CCR Research and Script #1

Podcast 

(Script:)

-Hi everyone, welcome back to In Between the Scenes. Today we're here with Daniela Saffon, writer and director of the upcoming film Malignance. How are you doing today? 

-I'm good thank you

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

(Script: So, this being your debut film, how did your production skills develop throughout the project?)

Answer: I learned so much working on this project. I started this off with not much experience in production, and this was a perfect chance to bring together everything I learned and worked on this year. Even though I have some sort of experience with video production, this being my first time directing something was particularly difficult for me. Having full control (and responsibility) of this project felt like a huge weight on my shoulders. I made a big mistake early in the project by taking a risk and using equipment that I had never used before and it didn't pay off, causing me to have to reshoot the entire project. But again, that was a huge learning experience for me, and I realized first that there are times to experiment and times that doing what you know is best, and second, I learned that in a process like this there will be so many challenges and disappointments and you just have to be constantly adapting and improvising.

How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

(Script: And I was wondering, in terms of software, hardware and online, how did you integrate technology into this production.)

Answer: Like I was talking about before I did make the poor risk of using "professional" equipment in my first shoot, it was my first time using a boom mic, camera tripod, and that specific camera. My inexperienced showed, so I ended up refilming my final shoot with my iPhone. I basically relied entirely on that technology in terms of shooting. I had a lighting set (which was basically two rgb lights and another standard light), a tripod, and my phone. I used Premiere Pro to edit the footage on my laptop, it's pretty comprehensive and great for editing not just footage but also audio. In terms of making the title card and credits, I used the graphic design application, Canva. And for any audio and sound, I used YouTube and copyright free sfx websites like Pixabay. 

(Script: "Wow ok. Thank you Daniela for joining us today, it was an insightful conversation."

Do Not Shoot Your Footage in HDR!! 

    So, after many, many hours on Premiere Pro (I'm so surprised my computer didn't end up crashing) I finally finalized my last draft of my project yayyyy. I split up the process depending on the day and importance of what I was working on, it went like this:

- Monday: editing the clips together to create the general structure (at this point, the video was over 3 minutes long).

- Tuesday: sound, editing dialogue, adding in sound effects, and music, as well as editing sound levels.

- Wednesday: color grading and shortening length

- Thursday: final edits

- Friday: exporting

    As someone who does NOT enjoy editing, this was one of the most tedious parts of the project. There are so many different aspects to editing that make it so difficult to make everything as close to your original vision.

    

Color Grading

    I have very little experience color grading (I usually prefer to do it on Lightroom too, but I chose just to color grade on premiere pro for now), so I'm not really sure how I feel about my final result.

Original footage

After color grading

Original footage

After color grading

     I don't know why, but it just looks really red to me??? I'll keep editing to see if I can make it look better, but I think this may be the final result.

Audio

    This may have been the process that took longest for me just out of the sheer amount of time it takes to find the exact copyright free music that matches what you're imagining. I ended finding this website called 99Sounds for copyright free sounds that was WONDERFUL. I downloaded their Halloween Sound Effects file, which came with 60 different horror sound effects. I used Atmosphere 2, Jumpscare!, Impact 2, 3, and 4, and Tension 1.

SS from the website

    I also downloaded their free jumpscare sound effect. Additionally, I used the ambient hum pitched from the YouTube Audio Library (part of YouTube Studio). From Pixabay I also used: Stinger 001, Demonic Whisper, Four_Voices_Whispering, HeavyBreathing, and Scared Breathing 2.

    To make the production logo intro, I used a xylophone eye blink sound from Pixabay and the horror intro sound effect and guitar sound effect from the 99Sounds Halloween Sound Effects packet.

