When I was initially assigned this project, I was in Georgia. Therefore, I wrote my script and my “color paragraph” blog based on the atmosphere there. I was randomly told by my family that we were going home that same week, after I had already based my whole film around being in Georgia. I tweaked my script while keeping as many elements as I could, and quickly got to work in Florida.

When editing my video, I realized that my audio was pretty much useless due to the poor quality microphone on my phone. I had to record every sound in the editing process, from the bed comforter ruffling, the sink faucet, the drawer, and many more. However, I did use youtube to find a few sound effects, like the birds chirping, the teeth being brushed, hair being brushed, and the perfume being sprayed. In a couple of clips, I was actually able to use the actual audio. The audio from the typing scene was perfectly fine because my phone was right next to the keyboard. As for the scene of me walking, the footsteps condescending sounded perfect and gave off a nice sense of distance. I enjoyed making the sounds for this project while it was quite tedious, and I think they came out perfectly. When recording my sounds, I recalled a video my instructor showed in class which discussed foley artists who make sound effects for movies (video below).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FyeSuJOJoAdeEsG5uc8Q29FlNDBZ1hKgmTMLqFexmXc/edit?usp=sharing

When I was first assigned this project, I was stumped when it came to idea for the theme. While I have done horror for previous projects in this class, I knew it would have been nearly impossible to pull off well by myself, and to acquire the materials for it during these times. I thought about myself and what I was going through, and was quickly inspired to make an inspirational/motivational film. In the early phases of quarantine, I was depressed and let myself get lazy. Then I realized I needed to push through and take advantage of this free time to better myself. I researched several inspirational short films on youtube and was inspired to pursue this theme! Writing my script was very easy as it was based on myself and my mindset I went through regarding my quarantine. A key aspect to making an inspirational film that I observed was the music. A common theme ran through every short film I watched: classical musical that heightened when the character turned themselves around. I researched dozens of songs on youtube until I found one I felt was fit for my film. Lastly, I noticed another key element that I really needed to capture was lighting and color schemes. The “sadder” clips all featured darker lighting and darker clothes. The “happier” scenes showed a bright, sunny atmosphere and the main character wore bright cheery clothes. I recreated this by filming my “sadder” scenes when it was raining outside to take away extra sunlight, and wearing black clothes. When filming my “happier” scenes, I made sure to utilize as much sunlight as I could and I wore a bright pink shirt, symbolizing joy. Below are videos I researched when crafting my final product.

While shooting “Quarantine” I quickly discovered a huge obstacle. I didn’t have any equipment to work with. The most important piece of equipment that I was in need of was a tripod. Working with only myself, I had to be the actress. So, that meant I couldn’t hold the camera and had to rely on a stationary position for the camera. I was challenged a lot due to this, and had to be creative to find a solution. For the shots where I am laying in bed, I propped my phone on my bedroom door handle to get the perfect angle. For the shot of me in the bathroom getting ready, I had to place my phone on one of the door’s hinges and tape it to hold it in place. In the scene where I am looking at old pictures on my computer, I had to tape my phone to my headboard to get the perfect over the shoulder angle. The most creative shot I had to do was the scene of me typing on the computer; I held my phone against my chest with my chin because I had to get both of my hands in the shot and I wanted a POV perspective. The rest of the scenes were shot using household items to hold up my phone. I used stacks of books and even a can of chili to place my phone against.

Also, I was lacking professional equipment including a quality camera and a microphone. I had to use my IPhone camera and the microphone of my headphones. I didn’t record much audio, except for the voiceover and a few raw sounds from my video. I also added non-diegetic music to add to the theme of the film. All in all, this project creatively challenged me and pushed me to use my existing resources.

Making this final product really forced me out of my comfort zone. Originally, I was able to work with my group members on assignments in Media Studies. However, we weren’t allowed to work in groups for this project due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Before, we all split up work amongst ourselves and we were able to combine all of our ideas together. Doing this project, I had to take on a lot more work including coming up with the idea, crafting and formatting the script, shooting, acting, editing, and more. The hardest part for me was the shooting. I had to prop up my phone to film and couldn’t do any camera movements (except for one POV shot) because I was the only actress and I couldn’t have anyone else film it for me. Another thing I struggled with while working by myself was that I had to be creative while working with no equipment, which I will further dive into in the next blog post. I also had to edit the film by myself, which was also a struggle as two of my other group members typically took on that task. Overall, I am decently proud of my final product that I put together by myself and overcame many obstacles to produce it.

