Thriller And horror Genre research

For this blog we have to pick two other genres, we picked thriller and horror. For thriller there are many common themes. Many films themes include: mystery, crime and revenge. For the C.A.M.S. Many camera angles include birds eye views for a way to look down upon something and dutch angles to show suspense. Camera shots, topically the use Close ups for the characters reactions, shot/reverse shot to show consequences, extreme close ups to emphasize objects and long shots to show the atmosphere. For movements, they’re usually be pans, or zooms that show a character, and a lot of tracking shots in a chase.

For clamps and sound, The costumes, they can be as basic as normal clothing, or regular work clothes like a doctor gown. The lighting can be very dark or really bright to add suspense. The actors vary from very famous to not that known. The makeup is usually basic because its normally regular people being acted. For props it can be anything from a gun to a pencil, there are an immense amounts of props in thrillers because they are either used to move the story along or just a simple everyday object. For setting it can be anything from a store to an airplane. For sound it’s mostly diegetic like dialogue or intense background music to build tension.

For the elements, there has to be a good story. Without a good story the movie will flop. With a good thriller there also needs to have some sort of suspense. A viewer can't really get anything out of a thriller if there is no suspense. Suspense brings tension, and tension keeps the viewer at the edge of their seats at all times. Another thing that helps the plot is the actors, without good actors the story will just feel rushed or simple in ways. Those two things makes up a good thriller. Some ways a thriller can be bad is, if it’s rushed or drawn out. A lot of thriller movies are a little too drawn out or too rushed and have a very shallow scripts, were it makes the movie uneventful and dry, making the movie almost funny. Besides some of the damp plots, We really think that the the thriller genre holds up well. 

For our second genre to research, we chose horror. There are a lot of twisted and unusual camera angle in horror films. Many films use low angles to show how terrifying the villain is or a Dutch angle to intense the unusual feel of a scene. For the camera shots, topically the use Close ups for the characters reactions, and tracking shots for the escape/chasing scenes. For movements, they can be usually be pans, or zooms that face a character, which make the camera shot into a close up.

For clamps, the costumes, they can be as basic as normal clothing, and as intricate as a detailed monster costume. The lighting can be very  dark at times to increase the scare factor. The actors are all usually indie actors because horror films are mostly low budget films. The makeup is also as complex and important as the costumes because for the monster/villain, it can bring out the scariest parts of the actor. The props are usually murder weapons, which includes, nives, swords pistols, and other harmful objects. The settings are mostly in dark and scary areas which includes: forest, a haunted house, sewers, cemeteries and carnivals.

To continue with, the sound usually contains, goosebump giving noises that are very erie and other unearthly sounds. For the elements, there are two prominent ones. The first and more important element of a horror movie is suspense. A viewer can't really get scared of a film if  there is no suspense. suspense is what keeps the audience on the edge on their seat, keeping their attention making the movie interesting and not boring. for the next element of horror, it is what causes suspense, and it is mystery. Mystery causes suspense and it is the main drive of most horror movies. The unknown can be very terrifying, and most, or not if all movies use mystery as something for the viewer to be scared off. With all of these ideas together, us as a group really like horror movies. The simple and raw energy of fear can be really entertaining and something different compared to other types of emotions you get from other types of genre of film. Although we like horror films, they have some problems. A lot of horror movies are a little too corny and have a very shallow script, were it makes the movie not scary anymore, making it not even a horror movie more. Besides all of the corny horror movies, We really think that the horror genre is one of the best.

Action genera research

A few assignments back, my team and I were assigned a project that had us make a power point in relation to a random genre. We were assigned the action genre which we felt pretty lucky to get. We felt that together we can make a good looking PowerPoint and get reliable information since the genre is so common. We made sure to include pictures throughout that came from well known action movies like Fast & Furious and John Wick. Another thing we did was watch a few short clips to get a sort of idea of an action film and what’s in it. Our Power Point focused on not only the genre itself, but also the different camera angles and movements used when making this sort of film. Clamps was an acronym that we stuck to which helped to organize our slides when talking on costumes, lighting, actors, make-up, props, and setting. This was very important because most action films have these things in common. Finally, we added in some slides that had more info on action films and it’s history. Our class is now referring back to this power point which proves its usefulness even past it’s due date.

