While in class, we decided to finish our storyboard! With our fixed plot after discussing with our teacher, it was time to finally plan the shots.
I drew the panels, so apologies if the art is not the best!
Depending on the shot, we added action lines to show how we want our actor to move (which Olivia volunteered to star!). By adding arrows by the head, we knew which way the action would face, adding more consistency to our final project.
Each page is intended to be a minute each. We planned with the first page, the one with the killer chasing her down, that there will be a lot of insert shots of the hall and the actual chase scene happening. There will be quick cuts to show the desperation to escape. We did not include every frame we wanted in this sequence, but it will mostly include over-the-shoulder and tracking shots.
When we meet on Friday (SAT day is on this Wednesday), we will review the storyboard to make sure it is the sequence we want it. It’s so exciting to see the story coming together!
Once we get the equipment from BECON TV and get our costumes/props, it’s time to turn this storyboard into a reality!
In our individual meetings, Olivia and I met with our teacher to discuss our film.
We realized there were a few inconsistencies with developing the male love interest of the film, as we want the killer to be the girlfriend of him. This is our main conflict of the film and would need to work in order to fully understand our opening.
We decided to change it from waking up from the call from the mother, as she will already be established with the broken picture frame, but maybe the call being from him as well as the lock screen. A knock on the door will be at the very end of the piece. For his name, we decided on Luke. We thought the name sounded nice. I personally liked it since it reminded me of Star Wars. The name was needed for the contact info for the phone calls, so to achieve this we'll just change our names on our phones to the name of the character depending on the phone we use.
The phone call will also help with establishing mystery, as one suspect has already been introduced. It will be the audience's first guess, which is the effect we want to achieve. There will be three characters in our opening, but we will only need two actors. Olivia volunteered to be our main character while her friend could play the killer. The knock at the door will be implied to be Luke but his face will not directly be shown.
A mood board would help develop him a bit. We wanted a preppy-jock vibe for him, giving the essence of our location of Miami. By making him an athlete for the school, it would make him have a higher status in the school, adding to why his girlfriend would go after our protagonist. We also decided on the name Luke Taylor, as we found a jersey that had the last name Taylor for our mood board and we really liked it.
My partner and I knew we had to make a schedule this week. We had already set aside different dates we could not film, like spring break for example. But after learning the other schedules from our peers, we decided on our own schedule!
February 27-March 3: Gather mise-en-scene elements, props, and work on storyboard
March 4-March 6: Film our project at UM
March 7-March 17: Get feedback from peers, edit and finalize our project
March 18-April 3: Complete CCR
April 3: Have everything done, submit our project!!!!!
This schedule really put everything into perspective. It now feels less overwhelming, but it also shows how close the end of the year is. I'm so excited to complete my film opening with my partner! Our idea seemed almost far-fetched but with our planning we realized it is possible with no budget. I may try to contact BECON about film equipment next week to see if we can use anything from there to help the quality of our film.
Filming March 4th through the 6th is really helpful as well. That week is really busy for me as my grandparents are moving down to Florida and it's me and my mom's birthdays! Then the week after is spring break.
Today was our first group meeting. We were randomly assigned groups then went to different parts of the classroom to discuss our plans and ideas.
I will say, I was a bit nervous to share my idea, so having to share our blog posts made it a lot easier to discuss. I was worried about not being able to fully express what Olivia and I came up with, so sharing my previous posts really helped. We got off to a quiet start, as most groups go, but as we kept talking, we felt more comfortable fully sharing.
One person in our group told us about something called BECON. It is a way to use media equipment that is available for students. I made sure to check out the website so when filming rolls around, we have a great resource to get cameras, and lighting and sound equipment. This will make our film look more professional, as iPhone quality may not do our idea justice.
I took inspiration from their schedules, by taking two-weeks for filming and two-weeks for editing. It leaves enough time just in case something goes wrong to fix it. While filming may only take a day or two, it is still good to set aside that time. Even if we finish filming before those two weeks, there will in-turn be more time for editing, putting us ahead of schedule.
This is a picture of our group meeting, we shared our blog websites and read and discussed them. I got some really great feedback, especially since we still need to develop our storyboard. I got a better idea of mise-en-scene because of the color palette I blogged about. I was told that having a set color palette may help in the editing project as we can color-correct as red will be our main color. It will make the shots more interesting having this specific color, instead of just the dull lighting of a university dorm.
We met for around 30-minutes, but being put on the Secure Protocol (also known as a "Code Yellow"), our group was allowed to stay together for a bit longer. Even though I am annoyed as this is the second time this week we have been in lockdown and secure, I know it will be safely handled by security.
During this time, we worked on our blog posts and discussed further into certain shots we wanted to create and how. Being stuck in the classroom let us fully tell our ideas instead of just what we had laid out, like actors. Most of our projects involved older characters, between the 18-25 range. However, this is a bit difficult as we are all high schoolers. I did not have this problem, as I am asking people in this age range already to star in the film, but it may be for others. Even if they looked the part, their acting may not be the best. That is the only worry I am having. Sadly, I do not know anyone in drama or theatre who has acting experience, so it is a slight disadvantage, but I will try the best I can to get the emotions needed for the film opening.
