Group Meeting Reflection

     Today I met with other groups/ people who were doing their projects and seeing how mine compared and how we can offer each other ideas. The first person that presented shared their movie idea about a girl named Stella. We looked at her blogs and at that moment I realized how behind I was, she had several paragraphs each post and large amounts of media incorporation. She already finished her research and started her planning. It was not just her who was this ahead, everyone had large amounts of information and planning. Each post was several paragraphs and my work dwarfed in comparison. This is a wakeup call for me and my group members to work faster and harder than we've been working. This group post won't have as much work because there is not more to discuss but I have had some slight planning, I have thought of doing a slasher and having either me as the main character or making our main character gay to cover representation. I will give my ideas to my teammates and see how it goes.

Intro Examination Sample Research#3

     Today I will be reviewing another sample. Today I will not review any slasher movie but instead a heavily praised slasher film. This is because I want to see how movie titles and credits are incorporated in their work. This blog, I will examine "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974). I will also compare it to "Halloween" (1978) and "Friday the 13th" (1980) to see what I should incorporate into my own work. The movie opens with a date "August 18, 1973", it then fades to black but digging sounds are displayed. A sudden flash of decayed fingers, eyes, arms, and teeth are displayed. Then a close up of a corpse is displayed. The radio plays which tells the audience about cemetery body robberies. The camera then begins to zoom out and the audience sees two corpses. The title is then shown but the radio continues to play.

    I did not see the type of credits I hoped to see, however much was learned. In terms of arousing mystery, this intro did it the best. The brief showcases of the corpse help keep the audience invested but still scared. This intro differentiates from other intros as the lighting was normal and it was done in day. I think in this intro helped keep the audience engaged more and create mystery but the other intros displayed technique more efficiently.

Intro Examination Sample Research#2

     This blog will also use a examine a sample to seek inspiration on what makes a good slasher horror intro. This blog I will be examining "Halloween" (1978). I will also be comparing it to "Friday the 13th" and seeing what was better and worse. The scene begins with the handheld POV shot. It is in the night and in dark lighting. Michael goes throughout the house avoiding people. As time goes on, it becomes clearer that he has a mask on. Michael climbs the stairs and watches his sister. He approaches her and kills her. He then walks outside where the camera finally deviates into a long shot. The entire intro is encased with an eerie sound to create fear among the audience.

    Although this intro was good, it was much more flawed than the "Friday the 13th" (1980) intro. To begin with, the entire scene was done in one shot. Although this is fine as movies like "La La Land" do this, it is not viable for this project as our goal is to demonstrate the full capability of what we learned to Cambridge. Another problem with this intro is the Title and credits were separated from the movie and done in a mediocre manner. I think this piece was good but not much can be learned due to the fact that it was in one take. The only thing that I gained was the reaffirmation of the usage of handheld POVs, low lighting, night, and eerie non-diegetic sound.

Intro Examination Sample Research

     This blog I will review what happened in the "Friday the 13th" intro and the techniques I learned from it. The scene begins with an establishing shot of the time and location of the movie (Crystal Lake 1968). The lighting is dark and the intro takes place at night with the moon out. It then switches to a wide shot displaying the teenagers/ soon to be victims. There is then a cutaway to presumably the killer. The use a handheld and POV shot, most likely to establish realism as well as a stalker vibe. An eerie non-diegetic sound starts to play "ch ch ch ah ah ah ah" which tells the audience when Jason is near. The killer is looking at a whole house full of possible victims and then starts stalking two alone teens. The director uses the obstruction technique to let the audience know the couple is being stalked. The teens then start getting physical. The camera switches back to Jason's hand held POV and then has Jason kill his victims. The intro then ends with the title and credits.

    I learned that obstruction and hand held POV allows for the audience to know that someone is being stalked. I also learned that dim/ low lighting helps create a scarier environment. Another fact is that playing an eerie sound allows to create a creepy feeling when appropriate. Although this sample was great, I feel like the ending was cheesy and that the incorporation of the credits and title were done horribly.

Slasher horror subgenre

     Our group has collectively agreed to do a horror movie. We each have chosen a sub-genre of horror to research and then read each others postings where we will decide the route we want to go. I have chosen the slasher subgenre. The slasher subgenre includes movies/ franchises such as Halloween, Friday the Thirteenth, Scream, Terrifier, Psycho, etc. I believe the slasher genre is defined by a human entity who brutally stalks and murders their prey. This human entity is a serial killer and has the option of having supernatural powers. For this project I think I will ignore the supernatural aspect as there is only a 2 minute run time and trying to go in depth on this topic will most likely confuse the audience.

