Who Did It?

 My Short Film Package

Who Did It?

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

jassydownloads.wixsite.com/website

CCR

How do your products represent social groups or issues?

Our product represents social groups and issue because it identifies a specific social group. After analyzing this I feel that our product mostly engaged with people that enjoy watching thrillers. The thriller genre can be described as the type of genre that comes with suspense, so the audience is never ready for what’s to come. Another group that would be engaged in our film is any type of group that advocates for female empowerment and women’s rights. I say this because my film is based on a woman, who worked as a job for the local court system. That is a hard job to earn so that itself would attract groups that support female empowerment. In my movie the woman was killed based off two things, anger, and jealousy. This film addresses the issue that people in our society have with jealousy now. For example, if someone doesn’t like the fact that someone is simply above them in the food chain then they will become jealous and go to extreme lengths to knock that person down. Once a person becomes jealous you never know what might happen and this film portrays this. Not only could our product apply to women empowerment groups, but it could also apply to groups that deal with jealous people and getting them, some help. Also, my product can apply to anyone that finds themselves in a similar situation. Situations of jealousy are often seen in today’s society, so I know for a fact that this film represents several social groups and or issues.

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

The elements of our production work together to create a sense of branding by showing a preview of our film. For example, our website was used to preview the movie. On our website you can find what our movie is about as well as what you, a person of the audience should expect to see. The website also shows the release date of our film and the places it will be played at. On our website you will find different pictures. These pictures were used so that they would correlate the movie. We used images such as murder scenes, caution tape, and knives to show what our movie was going to include. By seeing these images someone could assume that in our film a murder took place. Not only did we use images like this on our website, but we also used them on our other platforms such as our social media accounts. Each of our social media accounts have the movie listed as the name and the profile picture is of caution tape at a crime scene. We decided to do this because we were doing a film in the thriller genre and we thought that picture created a sense of mystery and suspense as well. Another thing that was noticeable was our color scheme. On all of our platforms you will see the colors red and black a lot. We did this to create a dark and scary mood. All our platforms including our postcard, our social media accounts and our website portray exactly what we want the audience to see from our film.

How do your products engage with the audience?

In my opinion, I feel that our products mainly engage with our audience through our social media platforms. I say this because nowadays social media is one of the largest platforms used by gen z and older some older generations. Everything can be discovered on social media, for example, you can find long lost family members or even find new information on things you weren’t aware of. When new films are coming out production companies tend to advertise them by using social media. For example, Marvel Studios just released the cover of Black Panther 2. I was scrolling through Instagram and it happened to pop up on my feed. It was probably seen on other social media apps like Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat. By doing this the audience gets intrigued and has the urge to purchase tickets to go see the film. For our film we didn’t use Snapchat as a way to engage with our audience, however we did use Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. On each account we made different posts which basically told viewers what they should expect to see in our movie and sometimes we posted behind the scenes shots while filming. There were enough posts to advertise our film, we also posted dates and times for the movie release as well so there was no confusion about that. We also had the idea to take a survey by using the polls feature on Instagram. We asked questions that would help us get a feel of what type of audience we were dealing with. We wanted to know some of their dislikes and likes when it comes to watching movies and we also wanted to know what they expected from films that fall into the thriller genre. Overall, I truly feel that we successfully engaged with our audience throughout this entire process.

 How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

The research I did on thriller films helped me get a better understanding of how to film my film. I researched some thrillers and found that there were different types such as romantic thrillers and action thrillers. I also did a background on the sales of some of these thrillers. I wanted to see how much money was made from the sales of these movies. Many of these movies made tons of money and the audience had great reviews about these movies. Before we started filming, we did some research on the elements found in the thriller genre. After going over, them we decided that we wanted to stray away from these elements. Two of the conventions that we mainly strayed away from were low key lighting and black and white shots. When we filmed, we had very bright lighting rather than dim lighting mainly because it looked way better to us. The low-key lighting just didn’t fit our film how we thought it would. We needed the audience to be able to see the actor’s facial expressions. We didn’t do the black and white shots because we didn’t want it to seem as if we were filming something that occurred in the past rather than in the present. However, we did include the convection that involves changing the angle of certain shots. We had to do this because our film included a lot of dialogue and we wanted the audience to see different points of view during the conversations instead of seeing the conversation from one specific angle. One of the biggest convections we used was tension music. This played a big role in our film because it’s what added onto the suspense. The music created tension and suspense all at once and it was very effective during the climax/action scene in our film. These convections were extremely helpful when it came to building up the suspense and animosity in our film.