Exporting

    Finally, Friday at 1 AM, I had finished editing, so I go to export it. Since it's a pretty small file, it only took about 4 minutes to export. I go to check out the whole exported video and it is SOOO overexposed and oversaturated, nothing how it looked while I was editing the sequence. Naturally, I started panicking and searching all over the internet to why the exported video looks like that. Apparently, Premiere Pro is in a different color setting (??) than how I filmed my footage (iPhone HDR setting). So, the first thing I tried doing was exporting in the QuickTime format rather that the standard H.24. The only problem I had with that was that when I went to export as H.24 in the QuickTime player, it wouldn't let me since I work on a Windows laptop rather than a Mac (really unfortunate since the QuickTime format captured the color perfectly). Next thing I tried doing was changing the color grading yet again to somehow make it less overexposed but that didn't work. After a little bit more of scourging on the Internet, I finally found someone who had the same problem. What they ended up doing was modifying the color settings in Premiere Pro. I tried doing the same thing (my original setting was in Rec 2020) until I reached the correct setting (Rec 709). I ended up sleeping at like 4 AM trying to figure this all out, but luckily I was able to fix everything.

Fonts...

    Fonts are oh so important to developing the tone of a movie, especially in its opening. Imagine if the title drop in Jaws was in comic sans...

A Little Bit of Research

    Did a some research on horror movie fonts before choosing my own. I chose to look at the credits and title drops of movies that I specifically know have a somewhat similar opening to my own (all horror too).

Raw title screen

    First one I chose to watch was from Raw. This title drop occurs right after a mysterious car accident. I love how the bold font chosen, matched with the opening scene, really leaves an impression for audiences, and expectation for what the rest of the movie will be.

Credits from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

      

Title from The Conjuring

    Second ones I went with was this credits scene from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and The Conjuring. Like the one for Raw these are bold fonts. Both are put on black and white backgrounds, with the fonts being white. Since my own title drop would be behind a red and black background, I think the best would be to have it in a red font. The credits would be in a white font to contrast against the black. 

    

    Last credit scene I looked through was Climax. I chose this one because there's like three different title drops throughout the movie and also a couple of credits scenes, as shown by the screenshots above. I was hoping that since so many different fonts and colors are used, I would get some ideas from from it. Unfortunately, the style of Climax is much more neon and "fun" than what I was envisioning. 

My Own Final Result

    I created the title and credits on Canva. While I know how to use Photoshop, I just prefer Canva, it's easier to use for me. The final fonts I chose were Inria Serif and Paalalabas Wide. Here is the final result:

TITLE REVEAL!!!

 I’m Back and Better than Ever

    Apologies for the hyper pessimistic blog post on Thursday, but it really made me reflect on my work for the past few months. I wasn’t happy at all with how the filming experience went, or how the final footage came out. I was so mad that I spent these last two months working on this only for it to come out like that. So I decided to take a risk. I reshot everything.

Popular stan twitter reaction image of Amy Adams screaming in Sharp Objects

  I decided to do it my way this time though. I’ve filmed everything in the class with my phone, so I would do my final project with it too. I contacted the same actors as before, one cancelled on me unfortunately, but I was able to get someone else relatively quickly luckily. And it went great! This time around, I felt so much more comfortable directing people. I changed the setting I had originally chosen to be my garage, which I think genuinely made all the difference. My dark, mesy garage is so much more atmospheric and I think made everyone seem so much more confident in what we were working on. I fixed lighting to make it darker and creepier. I’m just so proud with how everything ended up coming out and I could not be more happy at my decision to reshoot. Sometimes being a perfectionist is for the better.

Anyways here are some pictures on set and some of the footage (sneak peaks…)

Blog am I Cooked?

So yesterday was my first day of filming…We started at around 6:30, which was a little later than I was expecting since I had to set up the lighting. Unfortunately, I picked up the equipment really close to my filming time, so I wasn’t too accustomed to the camera I was using. In hindsight, I think I regret not filming on my phone since I’m just more used to it.  So….

You know when something is so well planned out in your head but when you actually *do it* it’s like ummmm??? I don’t know, maybe I’m over exaggerating, but I’m very nervous about how everything came out. I still haven’t seen the footage yet, but I think my inexperience with the camera will show. I’m also scared that I don’t have enough footage in general, I might need to set up another filming day have any extra footage. 

 Last Minute Pre-Filming Preparation

    Today is the dayyyyyyy.

    My first (and hopefully only) day of filming. I'm finishing up any last minute things before I can bring my cast over. 

