Shock! A New Horror!

The Newsroom follows our news anchor Sarah who after an intense encounter from mens rights activist James Baker, is haunted by her experience as it slowly takes control over her life which builds up what happened that dark night into an all out meltdown in front of the whole world.

My role in this short film was Assistant Director and Production Manager. In the three stages of production i was in charge of helping alongside the director with casting, getting costuming organised alongside the cast, designing the set including props and sometimes lighting and many more including call sheets and documenting. On set also i was in charge of the clapper and working alongside the director if any assistance was needed or if we needed any coverage, the documenting helped. I think with my creative progress, i was able thanks to my director to experiment whether it was with colours with the props or any b-roll footage or ideas that can turn themes into reality. I learnt in this experience that its really important in order to keep all stages of production smooth is communication whether its with my crew or cast but also to document everything early ahead of time and provide everyone with anything they needed whether its documentation with call sheets, script breakdowns and continuity sheets. I think my role took me out of my comfort zone and it changed me professionally for my first time ever on working on a short film.

Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/874741862

Synopsis:

“The Newsroom” follows Sarah, a news anchor who, after an encounter gone wrong with James Baker, a famous men’s rights activist, begins to be haunted by taunting visions, slowly culminating in a reveal of what happened that fateful night. As her world unravels, Sarah grapples with the paranormal and a disturbing truth to her reality.

My Role and Creative Process:

In “The Newsroom,” I served as the cinematographer, responsible for capturing the visual aesthetic of the film. My creative process involved a deep exploration of the horror genre and ‘post-horror’ aesthetics, which allowed me to infuse the film with a visually striking and thought-provoking quality. I worked closely with the director Jazmine to visually convey the eerie atmosphere, tension, and underlying themes of the story through lighting, camera angles, slow zooms, whip pans, and composition. It was a challenging yet rewarding experience that pushed me to stretch the boundaries of traditional horror and address crucial social issues within the narrative. “The News Room” delved into the uncomfortable themes of workplace sexual harassment and victim blaming. We infused a deeper tone of paranoia and anxiety, seeking to shed light on these societal issues through the lens of horror. This approach aligned with the ‘post-horror’ philosophy of addressing contemporary socio-political concerns and providing a platform for underrepresented stories and characters. Our film aimed to challenge the conventions of traditional horror by addressing critical issues that affect individuals in the workplace. With the goal to depart from the horror elements typically associated with the genre, and it allowed us to create a narrative that was not only scary but also thought-provoking. Working on “The Newsroom” taught me the pivotal role of cinematography in storytelling and how lighting and framing can shape the mood and tone of a film. Every shot, every lighting choice, and every camera angle can profoundly influence the viewer’s experience and perception of the story. This experience reinforced my belief in the power of cinematography as a storytelling tool and its capacity to immerse the audience in the world through the lens Sarah. It also reinforced the importance of pushing creative boundaries to contribute to the evolution of a genre. This project was a valuable learning experience that deepened my understanding of both the technical and thematic aspects of filmmaking.

Link to film: https://vimeo.com/874741862

On the eve of her 18th birthday, Natalie is held hostage and haunted by her teenage bedroom following the sudden breakdown of an intense friendship.

A teenage girl’s bedroom is the window to her soul. This film takes place entirely in one location that’s almost a character of its own; the protagonist’s bedroom. It explores themes of girlhood, coming of age, growing up and the intensity of female friendships. As a teenage girl myself, these themes deeply resonated with me. Since I could relate to the protagonist, I was drawn to the role of designing the set of her bedroom. 

Most of the things I incorporated into the set design for this film I drew from my own experiences and my own bedroom setup. A lot of the pictures that are on the wall are ones I brought from my own bedroom. Reading and re-reading the script and trying to put myself in the shoes of the protagonist helped get a sense of what her room would look like. My creative process involved drawing a lot of inspiration from my own life.

I thoroughly enjoyed the process of working on this film and working with people who have more experience in making media than I did. I learned a lot on set about continuity, production design and sound. I learned the importance of time and how essential it is to plan ahead. Dressing a set takes a long time, and I now know to dedicate more time to that in future productions. It’s also extremely important to be organized and prepared for any potential setbacks and always allow for extra room in the schedule so the production doesn’t run behind. 

Watch Shrine here.

“He Sucks”

Hi everyone, welcome to my reflective blog post!! Today we will start off by diving into the creative process of an all-female production team mini horror film ‘He Sucks’. I am lucky enough to be a budding cinematographer, lets embark on the journey of crafting this challenging and fun project.

So, pre-production is the crucial phase where every detail comes to life on paper, this is the part Jazmine (our director) creates her dream storyboard and communicate with me to design the best possible way of making her vision a reality. Jazmine was very keen on making the film in black and white which led to extensive discussion on how abouts we are to execute that. Whether we are filming in black and white on the day or colour tuning it afterwards. My priority was to translate the director’s vision into visual language, ensuring that every frame would resonate with the desired tone of fear and suspense. We ended up deciding to use chocolate sauce as fake blood and colour grade in post-production as filming in black and white isn’t very functional due to the everchanging lighting and angles in each shot.

