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Throughout the making of my film, “Annihilation 91-104”, I’ve learned many things about the production process, this includes producing, filming and editing. Our first cut was reviewed and got good feedback. Me and the editor made tiny mistakes that were easily fixed in the second cut. We had to make the scene look more real. We had to get rid of the notebook paper because it looked unprofessional and we had to make the phone look more real because it wasn’t even plugged in during the first cut. I learned that getting the correct audio for films is hard. You have to block out all background noises and amplify all the sound that needs it, including dialogue and sound effects. I tried my best to fix this by using microphones. Overall, we got good feedback and the film was great/well put together.

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Independent Distribution and Marketing Plan- Annihilation 91-104

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Independent Distribution and Marketing Plan- Annihilation 91-104

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1. To independently distribute my film, I would give it a theatrical debut. I feel Paramount Pictures would be the best studio to distribute my film. Paramount is known to do extremely well with sci-fi films. I would go to Sundance to get them interested in my film because Sundance is one of the most popular film festivals in America. Many studios including Paramount have people who go there to look for great films to distribute. One of them would be mine.
2. The title of my film is Annihilation 91-104. I think the title works with the genre and overall theme. The only thing is I feel as the 91-104 is  not necessary. Even though it's just a few letters, it adds a lot to the title. No one is going to call it Annihilation 91-104, they will just saw annihilation. I know this because when a title of a movie is long, I normally just say the words that are needed. For example, I don't say Perks of Being a Wallflower, I just say Perks.
3. A perfect tag line for my poster would be, "What in the world?" It is a line from the first two minutes and I think it explains a lot. This is what people are going to think after seeing the trailer, like what in the world is happening?
4. People who would be interested in my film would honestly be anyone at the age to understand things. No toddlers or babies, but pre teens, teens, young adults and adults. Both male and female would be interested. Many people like to associate sci-fi with men, but I think sci-fi can be enjoyed by anyone. My target audience would enjoy watching shows like The 100, Snowpiercer, and The Walking Dead. Their hobbies would include gaming, sports and reading. The male side of the audience would enjoy playing video games like The Last of Us and Mad Max. The female side would love reading sci-fi books like The Hunger Games and Maze Runner. I see these people following sci-fi genre actors. Typically anyone they see in sci-fi films nowadays. They eat McDonald's, Subway and pizza places.
5. If I had to self distribute my film, one way I would reach my target audience on YouTube is by adding advertisements on videos that deal with gaming and science. Since some people still use cable, adding my the trailer to commercials would be the best way to reach them. Many people in my target audience use social media, typically Instagram and Twitter. These are two great apps that I can advertise my film on. I will use a short video clip from it and put it on their Instagram and Twitter feeds. A cool animated poster would also grab a lot of people's attention.
6. To engage with my target audience online, I would use interactive ads that have fun little games to lead up to when the movie is out. There would be games that can be played and my audience has the chance to win free tickets to a screening of my film. The game would be to stop the aliens, kind of like Galactica. These ads would be everywhere. From social media to YouTube to websites that are commonly used among my target audience.
7. I think people can deduce the storyline from art or at least what the film is about. Art is a great way for me to market my film. Good art grabs the attention of many people in my target audience. Films in the sci-fi genre love to use dark colors. It brings a suspenseful feeling to the movie and makes people think of how destructive this apocalyptic sci fi movie will be. If there's one thing most people love about sci-fi movies, it's how disastrous and destructive there are. For example, 2012 and how disastrous the film is and that's how it keeps people engaged. People love disaster apocalyptic movies because it gives them a sense of something that can't possibly happen, but it seems like it can.
8. I'm not sure if this counts as a trend, but something I have been seeing a lot of marketing teams do is advertise their movie on TikTok. The app is used by everyone, old, young, male, female. This is something I can do to get more people interested in my film. A film in the sci-fi genre that had a great marketing team was Alien. This team was genius enough that they only had to use a tagline to grab people's attention. The tagline being "In space, no one can hear you scream." This I think is genius and would help benefit my movie too. My tagline needs to be more suspenseful. "What in the world" is great and makes people think, but I want to give off that eerie feeling that people got when they read the Alien tagline.