After looking at a few generators online, we found one that gave a lot of options. The website "Behind the Name" gave a lot of customization options to work with, from name origin to name origin.
We rolled the generator a few times to land on names we liked. There were a lot of random names that were ridiculous, such as the last name "Pickle" came up a few times. But ultimately, we agreed on a name, Carine Sylvain.
We agreed for the character to be from Germany who moved to the United States to attend university. Her decision to move that far from home was due to her complicated relationship with her mother, which caused her to want to distance herself from her family. By studying in Florida, she has a physical barrier between her and her mother.
From the mistreatment she faced at home, she developed anxiety which takes a toll on her relationships. Even though she is separated from her problems, she still faces social isolation. While having a roommate, she is not close with them. I want to include this in the opening to reveal how this will effect her later on, especially when being tracked down by a killer.
Her mental health is a large part of our overall project, as our antagonist is a reflection of her insecurities, hunting her down and becoming a constant fear.
Our backstory for her most likely won't be shown in the whole opening, but it will help us become more familiar with who she is, which will help with our character design.
As for her outfit and aesthetic, we took a look at Pinterest. There are hundreds of ideas and mood boards that can be used for our character. I personally think darker colors could be used for her at the beginning of the film, mostly the opening, to represent how overwhelmed she feels with her mental health. If the film were to progress, her clothing would get lighter to represent how she is persevering through her anxiety and mental illness.
We realized how some of the ideas on Pinterest were way too warm for our location. Not only would it not fit with the setting for our film, but it could cause a hazard for our actor wearing something that hot. A cropped white shirt would provide contrast to the solid black jeans. It will display the internal conflict she faces. We want her and the killer to have predominantly dark clothing in order to show their connection. If other characters were to be shown, they'd wear lighter and colorful pieces of clothing, separating themselves from the conflict of Carine and the killer.
As for our killer, I suggested a masked character. As mentioned in my research post, masks are very common in slashers. We want to use this in order to have a mystery for our character to solve. We originally considered the killer to be male presenting, that typical slashers are. A majority of well-known horror characters are male. However, we thought a female character would be very interesting.
Our female killer was created because we thought the crazy boyfriend character would not be as intriguing and possibly to obvious to the viewer, as this trope is seen a lot in slashers. For example, in Scream (1996) and in the rebooted Scream (2022), the boyfriend of the protagonist is the one of the main killers. We did not want to fall into this trope by instead using the idea. We want to display how women can display that aggressiveness and evil, as it is not typically shown in slasher films.
The killer is the girlfriend of a male friend that Carine has, showing her insecurity. It is that jealousy that drives her to go after her and others. We have not decided on a costume design for her, however I want to design a mask idea on Adobe Fresco or Ibis Paint to draw out a few ideas.
The costume while in disguise may be rather simple, possibly a solid black hoodie and black jeans to blend in with the darkness. The hoodie will conceal the rest of the character's head, leaving the audience without clues for any identifying factors.
Our film is hoping to have a dark color palette. Dark lighting is typically seen in horror, especially with dark tones and red hues.
For example, this is a color scheme from IT (2017). There is both black and red colors used in this shot. Red signifies danger, and often blood in horror. By using red as the main color of the shot, it contrasts the innocent white color of the costuming. It is a contrast to reveal the intentions of the character.
Red is guaranteed in horror. However, there are other colors that can have the same effect that red has to display danger.
This shot from Saw is using green, which often symbolizes nature and the earth. However, with the person in the center of the shot twists this meaning. The green makes this seem more disease-ridden and disgusting. The green twists your stomach rather than calm you down. Horror can still be effective without red tones.
While knowing this, we still want to use red as our main color scheme. It will be a better match for our film.
As horror is my decided genre for my opening, I decided to look at some film openings of the horror genre, ranging from the subgenre of monster and slasher movies, to psychological and supernatural horror films.
Scream (1996) dir. Wes Craven
The opening to Wes Craven's Scream is among one of the most famous film openings of all time. This opening begins with Drew Barrymore's character, Casey, answering the phone while home alone. An unfamiliar voice is on the other end of the line, of which is the voice acting is provided by Roger L. Jackson. This generated one of the most famous lines in horror, "What's your favorite scary movie?"
The scene takes a twist when Casey threatens to hang up, but the other voice gets upset over this. She hangs up and the voice gets verbally aggressive, threatening to kill her. The scene intensifies, then leading Casey to see the body of her boyfriend outside. In order to save him, she must answer questions based on horror films, althoughs he gets one wrong pertaining to the villain of the original Friday the 13th. As the boyfriend is killed off, she realizes she is next. She runs out of the house, only to be chased down by the killer.
This opening scene reveals almost everything about the rest of the film. The killer is a horror fan, which sets up the commentary on slashers that the film is trying to tell. It is a slasher about slashers. The self-awareness just in the opening. Drew Barrymore's character would have been read as the "perky, innocent blonde as Scream's main character and been primed to relate to her." It acklowedges the tropes set by other horror films and twists them. She was presented as a typical "final girl" character but was killed at only the beginning of the movie. It sets up the idea of how the film will break the cliches of the genre before we even see them on screen.
