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Critical Video Reflection: AICE Media Studies

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During the production process, I have learned the many tedious processes towards making a film. Being the director/writer, I have learned that every scene counts, and it is important to integrate lots of details in order for the audience to comprehend the plot of the film. Throughout the editing process, I reduced the amount of dialogue to increase the suspense. In regard to the rough cut, we were told to adjust the sound quality, create better title credits, and find a better actor who wouldn’t break their character. All of these changes were necessary to convey a sense of professionalism throughout our film.

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Independent Distribution and Marketing Plan- Next Caller

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Independent Distribution and Marketing Plan- Next Caller

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1. The first step I would take in independently distributing my film would be finding the target audience. Next, I would use social media to boost my film; releasing teasers, trailers, and picture ads. Then, with the plan of only releasing my film on streaming services, I would hire the social media aggregator, Curator, to take information from various social sites like Facebook and Twitter and display that information as a live feed. Lastly, a niche streaming service I may be able to approach directly would be Pluto TV because there are a variety of series and films of all genres on their program. They also are known for streaming niche movies that never appeared in theaters.

2. The title of our film is Next Caller, which I believe works with the plot and general idea. Because the serial killer of our film targets his victims by calling them, I think “Next Caller” is an appropriate name to describe the actions of the serial killer and the basis of the plot. Perhaps, I could incorporate the words “murder” or “serial killer” to further horror film conventions.

3. “Willing to pay the price of answering the phone?”

4. The target audience of horror films are men ages 18-35. Being this age, they are becoming or have already become mentally mature, which explains their desire to watch such films. At this point of their lives, they may have children and a steady income from a secure job. Some of their hobbies/interests may include playing video games and supernatural phenomena. Their social lives are particularly important to them, and they value their presence on social media. Additionally, they watch most of their films/series on certain PVOD platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and HBO max. This specific target audience would be interested in my film because they already value such content for entertainment purposes. I believe this target audience may use horror movies, as well as their other hobbies, as an outlet for releasing stress and other similar issues.

5. If I had to self-distribute, I would place picture ads on these social media platforms: Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. I would also release teasers on YouTube and Twitter. While placing nonvirtual ads, I would get the required permissions to print out physical ads to place around several movie theaters, malls, shopping strips, and gaming stores.

6. I would engage my target audience online by posting video teasers of the film on certain social media apps, such as Instagram and TikTok, that will allow the viewers to like and comment their ideas/opinions. I would turn passive audience members into active, engaged audience members by also allowing such video teasers to be shared. In order to do this, I would release the most suspenseful, interesting teaser, causing them to feel the need to share it with someone, claiming that they must go see our film in theaters. To ensure that many people will click on my ads, I will include interesting and captivating visuals, while also incorporating our signature tag line. I would offer them the challenge of getting through the movie without being jump scared (etc.).

7. My movie poster would be a close-up picture of a phone receiving a call from a blocked number, with a bloody/injured hand reaching for it. This is both familiar and fresh because it is common to include blood or injuries, and close-ups of objects/people in posters for horror films. The three main colors I would use are red, black, and gray. There would be nothing in the background--just a plan, shadowy, black background—and in the foreground will be the close-up of the phone and injured hand reaching for it. The iconography being used would be the bloody hand, transferring the blood to the phone. Lastly, I would use a font that looks digital, almost replicating typewriter font.

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(related images, final script and original script are in the word document above)
Writer
The only change that was made to the final draft of my script was the description and reveal of the serial killer. My short film opening is about a teenage boy encountering a serial killer that targets his victims through a phone call. The rough draft of my script did not contain a description of the killer nor was it a surprising element and form of representation in film. I changed the killer to be a cliché, bulky, masked man to a gorgeous middle-aged woman, draped in a red cloak, who has a slim figure. Therefore, my film now contains a further form of representation; a strong, independent woman who can overtake any victim regardless of their strength/size.

One concern I have for my film opening would be the production aspect of casting. I have doubted that my film group and I will struggle to find someone to play the serial killer and teenage boy, as these roles require a certain description and acting techniques.