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Director:

The vision I have for this film is something very quiet. I feel like movies that are silent when it comes to background noises and music, give off a more intense feeling than when music is involved. Sounds might need to be emphasize using sound effects. The running feet, the flipping of the binder and turning of the keys are tiny sounds that can easily mean a lot more if the sounds were emphasized. For the look, I want the facility to be kind of dark. Maybe a dark blue tone. I want the red alarm to be stressed throughout the facility scenes. It’s a key part of the opening and helps advance the plot in the first two minutes. I want the opening to give a Stranger Things type vibe, especially the scenes in the lab. The flashing lights, the background noises and scientific look. Whenever I’m watching a sci-fi movie and I get that eerie type feeling, I know it’s going to be good.

When it comes to shots, I want to master that low angle/close up of the running feet. Also, the shadow of the running people. In order for it to mean something, it must be done correctly. I want to add a dutch angle somewhere in there of an empty part of the facility. Even though we don’t see the voices, we see parts of their lower body like arms, hands, legs, etc. I want to get close ups of them doing actions, for example, the flipping pf the binder. I think a rack focus shot of an action being done while the screen or flashing light is in the back will be cool and add to that eerie feeling. One way the opening will break conventions is how silent I want it to be, besides the voices talking. I don’t want to add music, which some sci-fi films normally do.

Producer:

My group is going to film at school during free periods for the Mysterious Facility Control Room. The Tv Production teacher has a control room panel that would be great use. The scenes with Thomas at home can be filmed whenever. We all have our assignments on what scene we’re filming and what days. We only need two locations, one being the Tv Production control room and the second being the home of Thomas. Playing Voice #1 will be Wade Starace. Playing Voice #2 will be Thomas Mosca. Playing Thomas will be . The props we will be using are a control board provided by the Tv Production control room, a remote, phone and TV provided by , a large paper binder and two pairs of keys provided by Wade Starace. Since the only person fully seen on the screen is Thomas, ... will be wearing a normal teenage boy outfit. For sound effects, we’ll use sound effects to emphasize the noises being made in the facility. For example, the running feet, the binder being flipped, the alarm, etc. In the scene with the people running, we’re going to have to get technical shots of the shadows and feet running. The vision for this two-minute opening is something very quiet. I feel like movies that are silent when it comes to background noises and music, give off a more intense feeling than when music is involved.

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1. A one or two sentence description of the first two minutes. What happens? In the first two minutes, we see the stars and it pans down to people looking through telescopes. A man ask two kids and they all start talking about the star and what they see.
2. What is the genre and who is the target audience for this film? The genre is sci fi with a bit of drama in it I would say. The target audience would be towards older people. I used to hate disaster movies when I was little, so I knew this was definitely not targeted towards children.
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? It starts out with the Paramount logo and then goes to the DreamWorks. For the Paramount logo, the lighting is very dim even though there are bright colors for the sky in the back. The DreamWorks logo was black and blue, which aligns with the opening because it transitions to the sky with the stars.
3. Describe it visually -- a shot by shot breakdown that includes type of shot/movement, if any. It started with an establishing shot of the sky. It then panned down to a wide shot of a bunch of people looking through telescopes. Then, it went to a close up of one of the guys looking through the telescope. It switches over to the girl looking through the telescope. It switches from two person shots to medium shots, to close ups.
4. Describe the sound -- a "sound by sound" analysis of the entire first two minutes. It starts off with this twinkly star sound. Like you're in Spaceship Earth at Disney. It sounds like outer space and it adds a lot to the sci-fi theme.

5. 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? At the end of the two minutes, you were definitely left hanging. You didn't know what was going to happen. If the scientist was going to be able to tell people about the thing coming towards Earth in time to save people. I've seen this movie many, many times, mainly cause it's my mom's cleaning movie. So, I don't have any questions.
6. How would you describe the editing style in this clip? Any particular editing techniques you noticed, or length of shots? I don't notice any particular editing techniques. The only thing would be how it pans down from the sky and the stars to the people looking through the telescopes.
7. How did these first two minutes adhere to conventions? The first two minutes adhere to sci fi conventions because it starts with stars and people looking at the night sky. Also, the rocket and observatory adds to the theme. This is still within the two minutes, just a little passed it, but a scientist at the observatory finds the issues that is yet to come. He starts freaking out and that's when the movie starts to escalate.

8. How did these first two minutes break with conventions? I honestly think these first two minutes didn't break any conventions. I may be wrong, but from the start it was about some sort of science.
9. How did these first two minutes represent social groups or people or issues? The first two minutes represented people who like science. More specifically outer space science.

