left, noticing the strong silhouette of an old lady lying in a hospital bed plastered to the curtain. The curtain seemed to be separating his room from hers.

Although still confused at his surroundings, Lionel decides that he should at least explore to begin to understand where he was. He swings his feet off his bed, standing briefly in front the silhouette before strolling over to the other side of the room; there is another opening to the curtain that he can exit through. Upon reaching that side of the curtain, Lionel quickly opens it, anxious to exit the hospital room only to be met with a dummy sitting in a wheelchair directly outside.

Lionel jumps back, startled at the sight of the dummy, who he mistook to be a person. He takes a moment to calm himself, realizing that he only saw a dummy. However, directly after he calms his nerves, Lionel hears a crash behind the curtain before seeing shadows flash beneath the curtain. He opens the curtain once more, very apprehensively. Upon opening the curtain again, he sees an empty wheelchair. He jumps back in shock, realizing that the shadows he saw beneath the curtain were the feet of the dummy scurrying in the opposite direction.

Deeming that that exit it now unsafe, Lionel walks back to the other opening in the curtain, from where he can see the silhouette of the old lady. He peeks into the room, attempting to see if the lady is asleep so that he might sneak into the room unnoticed. To his surprise, he opens the curtain to find the room empty. The lady that was supposed to be in the bed is no longer there.

Although perturbed, Lionel’s attention is caught by a picture frame lying on a counter in that room. As he walks over to it, he notices that the picture is of him and a mysterious girl he does not recognize. As he continues to scan the disturbing room, he notices a fluorescent light near the floor, glowing on the curtain at the other side of the hospital room. He moves towards it, curious of its source.

As he does so, he feels that he is being watched. As he reached the other side of the bed, Lionel turns to his left, looking at where he previously was to find nothing. He could have been sure that someone was there.

He continues to descend, looking at what he now sees is a computer. The screen’s light had been projected onto the curtain. A document is open displaying rows of words. Lionel picks it up to read and decipher it.

Unbeknownst to him, a dark silhouette is now projected on the curtain he has his back to, looming over him. It is oddly shaped like the girl in the picture frame.

Lionel continues reading the document on the on the computer as the silhouette opens its arms wide, sneaking up behind him without a sound. Before Lionel can notice her presence, the silhouette grabs Lionel aggressively, dragging him backwards. In shock, Lionel drops the computer, unable to fight back against the surprise attack.

The audience can then see the computer in Lionel’s absence. The document screams “I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE” in bold, all caps lettering. We are left to wonder who this document belongs to as the screen fades to black.

There were many things accomplished in this shoot that required us to get creative and think ahead. A few things you already know about:

• The lighting of all of the curtains
• The “out-of-order” filming
• Figuring out how to best direct Robert (Lionel)
• The plot (revisions)

However, there were other things onset that we either had to take some time to figure out or we plan to rely on movie magic to bring to life:

Movie Magic

The Light on the Other Side of the Bed:

In our opening, we plan to show Lionel walking into the opposite room with the dummy laying on the bed and once he steps foot into the room, the dummy disappears. During filming, we took a shot were Lionel looks across a now empty bed to see a light on the other side. This is found out to be a computer. Unfortunately, a computer could not produce such a bright light on an already brightly lit curtain, so we instead laid the LED lantern light that I brought and put it in place of the computer instead. This gave the desired glow on the curtain that was visible to the audience.

Dropping the Computer:

During the revisions to the plot, I thought that it would be creative to use the Word Document repeating, “I Should Have Been There” to distract Lionel from the silhouette creeping behind him and to be the last thing the audience sees. To make it all the more dramatic, I thought that having Lionel drop the computer at the end would be the best course of action. However, the floor was tile and we knew that we most likely weren’t going to get it right in one take.

As stated in the previous post, my dad allowed me to bring two computers, one broken, one functional. We first had Robert walk to and pick up the functional computer, with the screen displaying the document. We then get the shot of Katelyn’s silhouette standing behind Robert’s figure, who is at this point holding the broken computer, but the screen is facing away from the audience. After Katelyn grabs Robert, he begins to drop the computer and the action is planned to be carried out from a lower angle, where the audience will still only see the back of the computer. This creates the illusion that we are still using the same computer throughout the clips.

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Behind the Scenes Decisions

Talking to the Actor:

This was probably the best way to direct Robert. While simultaneously giving him thoughts to be running through his head while acting to have the appropriate emotion portrayed on his face, I found that directing his motions were also best to help with his timing. During the filming of our first rough cut in the motel, I realized that Robert, while acting, was not conscious of the length of time he was using to act out certain portions. This was of no fault to him, since he was going through the motions that he thought were most natural. However, in our case of only having two minutes for out opening, we need effective, concise acting. Although I didn’t do it for every shot, for some shots where the timing of his actions were important, I talked him through it, especially since the audio from the videos is going to be cut out in post-production.

Take this clip for example.

After lying back down on the bed, I talked Robert through the timing of looking around and sitting up in the bed to slow his actions down so that they don’t seem rushed, but also make sure that he doesn’t lie down and look around for too long. This project is a large balancing act.

Shooting from Different Angles:

There were many times that we would just shoot from two different phones at once in order to capture the same action from two different angles. This will hopefully make it easier to stitch the clips together in post-production. However, this could not always be the case because of group members being occupied in other roles onset (ex. Actor, holding the light, etc.) or because of the shots overlapping, causing the person filming from a different angle to be caught in the other person’s shot. However, should we have decided to film step by step and have Robert do only the actions he was required for the specific clip we were filming at the time, continuity of his movements could have become a big issue.

To combat this, I primarily had Robert run through the entire motion of what we wished to film through all of the shots up to a certain point. For example, we took shots from above Robert, after he laid back in the bed to capture his confused reaction to his surroundings before he sits up in the bed. Of course, these shots could not be taken simultaneously, so we had to take them at different times. However, during both shots, we had Robert run through the entire motion, from turning off the faucet, to him lying down on the bed to him sitting up to look at the silhouette in the room next to him. This motion was ran through many times from different angles to conserve continuity and to make our editor’s job easier.

Below you can see one the master shot of the room that the first half of the opening is planned to take place and the movements I am talking about.

I believe that these onset decisions will making post production easier and further increase our title sequence’s quality.

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.