                                       

 In slasher movies, the setting is typically a secluded area or small town. I believe for our movie/ intro we will either do it in a woody forest or an abandoned building. The victims and main characters also typically tend to be teenagers. The last person standing typically tends to be a girl, our group may deviate from this trend as we are all males, however, we will see. Deaths usually involve heavy gore and tend to deviate kill to kill, however in a 2 minute frame I think there will only be 2 victims max. The time of the movie typically tends to be at night so there will probably be a lot of work to be done with the lighting. The killer also tends to have a signature weapon, some ideas I have are chainsaw, cleaver, knife, or pitch fork. The killer also tends to have a set costume design, I believe we will show it in the opening, however, I have no idea what that will look like. That will be expanded upon during planning. Another staple of slashers and horror in general is the jump scare. I plan to just have one at the very end when the killer kills his first victim.

    The horror genre also has many conventional techniques. In terms of camera techniques, POV/ perspective, tracking shots, wide shots, and extreme close ups. One common technique is obstruction where the camera is held behind an object to imitate the feeling of being watched. In action sequences the camera tends to be shaky and handheld to help create a feeling of chaos, suspense, and reality. I feel like this would work well if the victim is running, I do not know if the killer will run, that will be taken care of with more planning. Mise-en-scene usually consists of a foggy texture in the air. Color pallet consists of heavy black, grey, blue, red, and brown with hints of white. Common lighting techniques are: uplighting, silotete, spotlighting, underexposure, harshlighting, and projection of shadows.

Bibliography:

By, P. (2022, October 24). The Ultimate Guide to Horror subgenres. No Film School. Retrieved February 21, 2023, from https://nofilmschool.com/ultimate-guide-to-horror-subgenres

Designing for horror. Entertainment Partners. (n.d.). Retrieved February 21, 2023, from https://www.ep.com/blog/designing-for-horror-friday-the-13th/

Kench, S., Sam Kench Sam Kench is an internationally-awarded screenwriter, & Sam Kench is an internationally-awarded screenwriter. (2021, October 25). The slasher film - definition, characters, villains & tropes. StudioBinder. Retrieved February 21, 2023, from https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-slasher-film-definition/

Rae, John, A., & Scripts, I. (2021, November 30). The 13 key elements of a slasher movie with 10 slasher movie examples. Industrial Scripts®. Retrieved February 21, 2023, from https://industrialscripts.com/slasher-movie/

Rampton, M. (2022, November 1). 10 horror subgenres to know before planning your next movie marathon. Mental Floss. Retrieved February 21, 2023, from https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/horror-movie-subgenres

A study on the positives and negatives of using technology in the ... - liu. (n.d.). Retrieved February 21, 2023, from https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=post_honors_theses

Planning Blog 1

    Due to certain reasons, school was cancelled on Tuesday, the 14th. Due to these complications I have finally met with my group the first time today. Despite not being able to meet my group members, the ramifications are fairly minimal because we only lost 2 days to research and plan. Despite this, I believe our project should be unaffected. Today when we met, my group discussed

Research Blog 1

     In class, I researched how to create a good blog as well as the purpose of creating these blogs. I learned these blogs are the preferred medium of documentation as it allows me to embed media along with the invitation of criticism. I can take this valued knowledge and incorporate it into the production of my blogs, for example, here is a picture of the notes that I used to keep the research that I learned today:

    I also realized that there are different types of blogs I need to make which relate to the process of the project, that being research, planning, production, revision, and reflection. All of these steps are used to show my development throughout the project thus I should also talk about my failures, struggles, successes, as well as the skills I learned during my failures and how what I learned applies to the creation of my project.

Portfolio project approach

     My initial plans for the portfolio project is many ideas, so far I have considered action, horror, drama, mystery, crime, or science fiction. My thought is that horror is the best approach. I'm thinking about a slasher set in the night in the woods with a mysterious villain. Although it isn't the most creative, it is an easy way to build suspense and mystery, mise-en-scene won't be too hard as well and tone will be easy to establish. It will also be very easy to display lighting and camera angle techniques as the film is set in the woods. 

    My approach to the project is to work with four group members. I will use the same members that I used for the music marketing project as I believe we work together well and everyone pulls their own weight, as well as, the fact that everyone has their own specialties. Another approach I will take is while I am doing filming and research during the 2nd half, I will also try to do my CCR so nothing will be left for the last minute. 