Director
My overall vision for our film entails a major cliff hanger. I want the sound to transition between the muffled sound of the TV, including some sound ambience, and the clear sound of the news story on the TV. I would like the audience to be filled with suspense as the phone rings for the first time. I will get inspiration on how to build suspense and change camera angles when filming someone on the phone, from the Scream movie series. Additionally, I think our film needs a bright red costume for the serial killer, or something that compliments her features and enhances her true beauty. This would make her character a more surprising and unexpected element to add to the film, given that the voice on the phone won’t match her face. I also would like the setting to stay strictly isolated, and indoors, while also using lowkey lighting and possible silhouettes.

Regarding important shots, I think it would be essential to include a close-up shot of the serial killer’s face as she appears directly in front of the main character. I also think it is necessary that the camera angle changes various times as the main character is on the phone, doing the dishes, and moving from the kitchen to the living room.

Overall, our film represents teenagers/children and their naïve nature. Because the main character is a teenager around our age, he is susceptible to being a murder victim in a horror movie. Our fil also represents women empowerment, as the serial killer is a beautiful woman first to be disguised as a cliché, middle-aged man over the phone.

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For this project, each of the four members in our group was assigned to pick a film in the same genre our Cambridge final film will be in and create the following analysis. We researched the target audience and conventions of our genre, Horror-Suspense, to further familiarize us and prepare us to complete this assignment.

Countdown- 2019
1. A one or two sentence description of the first two minutes.  What happens?

The opening scene of Countdown depicts a party held by young adults who are all seated at a table talking about an app that predicts your death date. They are all eager to install this new app, except for one of the girls at the table who is extremely hesitant.

2. What is the genre and who is the target audience for this film?

Suspense/horror

The target audience are young, male adults

3. Describe the opening credits and title sequences, including any company logos or idents. When do they appear?  What color/font are they using? How does it "align" with the opening of the film?  Anything else you notice?

The opening credits included the iconic Universal Studios Introduction.

With the other credits, including company names, the letters appear in the same fashion as the flip clock on the “countdown” app. They appeared right after the Universal Studios introduction with grey, all capitalized fonts. This aligns with the opening of the film as the entirety of the movie is based on an app called “countdown” that depicts a flip clock of the time you have left to live.

4. Describe it visually -- a shot by shot breakdown that includes type of shot/movement, if any.

Wide shot of the setting; a house party

Tracking shot, following one of the young adults at the party

Cuts to a wide shot of people sitting at a round table

Multiple over the shoulder shots as the dialogue between characters change

5. Describe the sound -- another "sound by sound" of the entire two minutes.

Introduced with a perspective of what the music inside sounds like from outside.

Entering the house, the party music continues

Approaching the round table scene, the music gets quieter

When one of the girls checked her “death date” a loud, suspenseful sound effect occurred.

6. Describe how you felt at the end of the two minutes.  Did you want to know more?  What was left hanging, if anything?  What questions do you still have?

After two minutes of the opening scene, I felt the urge to keep watching. It ended off with one of the young adults checking their death date, getting 3 hours left, and then leaving the party. I was left questioning what happened to her when she was on her way home, and if the “Countdown” app is true.

7. How would you describe the editing style in this clip?  Any particular editing techniques you noticed, or length of shots?

There are a lot of cuts between characters and blurring out of the background to focus on the character speaking or other characters’ reactions.

8. How did these first two minutes adhere to conventions?

Low key lighting was used

Aspects of religion; in this case a symbol relevant to Satanism appears on the cover of the “Countdown” app.

The killer targets young people, in this case 20–25-year-olds.

9. How did these first two minutes break with conventions?

It did not take place in a scary location

The characters were not isolated

No scary music was used

10. How did these first two minutes represent social groups or people or issues?

The first two minutes represent the affect technology/our phones have on the younger generations. The opening scene also shows a form of peer pressure when one of the girls at the table doesn’t want to download the app, the others say it’s not real, and it would be fun because whoever loses must drink their left-over drinks. Overall, it is a prime example of how easily young adults are influenced by social media and those around them.

11. Why do you think this film was distributed on this particular site?

I think Countdown was distributed on Netflix because it is a platform that attracts millions of teenagers and young adults across the world, which would boost their views, as their movie is targeted towards young adults.

