Category: Deconstructing/Reconstructing Genre
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.
Just a Voodoo Daydream
Week 3 Exercise
Editing the other group’s shots was pretty confusing initially, and it definitely took us a while to get on track, though it gave us a new perspective. What I would have done differently, if we were to film the first part, would be to film the apple dropping out of Mia’s nose using an over-the-shoulder shot, as well as getting a close-up shot of Mia sneezing, from the front, at a low angle.
I feel that this would help the audience make more sense of it, rather than just the apple rolling on the floor, though I do think that it was a clever attempt at trying to replicate the effect. I first realised this when I was watching all the clips from the scene and I could not quite figure out how the rolling apple was supposed to fit into the scene – I found it quite out of place.
For the shot where I am appearing, we decided to film the empty space first, then film me in the same spot. From there, we placed the two shots together and used a fade in transition. Although the transition wasn’t the most perfect and smoothest, due to our camera moving just the slightest, it did almost successfully replicate the effect that we wanted.
Since we were under time constraints, we did not manage to take a proper look back at the clips. I feel that, if given the chance, I would have re-shot the last scene in particular, where I was supposed to disappear, and taken more time to ensure that the camera did not move between takes.
Looking back now, another thing I would have done differently would be colour grading. In our scene, we did set the white balance on the camera, but for some reason, it still seems as if there is a green tint to it. I would correct small things like that in post-production in the future, and perhaps even place a dreamy filter over it, to add to the whimsical narrative.
Week 6 Exercise
For this exercise, I decided to edit two clips – one where Ruby has ended up in a heaven-like place, but ironically thinks that she is in hell, and another where I am high on drugs and think that I am flying in the sky, when I’m clearly not.
We were simply experimenting with the green screen in this exercise. At first, I didn’t realise that the lighting was too harsh – and especially since this was my first time experimenting with a green screen, I did not fully understand how big of a role lighting plays in making a green screen work.
But when I began to edit the video and key out the green screen, I came to a realisation that, due to the harsh lighting, there was a huge beige spot that was too close to the shade of my skin, that I could not key out. In an attempt to key out the huge beige spot, I played with adding a second colour key, but since it was so close to the shade of my skin, any settings that would somewhat significantly key out the beige spot also ended up keying a large chunk of me out. Especially since I was moving around quite a lot in the clip, it made it even harder to key out the beige spots.
In the future, if I were to use a green screen again, I would definitely make sure to check that the lighting is not too harsh – something valuable I learned from this exercise.
Week 3 Exercise
Week 6 Exercise
“Just A Voodoo Daydream”
While we wanted to go in a comedy-drama direction, we also wanted to inject elements of horror or fantasy. As such, we drew inspiration mainly from films like Clueless and Mean Girls for the comedic dialogue.
In the scene, the main character Ashley (played by me) is primarily inspired by Cher from Clueless, with a much snarkier personality. We wanted to give the other character Maya (played by Mia) a good reason to really hate Ashley, leading to her daydreaming about casting a curse or hex on her snarky friend with voodoo magick. Ashley dons a fur coat, sunglasses, and is carrying a Juicy Couture paper bag, while walking down Bourke Street, as we wanted to showcase how her character is stereotypical of high socioeconomic status without having to explicitly mention it.
Though we had a rough concept of the direction we wanted to go in, ideas for the script only came in the morning of the shoot. In order to make it feel more natural, we decided to do a round of rehearsals, where we improvised the lines. From there, we noted down the lines we felt fit our scene the best and worked with those.
As for lighting, we went with more well-lit locations for the comedy-drama bits, while the voodoo bits were shot in a dark space, for more emphasis.
To make the shot where Maya is daydreaming about conducting voodoo magick more realistic, we gathered some props – a candle, a pentacle charm, a bunch of crystals, as well as a voodoo doll that I sewed from scratch. We felt that lighting the candle was a nice touch to signify Maya’s passion of hatred towards Ashley, and when Maya is snapped back into reality, the candle goes out.
Word Count: 292 words.