Another Chance?

  We have officially rescheduled filming for Monday, the 21st. Everyone has confirmed they will be available on that day. We chose this day for multiple reasons. One, it is close to the beginning o winter break so many people might not have plans yet (which no one had.) A second reason is because we wanted an ample amount of time to edit since we weren't confident in the componence of some of our actors. Although, it is ironic I say this since my acting skills aren't that strong in and of itself. One of my biggest fears are that we might have to do some refilming since we may have some unsuccessful takes. Unfortunately, we d not have this commodity since a handful of our extras are only in Florida for winter break and will leave state soon after the da filming. To compensate, we will try to get as many takes as possible on the day of filming. We can only try our best to ensure that we will have enough time to capture enough takes and that all of the audio will come out crisp. If not we might have to resort to having actors do complete voice- over over their own voices.

Editing

 My editing skills are only strong in Photoshop and Illustrator so, I am leaving the majority of the editing for Eva. I can however edit the audio so, that is what I will most likely be doing. Eva created a new project in Premiere. I then imported it. The first thing Eva did was line up the clips. This took much longer than I thought it would. Last year it was much quicker. This was because they were only two minutes for the film last year. The hardest part, according o Eva, was lining up the conversation shots. This is because they all look the same. So, she had to watch all of the clips multiple times just to get the order. Currently looking at the footage I fear that we don’t have enough to get to five minutes. I am currently at 2 and a half minutes. I already used a bit over half of the footage.

Update: I finished lining up all of the footage. With place holders for the main titles, it made it to exactly five minutes. This is exactly where it needs to be. This was a great start to the editing process. Now that everything is lined up I have to add transitions, effects, and finish the titles.

Music and Soundtrack Decisions

 

Today we searched for the music we are going to use for our film. We need at least two songs. One is going to sound spooky and the other is going to have a cheerful, upbeat vibe. Our best bet would be to find a small artist and ask for their permission to use their OST. An alternative however would be to simply find a royalty- free track so we don't have to ask for permission. This will most likely be what we do. Each track will have to be at least two and a half minutes. Preferably, the tracks will go over two and a half minutes so they can be altered if needed.

Eva has found a happy song which is royalty free. This could act as the song that is played in the exposition. Although the song is only two minutes long, our short film is five minutes. This song seems like it could work, given it is unlikely that is will be played through the whole first half of the movie. If this song doesn't work however, I'll attempt to find another song we can use ( but it most likely will.)

The Filming Decision

 During Thanksgiving Break, my group and I decided not to film. we came to this conclusion due to a number of factors. The first and most important factor is the ongoing pandemic with covid-19. The pandemic meant that we could not safely film in any public places and could not be in rooms that were congested. Considering that our movie takes place in a suburban home and our need for extras, choosing to film would be a risky move for all parties involved. The second was a lack of time. None of our group could properly set a date and time to meet for filming even if we wanted to film over the break. While it did come as a disappointment that we could not film so soon, our group instead looked at it as a positive. the longer we wait to film, the more time we will have to plan and prepare and make our film as close to the original vision it can be. while it may be multiple weeks until we film, we will be confident in our abilities both as a group and as a filming crew. While with enough planning and rushed preparation we could have completed the film over the break. However, the irritation and the pain from planning a date and the unnecessary danger that the crew would be put into far outweighed the potential benefit coming from filming the movie earlier. in fact, filming so soon could have been rise to much more irritating issues like more retakes than necessary. We, as a group are glad we chose not to film this past week and are excited for filming to the best of our ability in the upcoming weeks. Our film will be much better for it.

Permissions

   As a reminder, our pitch is a group of teenagers who hear a strange noise coming from under the house when they investigate suddenly they start to go missing one by one. We debated upon the three genres for a bit. We ended up deciding on horror. I think it fits the best. Also, it is the one I would like the best. The pace fit the best for the pitch. Horror is fast-paced. This will allow for a very cool action sequence. The action sequences are my favorite to edit. Another thing that I liked about the horror genre is the angles and movements. There is a lot of room for creativity. One of my favorite shots is the over the shoulder shot. It is optimized a lot in horror films. Due to the location we are filming, the common lighting being dim is perfect.  I think this is a great fit for this pitch. There is a lot of wiggle room which, I like. Some of my favorite movies are in the horror genre. I look forward to making this project with my group.  Considering that our movie takes place in a suburban home and our need for extras, choosing to film would be a risky move for all parties involved. The second was a lack of time. None of our group could properly set a date and time to meet for filming even if we wanted to film over the break. While it did come as a disappointment that we could not film so soon, our group instead looked at it as a positive. the longer we wait to film, the more time we will have to plan and prepare and make our film as close to the original vision it can be. while it may be multiple weeks until we film, we will be confident in our abilities both as a group and as a filming crew. While with enough planning and rushed preparation we could have completed the film over the break. However, the irritation and the pain from planning a date and the unnecessary danger that the crew would be put into far outweighed the potential benefit coming from filming the movie earlier. in fact, filming so soon could have been rise to much more irritating issues like more retakes than necessary. We, as a group are glad we chose not to film this past week and are excited for filming to the best of our ability in the upcoming weeks. Our film will be much better for it.

The Marketing of Vacant

We wanted our marketing campaign to be as Wide-reaching as possible. We achieved this by putting our movie on a number of different social media sites. all of the accounts on these sites share the same name so that we benefit from brand recognition. The name of our movie is short and sweet and is a normal word from the English dictionary to increase the chances that we are remembered by people simply visiting our pages. We want the name to stick out and be memorable without being a mouthful. we use many sites such as Facebook and Instagram. reaching out to this many platforms does nothing else but give us more exposure. For the specific form of marketing, we figured that most people will have an account in at least one of these places. The website is simplistic and easy to use. All of the necessary information that one would need to gather a sufficient amount of information on this movie is easy to access by simply visiting this website. The wide reach of our platforms, the accessible site, and the short chipper title are memorable and easy to use. We feel that this social media site will do a great job advertising our movie to anyone who would be interested. we are planning on expanding each site to include more information about the movie. While the number of platforms will most likely stay the same, the information will update with the production of the movie. Hopefully, our platforms are all-encompassing and informational for anyone who would like to see our movie.

https://vacantthemovie.wixsite.com/vacancy

Storyboaring

 My team decided to storyboard our movie make it easier to imagine the movie in motion. The storyboarding process is essential to the flow and the creative process of creating a movie. It allows the people creating the movie to put the movie on a physical medium, without committing to the manhours needed to film a movie. A supremely important part of the movie creating process is the storyboard. This is shown by realizing that almost every movie made in the past decade had at least one storyboard. For the storyboard, we decided to split up the work between us. this made it easier for everyone so that no one person had the task of creating 90 individual storyboard panels. For the storyboards, we did not focus on the quality of the art of the storyboards. we instead tried to focus on the type of camera angle we would use for a certain second of the movie. using this, the day of filming would be made easier on all of us and we could change things quickly if needed. we do not have to write dialogue either, as the script is on a separate document. while it may be inconvenient to have separate documents for these critical aspects of filmmaking, but this allows the separate documents to be as detailed as possible. While art is not my strong suit, I still tried to make the positioning of the characters as visually pleasing as possible. this works around my poor art skills and simply acts as a skeleton of what we should do when the day of filming rolls around. all in all, I am glad we decided to make a storyboard.