Steph's blog

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Lilac - Film opening

Hey guys, here's the final product!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AouQ19Va7gw

Creative Critical Reflection

Hey guys! Here's my creative critical reflection!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQP0xHdcQgo

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Hey guys, It's been a ride doing this project and I can't believe it's over! I've taken some time to reflect with you guys about the film Lilac. Our film production, named Lilac did not challenge the conventions of representing the females. We got many of these ideas from horror films. The girl usually tends to be the innocent one and is the victim throughout the whole film. An example of this would be Scream, Halloween, and Friday the 13th. While watching those films, I noticed that the girl is the killers main target. For our film, Angela and I decided to go with that type of cliche, but we also decided that the girl should be played by me. In one of my posts, I mentioned that the protagonist should look innocent and sweet, and all of my friends agreed that I should play the protagonist. They said that I had an innocent, girly, young persona. Normally, in real life, women tend to be the victims of stalking , assault , or rape. Therefore, it's stereotypical . We didn't go against any forms because obviously we went with that idea. In the beginning of the video, while I'm driving the car, I'm listening to pretty and happy music. Later, when the film progresses, the music turns dark and dreary. This is a turning point for the character because it's also showing a shift in mood. Her spirit will eventually break and she will not be as innocent anymore because she's looking at life in a different perspective. Not having a happy view of life, but a more paranoid, sad view.
Our project has attracted various amounts of people, but it engages with the audiences ranging from 15-23 years of age. Usually, even though it's not a rated R film, it would require people who have a mature understanding of assault, rape, stalking , and assassination. Even though all of these components are not shown in the film opening, they would eventually appear later. Also, thriller and suspense films tend to target younger audiences.This type of film would be viewed as mainstream, because now a days many films tend to be like this. This film, even though it fits in the suspense/ thriller genre, it's not like the traditional scary films where people are demon possessed, there's ghosts, or weird paranormal components. This film can fit more appropiately in the lifetime films I've seen in channel 27. Those films fit in the suspense genre, therefore some of them had to do with kidnapping, assault, dark family drama, and stalking. Like our film, they could go a little bit to the extreme, making it more intense than it should be because even though events like these could happen to anyone, we exaggerate them through cinema. That's what makes them desirable to our audience.
My production skills definitely did improve throughout this film. Since the beginning of the year, Mrs. Stoklosa has taught us different techniques that could enhance and make a film spectacular. She also taught us how these techniques could create meaning throughout the video, but it depends what you use. We've been watching many excerpts throughout the year, and the whole class has analyzed how the techniques and edits have given meaning to the film. I've learned to edit more and use technology more often. Before i didn't dare use the computer for anything else , other than just printing h.w. . I think that Mrs. Stoklosa has prepared us well enough by giving us constant production projects. Like that we've been able to integrate our knowledge about film making and use of technology. In our film opening, Angela and I used a lot of mid shots, close ups, high angle, low key lighting, etc... Since our film is suspense/ thriller, it opens up with a neutral beginning and a tragedy at the end of the opening. In the beginning of the film I'm supposed to look innocent, neutral, and happy, therefore we used a couple mid shots. For the audience to see everything in the protagonist's perspective, we used point of view. Close ups were also used to show facial expressions, long shots were shown to shown body movement and power, and high angle was shown as a sign of weakness. The high angle shot was used after I saw my dead sister on the floor, and it's supposed to put me in a vulnerable and weak position. All of this was used to convey meaning throughout the whole entire film. These techniques were most importantly used to allow the audience to relate and experience the film and " messed up adventure" with the character. One of my major weaknesses was editing. Long ago, my friend and I used to make short films when we hung out and were bored. We would both act in the films, but she would edit them. I had no interest whatsoever to edit, acting was enough for me. Taking this nice media course hit me with the fact that I had to start editing. Since it's one of my major weaknesses, I technically tend to ignore it. This year I edited a few of the project I've done with my partners, but for this one it was different. Since we decided to shoot the scenes in my house, we decided for it to be easier to start editing in my mom's mac computer. It wasn't the portable one, so we couldn't carry it anywhere and we could only edit in my house. Because I didn't want her to do most of the editing, I started by myself. It wasn't that bad, like O my gosh I hate this, but it was definitely frustrating because there were many little flaws that bothered me. Every time I tried to change something I didn't like, I would delete a scene and I would start freaking out. I literally had to search up " How to edit in iMovie". It might sound pathetic because I should know right about now, but either way I wanted to look at instructions incase if something misfortunate happens while editing, and I don't make it ten times worse.
Angela and I integrated various technologies in our film. First of all, instead of using an iPhone for filming the scenes, we used a professional camera. It wasn't necessary, but since it's a really important project, we wanted to make the video have good quality. This did come with consequences because Angela's camera died and we didn't have batteries, but mean while we took a few shots with my phone. Since it's an iPhone 6, the camera had many effects. For example, the camera had the slow motion effect, backwards effect, the " cheetah effect", which technically speeds up the videos, and it had many shades of lighting. Like that I was able to send the videos to my google drive and like that I was able to download the videos and save them in my uploads/ documents. We used my mom's mac computer and the app that we used to edit the whole opening for the film Lilac was in iMovie. I know that Mrs. Stoklosa recommended us to use a different app, but right now I don't remember the name. Anyways, I felt more comfortable using the iMovie even though I didn't use it as often. To keep up with my portfolio and keep people updated with what's going on, the whole class had to make an account for blogger. I named mine Steph's blogs. Simple as that. I would try to go in depth with my blogs by exaggerating on my storytelling, making videos, posting pictures, and writing quotes. This blog had many fun components to it and it also kept me updated on who read it and where they were from. For many of the posting I used homemade videos, and I edited them in iMovie as well. To post them I had to upload them on youtube or mp4 player. Angela helped me with that. For some of the movie trailers that I posted as well were from youtube. We also used iTunes to see some of the music that we wanted to download. We eventually had to email the companies that were rightful owners of the song. We also had to search on various websites and find non copy write music to find suspense rhythms or songs. Then again we would have to download it to put it in iMovie.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