Last day of filming

 Hey guys so today was our last day of filming. Now we're only focusing on editing our film and getting it turned in on time. Today I filmed the last two interrogation scenes. The scenes were with Briana who was played by me and Stephanie's sister who was played by my younger sister. In these scenes I used many over the shoulder shots. I did this mainly because it was a conversation. The conversation was between the detective (my mom) and the suspects (Briana and Stephanie's sister). After I gathered all of the footage I went through it. I deleted the scenes that were bad. Afterwards I sent the left over footage to Jasmine. She started to edit the rest of the film. While she did this I decided to try and find free music. We wanted suspenseful music in our film so I had to do some research. I found a website that listed several different sites where I can find free music and download it. Once Jasmine and I completely finish editing then that's when we'll insert the suspenseful music. When Jasmine was editing I suggested that we should change the lighting in the interrogation scenes. For example, it could like the lights are dimmed or it could look as if it was a black and white scene. We haven't decided what to do yet but we will soon. I think that the storyline is obvious and it's easy to follow. Overall I think viewers will be satisfied with the final product.

The editing starts

 Hey guys I'm back at it once again. This is the final week of filming. It's also the first week back from our two week long winter break. Over the break we filmed many scenes. We also started to edit a little bit. However we aren't completely done filming. As previously mentioned in other blogs Jasmine and I reviewed some of the footage and began to piece it together. Jasmine had the task of editing. So I sent her the footage that I recorded and she looked over it. She carefully analyzed them and made sure that everything looked okay and matched our storyline. I had to use my iphone to film and Jasmine had to use her iphone to edit due to the pandemic. I told Jasmine to use an app called Leap to edit certain scenes. I'm not quite sure what she did when editing. When editing jasmine did make sure to communicate with me. We wanted to make sure that we were on the same page. After we discussed some things Jasmine continued to edit the film. I'm going to film the final scenes of our film over the weekend. It shouldn't take as long because we have most of the footage already. I just hope that our movie reaches the proper time limit. I'll be back later this week to blog again and keep you guys updated.

More filming and editing

 Guys our film is finally starting to come together. Today I focused on two things, the filming and editing aspect of our movie. My family helped me film more of the interrogation scenes for about a hour or two. I didn't want to start filming the end just yet. I used iMovie to edit again. It was kind of hard to figure out but eventually I got the hang of it. I dumped all of the footage. It took a while because we had many takes for each scene. After I did this I had to narrow it down. I watched all the takes and only kept the ones that I thought looked the best. The transitions from each scene to the next was like a swipe kind of motion. This somewhat bothered me. I wanted to try and fix it but for today I just left it alone. I also wanted to add in music but Jasmine and I didn't find any free music yet. So over these next few days that is on my list of things to get done. While editing I noticed that the dialogue was heard but it could've been higher. Luckily iMovie has a feature where you can increase the sound of a take. I ended up having to do this for most of the takes that included dialogue. I sent some of the edited footage to my friends to get their opinions. So far they seem to think everything looks good which is great!

Re-filming the beginning of the movie

 Hey guys I had another successful day of filming. This time I re-filmed the beginning of the movie and also started to film the middle. My dad was actually excited to film today because he barely had any lines. So before I started to film I had my younger sister make fake blood. She used corn syrup and red food coloring. It took her a total of 20 minutes. I found some of my dressy clothes that I didn't mind messing up and put them on. Then I smeared the fake blood all over my parents bathtub. I used a paintbrush and my hands for this. I also put some of the blood on my clothes. After doing all of this I got in the tub and laid down in a position that i made it look as if I was murdered. My sister started filming my bod from top to bottom. At first she did a close up and then switched to an establishing shot. My dad, who plays the victim was standing over me holding a large knife covered in blood. Eventually we finished shooting this scene and started to film the flashback scenes from earlier that week. I also played the role of Briana, Stephanie's (the victim) bestfriend. My mom played the detective interrogating me. While filming I noticed how bright my kitchen lighting was so I realized I had to darken the lighting while editing. My sister played the role of a random person in Stephanie's life. My dad played the role of a man that was just released on probation. My mom interrogated us all. We had to record many takes because there were several mess ups. Overall, today was a productive day!

Change of plans

 Hey guys I have a new update for you. So as you can see by the title of this blog there has been a change of plans. As you know I've been filming this week. Well today I decided to start editing the footage that I've recorded to get an idea of what it would look like. All of the footage rounded up to 2 minutes total. This was only the beginning of the movie, we didn't even get to the middle yet. Once I realized how long the beginning was I decided that something had to be changed. After texting Jasmine we decided to cut the beginning. Now we will start the movie off straight from the murder scene. After that scene then the flashbacks will occur. I think this would be the best thing for our film. I didn't delete the footage that we already have because I wanted to keep it as a backup. Also, I realized there was an error in our storyline. Since the name of our movie is "Who did it?" I realized that the audience isn't supposed to figure out who did it. But in our storyboard we made it to where the killer would be revealed. To fix this issue I decided to do a black screen with a voice over of the killer on the phone with a voice disguiser. This way the killers real face or voice won't be seen. Hopefully, jasmine and I can figure out a way to properly edit that part and make it look good in our film. Today I was going to film but I decided not to. Tomorrow I will get back to filming and hopefully I'll have everything filmed by the end of this week.