In addition, the use of a mask character, which is common in the slasher genre, adds an element of mystery already to the piece. The costuming of ghostface, the alias of the killers in the movie, is used to obscure their body. The black robe they wear obscures their body, leaving a harder time for the audience to discover who the main killer(s) are. The mask also aligns itself with other masked horror icons, such as Michael Myers, Leatherface and Jason.
Nope is a blend of the sci-fi and horror genre. It takes the typical conventions of horror, like its sound elemnts, and combines them with the aspects of aliens in sci-fi. However, its opening does not align itself with aliens at all.
The scene depicted is increadibly graphic, so if you are made uncomfortable by this, I suggest skip to after the scene summary and video.
The film opens with the production company logos for the film but with cheesy dialogue and a sitcom laugh track in the background. The only name we are given through the exchanges of birthday gift giving is "Gordy." We are not shown the character yet, but they do not speak. The audience claps as the final production logo is shown, but the screen goes black accompanied by a hitting noise. The screen stays on this black screen and this fight continues, hearing pleas for help, the audience left unable to do anything to make it stop.
A bible quote appears on screen, of which the quote is from Nahum 3:6. The quote is about how a path of exploitation only leads towards death and destruction. This is a main theme of the movie about how you cannot make a spectacle out of danger, yet it is confusing when no chracters have been shown. This can only be assumed to be connected to the sitcom-type show being played in the background.
The first shot in the film is the perspective of a child on the show. We are shown a sitcom set that has been destroyed and a chimpanzee in the foreground. The site is covered in blood, especially on the costume of the animal. The animal calms down as a show is upright on the ground with no explanation. The shot closes with the chimpanzee looking directly at the camera, before the film cuts to black one more time.
This opening sets up the themes shown later in the film, the danger of a spectacle. The audience can infer this monkey has been trained to be in this live-studio production but snapped. This show is making a profit off of a creature and taking advatange of him, enforcing how you cannot tame a wild animal. However, it only fits in to one of the character's story and development. Jupe, played by Steven Yeun, sees the alien creature, later named Jean Jacket, and wants to use it for one of his shows. His background with Gordy shows his ignorance for not learning the dangers of wanting to make a profit from a wild animal.
The sound design really sticks out, once the first attack happens, the audience is gone. There is no laugh track, applauds or screams, just the people on set. It adds a sense of loneliness and danger as it is feared that no one will come save them from this animal. Sound is the main element of this opening, as there is not much movement in the visual elements, so the audience relies on it to piece together what is happening in the film.
Re-Animator (1985) dir. Stuart Gordon
The opening scene of Re-Animator, like Scream, shows every aspect of the film in just a few minutes.
We see a Swiss university in the establishing shot, shown by the university sign displaying the city "Zurich." The bottom of the sign can be interpreted that this location is one for medical purposes. This is solidified by the costuming of some of the people in the halls, as one woman is wearing a white coat that is synonymous with doctors. This womans leads a man and several police officers to a door, briefly displaying a name tag on the door for the name of one of the doctors, but the name being called does not correlate with the one on the door. There is screaming as well, adding mystery to what is happening in the sceme.
As the screaming starts spiraling into the sound of glass breaking, this causes the officers to spark into action. Herbert West, prtrayed by Jeffrey Combs, is restrained away from the screaming man on the floor. The man, named Dr. Gruber, on the floor stands up, his eyes exploding with blood before collapsing once more. West is accused of murder for this gorey scene before delivering the name "I gave him life" as it cuts to the opening credits.
The audience is left to question what West meant with that line, especially after seeing Gruber die on-screen. However the makeup and special effects done on Gruber add some strange aspects as his skin had a greyish-purple tone to it, almost mimicking that of a corpse.
The sounds from before they entered the room also speculate that this is something that West may have caused. This is cleared up later in the film with the introduction of his reagent, but there are slight hints of it in the dialogue in the opening, with West stating the "dosage" was too large, a slight explanation for what exactly happened to Gruber. It is a conscious choice to not directly reveal what caused the death, but to listen to the dialogue for what may ahve happened.
What Did I Learn?
Watching these openings really helped me understand the important of dialogue. Out of the three film openings I watched, both Scream and Re-Animator had phrases that connected to the main theme of the film. The opening is meant to give a glimpse into what is to come, so using dialogue is especially important. These are also naturally said, which does not talk down to its audience into what exactly is happening. Looking into more horror scripts may help with typical conventions used in popular films so I know what I have to write make my opening effective.
Costume design is also very important. Each one of these films openings had distinctive looks to each character that represented who they were without much development. Gordy from the film Nope is the best example out of the three. He is a monkey dressed in a yellow sweater. Yellow is often associated with happiness, but can also represent danger. By dressing Gordy in human clothes, it represents how he was tried to be tamed for the purpose of being a spectacle, exactly what the film's message was.
Each element of an opening is important. By analyzing these, it gave me a better look into the ideas I want to create in my opening, especially when having no budget.
I will most likely watch some more openings over the weekend, possibly more independent films since that is the style I want to replicate the most.