Update on Cast

    For the last couple of days I've been trying to contact anyone I know (and some people that I don't) in hopes to finalize my cast. I got added to my friend's giant Spring break group chat on Monday, so I just shot my shot and asked for actors on there. A couple people responded that they might be able to, but unfortunately, they cannot make it today. Yesterday was middle school MPA (band assessment thing) at my school, and I was volunteering until around 6 in the afternoon. I asked practically everyone else that was volunteering, but they also were unable to. (as you can tell I was pretty stressed out yesterday).

 And remember my last blog post where I talked about one of my friends who was willing to act. Well, he canceled on me. Figures. So as of a couple of hours ago I was castless. Luckily, I begged two of my friends to help me out and they agreed to. Can they act? Who knows. Then late at night yesterday, my friend texted me that she might have someone. She sent me her number and I contacted her. She said she could yayyy!! So that's my cast! Hopefully no one cancels.

Fake Blood

    A small part of my opening does require me to use some fake blood. I know that like Spirit Halloween sells some for costumes but unfortunately it is March and not October so that store is not open. I don't know where else you could find fake blood so I'll have to make my own. According to this article, the best recipe for fake blood (especially one that drips or splatters) requires Karo corn syrup, chocolate syrup, and food coloring. I went to Publix to get the ingredients and it literally took no more than 5 minutes to make.

Equipment

    At 5 today, I went to BEACON to pick up some equipment. Not really sure what like specific type of equipment I got, but I checked out a camera, lighting kit, boom mic, and tri-pod

. 

    

    My cast comes over at around 5:30ish. I am SOOO nervous. I don't have experience sharing my own vision, usually I work in groups, I'm scared that mid-filming, it'll feel dumb or I can't put what I am visualizing to camera. I also am really bad at expressing myself through words. I don't know. I'm just really nervous and excited. I do feel a little better knowing that I'm friends with most of my cast. Hoping for the best!

Casting!

   As I've talked about a...couple of times on here, casting has been the most stressful process for me in this entire project. For past assignments in this class, I've worked with other people who knew people willing to act, so having to find my own people has been stressful to say the least. The person I had my hopes on at first isn't able to, so I gotta contact my own friends and hope for the best.  

    I posted on my Instagram story a little earlier asking if anyone is willing to act in it. I only have 40ish followers (only about 30 that are teenagers/live near me), so I'm not really expecting too much traction, but you never know. 

Screenshot of my story

    

    Literally not even 10 minutes later, my friend replied to the story. I'm not sure how great of an actor he is, but I'll take what I got and I'm really grateful.

Screenshot of our conversation

        Tomorrow at school, I'll talk to the other two people I have in mind in hopes that they can too. 

    I'll film on Wednesday, which looking at my calendar, is actually great because I have early release on Thursday and no school Friday, leaving me loads of time to edit. Once I get home from school on Thursday, I'll edit all the clips together and add any necessary effect. Then Friday, I'll work on color grading the clips and adding credits and the title sequence. Also, since I'm filming Wednesday, then I can hopefully check out equipment from BEACON (I already contacted them, but they haven't responded yet). Yayyy everything's looking up now. 

EDIT (like 10 minutes later)

    Another one of my friends just answered saying that if I REALLY need more actors, she could help out. She doesn't really want to act, but since she's available (and if I find actors), I told her she could help me out on set. 

Revised Script

    The basic new story that I developed is that after the possession scene, the spirit of the dead wife mentioned remains in the character's body and she tries to get her (now dead) husband's spirit into one of the other teen's body. Not sure how the rest of the movie would go but yeah. Also, I changed the character's to be nameless for now since I don't have actors yet. 

Planning for the Future Because the Present is STRESSING ME OUT

    In class this week, we went over the purpose of CCRs and how to tackle the process of making our own. 

After we are finished with production of  our project, we have to make a Creative Critical Reflection. This basically a series of creative products in which we reflect upon our final project (it's pretty much in the name). It requires us to creatively answer a few questions relating to target audience, genre conventions, production process, and technology use. We watched a couple of past CCR that gave me a lot of ideas for my own. One that I particularly liked featured a format similar to Vogue's 73 Questions series. The other one that I liked was like a talk show format.

