For the whole semester, my investigation is to make a series shots of zombie, which creating a horror atmosphere. I mainly looked at the location, setting, and composition of some zombie movies, and to find what elements are important in a zombie films.

Research
I did some research for my topic, and I watched a lot of zombie movies for reference, such as 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Dawn of The Dead, Shaun of The Dead, and a vampire film Let The Right One In.
I also found that zombies are different among these movies. In Dawn of The  Dead, almost the most famous zombie film. There are common zombies, who walk slowly, prey on human flesh.In Shaun of The Dead, the horror comedy zombie film, zombies can not recognize you if you pretend to be a zombie.In I Am A Hero, a Japanese zombie film, the zombies’ physique didn’t change and they retained a little memory of themselves.
Some frames in these films really inspired me. Such as shots of hands and feet in Dawn of The Dead, a high angle shot in 28 Days Later, and a dark bridge shot in Let The Right One In.

I altered and recreated them to fit my project, like hands on the window changed to less hands on the door,  the car changed to trolley.

Reflection on shoot & collaboration.
1.
Trong and I took a series of shots during the mid-break. We did both indoors and outdoors shots. The shooting took place in Trong’s apartment and the residential areas. The place was good, it was open and quiet, which is suitable for a zombie movie when it is dark.
We planned what shots we were going to take, making a list first. Then we set up the camera and started to take the indoors shots.

For the indoors shots, I quite like the shot of a hand laid on the floor.
We tried several times and we had  three different versions at the end. A: the hand lay on the floor without movement; B: the hand trembles at first then stops; C: the hand trembles at first then grasps the wall.
We used close shot to emphasize the struggle. I think all of these three shot are good, but I haven’t decided which one should be used in my sequences. I am thinking adding some fake blood to improve the shots, making it creepy.
The difficult one is the shot of hands patting the door. We had to crouch down so that our heads would not appear in the shot. The speed and the strength of the hand movement were also hard to control. We’ve tried many times to get one or two satisfied shots. From this I learned that acting is a hard work.

After taking the indoors shots, we went outside to find the suitable location for shooting. It was not easy to decide where to put the camera in such a large open place. We considered about the framing, but I still found difficult to make it beautiful.
We tried to take a wide shot in a high angle from the rooftop of a building, but if we raised the tripod higher than the fence, we could not operate the camera. Therefore we chose to shoot through the fence. I found that is great because it kind of creates a feeling of snooping, which makes the shot more intriguing.

I really enjoyed this collaborative with Trong. Before we started, we discussed and made a plan, which ensure the shoot went on smoothly. During the shooting, we came up with new ideas sometimes and we both were willing to try them. That was really a great time. I am looking forward to the next time.

2.
In week 9 and week 10, Sem and Reza joined Trong and me, we four worked for the zombie shots together. Sem and Trong were in charge of the camera, Reza and I were responsible for the acting. This time, I was not a zombie, but a person chased by a zombie, who was played by Reza.
Again, it was hard to be a good actor. Since we were shooting a chase shot, Reza and I had to keeping run all the time and ran again and again in order to get a satisfied shot. For each shot we tried different angles. For example, there is a shot that I hided behind a wall, we did both horizontal shot and relatively high angle shot. Interestingly, Sem and Reza prefer the horizontal shot while Trong and I think the high angle shot can demonstrate the nervous feeling better.

For almost all the shot, we four had different or similar ideas. We tried all our ideas. Some of them came out fantastic while some of them were hard to achieve. For instance, we were struggling with the ending of the sequence. Reza suggested that we could end with the question whether “I” jumped out of the building. We all thought it was a good idea. Anyway, the collaboration was pretty interesting, which was like a brainstorm and tried to achieve it. I was inspired by their ideas, and learnt a lot from them, not only the technical skills but also the creative thinking. I really enjoyed it and I think all of us enjoyed it.

