CCR

 Here's my CCR

CCR

STEVE

STEVE

 Welp, here it is. 

Almost Almost my last PP blog. PP#23

 

Well, and here we are, a couple months later, and lot of work later, we're here, my almost almost last blog. I have definitely learned a lot about myself during this excursion, that being, making a film within a month. I have a lot more confidence in myself now as an editor, a writer, and a creator in general. I personally have made some changes my to CCR, and general analysis of my piece. For example, I decided on adding the detail about Lolita and the correlation it has to Dainty, since I find it the most telling, and I figured Cambridge could stomach it. I also added more meaning behind the music that I had not explicitly talked about. Finally, I finally delved into the target audience and distribution methods. That being, that since our film would be distributed through film festivals, most likely the film would be consumed and enjoyed by film festival attendees, mostly film students and adults. 

I have nothing more to say about this project, I am still exporting my CCR, so I'll end it with this. I hope you loved Steve, or hated it, I hope at least you felt like you needed to watch the rest.

I have enjoyed blogging here a lot, and will most likely continue to do so after school, but in a more personal matter, talking about my ideas an my growth as a filmmaker. 

So follow me along my, Vee's, Picture Talk.  

CCR script. PP#22

 

Here is my script for the CCR. I've highlighted the different sections of the script and added labels. 

CCR

Hi, my name is Virginia, that’s V-I-R-G-I-N-I-A. Today, I’m here to talk to you about my newest project that I worked on with Nicole Borman and Kai Amarante. We created a short film intro centered around the people and conflicts surrounding one man, a man named (STEVE). We started this project with the prospect of it being a psychological horror. At first sight, this film does not resemble the typical image of horror.  Usually, the big tropes of horror involve either a lot of blood or some scary monster jumping out in front of the screen. You see these a lot in movies like IT, Scream,.and the Conjuring. And while that’s a good way to deliver scares to the audience, it’s not the type of horror we intended on making. - INTRO

We moreso wanted to create a “Psychological horror”. In this genre, the scares usually come from the character’s psychology and societal commentary, rather than from something more physical. Dr. Glenn D. Walters said that "Psychological horror ...  explores emotional and psychological vulnerabilities over primal survival fears."  This genre can’t be mixed up with the similar yet very different “psychological thriller”. The difference between the two is that in psychological thrillers, a lot of questions the audience may have are answered, usually in a scene near the end known as “The Big Reveal.” In psychological HORRORs, however, viewers are left very much in the dark. Films like The Killing of A Sacred deer, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and American Psycho are good examples- American Psycho in particular still sees plenty of discussion surrounding its nebulous ending. In our case, this off-screen character Steve is said to have done some bad, bad things- but we never get an answer to why exactly he did them. The way the events of this film are presented are off-putting, confusing, and even senseless, and even weirder, none of the characters acknowledge the circumstances. Our protagonist wakes up in a huge, empty field with literally no questions about where he is- instead, his first line is “Hi”, spoken to a character named Dainty. He still has no questions when characters start appearing out of nowhere. It’s in a sense, surrealist. Surrealism is a cultural movement … which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself.We didn’t use gore or jumpscares to disturb the audience, we use uncertainty. The lack of explanation.  

 This allows the audience to make inferences on what is happening without the limitation of logic, and tells them that they should focus on the characters, rather than the situation. This field could be anything, but a field. Purgatory, his subconscious mind, anywhere where our protagonist has to encounter dilemmas, inner dillmas. We decided that we were going to make this movie bright and daytime. Originally, we were going to film in a white room, but after struggling to find one, we settled on a field, since we felt that if gave the same sense of isolation and added a sense of vastness. Most horror films are very dark and include creepy music to go along with them, yet we decided on a bright setting, making the film more off-putting, such as they do in Midsommar, and a score of classical music, that no only helped us better pace the film, but also separates the film from being in a field, giving it a bigger sense of “grandiosity”, and helps us focus on the very odd circumstances. Also there is a sort of creepiness that stems from classical music, we took advantage of the crescendos and pacing of the songs, and took great inspiration from directors such as Darren Aronofsky, who does not stray away from correlating horror to classical music. - Genre and genre conventions

 Now I’m going to give you a bit of a spoiler alert otherwise this analysis is not going to make sense, and considering the rest of the film doesn’t exist, you’re just going to have to take my word, or my blog, for it. The protagonist is Steve. So basically, this character has to, blindly, acknowledge all of his wrong doings and all of the people he’s hurt. With that being said, let’s transition into representation. 

