I forgot to upload my script so here it is:
Hi, my name is Federica Briones and this is my CCR for
my film opening named Spiraling.
To start everything off, my film opening takes place
in Weston FL and is about a girl named Serena, who was played my Sara
Montenegro, who unfortunately has a mental breakdown because of her home life.
Her parents have always wanted her to maintain a perfect image of herself when
in reality she does not feel this way whatsoever. As Serena grows more and more
tired of her mothers’ expectations, she breaks down and decides to run away
from her house.
Question #1
Like many other movies about runaways, my film fits
inside the thriller genre. The thriller genre is the easiest genre to merge
with other genre, which explains why there are so many of these films and why
it is one of the most popular genres.
Despite how much we have watched these types of movies over
and over again they always keep us hooked until the very end. It's like we know
what to expect but for some reason keep watching the film. This is all due to
the different ways in which suspense is created throughout the film. Suspense
can be created with anything, from a difference in lighting to the soundtrack
used.
This genre is best described by the mood that it
ignites inside of the viewer, the different moods can vary anywhere from
feelings of anxiousness or excitement. Movies in this genre also tend to only
use one main character who is stuck in a conflict and therefore takes the
decision to isolate themselves from the world, especially from the people who
care about them the most.
Suspense is a huge part
of a thriller movie, it is what creates all the different emotions evoked in a
viewer. Without suspense could a thriller even be called a thriller? Absolutely
not! Suspense is unpredictability, which leads to mystery and hooks readers to
watching the piece of film.A prime example of a master of thriller movies was
filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. People loved his movies because he was astonishingly
great at creating that feel of suspense and keeping people on the edge of their
seats. Some of his best thriller movies include, North by Northwest,
The 39 Steps, Rear Window, and Vertigo.
With every genre in
film there is said to be a core emotion, for the thriller genre that emotion is
excitement. People most commonly lean towards this genre because it feels as if
they are taking risks without any actual risks involved. These risks are then
deflated by the satisfaction of the protagonist uncovering what they needed to
do in order to avoid destruction or disaster. All good thriller films have a
controlling idea which can be defined as the lesson a filmmaker wants the
audience to leave with. This controlling idea is most often developed
unconsciously but it is always present. A controlling idea can be displayed
through an ordinary sentence or developed through the actions of the characters
throughout the film. Controlling ideas will differ depending on the nature of
your story, meaning if it is meant to be a positive story or a negative
one.
There are also various different conventions
that must be followed in the thriller genre. Conventions are NOT obligatory
scenes, the difference is that conventions are requirements that must be met in
order to further develop a story's characters and plot. Conventions do not have
to occur in a specific order unlike obligatory scenes.
Here are some examples of conventions:
·
Detailed description
of atmosphere
·
Crimes must contain a
clue
·
Limited time for
protagonist to act
·
Protagonist actively
investigates
·
Lives depending on
protagonist defeating antagonist
·
Hypocrite character
Wow no that we got the
research out of the way lets talk about the convention that my partner and I
decided to challenge. In our film opening instead of excitement being the core
emotion we decided to make it suspense. This can be seen through the music that
we used which varies in pitch throughout the film and has stronger music
towards the end when Serena is officially exciting her house. Also, since we
decided to film everything during sunset, it adds that darker lightning that we
needed to create even more suspense.
We decided not to
challenge that many genre conventions because we wanted to create something
that also fit right into what defines the thriller genre. We want people to
watch our creation and one hundred percent know that it is within the thriller
genre. Additionally, with our storyline it just made sense to stick to the
common conventions of the genre.
The typical conventions
of the genre are what tend to attract the target audience that we are hoping
for.
Our target audience is
often older audience from ages 20-25, mostly made up of males but not entirely.
The interests of the TA often are trying to outsmart what is happening in the
film, so basically thinking more maturely. There is a reason why these films
target older audience since younger audience might not be mature enough to
handle the different plot twists within a movie.
So, we have a target
audience but how are we supposed to engage this audience in our film. Well, the
answer is through our production choices! In our production we used a number of
different choices which will attract this audience, for example the suspense
created because no one knows what will happen next or why Serena is running
away from her house. Hopefully viewers will start thinking about what could
happen next and become more engaged at the end because like any film opening it
does not include a clear ending.
Even though we want to
attract that audience, we also wanted to challenge it a little bit. In thriller
films it id very common that the main character is a male but in our film the
main character is a female, which will hopefully attract more females to watching
our film.
But how will audiences
even watch our film? Well let’s talk about it, as amateur filmmakers it would
be completely unrealistic to talk about releasing our movie in theaters so
let’s start a little smaller. We would definitely publish our movie on YouTube
and make various social media accounts for it especially on TikTok since we can
post small clips of it to so when people are scrolling, they stop, watch, and
hopefully are interested in watching our whole movie. If everything goes well
on our social media accounts and we get enough traction we would consider
entering it into a film festival, which would widen our viewers.
#3
When we first began
making our film opening we were worried about our limited skills that we had
learned through classes we had taken in middle school, but now towards the end
I can confidently say that I have improved my production skills.
First the storyline,
the storyline was definitely the best part of the whole project because I
really enjoyed how creative I could get with it and it could really have been
about anything that we wanted it to be.
After the storyline we
had to develop our characters which I also really enjoyed because the characters
were completely created by us, there were no rules that we had to follow and we
could make the backstory the way that we wanted.
The whole production
process which I found to be the most challenging part of everything because you
want everything to be perfect and exactly the way you imagine it in your head.
This reminds me of one of the major changes we wanted to incorporate into our
film but unfortunately were not able to get it the way we wanted to so we opted
out for something else. This change was suggested to me by one of my group
members when we did our class group meetings and it was that in the moment when
Serena is having her mental breakdown the room behind her should be spinning
while she is standing there having her breakdown. We could not figure out how
to get the proper look for this scene so but we still wanted to have a spiraling
scene because it would integrate out title into the film even more so, we
decided that Sara would sit on the floor and since I was the videographer, I
would spin around her and then zoom in to her face. Even though it was not our
original idea, we still like how the scene turned out.
We used an iPhone for
filming, Adobe Premier Pro for editing, and documented our whole project
through our online blog posts.
We decided to use an
iPhone to film because neither one of us had another cameras and we also felt
that filming with our phone would give us more mobility when filming since we
would not have to carry around a big camera. We were going to use a ring light
but we decided not to because we wanted the whole opening to be during the
night so using a ring light would defeat the purpose of that specific lighting
we wanted.
Using Adobe Premier was
amazing because we both already had experience with this editing software from
previous classes we had taken so editing was not as challenging as we expected
it to be/ Being familiar with the software truly helps when your on a specific
timeline. Also, being able to document everything since beginning through our
blog posts really helps to see the progress that has been made.
The only problem that
we had with Adobe Premier was that the share feature was not working, the share
feature is basically a feature where multiple people can be logged into one project
and edit it at the same time. For some reason this did not work for us.
Finally the end,
I am extremenly proud
of what my partner and I were able to achieve and have learned so much and
grown an appreciation for the film industry now that I have an idea of exactly
how much work goes into every single choice in a film. The only thing I wish I
could improve is my time management skills, but this project was a great way to
start doing that. Bye!
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