10. Why do you think this film was originally distributed in the way that it was? Deep Impact was distributed the same summer as Armageddon. Although Armageddon did a lot better in the box office, people thought Deep Impact was more scientifically accurate. The movie was distributed in the United States by Paramount Pictures and internationally by DreamWorks. Paramount Pictures normally does the best with sci-fi movies. For example, Super 8 and Interstellar.

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In November and December of 2022, my Aice Media class learned about editing, sound, and screenwriting/screenplay format. I studied film editing concepts and created documents featuring 20 plus kinds of editing techniques. We watched a film editing documentary called, "The Cutting Edge" and a video on use of color. I studied sound basics and we watched a documentary on cinema sound called, "Making Waves." My class read the screenplay for "The Incredibles." We learned how to format screenplay using special software. I wrote a two minute horror film opening about someone having a nightmare as the basis of my midterm final project.

The requirements for the midterm film are one to two minutes; horror or horror hybrid" an "opening" rather than a finished film product; minimal dialogue; no wall-to-wall music; no long takes; start in black with company ident and/or logo and title and (optional) credits before straight cut or dissolve to first image; minimum of three crosscuts between actor and nightmare; edited/shot/uploaded by student; accompanying blog post. The film must also include one of each of the following: close up; dutch angle; high or low angle; low key light set up or silhouette; pan or tilt or track/push or spinaround; zoom or dolly zoom; sublimal cut or multitake or smash cut; match cut; J or L cut; use of slow or fast motion; intentional use of color for story/emotion; instance of intentional use of costume/hair/makeup; instance of visual complexity in setting choice (color, texture, depth, lines, shapes, etc.); piece of incidental music or sound motif repeated three times and three sound effects. Extra credit to include: 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; company logo with high quality graphic.

Throughout my film, I adhered to lots of horror codes and  conventions. The lighting in my film was mostly low key. In scenes with the figure, in order to make him dark and creepy, I used silhouette lighting. A dutch angle was used in one of the scenes to add that effect that something bad was going to come out of the situation. I included the typical suspense rising sound effect and the suspenseful jump scare sound. I adhered to audience expectations because my film had that normal horror movie feel to it. The bad dream and the dream finally catching up to the person. I personally think my film had the audience engaged since the foghorn sound effect. My film broke horror code and conventions by using a horror concept that's not normally used a lot. The dream inside of a dream concept. I could've portrayed it better with better match cuts, but I think I did my best. In my film, I represented young women. I will be honest and say there's not much representation in mine. My film has basic horror film elements, nothing special to it.

The most successful part of my film was how the actors portrayed my script and how engaged they were. They understood the character and assignment. The lighting is another part I'm proud of. Although, it was from an iPhone, the different types of lighting we used when standing is different areas, turned out so good. The audio is another thing I'm proud of. Even using my phone, I was able to capture what the actors were saying pretty well. On the topic of audio, I do think my sound effects could've been better. I did tend to use the same shot throughout the film. For my script, I used Arc Studios. For editing/sound/music, I used iMovie. From this project, I would say I learned how to write a script. My teacher had a great demonstration using the Arc Studios. She also made sure we understood screenplay by having us read The Incredibles screenplay.

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The genres we covered in class were action, romance, horror, dramas, biopics, thriller, b-movies, animation, musicals, indies, superhero, comedy, sports, family, film noir, mystery, historical, western, war, adventure, sci-fi, young adult, crime, fantasy, documentary, and Shakespeare. We studied the codes, conventions, and audience expectations of all these genres. For codes, we were educated about the different camera elements we can find in films of that genre. For conventions, we learned more about the story, plot, and characters of the film. We were told what emotions we might feel when we watch films of different genres. We watched three clips from three different time periods highlighting each genre. Some of the films we watched were hybrid. Hybrid films represent more than one genre.

