Creative Critical Reflection (CCR)

Here is my CCR!

https://youtu.be/44U6-3MGtTA

Link to the Google Drive with the final product and CCR:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MAqrdQu_GdfuMQAB4qAMxZrEag-IxNDt

Reflection

“ASESINA” is a suspense film about a female killer who kills the men she dates. The opening scene uses the conventions of the suspense genre of hiding certain aspects of the antagonist in order to create discomfort and tension. The identity of the main character, Anabella, is kept hidden throughout the scene until the very end, similar to how the shark in “Jaws” is not visible in the opening scene. This creates discomfort for the audience as it plays with the fear of the unknown, especially since they can’t put a face to the person. Additionally, her actions are unclear at first, adding to the idea of a hidden identity. As the scene unravels, the audience is able to slowly understand what she is doing as tension slowly builds up, which is another convention of the suspense genre. The image of her hanging up and admiring the pictures of her victims as if they were trophies make the audience uncomfortable. In addition, the haunting song that the main character sings “Come Little Children” is uncomfortable since she refers to her victims as children. It’s also uncomfortable that she sings while she admires how many people she’s killed, similar to how Buffalo Bill from “Silence of the Lambs” likes to dance to upbeat music as he holds his victim captive. These different aspects of the opening scene develop her character as a sadistic killer, which is common in the suspense genre. Serial killers kill for pleasure and have no remorse about their actions, the same way Anabella does not. However, the opening scene does challenge some conventions. The typical role of women in suspense films is the protector or the damsel in distress. The woman usually does everything in her power to protect her loved ones from the danger. In typical suspense films, the woman is the main target or the helpless victim of a misogynistic killer. In my film however, the serial killer is a woman who kills men that she seduces to fall in love with her. And unlike films where the wife kills her husband as an act of revenge such as in “Kill Bill”, Anabella seeks to kill for her own pleasure rather than to serve justice. She defies the portrayal of a helpless woman and instead is the danger herself.

The opening scene engages with the audience through the chilling song that the main character sings as she hangs up pictures of her victims. The haunting song has very creepy lyrics that make them even creepier with the context of the pictures, making the audience uneasy. In addition, the film emphasizes the fear of serial killers, which everybody can relate to. It especially makes young men uneasy as they realize that people who prey on young men exist. Another way the film engages the audience is by slowly revealing what is happening. The scene allows the audience to understand that the main character is a serial killer but leaves the audience wondering what happens next. The audience has no indication whether the guy she meets is her next victim. The opening scene also leaves the audience wondering why she kills this men, which is enough to keep the audience engaged and want to continue watching the film. This film would be distributed in movie theaters since suspense movies find the most success in theaters rather than streaming services, such as Netflix. Teenagers and young adults still enjoy watching movies in the theaters, especially suspense and horror films, so this would be the best distribution for my film.

My production skills have developed significantly during this project, especially when planning small details that make an entire difference to the tone and flow of the scene. I’ve come to realize the importance of something so small such as transitions, which can tie two completely different shots together and make a difference on how the scene develops. I also was able to develop my skills with lighting which was crucial in the first part of the opening scene to be able to keep the character’s identity hidden by using lowkey lighting. And most importantly, I learned how to properly cut different shots and manage the speed and duration of each one in order to fit the mood of each particular part. The first shots are all slowed down to match the slow beat of the song as well as create distortion to match how uneasy the scene is. The shots in the second part are at a normal pace, since the scene is back in reality.

I integrated several different apps and softwares to achieve the final product. I used Adobe’s Pro Premiere as my main tool to create the opening scene. It’s a very advanced editing software that has more features than more basic softwares, so it allowed me to do more in regards to layering sound and transitions. I used the app VSCOX to add filters and control the brightness, contrast and saturation of the shots of the second part to match the dark tone of the film. Finally, I used the app Glitch to add the glitchy effects to the presents and title sequence, in order to distort the shots and create an uneasy feeling. Once I finished the video, I uploaded it to YouTube and linked it to my blog.

Drum roll please....

The moment we've all been waiting for...
The finished film opening!😍

https://youtu.be/3FKYOjok94w

It's been a long and stressful journey but I'm extremely proud of our project. I'm super happy with the way the video turned out! Enjoy!😃

Editing (cont.)

Hello again!

We have not met up since we met on Tuesday but we divided the work so we have less to do next week. Alexia will finish editing the scene that I showed on the last blog post while I work on editing the color scheme of certain scenes. I have not had a chance yet to do so, but I will get to it this weekend. The reason for editing the color of certain scenes is to maintain the same mood throughout the opening scene.