We had multiple group meeting to decide the days on set as we do not want to leave the shoot last minutes hence, we did our shoot first week after our team meeting and condensed the shoot into only 2 whole days, Special thanks to Holland’s auntie for lending her house for our shoot which saved us so much time on deciding location for the film.

Moreover, me, Jazmine and Holland sat through all the auditions in one whole day, and we all agree on the same actors to be our James and Mary. They both have that mysterious goth look that matches Jazmine’s vision. The choice of our actors made the whole film alive as now we finally can visualise how each scene will turn out and work on wardrobe design for them.

The night before the shoot, I was actually very nervous as I feel so much pressure on my shoulders. I am a cinematographer and if I make any mistakes during the shoot, I will delay the whole production. I ended up spending hours the night before rewatching different camera tutorials on YouTube to try have an idea. I remember ringing Jazmine really late at night as I was inspired by a tutorial that I watched, it was a trick of placing very bright light in a small room and shoot from outside the room to achieve that strong contrasted look when the actor is standing right in front of it, we actually was keen on using that but we weren’t able to do so in the end due to us running super late to schedule.

Overall, our team had great communication and spread our workload evenly! I had a great time in this process.

‘Guilt brings Katie to the Stevenson household, where the increasingly foreign side of her family celebrates the dormant grandfather’s birthday. She tries to belong, but under the watch of her grandmother, nothing is safe.’

Working on Gooey was a challenging but illuminating experience. I played several, small roles, but they each gave me insight on the different corners of film production. It was my first time as a production manager or art director, but the two went hand in hand. I spent a lot of time with the rest of the group finding the film’s aesthetic, and narrowing down how to achieve it. Gooey plays on many horror tropes: the distant family, the old house, the transforming body, the secret. Designing the set and props to reflect this was essential, and the team’s cinematographer, Alexandra, contributed greatly in creating the right visual environment.

I had the most fun working on the makeup design; I had never tried special effects before, but I hoped for a long time to incorporate it into my work. I had great help from my mother and a family friend, who both had experience in dramatic makeup. This, paired with the director Luciana’s strong creative vision, led us to making what I believe is a very effective use of practical effects.

I learned the most in being a first assistant director, as there were moments were we had to adapt to circumstances on the spot. Improvising when making a film is difficult, but I tried my best to plan ahead, even if this meant stepping in as an actor. Ronan, our sound designer and editor, worked hard in the film’s final stages to deliver the best possible experience. A lot of time and effort was put into it, with a lot of good communication within the group, and I’m very proud of the final product.

Watch Gooey here: https://vimeo.com/874001088

– Ewan Hicks

The nightmare of teenage years, an experience we’re all familiar with, in Shrine is captured through Natalie’s perspective, as the conflictive process of overcoming the mourning of an important friendship while navigating through the passage from childhood to adulthood and the in-betweens of a not-so-linear sexual awakening.

As the editor and sound designer for SHRINE, the creative process of the project started with clear guidelines from the beginning of the pre-production as the director’s vision was determined by several elements from Giallo’s film style and mostly influenced by Dario Argento’s Suspiria which made the process of building the proposal inclined towards achieving the feeling where suspense and gore meet in the middle. Considering color light switches and the supernatural forces that seem to be hidden but human, I tried to keep the transitions as smooth and believable as possible. A lot of different shots and takes were made so the possibilities in terms of montage were as wide as they could be, also organizing the footage, audio files, and stills was key in giving us room to make mistakes,drag, cut, reorganize footage, and find our way again into the narrative.

In terms of sound design, I must say that is overwhelming the amount of importance it has to make a movie successful and I learned that the hard way. Recording with spare time, doing extra takes of every dialogue, every room tone, and possibly every crazy idea we have for it to be used for building the ambiance marks the difference in making the diegetic universe work in the final cut.

On the other hand, syncing every single scene was a time-consuming task that later on, would help us reorganize and ease the narrative, being that said, cuts to black, cutaways, and slow digital zoom-ins and zoom-outs were the chosen types of cuts that fitted the most to achieve the desired feeling of frantic pace of the supernatural forces haunting her when needed. I would like to also emphasize that experimenting with morphing effects and generative AI was a fun part of the process, even if it ended up not being a viable alternative for the morphing of the photo. Testing different types of typography styles that resembled the inflated balloon aesthetic was a tough challenge that I am proud to say I managed to overcome.

Above all, the main lesson I learned from this experience was that there’s perfection in the process. Not everything you envision at first is achievable nor it’s destined to be done in our self-imposed demanding timelines. We need to cherish the process, the frustrations, and the mistakes made along the way, that’s the true long-lasting lesson of all of this.

