Deciding Genre- Mystery

After conducting research on the two genres that we were debating between, we finally decided to make our movie fall under the mystery genre. We decided that horror was too basic, and too hard to make our movie different from the rest. A lot of horror movies follow the same plot, and we do not want to copy any ideas unintentionally, as our idea is original. Since we decided on mystery, we have more freedom to stretch our plot and make it more original. Additionally, with horror, most of the time extravagant costumes, makeup and props are included for that. Since we are young and not experienced enough to incorporate these aspects, mystery is a better choice. Furthermore, our idea just overall aligns better with the aspects of mystery. We are excited to experiment with different camera angles, lighting and movement particular to this genre.

Genre Research- Horror and Mystery

For our film, we are now conducting research on other genres. We are currently debating between horror and mystery because each of these could fall under the category of our film. This powerpoint attached below, is our research for the horror genre. We conducted research about the CLAMPS, CAMS and overall elements of genre. Additionally, we included the elements of comedy that appealed to us, and those that didn’t appeal to us. I learned that in horror, there are many different camera angles being used, many of which are high angles. High angles in horror are used to show weakness of a character, or portraying the victim of the plot. Also, there are many close ups, and extreme close ups. These are used to show very specific aspects of emotion, like extreme fear that can be clearly seen up close. Overall, there are many specific aspects to horror that stand out from the rest of the genres. Below is a powerpoint with all of our research that we conducted particular to this genre.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XeFHPDCEAS5GLX3yJztfkkdLi8lRJbOrf7FS7MYi4X4
Overall, we are debating for our movie to fall under either the horror, or mystery genre. Since we already conducted research for horror, we decided to conduct research about the mystery genre. Mystery is also a very specific genre, that includes many elements specific to this genre. We included information about the CLAMPS, CAMS, and the elements of drama, along with the elements that appealed to us and did not appeal to us. Some elements of mystery that appeal to me are the overall curiosity that lies within the plot, and the hidden clues that are placed within the film. I enjoy, as the audience, watching a mystery movie and attempting to predict who is the culprit, and who assisted in the mystery. This is appealing to many audiences, as they can become emotionally involved into the plot itself. One element that does not appeal to me is if the mystery is poorly constructed, and not leaving the audience with enough clues to predict the ending. This can lead to confusion, and overall dislike of the movie. Below, is a powerpoint with all of our research conducted on this specific genre, mystery.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QNAZkRVF1YYnvQr0ErkltneH7psZfYqzk7nulGnTG60

Genre Research- Comedy

This powerpoint, attached below, is research for a genre of film. This is a project that we have completed this year, in which we were randomly assigned a certain genre. The instructions said that we needed to research this genre, specifically the CLAMPS, CAMS and more. My group was assigned comedy, which was helpful to learn even though that our movie does not fall under this category. I learned many different things about this genre, of which I would not have known if i did not conduct this research. Specifically, I did not know about the certain camera angles being used. For example, I never realized that most comedy is filmed at eye level, as most comedy is shot in real life situations. Additionally, I didn’t realize that there are a lot of zooming in and out shots, until after I conducted this research. Overall, this project was helpful for our movie, in the way that we can now eliminate comedy as one of the options for the genre of our film. The research we conducted does not match up with the description of the thoughts for our pitch.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VDqgqkRIPMCkwmtJVh_fVPPv5Ppyww7XSZMs6vDYqi0