    This got me thinking about recent interviews that I've liked and I realized that recently, there's been this like surge of interviews featuring people eating chicken??? The example that first comes to mind for me is Amelia Dimoldenberg's Chicken Shop Date on YouTube in which the host (Amelia) interviews artists in the guise of them being on a "date" in a fried chicken restaurant..  Another popular one is Sean Evan's Hot Ones series, in which celebrities are interviewed while trying different hot wings until they can't take the heat anymore. These are so popular because of their unconventional format and charismatic hosts (at least I personally really enjoy watching them). I think a food related interview type CCR would be creative and relatively unique (might not age well but oh well). My hesitation on doing something like this is the fact that I would rather not appear on camera because I am unfortunately VERY awkward and not charismatic in the slightest (also my voice sounds so odd on camera, it would be a pain to edit).

Thumbnail of a Chicken Shop Date episode featuring Paul Mescal

    My second a idea is a bit more conventional: a podcast. I'm not someone who is an avid podcast listener (I prefer 3 hour video essays on YouTube about a topic I had never heard about before), but I am aware that podcasts have become an increasingly popular medium that is basically replacing talk radio at thus point. Usually when I listen to podcasts though, it's as background noise when I'm working on homework or cooking or something, so I would need to do a little research on how to best format it to make it engaging. The positives of doing a podcast is that I wouldn't have to appear on camera or have to do any video editing (which would be great because that's eliminating a process that I really don't enjoy). However, there are some downsides. Podcasts are an auditory medium, so it wouldn't be possible for me to show an footage to highlight what I am discussing, although I could use sound from the project to illustrate my point. I've done minimal research on this so far since my CCR is still kinda a long ways away, but I have found some websites that help you create engaging podcast websites such as Podbean and Simplecast, but I would need to find website without a hosting fee.

    The last idea that I came up with is a director's commentary type of video. The only director's commentary I've seen is the one featured in the La La Land DVD where Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz talk over the entire movie to give insight on the process. Honestly, I thought this was SO boring, and only got through about the first half before I had to turn it off. However, I do enjoy watching those Vanity Fair interviews in which directors (or actors, choreographers, composers, etc.) break down specific scene (Denis Villenueve breaking down a scene from Dune and Park Chan-wook breaking down the hallway scene from Oldboy). I have a ton of DVDs at home that feature director's commentary that I could skim through to get inspiration.

Process/Schedule

    I'm still debating, but I might move back my project date a little bit more. I'm ready to film right now, but I am still having trouble getting actors. My personal deadline for filming is Wednesday though, so I can have Thursday and Friday to edit (I have experience editing, so I'm not particularly worried about how long it'll take me to edit). This leaves me with Spring break, and Monday and Tuesday of the week after to work on my CCR. My schedule is to start planning the CCR format this weekend and to have a hard plan by Monday. Once I'm done editing my opening (hopefully by Saturday), I'll begin writing the two scripts for the CCRs. Monday or Tuesday, I'll film the first one, edit it Wednesday, then film the second one Thursday and edit it Friday. I'm not doing anything this spring break, so I have basically that entire week to just film, edit, and write my blog. If I follow this schedule, it would leave the entire weekend and the two days of the other week to do any revisions and finalize editing. 

  

 

 Setbacks...Setbacks...Setbacks

        Let's be a little negative today! 

Equipment

    Ok so! I really want my opening to look good. I want it to have good lighting and the footage to look sharp. Right now, the only thing I have to film is my phone, which has great quality, but it doesn't capture footage white like I want it to. Last Thursday, I contacted BEACON in hopes to check out a camera and lighting kit prior to filming.  Unfortunately, they told me they would be out of town for the entire week due to STN. This puts me in a huge pickle because I have to choose whether to move my filming date back even more, which is a huge risk and leaves me little time for editing and CCR, on the other hand, I film with just my camera and hope for the best. I don't know what to do to be honest.