If the story kept going, what would happen?

What would happen if the film continued? Would the killer come after the main character? Most likely, but why? Turns out that the killer is actually the protagonist's stalker and her name is Lilac. In the film there's a reason why he comes after her loved ones. Maybe he's trying to make a statement to profess his love for her or to show her that he's a complete psycho and that he needs to get over her. My dad usually says that this type of " love" is " un amor platonico". This means that it's a one way relationship, where one person has deep, intense feelings for the other. The other person may not be aware of this. It's a fake type of love. Eventually, the stalker, Chuck doesn't want anyone to " tear them apart, no matter how big or small they are". He will kill anyone in his way if he thinks that they're shattering them apart. The continuation of the film would be pretty obvious. She would eventually find out that not only her sister was killed, but her boyfriend Luke, her friend Sam, and her mom and dad . They fell into his interest and were assassinated. The film would be a continuation of Lilac Gilmore running away from her long time stalker and getting justice/ vengeance against him.

Editing is fun!

Hey guys,

Today we decided to finish editing the whole film. Normally, someone would think that editing is boring, but I actually think that it's a lot of fun. While vlogging, I will like to explain to you the different components that our film has, and how we enhanced it to make it look better. Overall, our film has about 100 different shots, but we have to edit them to make it look better on screen. An important task that we have to complete is adding the credits throughout the film opening. We thought it was really funny that we only had 2 characters, which was Sara and I. We made up a character for the killer. His name would be Chuck. Also, putting the title in the movie maker was difficult because we want to leave it long enough for people to see. It wouldn't last long enough! Ahhhh! The struggle, right? It took a while for us to fix it, but eventually we did. We also fixed the lighting because the day that we filmed, it was too bright outside and rays of light were shown on the camera too often. We had to dim the lights. We did folly sounds as well. My car normally has a soft beep when I try to lock it, so it sounded weird in the video. We had to use my dad's car because it had a more " masculine sound", from what Angela told me. Well that's it folks.

part of our edits

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Lilac

So it's official!!!
For a while now, Angela and I have been thinking of a name for the film. Would the title impact the film in any sort of way? Does it have to be related to the storyline? In the process of making the movie, we thought it would be best to wait till the end to name the movie because our ideas would be changing constantly, and if we already had a name it probably wouldn't match up with our new idea. I think it's hard enough naming a thriller, but naming the movie after filming is harder in my opinion. While doing the final scene, Liz gave me the idea to name the movie Lilac. She came up with this after seeing the flowers that I just bought , which is ironic because I didn't really think of that. Sara (the victim), was wearing a lavender shirt , and this encouraged Liz to say that Lilac is a perfect name for the film. What a coincidence, right? Angela and I decided to put the letter L to represent the logo for the movie. Maybe Lilac could be the killer? Could it be one of the victims? The world may never know until they've watched the whole film.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Possible songs

Hey guys,

Angela and I are currently looking for music to include in our opening scene. We thought of looking for many upbeat songs.

Sugar we're going down, by Fall out boy.
She's the tear in my heart, by Twenty One Pilots.
Be ok, by ingrid Michelson.
Where you lead, by Carole King.

These were our top favorites at the time. When I listened to these songs for the first time, I felt a happy vibe. It's those type of songs that you want to listen over and over again till you get sick of them. We finally chose " Be ok", by Ingrid Michelson. We thought it would be good for the plot because she would turn out not being ok at all. This song would be a contradiction to the story because like I said in my older post, the film opening should look like the total opposite from the thriller. The audience would probably be thinking that it's a happy film until the girl enters her house and the suspense music starts playing. We decided to contact the management to guarantee us their permission to use the song. Angela emailed them and stated that the song would be used only for school purposes. After 2 hours of anxious waiting, they replied and gave us permission to use their song . We were really excited. Once we inserted the song in our film opening, we knew we chose wisely. Here are some of the songs so you guys can listen.