Filming Opening

Today I started filming and unfortunately, I didn't finish like I had originally hoped. I've managed to film plenty of short videos in a single day. I thought it was fairly reasonable that I could do the same for this video. It didn't help that I have been feeling sick for the past two days. Not only was I feeling miserable, audio was a major pain too. The camera mic had a hard time picking up the dialogue clearly, causing an end result of the clips being hard to hear. I'm not proud of many of my static shots either. The entire production was a three-man job being done by a two man crew. If a third crew member had been there the entire production would've improved substantially. That third crew member would've held up a boom mic while my friend and I acted. Or he would've helped with camera movement and framing in the middle of recording. The good news is that I did manage to get a second friend to be that third crew member to assist me on this video. Ou

Markham Park finally gave me a response when I called them again today. Good news is that everything can now go as planned. I can now just confirm things with my friend on filming. My idea is to film during Spring Break on a day that I don't have family plans. After looking at my script a second time I'd say that I should be able to film the entire video in a single day.

The rough draft of my script has finally been finalized. It's not much different than the version I came up with earlier. It just helps give me an idea of how the shots and story will go, without having to recall it from an unreliable memory. And as if the script wouldn't help me visualize the shots enough, I took the opportunity to create a storyboard, which will help guide me in creating shots during production, despite my crude drawings.

My Media Studies class today had a class discussion to help us gauge our progress on our Foundation project/video. The class got split up into groups made up of people that aren't helping us in our projects. Each group being made up of about 5-7 people each. We listened to each other's plans for the project and gave advice and criticisms as to what their project was lacking and what to prepare for during the production phase. I would say that while my project has a solid vision and foundation to build off of, I still did learn a well of useful from the discussion. Like how I should consider a slow pace to build up the suspension for the beginning. Or how I should plan out the lighting since I'll be filming part of the video in the dark. And to record room audio of the outdoor noises to help improve the audio quality of the video. Needless to say, I gained important insight on how the production of the video should go.

The most original and distinctive mask I could realistically make for my villain was that of a plague doctor. It's such an unusual and rather well known part of history, that is surprisingly under utilized in the world of modern horror. I can't think of any horror movie off the top of my head that had a plague doctor as a main or side antagonist. Their entire existence is surrounded by this ominous cloak of death. There's nothing settling about the appearance. Thick clothes made to protect themselves from the outside world never showing an inch of skin, except for their hands and face. Hands which would be covered by rubber gloves and the last piece of humanity showing, the face, would be covered by that surreal, otherworldly mask. It all comes together to make a threatening antagonist. Making a costume like this won't be easy, but it's a challenge that I can overcome.

While I wouldn't say I'm a connoisseur of horror films, I will say that I've seen all of the "Friday The 13th" films, with the exception of Freddy vs Jason. I admit that the later films started to lose their seriousness and got very campy. Yet I still find myself enjoying all the films in some way and a large part of my enjoyment goes to none other than Jason Voorhees. You see, there's nothing complicated about Jason. His motivation is that his mom was killed in a sleep away camp, so now he'll kill anyone and everyone that even tries to go into his camp. It's that sheer simplicity and one-minded determination of Jason made him feel more like a force of nature than an actual human. He was a compelling villain not in spite of the simple concept surrounding him, but because of it. There was always a question of what morbid acts will he commit this time, (by the tenth movie Jason was in space) or how will he be killed this time? This was the glue that he

The park has still not responded to me as to whether I can film in their park in the early dusk. Half the time I just end up going to their voice messaging system and the other half the time a person picked up, but wasn't really sure if the rules allowed me at early dusk. But I'm not really worried with the filming location for the time being. Reasons are that I doubt that they won't let me film in the park and that I have a backup if they do deny me entry to film. What I'm worried more about right now is how the story will go in the video. The basic, rough draft I have for the premise is that two guys go camping in the woods for a short vacation. After they set up their camp for the night they go to sleep, but one of the campers soon finds himself waking up to a loud noise and his friend missing. Realizing that something is up, he makes a dash to his car but a masked figure catches up to him while he's running and is swiftly knocked out by the masked figure. He t

I realized that while I know I can film in the park during the day, since I've done so in the past, I need to know if it's okay for my crew and I to film in Markham Park at night. This is the perfect location for me to film my shots in. Not only does it have the right atmosphere, (as previously stated) it's also close to where I live, which makes it convenient for my crew and I as far as traveling goes. But the last thing I want is be halfway through filming and be told that I need to go somewhere else film. I'll give the park a call see if we're allowed film at night or not. For the time being, I think I have a decent plan B if it comes down to it. There's a small clearing with a couple of trees inside my neighborhood, that would be okay to film in. However, it would definitely be downgrade from my original vision.

I have decided to go with horror as my genre of choice for the film. I can definitely pull it off, and I have an idea on where to film it. There's a park near where I live, called Markham Park and thanks to Hurricane Irma, the forest in that park is all mangled up and dilapidated with trees knocked over and torn apart everywhere you look. Giving the forest a look that it's been abandoned and forgotten about, and has long since fallen into a state of decay. The visual aspect of my video is going to be perfect inside that rotted forest. I can now see the shots for my intro. Of knocked over trees, broken branches, of possible wildlife. Having filmed in those woods in the past I know that audio shouldn't be a problem either. The forest is filled with natural sounds like birds singing, crickets chirping, and branches snapping. All coming together to help make the film more engrossing overall. I genuinely can't think of anything wrong with the location I've picked for m

          I have been giving some thought as to what genre my video should conform to. I'm currently torn between either comedy or horror. Both are genres that are admittedly hard to do well. Comedy requires a perfect sense of timing in order for a joke to be effective. Half a second to soon or too late and the joke flops. The story has to be written simple enough to allow jokes to be worked in, but with enough logic that the story works. Along with that, the jokes need to be original and surprising enough to invoke laughter or some for of joy in a person. Horror is similar in that it has to be in some way original, or at least executed well enough to elicit a feeling of trepidation in a viewer. Atmosphere is vital in horror and audio is vital in atmosphere. While the visuals do matter in setting a tone and conveying information, it's really the audio working behind the scenes that sucks you into the story. And my view of good horror is that the threat stays hidden. Only show