Dainty could be considered the most interesting character in the film. There is a sort of ambiguity that stems from her. While we know Maria is mad at Steve because he cheated, we’re only told Steve stole from Dainty, and to leave it to Steve, “STEALING IS NO BIG DEAL”. In comparison, adultery is a much more serious crime than stealing, since you are hurting someone personally, so what did Steve steal from Dainty? Is it a physical thing or a personal thing? Let’s look at Dainty. First of all, Dainty says she is a little child, but our actress Nicole is 18, and Steve even acknowledges that her clothes are too childish for her, to which Dainty replies that she is a little girl. She is repressing at a younger age. Dainty wears heart shaped sunglasses and red lipstick, something that has been correlated in culture to Nabakov’s character Lolita, a young girl who is taken advantage of by an adult. And that is a possibility to what happened between Dainty and Steve. We wanted to represent Dainty as a traumatized child, someone who was hurt or stolen from at a young age, and remained at that mental age as a form of protection. Her name is Dainty, for two reasons. The first one being that she is the protagonist’s  leader throughout this quest to find Steve, as he gives him context on who Maria is, such as Dante does in the divine comedy, giving us more context that this might be purgatory. Also she is Dainty, fragile and hurt. Dainty represents those who were not allowed to grow normally, and who were repressed from a normal relationship with an adult. Now for Maria, she is Steve’s wife. Her name comes from the Virgin Mary, a woman who was forced to conceive and birth, while not receiving any credit. She is supposed to remain quiet when something crazy, like adultery, happens, and who is called a psycho when she protests. She represents  the classic housewife who has finally lost it. Now for Steve. There are two sides to this, Steve as a person, and Steve in the film, once he lost all of his memories. The person steve, is a sexual deviant, who puts others below his desires and seems to have little remarks for them. He represents the classic alpha male, a businessman who always wins. While the protagonist doesn't represent much, he doesn’t know anything about himself. The only thing he represents is a compromising male, who sees other men's actions, such as cheating or stealing from a child, as ok. He puts the blame on the women and calls Maria a psycho, acknowledging that women should remain silent. - CHARACTERS AND REPRESENTATION

This film would not be consumed by teenangers. According to IMBD, teens enjoy more coming of age, action, and comedymovies, with a couple of splasher horrors thrown in there.  Our market would be more young adults, to adults, with them our film being a film where the audience needs to be ok with not always knowing what is happening, which teens don’t tend to enjoy. Considering we would distribute our film through student film festivals, such as nffty, Indieyouth, and foothill, as well as some regular indie film festivals, so that every type of film fan can enjoy it. I would as well distribute this through my film social media, @moisemonasterio, since mostly other film focused accounts follow me there and could watch it and spread it. - TARGET AUDIENCE AND DISTRIBUTION

The start of this film came from my personal love of creating weird movies. Movies that do not really make a lot of sense, and that have odd and unnerving visuals. I have delved into the genre of psychological horror before, but it was always with blood or traditionally creepy elements. I have always had the idea of a white room being the creepiest of locations. To look around and not be able to deduct anything out of somewhere, could give someone a sense of isolation, and a feeling like they cannot do anything to help themselves, hence why I originally picked this location. However, this was a very unrealistic idea, since it would’ve been impossible to get a completely white room, without at least spending a good dollar. So then, we settled on a field. We thought it conveyed the similar sense of isolation, while adding a certain vastness to it. Although we filmed this about 200 steps from a vending machine and a parking lot, the film feels as though everything is the field, and no matter how much you walk, it will always be the field. It also gave me more opportunity to color grade in fun ways. I was able to take a normal green scenery, and turn it into something that seems almost dream like. 

The research of this project began while I was researching horror tropes and noticed that my favorite horror films all fell under the same trope. You see, There are three classic tropes to horror, The Classic: Story beats build up suspense and tension until something jumps from the shadows. 