Narrowing Pitches Down

Today, 1/16/2020, my group decided on our 3 pitch ideas (as listed in the previous blog). Upon debating between them, we realized that there are many pros and cons to both. We based our decision mainly on two different factors: originality and drama. Accounting for this, we decided to narrow out our first pitch. This pitch was described as a horror, kidnapping film. This pitch is much different from the others, as the others are mystery and this one is horror. We are aiming to stick with mystery, so automatically we decided to narrow out this pitch. Additionally, we determined that this pitch was not very original. There are many movies that have been created involving kidnapping. We created this idea originally because we thought that it would be easy to work with. After long consideration, we decided that it is not original and not within the right drama that we had envisioned doing.
Now, we narrowed our options down to our last two pitches. One being the pitch involving an abandoned house, and the other being about the restaurant poisoning. After discussing each one in depth, we decided to then rule out our abandoned house pitch. Even though it does fall in the right category, it would overall be too complicated to film. I believe that we would have trouble securing the location because we would have to find an abandoned home. Along with finding a good place, there is also a major safety issue involved. Abandoned houses are not safe, and we would be trespassing on private property. This situation is not ideal for the filming of our movie. Even though it would be a fun movie to film, it is not ideal conditions that can guarantee success of our final project. Accounting for this, we decided that this pitch would not be a good fit for our movie.
On the other hand, we decided that the pitch about the restaurant poisoning is most likely the best idea that we have thought about so far. We believe that this idea fits all of our requirements and in the end, will hopefully turn out the best. Beginning with the genre, we believe that mystery is going to be the easiest and most interesting to film. As this film is involving the poisoning of ones drink, this causes it to fall under mystery because the goal is to figure out who did it. Additionally, we believe that our idea is very original. We intend for the movie to begin with a normal group of friends casually going out for dinner. Following this, they all order their dinners and drinks, and the waiter comes back to deliver them. However, when she hands back the drinks, she makes sure to give one of the girls a certain drink, even though they all order the same thing. Shortly after, the girl that was given the certain drink falls ill. The rest of the movie will show the characters trying to determine who poisoned the drink. This idea was envisioned by us, and not based off of any other movie. Therefore, it is original, and the perfect fit for our movie.

Start of Final Task

My name is Danielle and I am a student at Fort Lauderdale High in Florida. I am in 10th grade and I am currently 16 years old. I am currently taking 4 AICE classes, including this class. The AICE classes that I am taking are Thinking Skills, Media Studies, English Language and European history. This is a big challenge to take on as a 10th grader, but it is very important in order to achieve my AICE diploma. I am looking forward to graduating with this extra diploma, with hopes that I can get into a prestigious college that I wish to attend in the future. I am aspiring to get accepted into University of Florida, and I strongly believe that my AICE diploma will be a prominent feature in this journey. In my free time, I go to dance every day after school. I have been dancing since I was very young and I hope to continue my journey throughout college. I aspire to dance in college as well, to keep me busy and in shape.
Before taking this class, I did not know much about editing and filming. After filming our commercial and music video, I have learned many different ways to film, plan and edit a video successfully. In our first project, our commercial, we used pinnacle studios to edit. However, using the school computers for this combined with this application, did not result so well. Our final project was successful, but there were many malfunctions along the way dealing with the computers. On the other hand, our music video that we created turned out just the way we had planned. We decided to film with our iPhones and edit on iMovie instead of using pinnacle studios on the school computers. It was much easier to edit and manipulate. For this project, I am working with Julia and we are very excited to begin. We are planning on using iMovie this time, as it was the most successful application to use.
To begin working on our project, the first step that we need to approach is creating our pitch. A pitch is a hollywood term to describe an idea where a film is encapsulated in 25 words or less. It took us a while to think about, but after long discussion we finally narrowed it down to 3 ideas. Our first idea is, “As normal, a mom comes home from work, excited to see her daughter. However she is not there... where did she go?” This idea is inspired from our idea to create a horror movie involving kidnapping. Our second pitch idea is, “Its Halloween and as a tradition, a group of friends explores an abandoned house. However this year turns out different... what do they find?” This idea is a mystery movie involving a group of kids finding a bottle with a note in it that takes them for a journey. Our last idea is, “A girls night out goes wrong and someone ends up with a poisoned drink. Who poisoned them?” This idea is also a mystery movie, involving a group of girls who go out for a normal night. They are all given waters, and the waiter gives them the drinks in a weird way, causing them to suspect something. One girl falls ill, leading them to believe that someone poisoned their drinks. So far, we are leaning towards this idea because we believe it is the most original and creative. Below, are pictures of us working on our blogs and pitch ideas today, 1/16/2020.