 In my film “Quarantine,” there aren’t very many props being used. One thing to set apart the depressing tone at the beginning from the upbeat and inspirational tone that comes from the ending of the film, however, is the lighting and scenery. For example, in the beginning, I will be seen in a dark room wearing dark clothes. I’m at my parent’s cabin in Georgia right now, and my bedroom here is very dark, as it is decorated with dark woods and it is in the middle of the woods. This darkness can be related to Seasonal Affective Disorder because although it typically occurs in winter, it also relates to the lack of bright light as stated in the article attached. When my character begins going outside more, the brightness combined with the surrounding nature helps uplift her spirits. Since she is outside in a forest, she is surrounded by the color green which is known as the “strength provider” and the color of nature. Green can stimulate growth, tranquility, and ambition, which are all traits that my character adopts after her change of environment. I didn’t pack very many clothes because I did not intend on being in Georgia for so long (thanks coronavirus), but I do have black and grey shirts to wear at the beginning of the film, and one lighter colored shirt I can wear in the end. The black and grey shirts will perfectly compliment the mood of the beginning of my film, as they convey depressing and mysterious tones. So, while I may not use many props in my film, color and lighting still play a key role as they are manipulated and utilized through the environment and setting. 

One of the key components of our film is the lighting. The lighting sets a visual mood and atmosphere for the audience. It also guides the audience’s attention, reflects the psychology of characters, and defines/supports the genre of the film (see website). In our film, we will use the common three point lighting technique, however, we will use little of it to support the dark and depressing scenes. The scene with Caroline’s parents arguing will be shot in one of my group member’s kitchen, where she has dimming lights. The parents will be standing across from each other with the countertop between them. We are going to play with the lighting and see how we can manipulate the lighting of that scene to make it as dramatic as possible. Perhaps we will utilize the overhead lights to cast dramatic shadows on the actors’ faces.

Our flashback scene will take place outside at a park, so we are relying strictly on natural lighting for that scene. This isn’t too much of an issue, as the scene is supposed to reflect when the family was happy, so it will match the mood. However, there are several factors that can affect the lighting, such as weather or time of day. We plan to shoot it in the afternoon when the sun is at its peak. Also, daylight savings time is happening on Sunday, which plays into our favor since we all have busy schedules so it is hard to find time to film. However, now that the sun is up for longer, we have extra time to still be able to utilize natural lighting if we are meeting up later in the day to film.

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/film-101-understanding-film-lighting#why-lighting-is-important

Music is an essential part of any film, whether it be diegetic or non-diegetic. Diegetic music is music in a film that the characters can actually hear. Non-diegetic is only heard by the audience, and is not playing in the actual scene. For our film, we are going to play non-diegetic music. The music will be very quiet and calm in the beginning of the film, and slowly escalate as the film twists to more abusive and dark scenes. The music will reach its full height when Caroline is aggressively painting, to match the dramatics of the scene. The music will be classical, which has a very serious and momentous connotation. I researched music scenes that utilized classical music in the same way, and found an article featuring a few examples. One example that stood out to me was Space Odyssey’s opening scene. When the music reaches its peak, it is when the chimp has a break through, an idea has struck. The classical music was used to “bring a seriousness and transcendence to the visuals,” which is exactly what the classical music does during our clip of Caroline painting aggressively. The slow build up of the intensity of the music also adds to the dramatics of the scene.

The most important piece of equipment for our film is the camera that we use. Originally, we planned to use a regular iPhone camera. I didn’t favor this idea, as I wanted our final product to be the highest quality possible, but we had no other choice. Until a couple of weeks ago, when Sarah was able to get her hands on her aunt’s camera to borrow for the project. The camera is a Nikon, yet we only have experience with Canon cameras for that we used in this class. The reason we can’t use our instructor’s camera for this project is because this one is being filmed outside of school. Since we have no experience with this type of camera, we wanted to test it out before we started shooting our final product. We met up at Sarah’s house to test out certain techniques and features on the camera. This camera has its own mounted microphone, so we wanted to test that to decide if we need to check out the Lavalier microphones. After some trial and error, we discovered that we had to tweak the camera’s settings to not have the mounted microphone audio become distorted. We changed the audio to the setting movie and also turned on auto-sensitivity. With turning on auto-sensitivity, the camera is now able to adjust the audio according to the environment it is in. This will come in handy when we switch from the bedroom scene to the outdoor picnic scene, as I’m sure there will be a lot of wind outside. Another thing we discovered was that in order to have the best camera quality, we had to be mindful of any camera movements. Our film doesn’t have any drastic movements, so we should be okay. We only have soft pans when we show Caroline painting, but those will be shot slowly anyways, so the camera will still remain in focus. In order to learn about the features in the camera’s settings, we taught ourselves by spending time tweaking settings and also by researching on the Nikon support website about the features. The link below is where we learned what the auto-sensitivity feature was.

https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/eu/BV_article?articleNo=000006322&lang=en_GB