ೃ⁀➷ THE FINAL PROJECT *ೃ༄

 

Hey everyone! See the picture? Had to end this era with my favorite movie :) Today, I will be showing you the final product of our film! We have been working on this for so long, and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did...

MAFIA:

Here is a synopsis of our project:

A friend group decides to have a sleepover and before they go to sleep, decide to play a game of Mafia. They play the game, unknown that the cards are deciding their fate...

I enjoyed the entire process of filming the film opening so much, and I am SO proud of all my members for working on this and getting through this! There have been a lot of struggles, from starting the project and coming up with the idea, to filming, and even editing. We have went through a lot of ups and downs, but in the end we made it through and ended up with a great film opener! 

Here is a detailed description of what happens in our film opening:

The setting is dark, until candles are lit and a friend group is shown playing a game. Maya begins to say "Lets play Mafia", showing interest in playing the game. The group begins to play the game, and the roles are as follows; Maddie is sheriff, Eve is doctor, Zara is mafia, and Maya is narrator. During the game, Maya says instructions, and Zara chooses to kill Maddie first. The game is played, with lots of laughs and giggles, and in the end Zara is never found out to be the mafia, and she wins. Then there is a time skip to later at night, and Maddie goes out of the house to take a swim. Little does she know, she is about to die. As she reaches the end of her lap, and gets to the end of the pool, a hand comes out to push her back down so she can die. She ends up drowning, and the film is left on a cliffhanger. The title sequence then shows, with polaroids of the friend group, Candles being lit, a letter inviting a friend to the sleepover (with the name crossed out) burning, and lastly, the title of our film spelled out in cards. There is a cut in to the king card, signifying that the person with that card (Maddie) has died. 

ೃ⁀➷ FINAL UPDATE !! *ೃ༄

 

Hello everyone! This is my FINAL update of my groups film opening. 

First off, Sofia and Samantha finished editing! But when we all looked at it together, we noticed some things that we needed to be changed. The first thing we changed was the title sequence. When we all looked at the project, the main thing we all noticed was that the title sequence was slowed down too much, specifically the first clip. The credits also only showed the name of the people in the group, and did not include the extras. We then added their names, and changed the font of the credits, as it looked like a Times New Roman font, and we were not satisfied with that. We looked through the Adobe Fonts, and found a new font that we think looked perfect with the title sequence. The font name was Viner Hand ITC. After we changed that, we changed the placement of the credits. We wanted the names to fade in from different places, and not the same position for every clip. For this, Samantha had to change the key frames, which was a lot of work! 

We then changed the transitions in the film. During editing, we decided to add 5 dissolve transitions (appearing during the montage, and when I explain the instructions of the game. But when we watched it over, there was an issue with the amount of dissolves. The dissolves looked repetitive, and unnecessary as without it, it looked fine. We altered that, and had only one dissolve appear - when Maddie dies. Also, midway of editing, we decided to record a voiceover of me saying "Discuss who the mafia is", instead of using the "Okay. Discuss!" during the actual filming. But when we looked at how it sounded in the final product, we realized that it sounded WAY too loud, and out of place. We decided to revert back to how it was before. The final change we made was the fade in and out in between the end of the Mafia game, and Samantha walking out of the house. Since we forgot to film an establishing shot to signal the amount of time passed, we added a text that said "Later.." in the film. But, we decided to remove the text and make it just a fade in and out. After, we looked at the final product and decided that it was decent! We finally reached our finished product.

ೃ⁀➷ EDITING HELP *ೃ༄

 

Hello everyone! Today I will be talking about the help that we got during editing, and why we needed it.

In the past blog post, I mentioned how the lighting was a big issue for us that we needed to fix. The lighting was more orange in the last 2 days of filming, compared to the first day, where it was more yellowish-white. In order to fix this, the lighting of the scenes from the first day had to match the other scenes, and meet somewhere in the middle with lighting. As Samantha was confused on how to fix it, she asked a friend who is experienced in editing to help her out. This friend also knew how to use Premiere Pro, which was great because even though we had access to using the app, we were very confused on how to do certain editing tricks. Eventually, the lighting was fixed, which was great, as that was one of the most important steps of editing this project.

For other editing tricks, such as the transitions and the text fading out, Google was used. One of Sofia's favorite sayings is "Look it up", and that's exactly what she did for her part of editing! For example, she found out how to do the split screen in the film opening through youtube. This split screen was needed, as we wanted to show the main characters cards and their reaction at the same time. This not only looks great, but it also minimizes the amount of time on those scenes, and we really did not want to go over 2 minutes! For the fade in and the fade out, we also searched that up. Premiere Pro is a confusing app at first, but once you search up instructions, it saves you A LOT of time! We also managed to remove some graininess in the clips through youtube as well. We are almost done with editing, and my next blog post will be the FINAL update of editing!

ೃ⁀➷ EDITING POST 3 *ೃ༄

 

Hello everyone! Today I will be talking about the editing process.

First, we faced an issue with editing. When we all attempted to get onto Premiere Pro, some of us got logged out because there were too many people on Samantha's school account. So, we had to minimize the amount of people on the app to edit. So, the people editing are now only Samantha and Sofia. Me and Aleena would give little bits of advice of how we think the clips look and whether it should be altered or not. During editing, they realized that they could not get on the same project file and edit together! So, they had to split up the parts they wanted to do for editing. Sofia decided to add all the clips together, and make the opening less than 2 minutes, as our clips were too long! After, she sent the clips to Samantha, who would work on the lighting and the text, such as the credits in the title sequence.

