Relentless Curveballs

Well, we were using a MacBook Pro for our project from one of our school computer carts, but that sparked some issues. We were not aware at the time that some of the classes we share the cart with have so many kids in the classes that they need every computer in the cart, so we had to save our project elsewhere and return the computer. So, Nat brought her computer in and we tried making that work. She has an older version MacBook, and an older version iMovie also. After transferring the clips, we found that it would be more efficient to use one of the "crappy" computers that our teacher has in his room. The good things about that is that we have a computer that will for sure be available every day in class, and unlike Nat's it has the better version of iMovie, which will allow us to put in more of the effects that we want.

Another curveball that I was thinking about earlier was that next week we have spring break. Which means we will have to see about taking the computer to one of our houses that way we can work on it over the week-long break. We still have quite a bit to do at this point, so we cannot afford to just take a week off. Most of our transitions are finished, and I believe we have one more clip to reshoot. Color correction is done, and we have to really crack down on getting our sounds done. Anyways, it is going to be pretty hard probably to coordinate all of us being available over break to work on it together-- I know for sure that I will be working full-time over break, with most likely only one day off, which I will not be doing anything on besides sleeping because it is supposed to be a "break" after all. Either way, I am pretty positive that we will figure something out.

Current representation of us right now. 

Who ACTUALLY Likes Technology?

Okay, the title is pretty rhetorical because almost everyone likes technology to a certain extent. But, when technology hates you and gives you problems, then it sucks.

The more "blown out" take of the clip
versus the focused one. 

We ended up videoing the clips on my iPhone 7. This worked out pretty good, the quality is not absolutely amazing, but it is still decent. I think the most difficult part was making sure that the camera stayed steady. I have learned over the course of having this phone that it is easily susceptible to shaking-- you have to keep your hands pretty steady. But, we were able to do that for the most part. There were only a few clips that we ended up having to reshoot because the filming was unsteady. Another problem I kind of had when I was videoing a couple of clips was having the camera focus on what I needed it to so that the light didn't wash everything out. I had to figure out where to focus the camera to achieve optimum lighting, which took a few shots.


This was completely our fault, but when we were shooting the other day, we were about 1/4 of the way through shooting when we realized we were not shooting in landscape. It would have been really helpful if we would have had a reminder or something so we remembered. Maybe we are all just a little stereotypical blonde on the inside, though.

Today, we spent an entire class period trying to import the videos from my iPhone 7 to the computer. Or should I say, computerS. We started out trying to import them to a MacBook Pro and save them to the desktop, but it was an older version of the computer so it did not work. So, we tried to just import the clips into iMovie. This kind of worked, except for the fact that they all imported as BLACK CLIPS. Which obviously is not helpful. Therefore, our next step was to try a MacBook Air. Again, it didn't work with just importing the photos. Needless to say, we ended up Airdropping the clips from my phone to the computer, then saving them to Anne Marie's Google Drive. We then saved them to a flash drive, and we plan to back everything up on the flash drive regularly in order to make sure everything stays saved and we do not lose anything.

SETting Up

Hanging up the towel.

We had a lot to do before we even started filming today. To begin, we had to make sure everything was where it should be— meaning, we had to make sure all of the stuff in the bathroom was arranged to how we wanted it. We also had to put a towel over Nat’s bathroom window, because we ended up filming around 11:00 a.m. The reason for this was that we wanted to make sure that we had the bathroom as dark as possible, along with the hallway. We made sure to close all of the bedroom doors in the hallway, so the light did not flood in.

Mixing everything together for
 the blood mixture.

Making our blood was a whole other adventure. We could not find any at stores like Walmart, and we did not have the time to order any online. So, we made our own. We started off with trying to dilute paint with water, but it was too runny. So we then tried adding honey AND glue AND flower to that same mix in order to thicken it, but it didn’t work. What we ended up doing was getting some honey in a little dish, and mixing red and black paint into it for the color. This worked really well for us, especially considering that we made it in probably under 20 minutes. We had to make about three different batches, however, because we kept running out. In all honesty, making the blood was probably the most challenging part of everything today.

Costuming for today was overall interesting. I forgot to bring my robe, so we found one at Nat’s house so that I looked like I was at home getting ready for bed. Finding stuff for Anne Marie was a whole other story, because we wanted her to look unidentifiable and kind of scary. We had to dig around trying to find a black sweatshirt, and then Nat remembered that she had ski masks from her ski trip, so we had to run around trying to find those. So, we were able to fulfill our scary killer costume, that was almost stereotypical. Nat literally just wore the clothes that she wore to school, although it could be seen as ironic that murder=blood, which is red, and her shirt was red ;)

The bathroom before shooting. 

The hardest part I think with continuity of our props was the door, and how open it was. We had it cracked open, but we had to keep going in and out. So, we had to kind of estimate again and again how far open it should be. But it was not that huge of a problem. Thinking now, we probably should have knocked over or displaced some of the items on the counter post-me getting murdered and falling to the ground. We will probably just try to see how it looks, and if worst comes to worst we can just try to reshoot and redo it.