Credits

    My other little dilemma is how to structure my opening. Since I want to produce a horror, I actually do want to open with an at least tense scene (I don't know if I'll be able to scare anyone, but I'll try my best!) So, I have to figure out where to put my credits. I was thinking of having the entire sequence, and then opening to another scene where we roll credits, but I think that would be sacrificing time to develop the tone for my film. That leaves me with having the entire opening in the same setting of the get-together. I really don't want my film opening to be disturbed by the credits rolling in the bottom of the screen. I'll have to develop an establishing sequence to put the credits in and then start the action. So my problem is where to put the title. Do I open the scene with the title? Close it with the title? Maybe when the lights go out? WHAT IS MY TITLE? I have no clue. 

Actors

    I talked about this in my last post but might as well bring this up again. I have no idea who to get to act in my film. I have no idea how to ask other people to help me out. I'm also worried about the fact that the setting I have chosen to film in (my dining room), has many windows in the area, so I have to film at night to get the lighting I'm hoping for, and I don't know how many people would be willing to come to my house late at night to film :/

    I really need to solve these problems quickly because I HAVE to start filming by next weekend. And to be honest, I really want to start production on this! I think contacting some of my friends for help will actually really help me with these problems so I should get started on that soon...

 I'm Going to Lose My MindvcsukzmbDAKHZCIKAJ

    Disregard anything I said on Sunday, I was feeling a little silly. We're back to the original idea, yay!...This whole process has been a bit of a mess to be honest, I've been so indecisive with my opening, and I've changed it so many times at this point. This is my last idea though, it's this or this you know? I can't keep being wishy-washy about this while I'm losing time.  I had originally scheduled to film this weekend, but I'm falling behind schedule, so I'm pushing back to next week. My biggest worry at the moment is finding actors by next weekend because I 1) really don't want to direct my friends, it would be very awkward, 2) don't think any of my friends CAN act (unfortunately band kids are not particularly known for their acting skills), and 3) don't really know that many people (womp womp). Also, I have to time out the two minutes to see which one of my two credits ideas work better. Anyways, I finished storyboarding out the idea and writing the script (blog post about that tomorrow probably). Apologies for the nightmare inducing stick figures :/

    

    So yeah, I'm gonna work on test shooting and lighting the entirety of tomorrow because between club/officer meetings, band rehearsal, my trio rehearsal, district MPA on Thursday, and a Zoom meeting for a social media project that I accidently got myself into, this week'll be super busy for me. 

    Also, happy Oscars week! Rooting for Poor Things and Past Lives personally (I Bet on Losing Dogs or whatever Mitski said).

 Intermission

    Little pause in the planning process posts (so many more are coming in the next week) to talk a little about my production logo. I got bored the other day in class and started playing around on Canva and ended up making the production logo that will appear in the first 5ish seconds of the opening:

    I found a Canva template to format it after. I changed the color scheme and fonts to kinda get the look I was going for. I figured that an eye is pretty representative of spooky horror cliches, so that's the design I went with (it was originally a Canva element that I played around with). The design is a little inspired by Jordan Peele's company, Monkeypaw Productions' own logo design since I wanted it to capture the same kind of eerie feel.

Canva template 

    The name of the production company is actually quite a funny story (to me at least). From the moment we were introduced to the portfolio project, I KNEW I had to name the company green red orange productions. This name is actually the title of a short story I read probably last year (it's not protected by copyright, I made sure to check). The story, written by Mariana Enriquez, is a part of her horror collection, Things We Lost in the Fire, which is filled with some of my favorite horror stories, many of which inspired this own project. This story impacted me so much when I first read, that I've wanted to make my own interpretation of it since (maybe one day). While this project could not be farther from Green Red Orange, I still wanted to pay my own little tribute to it. And of course, naming it after a short story is obviously inspired again my Monkeypaw Productions, named after The Monkey's Paw by W.W Jacobs.

 It's Finally Slowly Starting to Come Together

What these past couple of weeks have felt like.

