AICE Media Studies

     After my short film was finished being edited, it was time to seek a third person point of view. It is fundamental to get a second opinion on any film or artistic work and it often takes an unbiased view to provide unbiased criticizations. A third person can point out aspects you are lacking in, as well as what you have excelled in. For my viewing, I chose my friend, Ariel Pierre, to watch and review as she was in A level Media studies lass year. She brings with her experience and knowledge in movie making that is ideal in reviewing my short film.      So after I showed her my short film on Capcut, she started to give her critiques. Overall, she liked the plot twist and how it wasn't over stereotypical, but still was shocking enough to film the rest of the film. She liked the slow build up to showing Hoffmans face in the beginning as it made it more suspenseful. Likewise, she liked the sequence of shots that occur when Hoffman chases Reynolds as you al...

     I believe that the most important concept to a film's success is its film score. Without music to properly capture the suspense, excitement, and mood of the story, audiences would never resonate with the emotions of the film. For our film, we wanted the last 30 seconds to include a powerful music score. The music would take place after the two detectives wrestle on the ground and highlight the mystery of who shot who. As the camera pans up at the tress, I wanted a song that captures the peacefulness of the treetops while still being a little mysterious. As the camera pans up to reveal that Detective Reynolds survives, the screen will cut black and the credits will be shown as the music still plays. The music should be able to show the audiences shock and resolution with the plot.      Searching for music is harder than talking about it. I knew that there was no way of getting a popular song with royalties in our film. Because of this, I started to look...

     Once I had all the shots filmed, it was time for editing. Zeyn sent all the shots we filmed from his phone to my email, from which I downloaded them onto my computer. I then made a new Capcut account so both Zane and I could edit on later and uploaded the videos on the project space. The uploading of all the shots took a while as five minutes worth of film takes a while to fully download and sometimes glitches. Because of this I took two to three breaks to let the Capcut program settle. I then put all the shots in their proper order for which I used the storyboard. I then cropped the shots so any time before or after important sequences was eliminated. This brought the time down from 5:25 to 4:58. I knew I needed at least ten seconds at the end for the credits to play, so I double checked if any of the shots could be cropped even more. I gained five seconds by doing this. Now it was time for sound.       The sound for the shots were not significan...

     Day 2 of filming occurred on Wednesday, February 28. Zane, Jason, Zeyn, and I all met up at Zane's house to finish filming. First, we had to finish the car scenes before we moved to the scenes in the park. I stood outside while they drove past me to get the establishing/wide shot. Then I went inside the car to film the dialogue scenes between the two detectives. At one point, Zane had to hold the camera himself to film Jason because we needed a medium shot of just Jason, and I can't position myself to film that from the backseat. Once I was done with the car scenes we parked the car in the park.       I once again got out of the car and started filming from the ground while Zane parked the car for the shot and ran out. This shot where the detective chase starts took some coordination as the car has to park first, then detective Reynolds runs out, then detective Hoffman runs out. The next set of scenes includes the detective running, which Jason co...

  The first day of filming took place on Sunday, February the 25th. Zeyn El Ali, Jason Alexandrescu, and I showed up at Zane Royers house to film. We decided to work chronologically and film the shots in order while crossing them out with a pen. I used Zeyn's phone for filming since he had the best camera quality and storage. After everyone was in costume, we got to work.     I used my fake blood for the first shot and watered it down. I filmed the opening sequence by using Zeyn's phone while Jason crossed out the storyboard. Now it was time to film the coroner's office. I got into my doctor scrubs costume and tied back my purple dyed hair to hide the unprofessionalness. We realized Zane's dinning room table was too unstable for Zeyn to be laying there while playing the dead body, so we used the floor. We used a verity of white sheets to make Zeyn look like a corpse at a morgue, while still being on the floor. I did the bruise makeup on Zeyn's cheek and covered him ...

     Our first, original schedule for filming was to have a shoot every Saturday starting February the 10th.       Original filming dates were 2/10, 2/17, and 2/24 at locations at Zane Royers house, Easterlin Park, and the Galleria Mall parking garage. We decided it would be best to film on Saturday's since that is when we are all available. On weekdays, Zane is busy with football practice, and I don't have a car to drive anywhere. For the locations, Zane's house is where we could film the opening sequence, the morgue scene, and scene 2 shots in the car. Easterlin Park is where we would film the last half of scene two which takes place in an abandoned park. And the Galleria mall garage is where we could film outside the police station.       Unfortunately, my group member, Jason, wasn't available to film 2/10 last minute so we cancelled. We rescheduled the same filming day at Zane's house the following Monday on 2/19 since Zane woul...

     For the longest time, our short film went without a title. Even I who made the pitch and screenplay had trouble making a title that fit the story perfectly. I knew I didn't want the title to be too long and starting with the phrase "The murder of" or "The killings of" as it seemed too cliche. I only knew I wanted the title to reflect the genre of crime-thriller.       For the thriller genre, typical titles could either be one-word long such as "Parasite" and "Reptile", or longer titles such as "Silence of the Lambs" and "The Girl on the Train." Overall, the words in the titles are short even if they have more than one seen in "Get Out" and "Gone Girl." For the Crime genre, typical titles are almost always short and not as long as some of the thriller ones. Examples include "The Guilty", "The Unforgivable", and "Glass." With these titles in mind, I am leaning towards a ...

Here is my screenplay that I made with dynamics and time in mind.   short movie screenplay (title TBD) - Google Docs