The brightness in these scenes are too bright for the dark and scary mood we want to create so I will be using the VSCO video feature to edit the colors to fit our story better. I will update the blog with the results of the edits next week. Even though right now our progress has been really slow, once we are back in school I know we will be back on track to finish by next weekend!

Editing Day 1

Hello! 😁
I met with Alexia on Tuesday at Panera to begin our editing process. I was playing around with the DaVinci software that was recommended to us by Mr. Guarasci from Becon TV. I hated it! It lags so much😡 The program is incredibly slow, and it wasn't because of the Panera Wifi (we connected to Alexia's phone's hotspot at one point) Not only was it slow but it was extremely confusing to use and was not user-friendly at all. It has more features than WeVideo but they were completely useless to us since it was impossible to figure it out. It was so frustrating because the software wouldn't even play back the video we had uploaded to start editing, so we just deleted it from my laptop.

Afterward, we shifted over to WeVideo and began working there. I don't know if my laptop was acting up or the wifi became really slow because WeVideo was taking forever to load the videos, but was still 100% better than DaVinci. We barely got anything done because of the lagging and that I could only be there for a little. At least we had an idea of what one of the parts of the video would look like. We began working on the part when the pictures build up, right before the title pops up.

It's very rough but it will look better once we clean it up and add sound effects.

Still break

Hello! I talked to Alexia so we can plan to meet up on Monday afternoon so we can start actually editing! Since yesterday, I have not come up with more ideas on how we can go about editing. Right now, it's a little hard to visualize everything without any editing taking place, so it's challenging to make decisions.

We are going to test out the editing software that Mr. Guarasci from Becon TV recommended to us which is called DaVinci. My friend told me that the software works well but it lags a little bit, but it's still better than WeVideo. We use WeVideo in class for our projects but I have had some problems with it because it doesn't let you edit a video at the same time as another person so any work you do just gets deleted. It also lags a lot, especially when you need to move a video down from one side to the other. I hope DaVinci works for us and that it's user-friendly since we're both beginners in film production.

Spring Break

I'm back! So we started Spring Break this weekend! YAY!

We haven't worked much on the project since we have just started break, and I had to go out of town for a family emergency. However, I have been thinking of other features we can add to what our story looks like so far. I was thinking specifically about the scene of the date. Originally we wanted both parts to flow into one scene but now that the title will be introduced between both parts, we have to treat both scenes very differently. I have an idea already of small details such as the sound of the cars and people chattering that will go in the very background of the overall sound. I was also thinking of the type of music we can add. Since she's about to meet her next victim, the music should have an ominous sound to it. The only thing about the sound in this scene that I'm unsure of is that their conversation will be muted, (to add more suspense), but how will it flow into an entire movie? Will this scene be simply a fast-forward into what's supposed to happen? Will the movie tell the story about her next victim or of how it all started? I will discuss these questions with Alexia when we meet up this week because they are very crucial to how we will edit our opening scene. Until next time!

Peer Review Pt.2

Hey friends! We had another peer review yesterday in class!

I love peer feedback because it helps to make sure our ideas are on track and that other people can visualize it, so I was super happy. I shared my blog posts and the footage we recorded last weekend along with an explanation of our storyboard. Everyone in the group loved our idea and they thought the shots we filmed were very well done, which made me even happier!😆 Ana, one of the members of the group, loved the lighting we used and thought it set the tone very well for the movie.

Finally, I asked their opinion about where they think the title should come in: after the sequence of photos of the victims or after she reveals her identity at the date? They agreed with what I had thought of which is to make the first scene the opening credits, followed by the title (which will pop up with a BANG sound) and then the scene of the date with her next victim.

Movie title

Hello!😃 I don't have much news so far since it's only the beginning of the week. I discussed my idea for the title of the film with Alexia. I had the idea of naming it "Black Widow", like the spider since it goes with the whole idea of the woman serial killer of husbands. However, Alexia pointed out that it sounds like a pop song of the same name so it might not cause as much suspense. Plus, we never hinted that her victims were her husbands, making her a widow so we discarded that idea.

Alexia wanted the title to show up in a handwritten font with a one-word title to be more impactful. She came up with "ASESINA", which is a female assassin in Spanish. I then thought of maybe using lipstick to handwrite the title and take a picture of it to add feminity to the film since it's about an unconventional serial killer, so we want to emphasize that. I saved the pictures of the victims that we used for the film so we plan on using them to recreate a frame for a mirror or a blank surface, so the pictures surround where the title would go.

