Production for ‘The Newsroom’ was a sort of fever dream for myself and the crew. We filmed over three days and it went very smoothly and efficiently. We planned each day in different shooting orders not following the scripted formula, we filmed the last part of the film last which was in the news studio which was filmed in Studio D of RMIT which was really cool to do. For my position, i decorated the set with a news wear atmosphere which involved the prop room where we acquired a big news desk with a Television below it and many other environmental changes. Along with the set, lighting was very fun to experiment with, the studio was very heavy with lights all around the ceiling, one on each corner in which we adjusted to discover what feeling we were going for each scene/shot. One challenge was definitely as it was the first day, i was not really used to having this much authority, of  course i took some time but then i got really used to this workplace, i was talking to the actors and was providing insight on what we can improve on, of course i messed up with costuming as one day i accidentally left it at home, thankfully, i don’t live far and ran back and forth and got back to the shoot on time for the actor. The other days also ran smoothly as we finished earlier hours than expected which worked for us to be more confident in the shots we wanted and the planning/break we could leverage with. Reflecting on my role as assistant director, i took charge of the clapper throughout the whole production which meant i was close to the set, observing and directing where the cast should go alongside Jaz. I remember a couple things that stuck with me which included day 2 in the kitchen scene, the script stated that Richard goes up to Sarah, i had an idea that to make her uncomfortable and fit the feeling of misogyny, he goes up to her and she backs off, implying a sort of sexual workplace with the men against women. Also for the final day, we needed b-roll footage for the flashback scenes of James’ death and i took the courage of holding the camera and thinking of any shots that could encourage uncomfortable settings in which i chose a Dutch angle which i was really proud of.

When you think of pre production, you think, oh its just a long process where nothing happens and planning is the overall goal of it, but, its so much more. When i was assigned role of Production manager and Assistant Director (Art direction),  i didn’t really get what i was doing, i didn’t know that this was a reality, i didn’t know how important i really was. From the very get-go of joining my group, i was really excited as i thought that Jaz (director)’s idea  was really powerful and could be really fun and interesting to film. A week into the group i felt the exact opposite as what i was feeling, i felt excited, i felt creative and i felt important. With the role of production manager, I had to do a lot of things in the pre production phase which were challenging to me as this was my first ever completed short film. With this role i was in charge of casting, shooting schedule, call sheets, props/costuming, meetings and catering. I think the choices i myself made were very big due to Jaz providing myself to be flexible with what i wanted. With the catering, a big challenge i had was what i should actually get, luckily for scheduled various meetings with my cast and crew, i found out if anyone had any dietary requirements which made my life easier in acquiring food for everyone, which the food was really well received. For the tone/style for the short film, i was given clearance on the set which provided myself opportunity to create my own narrative with the objects of the film whether it was costuming or various props on set. With the props, especially for Sarah and Richard, i wanted to colour code them for the individual and how they can be feeling, Sarah’s mug is pinkish red and white which i wanted to resemble a sort of guilty feeling with the red and the white could resemble innocence. For Richards mug which was blueish it represents males and the stereotypical male which we wanted to represent in his character. Another thing in pre production that really gelled us together was the constant communication and meetings we held as a team, you’d think that these meetings would be awkward as none of us really knew each other a lot except for myself and Ben, but we really all got along really well and wanted to make a piece as passionately powerful as we were imagining it, these meeting showed it.

Post Horror Assignment #2

s3944683@student.rmit.edu.au

‘You Were Closed When I Needed You’

Research Statement:

For this assignment, i created a world full of trauma, confusion, and deception in a way to horrify my audience. My short film is called ‘You Were Closed When I Needed You’ and follows the deceptions and tragedy of mental health and the trauma of dealing with it in a post horror way. The research i undertook to demonstrate and create this film were interesting to find out. In my research, my main priority was to inspire myself into these dark themes and scenarios but did not want to make it like a classical horror film, i wanted it to be dialogue heavy to confuse the audience even more. My research for this creation were three films that took my interest highly, these were ‘Shutter Island’ (2010) which involved the flipping of the antagonist victim into the perpetrator of the crime scenario and just the total mind breaking it did for myself i had to explore this idea of insanity in characters. Another film that was ground-breaking for my research was the 2020 film ‘The Father’ which show’s Anthony Hopkins character Anthony losing his mind and the audience with dementia, and it shifted my viewing into being so invested and then confused just like the character experiencing this breakdown in reality. Another film that brought the stalking scenarios into my film was definitely Hush (2016) it follows stalker stalking a deaf woman and it just gets really intense and he’s always in the background and that’s what i wanted to replicate the most. Moving away from just films, screenplays that influenced me that i researched upon were various post-horror films including ‘The Babadook’ written by Jennifer Kent, i feel like the way she writes helped me get words onto my page, her usage of technical elements made me feel comfortable writing. Another screenplay that helped me was John Krasinski’s ‘A Quiet Place’, its mysterious creatures that are described by Krasinski made me wonder how i could trick the audience into creating mysteries with the stalker. The tone of my script is although made to be dark and have the use of shadows, i was picturing it in my head as a sort of ‘giallo’ Dario Argento film while i was writing, i was trying to be artistic with the garage from mad max and the way it sort of hypnotises you. A final inspiration for my script was definitely The Sopranos, not in the mafia way but the psychologist way, the relationship between the patient and the professional is just interesting and the dreaming sequences Tony has in his coma just reminded me of what i was writing.