        

    So, I realized that I'm about to enter the fourth week of production and I still don't have a defined storyline for the actual film. I figured that as long as I knew what my opening would be, then I didn't need a full film, but now seeing my peers' groups and reevaluating my own progress, I'm beginning to understand that a "film opening" doesn't work without an actual "film". All of my previous research on horror, screenwriting, and storytelling has led me to one point: write what you know. And so, I am choosing to center my film around a theme of obsession. I don't consider myself to be an "obsessive" person (and this theme may not even be reflected in my opening), but I am aware that when I'm passionate about something, I can become quite...intense. So here it is:

    We open a little bit differently than I had intended. It's still a small get together of friends, but this time it's being recorded by one of them. The entire group is part of the seance. Like the original idea, it will go wrong, a girl gets possessed, the lights will begin to flicker, and when they come back on, she is dead. Then the camera will pan out, revealing that this footage is being watched by someone. The rest of the opening will be a collection of mise-en-scene elements to develop the character. We learn that he is a wanna-be filmmaker who has been researching this incident for a while. This is developed through shots of his surroundings: post-it notes, dvds, and papers. The scene ends with him contacting the person who posted the video, claiming that he is interested in doing an investigative documentary on the incident. End of opening. I literally came up with this idea a couple minutes ago, so it's possible I wake up tomorrow morning, absolutely HATE it, and revert to square one. Since my idea has changed quite a bit, I'm considering doing a bit more research on the topic, but luckily my idea hasn't changed enough for my previous research to have been for nothing. So far, I'm kinda basing my idea off Benny's Video, a movie about a kid so obsessed with video that he loses sense of reality and commits a horrific act, and We're All Going to the World's Fair. I haven't personally seen this Benny's Video (I will now though), but it's been in my watchlist for a while. I'm mostly interested in the set design elements during the opening that develop Benny's character. 

Stills from the opening sequence of Benny's Video

Stills from We're All Going to the World's Fair

    Rest of the movie: he gets into contact with the original poster of the video (who is actually in the opening sequence, we'll call them Riley), and begins to record a documentary surrounding the mysterious, unexplainable events of that night. At one point during filming, they have to re-do a seance scene, this time, nothing as drastic as the opening occurs. He isn't involved in it, only films it, but he begins to become very curious and takes the object before anyone notices. At this point, it's clear that this obsession isn't healthy, even though the documentary process so far may indicate this all being a hoax. He tries out the ritual (this is the climax), and becomes convinced that he is possessed. Riley begins to get worried at his deteriorating mental health and confesses that the original video was a fraud for popularity. However, he doesn't believe him and he continues to spiral. The film ends with him filming the final scene of the documentary: a murder that the "spirit" influenced him to do. 

Like I said, it's very possible that I'll scrap the idea by tomorrow morning, but for now, I really like this storyline and would totally watch a movie about this actually! Now to re-do my script and storyboard :(

 Research

    One of my peers recommended I look further into séance scenes during the group meeting and that is exactly what I am going to do. This post will be a little longer than my past ones, so I think It'll be best to split it up into some sections: history, sample analysis, and reflection.

History

    So what is a séance in the first place?? 

Séance captured in France 1897, photographer unknown.

    

    The word séance derives from it's French root, meaning "session". In English however, seances are associated with ghosts and the supernatural. Why is that? Well, in 1849, two sister, Catherine and Margaretta Fox, wanted to show to the world that they could communicate with spirits. Their demonstration, in which they claimed that spirits would communicate through "clickings" (one meaning yes, two meaning no), is the first documented case of spiritualism being performing in front of an audience for money. Even though the Fox sisters admitted to their demonstration being a hoax years later, spiritualism and seances still became very popular across the world. Just off of this little bit of research that I've done, I've deducted that my original idea isn't exactly a séance, but rather a weird combination of a séance and a possession.

    There are actually different types of seances (there's like a whole science to this, it's much more complex that I imagined). Religious seances fall under the religion of spiritualism and Divine Metaphysics, so this is not relevant for my research. There's also seances that a performed by mediums on a stage to an audience, again, this is not relevant. The only kinds of seances that fit my idea are leader-assisted seances and informal social seances. Leader assisted seances are performed by a medium, which I do not have, these mediums go into a trace, which I DEFINTELY want to incorporate into my story. And obviously, my "séance" will be in an informal setting, so this will be my biggest inspiration for the rest of the project.