Music Marketing Blog Post 2

     The first part of our project was the research portion. The research portion consisted of finding 2 different music companies and studying the marketing, distribution, branding, and other tactics of two artists under those music companies. Our genre was rock so we chose Sony and universal and got AC/DC, Bruce Springstein, Sting, and Metallica. Although these bands are very popular, the research was hard because in the current decade, rock is not a huge topic of interest so there's not a lot of data that has been publicly released within the last 5 years. We split the 4 artists among our 4 members, personally I got Sting which was probably one of the harder ones as he's more obscure than the other artists and most of his data/ popularity was tied with the band "The Police". Despite this, our group was able to complete this portion in a timely and orderly manner. We then did a few small case studies on services like Spotify and TikTok as well as the rock genre. The last research we did was just to find the target audience of the rock genre which was fairly quick.

    The next part of our project was the brainstorming. In the brainstorming we first looked at the schedule we wanted to create. We decided the best schedule was work on the presentation in class and work on the music video by meeting at places outside of school. After we got the footage we'd have one member, Lenny, purely focus on the music video while the rest of us took care of the presentation. The next part of brainstorming was to choose the song we wanted to present. We ultimately chose the song "My Name Is Human" by Highly Suspect as our group collectively agreed we liked it the most. We then continued on with the project and started creating an outline of our music video. We decided to use the storyboard assignment to take care of this. The brainstorming took one day for us, however, it provided a useful outline for the different shots and angles we'd want to use. After the brainstorming of the music video, we brainstormed different subjects of interest for the presentation, we had tons of ideas like websites, merchandise, social media accounts, logos, etc. We also had to brainstorm our brand. We landed on "Dark Night" as the name for the artist.

    The production was definitely the most enjoyable part of the production, after school we all drove to our Town Center to meet up, we decided to take a lot of footage in front of a podium with a lake, however, we realized we had one large problem, one member was unable to be present and they had the story board. This prompted us to adapt and we decided to just go with the flow. We decided to get a few shots with the guitar and then focused on getting shots of the artist. We came up with cool ideas like filming the slow part in day and filming the fast part in night. We finished the first day in night and then returned to Town Center for the second day and filmed during night. While walking around, we stumbled across the great idea of trying to get a cop to handcuff Lucas in the video, we walked around looking for one and found officer Dan, who wouldn't handcuff anyone but allowed us to use his blue and red lights which looked great in the night. This wrapped up our production and left editing.

    The post-production process was definitely the most strenuous, it was fast paced and focused on us heavily perfecting our PowerPoint while Lenny took care of the editing. The PowerPoint for me was hard, I didn't really know what to put because even after my research I still was not very profound on the information stored within the music industry. We first decided to take care of the marketing plan, our marketing plan started by using TikTok to appeal to a young audience and ended at a point where we were so established to the point where we could use large concerts/ performances to fuel our interests. We then created a TikTok, Instagram, and Spotify account as a part of our marketing. We also created a logo to create a recognizable brand. We took the logo and used it to create the foundation for the black and white theme of the presentation. On the other end, Lenny did a great job with the music video and we were able to do everything on time. 

    The last part of the project was the presentation. After the completion of the video and PowerPoint all group members took 2 slides that they would solely focus on. I got distribution trends and marketing plan, I wrote myself a script. This script was full of planning and the use of the case studies mentioned in the research portion of the blog. After writing my script I kept reading it over and over to memorize it. On the first day of presentations our group was not called so we decided to go first on the second day to get it over with. I made the mistake of not using the weekend to prepare and forgot a lot of material. I tried rememorizing it during my fifth period and then we presented. I was fairly nervous but decided to go first anyway. I was doing great until the end of my second slide where I blanked and forgot a lot of material. This made our presentation come off as unprofessional and bad. Although I costed my group members, I will use this experience to make sure next time, I use all of my time in a productive manner.

    I learned many things during this project. The most important was definitely the incorporation of synergy, synergy is essential when working with anyone and makes or breaks any task. Another thing I learned was the importance of a schedule, using a schedule allows for people to be more organized and allows our mind to process things piece by piece. This is important as now we don't feel like the task is impossible and work toward a goal day by day instead of completing it at once. The last thing I learned was the importance of being productive, being lazy never helps and if I'm given any form of extra time, I should use it well and prepare myself rather than just lying around because it helps me perform better. The most important part of this project in terms of developing my portfolio is probably the experience I gained with filming and editing software. Another benefit for my Cambridge portfolio is the ability to reflect and document my experiences as I am doing currently with this blog.