The bathroom before and after blocking the light with the towel.

Some Changes

So, after some discussion and looking at our storyboard, we came to the consensus that we have too much going on in two minutes of film. Therefore, we are modifying stuff a little bit.

We are keeping the same overall idea that we had, but we are cutting out the entire plot line including the best friend being killed. So, our intro is just going to consist of the original murder, and the events included in that.We have also decided that we need to make sure we have elements of an actual title sequence, so we plan to have cuts in between shots with credits.

The best example I could find is the "Psycho" title sequence. I have talked about it before, but this time to kind of reference how they set everything up. So, how am I relating this to our project? Between each credit, there is the little line transition. For our project, instead of the line transition we would have footage that we shot. The time between would also be longer in our intro, due to the fact we are having actual footage to separate the credits, not just fancy transitions.

Making these changes also helps us make sure that we will stay within our time frame, and not have too much action that would force us to make it longer than it should.  I think we were kind of overthinking and therefore overdoing stuff beforehand— we had more of a short-film mentality as opposed to an introduction to a two hour movie mentality.

It Begins

So after a lot of coordinating, we have arranged to start shooting today. It was kind of hard to work around all of our schedules, because we are all busy.

Nat's availability: 
Monday, Wednesday and Friday after 5.

My availability:
Monday and Wednesday after 5, Tuesdays as long as I do not work.

Anne Marie's availability:
varies depending on her work schedule.

Therefore, after 5:00 today, we are going to try to get this show on the road. The pros to this is that with shooting today, we still have plenty available time to reshoot anything we need either Wednesday or next week. We also have a whole lot of class time to work through all of our footage and begin editing, that way we don't have to worry about further coordinating outside of school and stress ourselves out over availability. 

Another aspect of availability is the availability of technology in order for us to begin shooting. The basic and easiest technology to use would be our iPhone cameras, with the best camera being on an iPhone 7. This camera has better raw image support than other iPhone cameras, and the image signal processor (ISP) makes images an videos better quality than past iPhones, with improved white balance and focus.

Resolution: 1334 x 750 

Megapixels: 12

However, Nat's mom has a camera that is more on the fancy side. The only thing with this is that the availability won't be the same as with our phone camera, and it may or may not be harder to download the footage and edit it. The camera is a Canon PowerShot SX530 HS 16MP CMOS Sensor Camera. In normal terms: it's fancy. It has a lot more settings, and the quality is a lot better than the iPhone camera.

Resolution: 4608 x 3456

Megapixels: 16

Source Links: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/09/08/apple-iphone-7-and-7-plus-camera-explained-how-good-are-the-phot/

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/canon-powershot-sx530-16-0-megapixel-hs-digital-camera-black/2761156.p?skuId=2761156&cmp=RMX&extStoreId=1405&ref=212&loc=DWA&ksid=95f7feca-4c8f-464b-b038-6ab17e1ff1f8&ksprof_id=3&ksaffcode=pg269395&ksdevice=c&lsft=ref:212,loc:2&gclid=CjwKCAiA_c7UBRAjEiwApCZi8aR2Gw6xGdnxLdtUSiaWYwk8PjcXtFrOEqoun5NeTeRWmXk_J2V5thoCw6MQAvD_BwE

Storyboard

The very beginning, establishing where I am at and what I am doing. 

Hand-drawn because it couldn't be made online. But, consists of the actual murder, and a hopefully realistic screaming close-up.

Nat coming into the scene, looking for her missing roommate.

Nat finding the body, and basically freaking out.

After finding the body, then her getting murdered herself.

Sources:

storyboardthat.com

Our Mock Film-Pitch

We are pitching to Blumhouse production company, with the name of our film being "Rub-A-Dub". The film is going to be about a serial killer that has an obsession with killing people in their bathrooms. Our movie is overall going to follow this estranged murderer as it kills its' victims and the police frantically try to catch the killer before they strike again. The opening sequence will cover the killer's first victim and basically set up the main plot for the film as a whole. This production company will be a good fit for our film because a lot of its most popular releases are horror movies. It also has some movies that have somewhat similar plot lines, so we are able to predict our success based on that.

Example Movies:

1. "Insidious"
2. "Scream" Series 
3. "The Purge"
4. "Unfriended"
5. "Get Out"

**Our movie mimics the "Scream"series to a certain extent, which in total grossed about $332 million. It is in the same horror category, and has potential to be just as successful.**

We will have secure resources with Blumhouse, because it is a very large production company with plenty of financing and equipment to help us produce our movie. 

Example Budgets:

1. "Get Out": $4.5 million
2. "It Follows": $2 million
3. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre": $300,000

Our predicted budget: $200,000

When talking about distribution, we were planning originally on going through film festivals for distribution. But, Blumhouse has signed a 10 year contract with Universal Pictures, who they now use as their distribution company. Due to this new contract, if Universal chooses to distribute our film, we will not have to go through the film festival circuit. '

Our project is an original movie that will prey on the audience's fear of death, especially the feelings of someone finding you vulnerable, in the bathroom. This movie will guarantee the attraction of our target audience and will be worth an investment.