Kalel's blog

Today we are still working on editing. We are more focused on touching up our project and making sure everything looks smooth and put together. Yesterday I got almost all the clips together. Now I want to work with some FX. Since we are making a slasher movie, I want it to be dark and eerie. Right now I am learning how to add a color filter over the intro to make it dark and learning how to add a vignette. I think this makes the movie create the desired tone and feel of a horror movie, which plays perfectly. My partner, on the other hand, wants to make everything vibrant to make everything look like a fever dream and create a sense of anxiety within the viewer. She got this idea from the movie Suspiria. This allows both of us to take completely opposite approaches and see which one we like more to create the best possible project.

Today we are starting our editing, so we created a Google Drive folder where we are collecting all the clips and pictures together so each director can pick and choose the desired clips. we are going to each make our own edit and decide which is the preferred edit. Right now we are just choosing clips and putting everything together to create our base story. This takes a while because I like to analyze every clip clip to determine which one I like the best to make the best product possible. We also have a lot more stuff to do with editing, such as FX and sound, to make everything come together and fit nicely as a completed project.

 Today we shot the second half of our film in Barnes and Noble. This part is the "nerd" who can talk to dead people but in fact, it's her hallucinations that help her solve the murder case. We spent a few hours taking these shots because we wanted them to be perfect and to integrate a lot of whip pans to add movement and emphasize the chaos within this character's brain. this part of the intro sets up the rest of the story with the murder mystery and hallucination aspect. This creates an intricate and engaging story that helps push the stereotypical slasher characteristics. We had everyone get new outfits so that it could show the progression of time and how a day has passed. we also made sure that Alex wore the same thing though because since he is dead that is the last thing he was wearing. He also has no blood on him because Gaby(nerd) never saw him with blood but witnessed him die.

 For our CCR we have a few ideas. We were told a talking head is a no-go because we want to make it fun and engaging. this is why we thought an interview/podcast could be cool. This format creates a natural way to discuss these topics while allowing for a lighthearted conversation to form making it interesting and engaging without making it boring. Another idea we had was to make a presentation where each person does voiceovers while showing clips and examples from our own work. This allows for us to answer exactly what needs to be answered with great detail but also allows us to show exact examples in our own work. Right now those are the 2 big contenders for ideas and we want to do the same thing to be as efficient as possible but we will have different questions and answers.

When we were shooting, we had a few obstacles/issues. Our first issue is that we couldn't find any fake blood. This made the slashing scenes look wrong, but we are now looking into if we can edit in the blood to make the scenes look real. The next obstacle we ran into was that mid-shoot our main phone died, so which meant we had to change phones, and therefore the quality and look might be a little different. We will see in the post if and how we can fix it. Lastly, we were there until 6:45, and the park closed at 6, so that meant we had to rush to finish what we could and get out of the park. This means we might have to go back to reshoot some scenes or finish any unshot scenes 

 The prop that we had to create and put the most time into was our killer's mask. We went to Party City, bought a clear mask, and decided to paint it. We wanted our mask to have something to do with her motive, so we painted it with mascara running down to represent someone with a broken heart crying. We felt this was perfect and represented her perfectly. We took inspiration from the movie The Strangers, and we felt that these masks were perfect for a horror slasher. We wanted to make it our own, though that's why we added that little touch of the running mascara that I think we are very proud of.