Reflection:

Reflecting on my piece, this script came to me because i wanted to haunt my audience, not in a scary classic way but just a mind-bending way. When i was writing my piece i kept thinking of stereotypical horror films and how i need to go as far away as possible while i was writing, i found myself deleting a lot of things and replacing them with post horror elements in order to make my piece stand out. The process of my idea was quite excessive, i have had many experiences with mental health struggles and seeing these in action like dementia through various people, i realised how scary it actually is from their point of view and the person viewing it, it made me realise that i don’t think that it’s really been explored and i could make this without really copying anything word for word, yes there’s clear inspiration from other sources, but not entirely. I think a big challenge i had when i was writing was how to make it scary. I feel that yes i am making a horror script, i should know how to make it scary, but i struggled heaps into making it original, terrifying, and realistic. I think an epiphany i had whilst writing was the ending, i was sleeping and i just woke up sort of cause i had this thought in my head into how to end it and i wrote it down and i was really happy with what i did cause i was half asleep and it just popped into my mind. I wanted an obscure ambiguous ending and I’m glad i went with it instead of a death ending or a good ending, the reader can decide what happens next, is she faking it? is she confused? did she kill her husband? I wanted to leave the audience with questions and i hope i, did no matter what about.

One Drive link to script:

Post Horror Script

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/giorgiocurcio/2023/08/04/post-horror-assignment-1-blog-1/

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/giorgiocurcio/2023/08/04/post-horror-assi…-blog-post-2-pt1/

 https://www.mediafactory.org.au/giorgiocurcio/2023/08/04/post-horror-assi…nt-1-blog-2-pt-2/ ‎

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/giorgiocurcio/2023/08/04/post-horror-assignment-1-post-3/

Horror is a gigantic genre in film and has been around since forever. The ability to scare the audience is its one main element and its gradually changed overtime into various subgenres which could include slasher films, ghost stories and even religious horrors. Horror has adapted so quickly over the years that in this present time a new genre has portrayed audiences to new levels with the help from a special someone.  The reason i chose this specific individual as he was one of the main reasons why i chose this class, his implements into this genre as a new filmmaker inspired myself to launch myself into this type of area for my future. The man im talking about it none other than Jordan Peel. Peele has been a long admirer for me due to his history on Key and Peele, his past career has been mainly in acting alongside fellow actor Keegan-Michael Key in which the two performed sketch comedy through comedy central and it was just really entertaining. The reason why this specific filmmaker is so special to myself and just in general is that he switched genres completely from comedy into serious horror. In 2017, His first film he directed, produced and wrote won him an oscar and was critically acclaimed around the world for its post horror elements including racism, thriller, mystery and experimental elements that involve hypnotising and what could be happening around the world in which we may not know. This specific film was Get Out and it stared Daniel Kaluuya and in my opinion changed the horror genre into films we see today which explore social issues which may involve racism but twist it to turn them into horror films.  Peele has also made two other films one called ‘Us’ which involves an African American family and their clones of themselves fighting for a spot in their life and it gets really close and sentimental with identity, who you are as a person and grief. His newest film he made was called ‘Nope’ and it follows a western sort of atmosphere where it connects the plains of Hollywood to a UFO and alien sort of event which has various plot twists that involve grief and post traumatic stress disorder for various characters and just the outstanding tension he brings provides the story and the audience to change throughout the film. The idea of post horror involves different tropes that similarly impact the real world and its frontrunner filmmaker and succeeder, Jordan Peele clearly understands and translates major opportunities of themes that are not likely seen in horror movies and each film he creates, new themes are present alongside new inspiration. Jordan Peele like other filmmakers takes inspiration from all around the history of cinema and wants to sort of celebrate it in  a way and shape it into his own films to sort of reimagine it. An example of this is George Romero’s zombie classic ‘Night of the Living Dead’ way back in 1968, in which Peele has stated that the main lead and the whole story can be viewed as social commentary on racism, the main character, as he is shot by humans instead of the zombies with no intention of doing any hard, it made him realise this was impactful. This was just one example of his inspiration, but it clearly shows the true talent behind this young mind in the horror cinematic directing atmosphere. Other filmmakers like Robert Eggers and Ari Aster have many impacts in common, they are new and have bright ideas for not so bright events (in a good way). To this day, the story of Jordan Peele influences myself and many of my peers to the future of filmmaking and the ability to change a genre into various ways that no one would even think about.