The genre of my group's first film would be drama. Most dramas are known to deal with social issues. Our first film dealt with bullying and friendship in high school. We conformed to conventions in drama films by adding the characters you would mainly see. The bullies, the bullied, and the friend. We stuck to a pretty simple story. The girl gets bullied, and the friend tries to help. I think we broke conventions by having the friend also be friends with the bullies. Also, them all becoming friends at the end is different from what you would normally see. Since this was our first film, the camera work wasn’t all that great. There were many two shots, medium shots, three shots, track in, track out, pan left, pan right, and several more. One scene that broke codes is when the bullies and the bullied were sitting at a table and a pole was in the middle of the shot. When talking about audience expectations, I honestly don’t think the audience was expecting any of it. From the laughing to the fighting and skipping scene, I think people were overall confused. The genre for the second film is drama. Just like the first film, this one also deals with bullying. In terms of conventions, we stuck to a very basic story and characters. The bully bullies a girl, the girl figures out something is happening in the bully’s life, and then they become friends. Like every other film about bullying, we gave the bully a reason why she was mean, instead of just making her mean. Our camera work improved for this film. We included a high-angle shot, more two shots, an over-the-shoulder, pan left and right, a three-shot, tracking shots, and an attempted POV shot. Even with improving our camera work, we did end up breaking the 180 rule. We tried to make this film more serious. We cut out all the laughing scenes and stuck to the serious topic of bullying.

My favorite genre would have to be musicals. As someone who wants to become a filmmaker, I already have some potential ideas for a potential film. Much like Mamma Mia and All Shook Up, my film would be based on hits from none other than Queen. After his parents die in a car accident, Lucas has to move from his small town in Kansas to his aunt’s house in the hills of Los Angeles. Struggling to fit in at his new high school, he decides to try out for the football team. After making the team and taking the spot of quarterback, he makes friends but also an enemy. The enemy, nonetheless, is the ex-quarterback, James. Lucas also finds himself falling deeply in love with the cheer captain, Brooke. Even after finding out, Brooke is dating James; Lucas still can’t help but think she’s the one. This is the story of a small-town boy finding love and friendship in upper-class California. Songs would include but are not limited to, Somebody to Love, Bohemian Rhapsody, Don’t Stop Me Now, Killer Queen, and I Want to Break Free. I would be interested in exploring the characters more. Showing their backgrounds and personalities. I love a movie that really goes into depth with the characters and doesn’t have you wondering so much about them. I would upend the audience’s expectations. Musicals tend to be happy throughout most of the film, especially the beginning. I would start off on a sad note, then turn that around immediately. Movies that explore different emotions tend to be the best. Along with that, I would love to explore how the characters portray their emotion through song and dance. In musicals, the characters aren’t just singing songs, the songs mean something. If the characters just sing songs, nothing happens. But when they use song and dance to tell a story, it helps advance the movie overall.

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For this assignment, I was given another group's original film and tasked with rewriting and improving the script. I needed to also include 10 different kinds of shots and camera movements. The original plot of the film was the bully had something going on at home and the bullied overheard her talking on the phone with her mom and tried to help. We switched it up by having the bully go through a breakup on the phone and the bullied girl overhearing it. My group used a variety of shots ranging from the most memorable which was the POV to shots like two shot or tracking shot. Kadence played the bully. Bella played the girl that was bullied. Emmaly and I were the bully's friends. Jamie was the camera person and editor. This time filming did feel much different. It seemed more professional, rather than us just holding and moving the camera freely.

Overall, I think our attempt to make the original film better was ultimately successful. The one thing I believe needed work was the POV shot. The class did find it funny, so I'm glad we could get a laugh out of them. The tracking shots were improved from last time. They showed more depth I would say. Jamie did a great job with keeping the camera as steady as possible while walking backwards. The shots between Bella and Kadence didn't succeed like we wanted them too. Mainly, because we broke the 180 rule. Bella was on one side and then she was on the other. At first, I didn't see a problem with it. But when Mrs. Marquis started explaining it more, I understood what she was saying. I do think our film was a great improvement from the original. It just needed a little more attention.

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This was my first film in Aice Media Studies. The title of the film is “Ginger.” I was in a group with Kadence, Jamie, Bella and Emmaly. Jamie was the camera person. Emmaly and Bella played the bullies. Kadence was the ginger girl and I played the best friend. The film is about a girl who has ginger hair and her best friend. The ginger haired girl gets bullied by these two bullies and supposedly her “best friend” is friends with the bullies. They fight and at the end, they apologize and make up.
There were many weaknesses to our film I would say. One that stood out to me the most was the laughing. I did laugh through out the film and we should’ve refilmed those scenes instead of keeping them in. Another issue was the transitioning and placing. You can see that in one scene the bullies were there and the next, there were out of the shot and then back. One strength I can say is the editing. Although there were some scenes that could’ve been cut shorter, so you wouldn’t hear the camera person say “go” or laughter at the end of the scene. Overall, I think with some retouches, the film could’ve been great.