What's ahead

Hello friends! I'm super excited for this week because we will officially begin editing!😝 As I mentioned in the last blog post, we began looking at how we can edit our footage to create our opening scene. In addition to cuts and sound, I also began looking into possible film titles and how we will do the opening credits. Even though to most people the opening credits don't seem important at all, they are what set the mood for the entire film. The font and colors must match the film or they look completely out of place, confusing the viewers. We haven't looked at specific fonts yet, but we will be researching different suspense films to find inspiration. The colors will have to be neutral or colors that are correlated to thrillers and suspenseful movies such as red. Finally, I think a good title for the film is "Black Widow" because the main character is essentially like the black widow spider, and it matches the opening scene perfectly. I also think just "Widow" is a good fit and might be more impactful since it's only one word.

I also was reflecting on past research to try to think of other factors we should consider for our opening scene. I remember looking at the Jaws opening scene which is considered to be one of the best film openings in existence. The music that is particular to the presence of the shark is introduced in the very beginning and is a constant motif throughout the film. I was thinking maybe we can also incorporate this idea to our character, who we still need to come up with a name for. Since in the opening scene, she also appears in the second part, I think it would be interesting to incorporate a specific theme song to her reappearance to build tension. I haven't shared this idea to Alexia yet so we will discuss everything on Monday so we begin editing.

Ideas and more!

Hey guys! So after filming, Alexia and I began to review the footage to start planning to edit, which we will be starting on Monday during class. We have come up with different ideas of what could work on our film to tie everything together. For example, I thought of maybe having a voiceover of our actress, Valentina, sing to add a creepy and haunting tone to the film. It would go great in the beginning when she is almost admiring how many victims she has.

We also began to imagine ways we can transition from the first scene onto the next one since they have completely different moods. We filmed her walking heels into the date, which is the same way we started the opening to create uniformity in the movie. However, the title of the film may be a better way to transition, leaving the first part as part of the "opening credits".

On Monday, we will also be looking at how to incorporate sound into the film, since we plan to mute everything that we filmed to create suspense. Synchronous sounds will be very important to accentuate certain parts of the character, such as the clanking of the heels, as well as certain actions. The music we select will be extremely important in how we build suspense since music is what builds tension in most suspense films. I will keep you updated in our choices for editing throughout the week.

FILMING DAY!

Hello guys! We finally filmed today!😁😝😍

We wanted to film in the darkroom in the school that they use to develop photographs for the photography class for the scene of the main character in her "lair" as she contemplates her victims. Alexia was able to get permission to use the room so we scheduled to film there after school on Friday. We prepared everything for the film, buying the necessary materials and printing the pictures of the "victims".

Since we both have 8th-hour privilege, we came back to school with all the materials and equipment and met with our friend, Valentina, who would be our actress. The darkroom was really cool and was exactly what we were looking for. We instantly got to work since we still had the date scene to film that same day. I set up the camera and the lights while Alexia painted Valentina's nails red since it's the signature feature of the character. We then hung the pictures on a red string with clothing pins, to recreate the look of a "lair".

As we filmed, we focussed on the shots, movements, and lighting to then incorporate mise-en-scene. We did many different shots and movements to have extra footage to have more flexibility when editing, especially with the types of cuts we will do. We also kept in mind how it will look together to stay on track on how the whole film is supposed to look like.

After we finished filming in school, we met with my friend Francisco in the town center to film the scene of their date. We were given permission to film outside of a restaurant that has cafe-like tables that were perfect for our scene. We were able to finish filming by 6:30, right before the sunset. We managed to film everything in one day, for a total of 4 hours, which is very alleviating since now we have three weeks to edit and put together our film opening.😊

Back to square one

I went to return the equipment at Becon TV on Monday, sad that we weren't able to film anything over the weekend.😞 I became stressed since other groups had already rented out the equipment for the other weekends so we didn't have a way to use it at any other time. I finally figured something out with my classmate, Ana, who was renting out the equipment from Wednesday to Sunday but was only filming on Sunday so we were able to use it on Friday.

Alexia and I continued developing our new idea that we came up with on the peer feedback day and began a storyboard with as much detail as possible to be able to have a clear idea of what we needed to shoot so we could get it done in one day. We will first focus on the shots and movements to then incorporate sound and mise-en-scene into the filming. We plan to film more shots than just the ones on the storyboard in case one works better than the other and we have more footage to play, so it serves as a guide to help us know where to start.