• The Full Version: Nothing is happening at all, which makes the audience fearful of what they imagine might happen. 

• The Empty Version: The audience thinks that there is nothing there until they realize there's been something there the whole time. Usually delivered as a reveal.  

Mind Screw

This trope is a combination of symbolism and surrealism. The idea here is that the audience is never quite sure what could be happening. We never have a definitive grip on what is actually going down, until maybe it's too late. 

Here's a list of these tropes compiled by Harriet Moore and Sheldon School:

We went with mind screw. 

Specifically, these are the tropes we wanted in our film

• Due to the symbolism or surrealism, the film appears "weird."

• Even when symbolism is used, it is not explained.

• You have to pick up "pieces" throughout the film to get the whole picture.

Now, you might have noticed that the character Dainty wears a cast-thing. And it is not very well explained. Let me tell you, this is where we encountered our biggest issue. We had planned to film this throughout spring break, however, Nicole, got into a very poorly timed car accident, which made her have to go into surgery. This made it uncertain how our project would progress, but I rewrote the script to include her cast. Due to the circumstances, we had very little time to film, since nicole was in recovery, which is why there are a lot of differences in lighting throughout, since we filmed in one day. However, since we filmed linearly, this was no issue, since I wanted the first shots to be brighter and more overexposed, and all of the other issues I fixed in post. - research and challenges we experienced. 

Editing brought me with a challenge. I rarely edit all by myself, since I find it extremely overwhelming, and stressful. In a way, I was rewriting the script, since some shots did not fit well together, and some dialogue had to be cut. Yet, I’m glad I did it on my own. This project was the first time where I really felt like an editor. Having to edit together so much dialogue, having to create so many J- cuts and L-cuts, helped me become more comfortable with myself and my skills. Also this was my first time where I’ve been given an ample amount of time to create a film, since in my previous filmmaking endeavours, competitions, I’ve had a maximum of a week to make a whole film, and let me just say, it was nice. Having a whole week to edit, and almost a month to write, felt like an indulgence, and made me realize how necessary it is to go back to my work and give it a pair of fresh eyes. I also was able to problem solve, and realize, that I the resources that are provided to me are more than enough. Even this, the CCR, allows me to truly delve into my ideas, and well, it is nice to talk about them. It made me realize how, even subconsciously, our mind puts things together in a way that makes sense. When I first grabbed the heart shaped glasses I did not even realize the correlation to nabokov, and well I’m sure glad I grabbed them. -personal growth 

Now finally, I get to tell you about the tech side of this…yay. If you are wondering why the quality of my video went down, well its so that I can show you the equipment I used. To start off we used a sony a 7 III camera, I think that’s what its called, it might be Sony a 7 three roman numerals, anyway this camera. I chose this camera due to the quality of the video, and because of how little the quality of the video lowers when raising the ISO, and lowering the aperture, basically, it can receive a lot of light. I accompanied this with a 50 mil lens for wide shots, and zoom lens that went up to 85 mils for other shots, both sigma, I know fancy. Additionally, I used this boom mic, the SHURE LensHopper VP93F, in addition to a boom pole and a dead cat, don’t worry it’s just this little fuzzy thing, it helped us block out the wind. Additionally we used a slate, and a tripod. We rented all of this from BECON, a student news channel, that rents out equipment to all media and tv south florida students. (Wink). -equipment

I edited this on adobe premier pro. I have premiere certification I received my sophomore year and I have been editing for over two years, which definitely came in handy. Oh, and if you haven’t gotten the memo, I color graded the absolute heck out of this. Just check out this shot before, and after colorgrading. I find the coloring section of premier to be a little complicated, but overall very useful. Additionally, I used adobe after effects to create the graphics of the film. Using the font soft spirit, and the effect, “quiver”, I very simply was able to get the creepy credits you see in the film. -softwares

 

I loved doing this project. Although it presented at times as stressful, and annoying, and, you get me, I am very proud with out outcome, and I simply cannot wait to make a much longer film in A level. 

I hope you enjoyed steve just as much as I enjoyed making it. Im Virginia Monasterio, thank you for watching. -final remarks