Editing

Today, 12/4, we finished editing our music video. After a few hours of long work, we finally finished editing. We are very pleased with the overall outcome of the video. Even though we couldn’t use the professional camera that we signed out from the class, all of the clips turned out good, just the way we had planned. I think that the camera on the iphone that we had used to film was better quality than the camera we signed out. We used this camera for the commercial, and i think our music video overall turned out better. There were some complications but the finished product did not show them. The whole process took about 4 weeks of planning, storyboarding, filming and editing. The editing portion did not go exactly as planned, however. We learned to overcome this and complete our video either way.
One of the complications that we faced was with the music. The song that we had planned to put into our music video was Sugar, by Robin Schultz. Because we couldn’t use the camera and we used the iphone to film, it was easier for us to use imovie instead of pinnacle studios. It would have been really difficult for us to transport all of the clips on our phone to the computer for pinnacle studios. With imovie, we were easily able to transport our clips onto the application. Once they were transferred onto imovie, we needed to add sound first. If we added sound after we edited, the clips wouldn’t match up with the words in the song. So once the clips were uploaded, the next step was to import the song into the video. When I clicked the sound button to import the song, it said that the song was DRM protected. This means that we could not import the sound onto the video. The solution that we thought of was to do a voice over of the song playing on someone else’s phone and insert it into the video. This worked out perfectly fine and the sound sounded completely normal.
Another issue that we had faced when editing the video was that I could not figure out how to manage the transformations. I had envisioned the video to have transitions between clips that fade into one another. When I began editing, the only transition that it would allow was to just cut into each new clip. I didn't think that this looked smooth and consistent. I figured out that in order for imovie to allow me to use the dissolve transition, I needed to insert each clip individually. This clearly took much more time that my previous method, but the overall product turned out better. Even though we faced multiple complications, we are pleased by the way that the product turned out. Overall, the editing process was long and tedious, but the finished music video was a product of good quality and planning.

Filming (continued)

This weekend, we finally filmed our music video. We filmed on 11/27, the day before Thanksgiving. The timing worked out perfectly, as it was over break and we were all available. We included our two other friends, Ari and Lucy into the video. Since Ari drives, we were able to successfully film the clips in the car that we had planned out on the storyboard. Overall, we filmed some of the clips that we planned out, but not all of them. For example, we planned on staying for sunset and concluding the video with those clips. However, we did not end up staying for sunset and concluded the video with us closing the doors to the car and waving bye. We were overall pretty successful with the way that all of the clips turned out. If we didn’t like the way something looked, we would film them again and again until we got it the way the wanted to look. In total, we took over 60 different clips to include in our final product.
Overall, everything went pretty smoothly. Every place we planned to go, we went, and filmed the clips that we planned. Only one thing did not go as planned. On Monday, 11/25, we signed out the camera from class, along with the SD card. Our teacher told us to charge the camera multiple times, but we forgot to charge it. When we first got in the car and took out the camera, we realized that we had to charge it but we didn’t. Originally, the camera said that we had 29 minutes left of battery but then it quickly decreased and soon the camera was dead. We then tried to charge the camera in the car, but it wasn’t charging fast enough and it did not work out. We decided to use our phones to film instead of the camera. This worked out in our favor and was overall less stressful than to worry about the camera working properly.
We ended up filming about 75% of the clips that we had planned. For example, we filmed a close up of our friend singing certain lyrics to the song. We filmed multiple of these, and we will cut back to them multiple times throughout the video. We also filmed with donuts from Krispy Kreme, not Dunkin’ donuts like we had planned. We filmed the server at the drive-through window handing us the donuts, us eating them, and a few shots of just the donuts in the box. We also filmed a few shots of us all dancing in the car and being happy, just like the song is talking about. In addition to the clips that we had planned in our storyboard, we added some new clips. One new clip we added to conclude the video was of us waving bye and closing the car door. We felt that this was a good way to end the video, instead of staying for sunset. Overall, we are content with the way all of the individual clips turned out and we will soon put it all together.