Choosing the right pitch

      We have narrowed down our movie idea options from three to two. We decided to not do the deadly paintball game idea. It would be to expensive and could be unsafe. It is also in a location that is far, so filming at a time when everyone is available would be very hard. Reshooting would also be very hard to do because of the paintball park’s location and admission fee. Our other ideas are stronger and more interesting. They are also much easier to film and edit. There are two remaining pitches, the one about a mystery kidnapper and the one about a ghost. It is very hard to decide which one we should use as our final. Both have many pros and cons and our group is not unanimous.

   For our first pitch, we feel like it would have the most interesting plot. But it’s not perfect. The cons of this pitch is that we would have to film at night, making it harder for us to get good lighting or shots. Since it’s also late at night, where we would need to shoot it in downtown Hollywood may be packed. The Pros for this pitch how ever is about how much we can make out of it. The costumes are really easy to make and the location is really close to where we live. 

For the second pitch, it is probably one of the easiest for us to do. The pros are that the plot is simple and the part that we are  shooting is only in a house. We are not going to film any scenes with someone driving, like one of the other pitches so we won’t need any adult Supervision. On the contrary the story might be a little to bare-bones and might be somewhat boring. Another con is that the story we have at the moment has to much of a short story feel, not like the first 2 minutes of a movie like it should have

Our final decision was tough but we ended up coming to a conclusion that we feel will be the most beneficial towards giving us and that A level grade. With careful consideration, we decided to create the kidnapping pitch. There was something about this pitch that made it stand out from the rest and as a group we can really make this idea into an awesome clip. Now that we’ve decided that this is a definite pitch we can really get to working out the critical parts. Another benefit when choosing this pitch is that we use a truck for effects. This will enhance our clip and make it more unique. The inclusion of the truck makes the pitch far better then the others. All of our previous projects have prepared us so we can do as good as we possibly can on this one. It’s between Cambridge and us now. It’s just a matter of meeting all our deadlines and making the best video we can.

Start of final task

   This is the beginning of the final project and i have changed a lot since our first, but i am relatively the same. I still go the the same school, still talk to the same friends, made a couple new ones, but nothing like that stuff really changed. I am still a A/B student (besides that one algebra 2 quarter) I still try to get good grades mostly get them. i still haven't learned a single word of Spanish, even though i am  in Spanish. I just realized that i haven't really changed since the first blog but i grew a couple inches since. My group changed a Little for these projects. The first Project it was Me, Paige, Zeke ,and Elijah. The second project it was just me and Paige. For this project the old team came back together and it's the same as the first project, witch is Me, Paige, Zeke ,and Elijah.

   Besides the stuff outside of class i have learned a lot inside our class. I really enjoy any types of film and how they are made, and the stuff that i have retained from this class really sparked my interest. When watching some movies i am always puzzled on how they did these shots and from the stuff i learned i found out how i did this. The camera angles that we were shown, were very interesting and cool. on the other hand, the stuff that I learned from the project film making was I thought was even more interesting. I learned how to be a cameraman, and my camera skills evolved. I can actually use a camera now too and not use it like a buffoon. My storytelling has gotten greater too, and i can actually create a story with a deep plot, not a shallow one.

   For the our pitches, i think they are pretty creative. For our first pitch, we decided that we are going to do a self discovering type of film. This pitch is about the main character wakes up to find out that he is a ghost he goes on a journey to find out how he died. This is a pretty good pitch in my opinion (because i made it). The second pitch that our group made is a crime, abduction movie. The pitch is were the main characters find themselves involved in some dangerous business and go on trying to escape their captures and keep themselves from life in a cell. This is probably the most likely Pitch we are going to pick for our project. For the last pitch it is a horror film. This pitch is a friendly paintball game turns into a deadly situation once all of the paintball become toxic. Players go on a quest to save their teammates.