Reflection on editing  
After the first collaboration with Trong, Sem, and Reza, I did the rough cut for the footage I’ve got so far. At first, we wanted to make a trailer. However, when we showed Paul our trailer, he didn’t think it was a good idea to make it a trailer. He suggested us to make a sequence rather than a trailer, and we should get some establishing shots and make a opening sequence for the 44s video. In addition, he pointed out that the order of the people appeared in the shot was important, because in the trailer, “Reza” appeared first, then “I” appeared, which seems like I became the zombie and I was chasing Reza. This problem was very typical. Since we all knew what role we were, so we understood the trailer. But for the audience, they would confuse about this because of the order. I found great illumination in this.

The week after the last collaboration I worked on the colour grading of the footage. It was my first time doing grading, I have no experience. I did it in the way Paul taught me before, duplicating a clip several times and grading them in different versions.

Here are the examples of one of my clips. I made five to six different versions, some of them are quite different while some are similar, being adjusted a little bit.
 

Because we shot this in the daytime, in order to make it more like a zombie film, I reduced the highlight and increased the shadow. For the first image, I also increased the saturation, but it doesn’t look like a zombie movie. Then I made it darker by adjusting the vignette (see image 2-4). However, even though it looks gloomy, it doesn’t look like a zombie style. I think the colour tone of a zombie style film should be cold, so I changed the highlights and midtones to a little bit green(as image 5). I like the last grading, so I decided to make the colour tone of my video towards green, which gives a sense of cold and deserted.

After the cut and grading, I came across with the problem of audio. Even if I collected some music during this semester, it was hard for me to pick up suitable music for this video. So I restarted searching for music. Finally, I put three music and one designed sound in my video, which I think fit the video and is able to creating a intense atmosphere.

Reflection on the final video (from others and myself)
I showed my final video to some of my friends. Some of them think it’s good and they like it. And one of them give me useful feedback. He mentioned that in this video, the reaction of “me” after seeing Reza is strange in the world of the zombie movie. In those movie, nobody knows what zombie is. They have no conception of zombie, so when they first time seeing a zombie, they won’t run away, but check on them. However, in my video, when I found Reza abnormal, I pushed him away immediately, which seems like I already knew he is a zombie. I think his opinion is very typical and meaningful.

To be honest, I’m not quite satisfied with the final video. First of all, the actors are not professional, which can affect the film to some extent. As what my friend said, Reza did not act like a zombie, so when I saw him, I shouldn’t run away but rather check on him. I think that’s because we did not have professional and we did not wear professional make-up. We also lacked props and costumes. Secondly, the colour grading does not look the same through the whole video. Because the lighting of each shot is different, it’s hard to make the grading look totally the same. I just tried my best to make them look continued. The last thing is about the music. I did not have enough time to look for or make suitable music. I’m thinking to remake another zombie film during the break, refining all these problems I’m not satisfied with.

Summary  
Through the whole semester, I found this studio very useful and interesting. For the beginning of the semester, I learnt a lot of technical skills of making a film.

I really like the class exercises that made me know more about the basis of controlling camera and audio. I haven’t learnt about the exposure, focus, white balance before. I found these exercises are very useful. I’ve got some important tips of shooting. To get the sharpest focus, zoom into subject’s eyes, focus, and zoom out to compose the shot. Keep the camera handy with blank tape and batteries charged. Set white balance at every location. Keep the shot steady and use a tripod or other camera stabilization.
The audio exercises is also useful. I thought that the sound was being recorded at the same time with the images, or created after the shooting, but actually, most of the time directors tend to record the sound before hand. I was a little bit surprised by this. I think it helps me to think about filmmaking from a new way. I start to pay attention to the sound of anything in my life, which may inspires me. The sound of chewing, typing, dressing and so on. It becomes more and more interesting to do this. After hearing these sound, I begin to think of a scene that includes these sound. However, I find it difficult to match the sound with the shot I took perfectly if I didn’t record them at the same time. Is it editing the only way to match them perfectly? Or there will be other tips to do it better when recording audio?

For my project, I really like the collaboration with others. I can learn a lot from them, and working together can distribute the project better, saving time and optimizing the work. I also really appreciate Paul’s feedback. I like the every week’s consult, which really helps me with my work and ensure it is on the right track. The way of organizing the footage and grading is quite useful. I really like this studio, making friends here and every one making great projects.