In week three of the post horror studio we went through the history of horror and its ability to change overtime and its affect on how to justify whether a horror film is in the subgenre of post horror. A thing that was discovered inside me that made me really surprised was the amount of films we figured out and talked about were heavy interests of post horror and they can also justify for post horror even though they were made in the last century. Specific films that i did not realise or even know about it made me more interested in them and persuaded me to view them which included ‘Don’t Look Now’ which was made in 1973 and i also rewatched Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece ‘The Shining’ due to the group exercise. In this exercise we watched various clips from horror classics like The Shining, Suspiria, Night of the Living Dead, Don’t Look Now and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari which provided groundwork for discussion and a huge interest in me. I found it very interesting as these films at the time were seen as experimental to the genre of horror and at the time were received as different and not treated in the same category, whereas now, they play the groundwork for modern day horror films which experiment from a contemporary lens. The thing about these films that make it experimental is that they are all different in their own way, creativity is key, yes these films take a while to heat up and scare the audience but they do it in the perfect way to excite them with all the tension and drama that gradually builds up as the film progresses. The reason i chose this exercise/groupwork/discussion was that each film had a lot to say about how close and similar these films have adapted and how these experimental horror films that shy away from genre conventions provide post horror inspiration. Not only this, the class and myself emphasised our interest in these inspirations through films such as ‘The Thing’, ‘Candyman’ and even ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ elevate horror to new strengths that think outside of the box to surprise the audience in scary elements.

One of the workshop activities that stuck with me was the learning and creating the levels of a script by using WriterDuet. In high school i made a short film and it sort of failed due to my inability to not know how to write screenplays and understand all the features these apps have inside them. Thanks to this workshop, i learnt how to tell the difference between characters, actions, scenes, parenthesis’ and even provide transitions into a simple screenplay with hard cuts as well. In the class we thought of anything that came to our mind and were helped with Tim in order to give us specific prompts or ideas in order to make our idea from the top of our head into a new story that haunts us into a scene in which we would then create if it is chosen in our group. I think this exercise was very helpful to gain insight on post horror as we were given the opportunity to expose ourselves to themes that post horror films follow whether this to focus on social aspects that are happening around the real world, racism, psychological or just something completely different and unique. My story followed the themes of grief, isolation and followed the aspects of mental health problems and how the main character goes insane. With the help of my group and their first round of feedback i got ideas flowing all around me in order to make this as scary as possible. My scene included a man on the run from a military force running away with his daughter who was not real and past away in which the man goes underground for hiding, he slowly finds the evils of all the world in a haunted experience where he doesn’t know what is real or not. I think the best part of this activity was hearing what everyone else’s ideas were, everyone on my table was really passionate about their own little project and i thought it was pretty special how quick we can create something and get hooked into it likes its our own world. A moment that gave me a sort of epiphany was understanding the things that other people had, i felt like if they said their piece of work they made before i even made mine, i would’ve been out of this world as it was just really creative and felt professional.

When i submitted my request to get into the Post Horror studio,  i knew from the first time i saw the description that i had to be in this class. Not only was this class going to be full of horror enthusiasts, i myself was behind the attitude of this, on the first class i was surprised to realise how many horror movies there are and which many seriously good ones i have not persuaded myself to watch or even known about them. Whilst reading the description on the media factory website, my eyes were firstly drawn in and symbolise my reaction to the class, this was in fact Daniel Kaluuya’s character in Jordan Peel’s contemporary horror film ‘Get Out’.