Music Video Edditing blog

  Today we finally finished this hard trial of editing our film and i'm glad we are finally done with this project. It has been over 3 days of editing this footage and each day had its own problems. The first day of editing was a day right after we filmed all of our footage. The whole day we were trying to transfer our footage from Paige's phone to Pinnacle studios. This was a tough problem to solve because nothing was working. At first we tried to transfer the film by Gmail. This didn't work because it couldn't handle transfering all of them at once so we tried doing them one by one we transferred the film one by one and it started going smoothly. Half way through transfering the film  some of shots wouldn't transfer. We spent the rest of the period trouble shooting on how to fix this problem and we asked Ms. Kats and she gave us her flash drive so paige could transfer all of the film at home from her computer to the flashdrive so we can use it at school.
   The next day of editing it also had it troubles. Paige and I kept switching back and forth on if we should use the vertical shots and horizontal. At first we were going to do a mix but everything looked garbage. All of our film was filmed in a vertical view and some in horizontal. Paige and I thought that The whole film had to be horizontal so we tried to work that out. We tried to crop out the top of the vertical shots and add borders, but that didn't work that well and left shots janky. With that option not working it left us with two paths. The first was to film the non horizontal shots horizontal, making us film more or just do it all in vertical form. We ended up Choosing the latter, which we are both happy about.
  The last day of editing was today which probably had the most frustrating problem. We had to fix a lot of the footage, which was sideways because it transferred wrong from paige's phone. This was the only problem that we were not able to fix. We tried a lot of different ways to change this, in pinnacle studios and outside of pinnacle studios like windows movie editor. All of these did not work and it was very frustrating. Although none of these worked, we tried I-movie and this saved us. None of the transfering problems ever occurred to us when we used I-movie because it was already on paige's phone. It literally took Paige and I about 10 minutes to figure out the app, transfer all of the film and, edit the shot and it was done.
 

Music Video Filming Blog part 2

   We finished filming for our music video about a week ago, but there is still stuff that pertains to filming that we need to do. Half of our shots were filmed vertical, not horizontal. The shots are not supposed to be vertical, because it will look janky when viewing it on a horizontal screen. All of the footage that was filmed vertical was the easiest footage to film, only needing paige and her dog. All of those scenes would probably take from 30-45 minutes to do. So paige decided that she could do all of those scenes, but i didn't agree. I felt really bad about her doing all of those shots by herself, but she made me do another thing. I had to "find" the music for the music video, which is took me less than 2 minutes to "find" the music and download it. 

   The film that we already filmed before that was horizontal, or that could be changed into a horizontal shot had its problems too. The first problem was that the film wouldn't email from paige's phone. We were using paige's phone in the first place because we forgot to charge the camera. It took awhile for us to try new ways of finding a way to transfer the film. We tried email, which sent half od shots, the others didn't work. Some of the film was to long, and others we couldn't find a reason why they wouldn't go through. We tried google docs, which didn't work as well. Then Ms. Cats came to our rescue.

   Ms. Cats offered us to use her flash drive, which saved our skins. I don't have an idea of what we had of done if Ms. Cats didn't offer us the flash drive I wouldn't know what to do. With the flash drive we couldn't use at school. since none of the footage would transfer to the school computers because of the bad school wifi and the bad storage of the school computers. Paige had to transfer the film to the flash drive because she had the film on her phone. Transfering from her phone to her computer was a lot easier from any other methods we have tried to do before.

Music Video Fillming Blog

    So we started filming and it was a lot better than the last project. This project we got to do outside of school, which was one of the leading reasons why it was easier. I rode my bike to Paige's house to do our first shot, witch was right on the end of her block. the shot was a simple one, with us using a flyer that had a lost dog, that paige taped onto the street corner pole. the next scene was the one were we set the location of the film. we walked over to harbor island and did the shot in front of the gates that lead into the park. The next shot was introducing paige's dog Evie, with her just wandering around.
    The next scene is paige wandering around, trying to find evie. this and most of all of the scenes were all taken multiple times and most of the shots were all different then the last. Most of the time we were just trying new camera movements and angles, and just testing out new stuff. The next shot we have paige and Evie find each other and the shot was a mix of a pan and a over the shoulder.
the next slide was the reunion scene. when we filmed this scene, we actually combined the next scene together when filming because they go back to back on the storyboard and are at the same location. Those 2 shots were made into a pan, that goes left to right, right to left and back to left to right, following paige and evie. For the seventh shot we had paige hook Evie's leash on her collar, it was just a normal shot that was full body. The next shot Evie and paige run at the camera, and the shot is slomo, and it is a low angle
  For the next shots we introduced people and dogs other than Paige and Evie. Paige and I got some of our friends that live in our neighborhood and that live near harbor island, were we were filming. We had 4 friends who brought their dogs with them. For the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th scenes we had each of the friends besides one of them who i replaced and held their dogs. for all of those shots it was just full body or just medium close up. After we filmed all of these shots we checked over all of the film and we realized a problem. most of not if all of the footage was filmed as a vertical shot, not horizontal. however i can fix this problem, buts thats for another time.