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Throughout November and December of this school year, I learned about the tedious components of editing, sound, and screen writing. Overall, we studied film editing concepts and created documents featuring 20 plus kinds of editing techniques.  In editing, it is necessary to cut at certain points such as on action or dialogue. We were presented with a documentary titled “The Cutting Edge” that discussed film editing and watched a video on the use of color. Sound quality is an important aspect of film as well as sound effects, music, and voice overs to furtherly add to the viewers emotions and experience while watching. We studied sound basics and watched a documentary called “Making Waves” on cinema sound. Additionally, there is a very particular format used to write a script. When introducing a character, their name must be capitalized and followed with their physical or personality description. Furtherly, every type of writing piece has its own symbol and place on the paper. For instance, action, character, dialogue, scene is all placed on different parts of the script. To learn this tedious process, we, as a class, read the entire screenplay of “The Incredibles” and studied the formatting. This practice helped me develop my own screenplay on a two-minute horror film based on someone having a nightmare, for my midterm project.

The requirements of our midterm film included being one to two minutes long, either horror or horror hybrid genre, an “opening” rather than a finished film product, minimal dialogue, no wall-to-wall music, no long takes, start in black with your company indent or title and optional credits before either a straight cut or dissolve to the first image. Additionally, we needed a minimum of three crosscuts between the actor in real time and the actor in the nightmare, and we had to edit, shoot, and upload it on our own with the addition of a blog post. Regarding the codes of the film, we had to include one close up, one dutch angle, one high or low angle, one low key light set up or one silhouette, one pan or tilt or track/push or spin-around, one zoom or dolly zoom, one subliminal cut or multi-take, or smash cut, one match cut, one J or L cut, one use of slow or fast motion, one intentional use of color for story or emotion, one instance of intentional use of costume/hair/makeup, one instance of visual complexity in setting choice, three sound effects, and lastly one piece of incidental music or one sound motif repeated three times. We also had the opportunity to earn extra credit if we included, quick cuts, montage, wide establishing shot, split screen, POV shot, reflection shot, intentional break of the fourth wall, intentional break of the rule of thirds, rack focus or pull focus shot, intentional use of handheld camera work, use of color filters to create a dream like quality, fisheye lens or fisheye effect, or company logo with high quality graphics.

1. While filming, I adhered to horror conventions by placing the main character in an isolated area, having his life at stake, and including a monster/demon who was hunting him. Regarding adhering to the codes of horror, I included lowkey lighting, young children, and quick cuts. Ultimately, I met the requirements of the typical suspense buildup of the audience, which they are prone to expect while watching a horror film.

2. I had broken the typical horror conventions and codes by not including a dark color pallet, eerie music, or jump scares. Regarding the audience expectations, I did not adhere to evoking them with total fear. Instead, they can expect to only feel suspense.

3. I represented young children in my film. My story furthers the general idea or conception of children being vulnerable and easy to manipulate, which is why they are frequently depicted as the victims in horror films.

1. Some of the most successful aspects of my film included the sound effects and angle changes. I feel as if I timed the placement of the sound effects at a time that made sense according to the plot of the film. For example, when the monster/demon that was hunting down the main character was seen, I used a sound effect motif that indicated that that being was dangerous. I also feel that I changed the camera angles a sufficient number of times needed to show the entirety of emotion and body language occurring within the main character.

2. The least successful part of my film was the lack of a soundtrack. Typically, horror films include various sets of background music to induce fear and set the tone of the plot. However, I did not select any music to add to the plot, which would have added to the emotion and tone of the short film.

3. Various hardware and software were used to produce my film. To create my script, I used Arc Studio and used my iPhone to film and record the sound. To edit my film, I used iMovie and used Procreate to make the title graphic of my producing company name and film title. I had used iMovie to edit prior school projects, so I didn’t learn any new editing material.

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Over the course of two weeks, we had covered a total of 22 movie genres: western, Shakespeare, biography, sports sci-fi, young adult, musicals, romance, comedy, drama, history, war, superhero, documentaries, family, animation, horror, thrill, adventure, fantasy, crime, and mystery. Specifically, we studied the conventions, codes, and audience expectations by watching three movie clips from three different time periods for each genre. The clips presented to us were hybrids; movies that are composed of two or more genres.