– Isabella Montoya

 Gooey centres around a young woman who is forced to rekindle with her extended family for a birthday celebration.However, when she gets there, things don’t seem as usual. The grandpas decaying, her family members are acting strange, and there’s a weird substance appearing all around the house.

For this project, I was given the task of directing Gooey. As a first-time director, I thought it was a good idea to create a collaborative environment with the cast and crew, so that I could hear any ideas they may have had for a specific scene. Within that, I continued to develop my team work skills, as well as my technical skills in working with the camera and lighting. Through the creative process, I had realised that the film would be leaning into an uncomfortable tonality, which I, along with my crew, managed to establish through extreme close-ups of actors and B roll, weird sound effects and more.

I learnt that you can never be too prepared with anything, and that some of the best ideas are the ones you think of on the spot.

Watch Gooey here: https://vimeo.com/874001088?share=copy

-Luciana Nicolaci

On the eve of her 18th birthday, Natalie is held hostage by her teenage bedroom following the sudden breakdown of an intense friendship.

I am the writer director of SHRINE, and my goal with the film was to highlight the intimacy of female friendships and how they often toe the line between queer and platonic, as well as validating the intense emotions felt by teenage girls. Our society loves nothing more than to make teenage girls out to be frivolous and dramatic, and diminish their feelings down to nothing more than raging hormones. It really is gaslighting at a systemic level, and SHRINE aims to make the invisible visible, by representing the concerns, fears, despair and anger of teenage girls as something real, sinister and all-consuming. SHRINE is also a rumination on the role of the archetypal teenage bedroom, and how for many of us during our adolescence our rooms function as records of our own personal histories.

Aesthetically, SHRINE is campy, hyper-feminine and fits well within the realm of “bubblegum horror”. My key inspirations were Jennifer’s Body (2009), House (1977), Suspiria (1977) and Coraline (2009). To a lesser extent, I also drew from coming-of-age media like Ladybird (2017) as a reference for teenage bedrooms and the pivotal role they play, as well as Puberty Blues the series (2012) for it’s sun-drenched, Australiana vibe as I wanted my own short film to feel very local.

Working on this project I learned a lot about the collaborative and organisational side to filmmaking, and what preparation needs to be done prior to a shoot to make sure everything runs smoothly and on time, as well as how different roles intersect at different phases of production. Lots of micro-lessons were learned relating to continuity, coverage, test shoots and sound during this process that I’m sure will help me out next time I’m in the director’s seat!

– Charlie Stamatogiannis

“He Sucks”

He Sucks follows Mary who has found herself in a toxic relationship with a Vampire, James, where she has become physically and mentally suffocated by him, will she make it out of the relationship or turn into a vampire herself?

During the production of “He Sucks”, I learnt new skills in pre-production which is quite new to me. My role in the film was Production Manager, Art Director and Assistant Director. These roles tested my skills as I was completing Call sheets, location agreements, safety reports which I had never done before. The German expressionism and the aesthetics in this film allowed me to expand my horizons when finding props, locations and costumes which was very fascinating. Working on a film with all women was extremely enlightening as the film explores how young women can become trapped in toxic relationships and being able to represent this was an amazing experience. I did feel very involved in the creative process, especially being Art Director, which allowed me to bring out my creative side in a completely new way. 

Being the first horror film I’ve ever worked on allowed me to look at a new side of creativity and how I can use this creativity to create something meaningful yet a spine-chilling experience for the audience. What I learnt most on this film was the amount of work that goes into pre-production. Due to my role being mainly involved in this area, I really had to work hard and fast to ensure everything was prepared for the shoot days. Learning how to fill out the call sheets, location agreements, safety reports, finding the actors and the location and more really allowed me to learn about how I can work well and complete everything before it is needed. I also learnt how well I am able to work in a team and use each other when needed. I am a very independent person and working with a team where we can all assist each other in different areas showed me I am able to work in a collaborative team efficiently and effectively.

– Holland Stanway

Synopsis – The Newsroom follows Sarah, a news anchor who after an encounter gone wrong with James Baker, a famous men’s rights activist, begins to be haunted by taunting visions, slowly culminating in a reveal of just what happened that fateful night.

My Role in the film was editor and sound guy, so I was in charge of operating the boom mic and recording all audio during production along with being the main person in charge of the editing process. As the sound guy I had to ensure that all the audio was of a high quality, which involved getting myself into the best position to record audio while also being out of the shot. Though there were a few hiccups in the end the sound recording was successful. When it comes to my creative process as the editor I mainly wanted to create an uneasy atmosphere and really engrain the audience into the headspace of Sarah. It took a few rounds of editing to really nail these feelings but in the end, using the footage we had I think My group and I ended up being quite successful in creating this atmosphere.

What I learnt the most was refining my skills in Premiere Pro, as beforehand I had some knowledge but now It really feels like I know way more, though there is way more for me to learn in the future.

Watch The Newsroom Here