Samples

Emily 

    So, Emily is a biographical film following the life of writer Emily Bronte. It's not really historically accurate at all, but I do love the way it incorporated supernatural aspects to a realistic setting. Maybe an odd choice to reference first since it's not a horror film, but honestly, this clip may be the closest to the idea I have in my head. During this scene, Emily is using a mask to conjure up the spirit of her mother and it seems like her mother actually possess her body. I'm particularly inspired by this scene because of the tonal shift that occurs. While mine would be set in modern day, this is surprisingly close to the the...vibe that I want to capture, just a group of friends trying out something stupid that turns out not so stupid. One detail that I noticed used to develop the tonal change without the need of fancy effects or incredible acting (not saying the acting is bad though...the cast is phenomenal in this film) was the pacing of the editing. The beginning of the scene relied on very little cuts, and only used them to get an occasional reaction shot or different angle. However, by the end of the scene, the cuts are frantic and much more frequent. This really helped translating fear to audience. The lights flickering also helps with this effect (I could probably do this on Premiere Pro). One last detail I wanted to mention for this scene was the variety of shots and angles that were used. They really bring an eeriness to the rest of the setting, I could actually try recreating some of the shots in my own film. 

Stills from Emily

Hereditary

    One day I'll write a blog post that doesn't involve me mentioning Hereditary, I PROMISE. This film is a much more traditional horror, I really don't even want to rewatch this scene because it just freaked me out so bad, but well oh well, the sacrifices I make for media studies. Hereditary is about a family that is haunted by a demon following a series of tragic events. In this particular scene, Annie (Toni Collette), who believes she is a medium, is performing a seance to communicate with her daughter, Charlie. Charlie possesses her body, but rather than it being a traditional horror sequence, Charlie just asks for her mother, which is honestly so much creepier than most seances scenes. This scene is honestly so strong just because of everyone's performance, so while I hope to have actual actors in my own project, I can't fully rely on developing tone thorough characters (to be honest, it's not really fair to compare Toni Collette to any actor so...). What actually caught my attention the first time I watched this scene was the camera movements used. It's very subtle but there are very few, if any, static shots throughout this whole sequence. The constant movement, the tilts and pans, make the rest of the atmosphere very unsettling, like there's something lurking in the shadows. I mentioned this in a past blog post, but I really do want to use movement in my project. Since I am talking about Hereditary, I also wanted to mention another scene that had a big impact on me when I was originally coming up with the idea.

       In this scene, Peter (Annie's son) is possessed by this demon for the first time. I'm not exactly sure how much this scene will influence my actually opening, but the look on Peter's face is so terrifying and has stayed with me since I watched this movie. The whole idea of not being able to control your own body is a great theme I could try to tie into my own film.

Talk to Me 

    I know I talked a little about Talk to Me's opening scene a couple blog posts ago, but I did feel the need to discuss this sequence since it's pretty hard to deny the similarities between my own idea. So, Mia (the one in the yellow sweater), is trying out this hand thing that lets spirits into their body or something like that at a party. I actually saw this in theaters and the jumpscares and so simple but SO effective. I truly don't know if I want to include jumpscarses at all, but if I do, Talk to Me's quick cuts are a good technique to model after. Like Emily, this scene has a more informal, casual environment, that fit well into what I am visualizing. What I thought this scene did very good, was subtly developing each of the character's personalities through their actions. There's something else I wanted to mention about this scene but I'm really blanking at the moment, so if I remember, I'll probably include it in a later blog post (also little side-note, but I love how the costume design emphasizes Mia as the subject).

Some stills from this scene

    That's all the research I've got left in my today; think I'll watch a horror move as a treat.

Sources

Kingston, T. (n.d.). Séances, spirits & mediums - victorians & spiritualism. History Undressed. https://www.historyundressed.com/2017/06/seances-spirits-mediums-victorians.html




Levrier-Jones, G. (2021, October 18). The rise of spiritualism in 19th century America - History is now magazine, podcasts, blog and books: Modern International and American history. History is Now Magazine, Podcasts, Blog and Books | Modern International and American history. https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/10/18/the-rise-of-spiritualism-in-19th-century-america