Whilst reading the complete description of the class i wondered what it meant by post horror, is it ending? Is it somewhat a celebration of horror? Is it what is wrong with horror? Or is it something different entirely. The reason i took this class was that i wanted to explore the genre of horror. Furthermore, i never took time to consider horror as a primary focus in viewing films but through this engaging and changing genre provided with directors such as Jordan Peel, Ari aster and Robert Egger’s, my opinions changed quite quickly. I would say that my goals for this class would include a wide opportunity to attribute and provide groundwork for my future in filmmaking and the future in this field. These goals include, finding a better understanding and history behind how horror has evolved overtime from classical horror to international horror including giallo films, experimental horror and now contemporary horror which is regarded as post horror, another goal i would like to fulfil is to with the help of creating a short film, get my hands and experience on cameras and film equipment to brighten my range of experience in this field.  Overall, im glad i chose this studio over the others as its obviously the most interesting and i think the most important as i believe that horror is the most exciting genre in all of film and to find out how the genre works gives the student a good centrepiece into how to work through this gigantic genre on a contemporary storytelling point of view.

The Debut International Film Festival. What a journey. Before taking this studio, i had no ideas about the studio, i thought we were just going to draft a film festival, i thought we would just present to the class but i was wrong, very wrong and im glad i was. The Festival Experience studio has been my favourite studio of my course and our progress from where we just began is extraordinary to say the least. From the first weeks and ongoing weeks i did not even realise we were actually putting on a film festival, but this opportunity gave me the ideas of creativity and excitement to keep me forward and focused. Speaking about the festival’s conception, ideas were flowing all over us, did we want to focus on a singular genre like action? An action festival celebrating the global side of things like classic Jackie Chan movies and then we asked ourselves, what was his first movies and then BANG! The Debut International Film Festival before it was called that had a number of names, FIFF (first), DIFF (Different) and finally my favourite DIFF meaning Debut meaning firsts. Our aim was to celebrate directorial debuts from our favourite directors of all time in cinematic history and io think in the end we did a great job. By influences of uniqueness and inclusivity, our aim was to globally challenge our festival, we didn’t want to just have a white, American and male list, we wanted females and global attributes to provide the real image of cinema in our eyes. The parts of the festivals operations were very balanced and easy to find out, my job was very fun  and also important at the same time, unlike marketing, production and social media teams, my job was very intimate, by this i mean it was very close and hidden from the festival, i was emailing so many companies it was incredible, i went into lengths i did not even know i could get to and this experience has given me many things; confidence, email wording skills, negotiating, patience(key) and the famous saying our lecturer constantly told us “maybe you do know someone” when we were wondering how to have contacts in these big film distribution companies which kept our hopes up. In all seriousness,  confidence in my eyes alongside with being comfortable will get you success in this field and can lead to a bright future for you in this big industry, i can already say that before this studio i would not have the guts to be involved with anything but this festival made me realise what is the point and just do anything to help the team. Speaking of skills i had before the festival would include improvisation, this worked in the festival as we were thinking of slogans for the festival at our starting point brainstorming and i just shouted ‘Something DIFFerent’ and the class agreed then our lecturer asked “what do i call you guys” and i screamed ‘DIFFLOMATS!’ which i was surprised made sense and stuck with it. The division of labour across each team and area i think for our festival could definitely have been better, i felt that in some times i was doing too much then i was doing too less and didn’t flow through the same energy whilst trying to balance other classes but as soon as the dates got closer and closer this class became a high priority in organisation and dedication. Speaking of interpersonal dynamics and workflows and even things that i did to operate the festival, Film Freeway is my answer. I took the responsibility to be in charge of the creating, posting to the public and communicating with the global world of film freeway for our short films. With the help of the editorial team and my fellow programmers we created the rules, rewards, prices and mission statement for the festival in order for the short films to be accepted and our festival on the map. This process felt short but it was very long and learning how to operate a new system under a short time was a challenge and i am glad i proved myself and did the best work i could in that category. Speaking of successful relationships, with the help of my new and improved emailing skills, i had strong contacts with big companies like Village Roadshow with Dominic and Park Circus with Chris in which both of these were outer state, they contacted me immediately and even went out of their company to ensure i got the films i enquired about after hours too. Discussing my independent research and self-initiated activities alongside the great readings we were resourced, i felt that with this class i now understand what Cannes is and other big festivals and have been researching what is premiering and how its celebrated and how i can get tickets to more Melbournian film festivals in the future. Speaking of helping the festival research and activities, in the last week of classes, i went all around RMIT campus with buildings 13, 10, 80, 9 and many more, i planted our festival posters and then also in the city but mostly in my suburb of Fitzroy on popular streets that may attract attention, also with my own presence I continue to shoutout my film festival to all my community on social media. This experience was unreal, stressful but a rollercoaster of excitement.