Reflection

Our film is a teen-horror film about 5 girls who are intrigued by the legend of Bloody Mary, and attempt to summon her. We wanted to incorporate elements of comedy and stereotypical high school characters as seen in teen films. This is seen throughout most of the dialogue ⁠— the most distinct character is Brittany, who acts as a mean girl, ringleader-esque teen.

We started out by creating a production schedule. As the producer, I spearheaded this aspect of the project and organised this in an excel sheet. This was done first in order to delegate enough time for each phase of production ⁠— pre-production, production, and post-production.

Pre-production, which included filming test shots, posting casting calls, setting up auditions, gathering props, and the in-class pitch presentation, took up four weeks. This took up the most time as we did not want to rush out the script or castings. Production, then, took a day, and post-production was left with two weeks.

Since the scriptwriting hadn’t been completed yet by the week of 9 September, but we had a rough idea of how many and what types of actors we needed. Our film required at least 5 female talents who will partake in dialogue, and 1 actor to stand-in for Bloody Mary. From the beginning, Caroline and I had already expressed interest in acting for the film. However, during the film tests we collectively decided, Caroline herself included, that she was not suitable for a role with lines, as she was not comfortable conversing on camera. It was a setback, but a minor one.

Kaushal offered me the role of Brittany, as she designed the character loosely based on my personality, but we decided to go with another actress for the role when we saw her passion for the character and how well she fit into the role. 

Since Caroline still wanted to act in the film, we offered her the role of Bloody Mary. Afterwhich, I went ahead to call for 4 actors on Starnow, all of which were scheduled to drop by my place for an audition. As the script was not completed yet, I wrote a set of audition sides for the talents to read lines with. This hopefully also gave them a better idea of what our film was like. I scheduled a total of 10 talents throughout the weekend, but only 4 showed up, and thankfully, they seemed to fit into the roles of our film’s characters flawlessly.

After Kaushal had completed writing the script, I broke it down to get an idea of the hard details for the shoot — actors and props we will need throughout filming, for example. I spent the next few days sourcing for props — candles, a black wig, and makeup for Bloody Mary. 

It wasn’t long before filming weekend had arrived. Kaushal lives in Frankston, so Mia graciously offered to drive us (Lauryn, an actor, and I). We offered a ride to the other talents as well, but they kindly declined as they could drive themselves.

Before we started shooting, we headed to Woolworth’s to get ready-made microwavable meals, as well as salads and snacks, for the cast and crew to munch on during dinner break. 

Throughout the process of producing our film, we were met with plenty of bumps along the way. Our first issue was when our director of photography (DOP) went missing in action without warning due to unforeseen circumstances during the pre-production phase. We were desperately running out of time, hence I decided to start working on the storyboard first, and our director and DOP continued by working on the shot list after I had left. This resulted in miscommunication, and clear differences between the storyboard and shot list were present, which made it all the more confusing when organising the shooting schedule.

Our next issue arose when one of our cast members decided to pull out two days before the filming date. As our director had quite a lot on her plate at that point in time, I decided to handle the situation on my own by reaching out to as many potential talents as I could. Fortunately I managed to replace her in the nick of time. 

Another issue we faced on the shoot day itself came to light when we discovered Caroline’s fear of paranormal activity, which included her own character of Bloody Mary. When the director instructed her to stand at a certain position, she would suggest standing elsewhere, having someone standing with her, or not doing it at all. Though we understood her fear, as everyone was afraid as well, this did waste a bulk of time, and the actors were visibly worn out due to the back-and-forth after awhile.

We encountered yet another challenge when Lauryn and I offered to pick up the equipment ourselves, since we lived nearest to school. Not realising the abundance of equipment we had booked, we ended up struggling with just how heavy they were. It probably took us two to three times longer to walk to my apartment then it usually would. In future, I would take note of the equipment we are borrowing, and gauge how many people I would need to help with carrying it.

After viewing a cut of the film, we realised that there were not enough close up shots incorporated. This made the film lack visual interest, and especially during the more scary scenes, we don’t see the actors’ emotions very well, which is not very fright-inducing. I noticed this while we were filming, and wanted to suggest it but I wanted trust Mia’s decisions with the camerawork and did not want to feel like I’m overstepping my position or hijacking Mia’s role. Looking back, there was no harm in me suggesting it, which I should have done. This might have possibly saved us from this (pretty major) setback.

Word count: 981 words.