In my first student film of the year, my group would confidently categorize it under the thriller genre. We conformed to conventions by making the stalker character seem mysterious and uneasy while the girl being stalked was ordinary, yet suspicious of her surroundings. We had also used codes such as sound effects, fast shots and long takes of following shots to build suspense for the viewers, which is one of the main audience expectations. One way we broke conventions was with the aspect of iconography. We did not include the general, basic elements or symbols you would see in a stalker thriller film such as binoculars, cameras, trench coats, and hats that the stalker would be wearing/using. For our second student film, we would also confidently categorize it as a comedy-horror. Despite the bits and pieces of gore and suspense, there was also room for some comedic effect. One of the main conventions we used was the main character’s (the murderer) origin story, which significantly influenced the way he was viewed throughout the rest of the story. Some of the codes we used included some CGI for the gore clips and sound effects for both the comedic and horrific aspects. Both elements contributed to the audience’s expectation to feel scared, while also experiencing some comedic relief. One of the main ways we broke the conventions of the horror genre was by the lack of iconography. We failed to include the classic facets of religion and weapons that are known to show up in horror movies.

Personally, my favorite movie genre is superhero. The entirety of this genre entails a main villain and superhero/superhero team battling through a heavy conflict that usually puts the entire world at stake. A potential story synopsis for a final film project in the superhero genre could be: An ordinary high school student finds herself dealing with supernatural powers after being stung by the world’s most venomous scorpion. After being bullied for the entirety of her life, she avenges her social image by saving the world from an overpowered dictator, who too gains supernatural powers. This film would include the use of CGI for the supernatural elements(code), both a villain and superhero (conventions), and finally the feelings of both thrill and fascination (audience expectation). I am extremely interested in learning the extent to which editing can portray such characters, beings, explosions, and so on.

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As of recently, we were tasked to remake another group's first student film with the requirement of rewriting and improving their script, and including a minimum of 10 different types of shots and camera movements. One of the various ways we revised the script was by the addition of the murderer's origin story. Unlike the original film, ours contained how the "super murderer" gained his powers which allowed the viewers to infer who was going to be the antagonist, and what was going to occur for the remaining duration of the movie. This ultimately improved the script, given that the viewers were given more incite about what was taking place, as opposed to the original movie, which did not contain any background information. Throughout the movie, we integrated a total of 10 different kinds of shots and camera movement including an over-the-shoulder shot, 2 shots, long shots, medium shots, close ups, tracking in, tracking left & right, panning left & right, high angle shots, and low angle shots. Additionally, in this film I took the role of being the director of photography. This entailed physically moving the camera during the shots and ensuring that the angle and lighting was perfect for the scene.

The special effects, types of shots, lighting, and overall plot was excellent throughout our film. However, one factor we can improve on is the acting. Some of the shots included our actors laughing, or not expressing the right emotions when they read off their script. Better acting would have conveyed the plot of the movie more effectively towards the viewers. Another factor we could have improved was the audio by using a better quality mic, or reducing the amount of open space that caused the echo. Despite the couple of factors we could improve, we included various types of shots that made the plot of the movie better, and easier to understand. First, we did a close up shot of a handshake between the main character and the deal maker, which showed the significance of the deal and the effect it had on the rest of the plot. Second, we filmed an over-the-shoulder tracking shot on one of the main characters discovering a dead body, which gave the viewers a sense of physically experiencing what the character is going through. Lastly, we filmed a high angle shot of the characters praising Jesus, which gave the effect of glorification after he had saved the day.

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As our first class project, we created a film that took place in Gulf Coast High School. It was about a male student who had been stalking his fellow, female student. As the day progresses, female student Gianna, felt a weird sensation of being followed, but whenever she was to verify, no one was there. However, as the suspension builds throughout the short film, the stalker was finally caught and was faced with the proper consequences.

Despite the well-constructed plot, the sound quality as well as the lack of different camera angles could have been improved for the next time we produce a film. The microphone from the device the movie was shot on was picking up echo and other noises from across campus, which disturbed the primary audio we needed. Therefore, we would need microphones in order to improve the audio quality.