The lighting part of editing is super important. Due to us filming on different days, the lighting changed.. ALOT. This was also due to the fact that we made a mistake during filming - which was to add more candle lights and use that as our main source of lighting. Dark/Horror Lighting is harder than you think! Samantha is working on a way to fix it so that the lightings can match. The two also planned to meet up to do the editing, but they could not find a time that satisfied both of their schedules. So, they have to edit from two different places. I am very proud of them, as editing is such a difficult thing to do and to do it while having other things to do shows how responsible and hardworking they are.

ೃ⁀➷ TRANSITIONS *ೃ༄

 

Hello everyone! Today I will be talking about the transitions in our film opening.

The first transition in the film opening is the insert shot. This transition is during the "Let's play Mafia" scene. The point of an insert shot is to direct the audiences view to a certain object, and we did just that. We used this insert shot to show the audience that the deck of cards is very important to the film opening. This scene also emphasizes the sound of the cards being slammed to the ground. The next transition used was an eyeline match. This eyeline match is used when Zara is pointing to Maddie, showing that she wants to kill her. The point of this eyeline match is to show the audience who Zara chose to kill, and also see through Zara's eyes for a second. This also builds suspense, as the audience now knows something most of the characters do not.

The next transition used in the film opening was a dissolve. This transition is used when Maddie is swimming, to imply that time has passed as she has been swimming. The first clip is of her swimming laps, and the second clip is a more zoomed in shot of the edge of a pool. This transition tells the audience that Maddie has been swimming laps for a while, and implies that she will be shown in the next scene swimming as well. It also makes the audience wonder what's going to happen to Maddie, as they hear the suspenseful music and know Maddie is in the pool. Next, there is a fade out transition, shown after Maddie is drowning. This tells the audience that Maddie has died, and marks the end of this scene. It also gives a sense of closure to her story even though we just met her at the beginning of the film opening. There is also a fade in to the next shot, of the bracelet. This shows the audience that this scene is important, and that the killer was one of the friends. The fade in and out of that scene to the title sequence also marks the end of a period of time, and lets the audience know that the possible action after will be after Maddie's drowning.

ೃ⁀➷DAY 3 OF FILMING*ೃ༄

 

Hey everyone, welcome back! Today I will be talking about our FINAL day of filming. This filming day was before editing started.

First, I will talk about what we prepared to film and who was there. We needed to film the montage scene, and the scenes of Aleena, Sofia, and Samantha pointing. In order to get these scenes done, we needed EVERYONE to be there. We also planned to re film any scenes that looked bad, such as the overhead shot. Compared to the other days of filming, where Samantha's mom and dad were there to help us film, only Samantha's mom was there today. When we got there, we unboxed all of the equipment Sofia got from BECON-TV, and began to set it up. We then faced an obstacle with the equipment - we couldn't get the boom mic pole to work! We inboxed BECON-TV and asked for assistance, and he helped us figure out what we were doing wrong. After we got all the equipment set up, we began to film!

The first thing we filmed was the scenes of me talking, saying the instructions of the Mafia game, such as "Mafia, open your eyes". However, we struggled with the lighting, as we were filming during the daytime. The problem was that we could see the sunlight even though we shut the blinds. To minimize this, we moved where I was standing to a place where you could not see the sunlight, but also where the lighting still looked okay. After we filmed those scenes, we set up the montage of us playing. To do this, we actually played a game of Mafia! It was super fun, and we had it that I was the narrator so it would still be like the film opening. We moved the camera angles occasionally, but reached a problem. The camera died mid-game! So, we filmed another game to make up for it. After, we filmed the pointing scenes of Aleena, Sofia, and Samantha. We also filmed the close ups of every character, to show whos getting killed or saved. This day was very productive, and I am so happy we got everything done!

ೃ⁀➷SOUND UPDATES*ೃ༄

 

Hello everyone! Today I will be talking about the sound updates for my film opening.

First off, I will talk about who was involved in editing sound then, and who is involved in editing sound now. Originally, it was meant to be only me involved in sound, but due to time issues, Aleena decided to help me with the sound as well! We also changed where we wanted to have the sound. Originally we wanted to have a song playing during the montage, suspenseful music during the killing of Maddie, and suspenseful music during the title sequence. However, during editing, Samantha decided it would sound better if there was no music during the montage, and that you hear the girls playing instead. On the topic of the montage, the editors also realized that during my talking scenes, there was no clip of me saying "Discuss who you think is the Mafia". Instead, Sofia decided to take an audio clip from the montage, where I say "Okay, Discuss!" and added that to the film. 

Before we understood that we had to have copyright-free music, we chose some songs/instrumentals that we wanted to use. For the montage, we wanted to use the instrumental of "Every Breath You Take", as it gives off a suspenseful sound while still having a teenager vibe, as we are still teenagers at a sleepover. The update for this is the removal of the sound that I mentioned in the first paragraph. Another song we wanted to use was the Pretty Little Liars score for the title sequence. The sound gave off the perfect atmosphere of the movie, and matched the title sequence perfectly! We were having trouble finding music that sounded good with the title sequence. However, we had to update the sound to an instrumental of a copyright free sound Aleena found, called "voice - strange".  While this does not give a suspenseful sound, we decided it matched the title sequence well enough. Finally, we changed the fact that we did not want any music in the background. Me and Aleena sent Samantha a suspenseful copyright free sound, and we used it for the background music during the entire opening and it increases when Maddie drowns.