I know I always seem to start my blog post like this but this time I honestly don’t know where to start with this one. Maybe with an introduction of the project… For this project we were to make a horror film and if you look back in my posts a big you will find a similar project. (The dreaded Macbeth movie) Our film was to respond the driving question “How does horror reflect and comment on our society?”. Again this was a full class project meaning everyone in the class works together to create one final outcome. Not sure why our teachers wanted us to do this again since the last time it failed so badly, but either way we were doing it. With the hope that we could learn from our mistakes from last project… not sure that really happened.
The goal for this movie was to reflect on and answer the driving question “How does horror reflect and comment on our society?”. Prior to this we watched and learned about how all horror is a mirror of our own internal struggle. This unit I actually found very interesting because not only did I go into it thinking I would hate the entire thing because I am or thought I was terrified of horror. Don’t get me wrong it’s still not my favourite but it did realize that all my fear around the horror genre was built up in my head and I am actually less afraid then I thought I was. We studied the different aspects of horror and what makes something truly horrifying. The elements of aversion as seen below and how they are used in every horror film and what effect each of them have.
Prior to also starting this project we read both Frankenstein and Birdbox and studied what makes each one horrifying. We also watched both “The Exorcist” and “Halloween” and wrote reviews on both and why we both found them scary and why the viewer when it was made would find it scary. Also what elements for aversion were used and how they contributed to making it horrifying.
This project started with our trip to Seattle where we went to horror museums and some other museums and a haunted house in which I didn’t partake but was terrified enough from the outside. I ended up staining my favourite hoodie on the wet wood paint while also getting absolutely terrified, super fun right! But it was really fun watching everyone come out, the shock stuck on their face and still screaming.
Anyways after this trip we started the movie. We had to apply to each role and our teachers would decided who was fit for each role. I applied for the role of art director and ended up working with Nolan as co-art directors. Some people got something absolutely different to to what they signed up for like Alanah for example signed up for script and got one of the lead actors.
This movie started off well… well sort of. We all had our rolls and we were starting to plan how everything was going to go and what our story is going to be. After that, everything went downhill.
It was really hard because in the beginning of the project the first thing that had to be done was the script and then after that was the story boards. So at the start there seemed to be a lot of not doing a lot and I know our teachers always say that there is always something to do but it was hard to plan and figure stuff out without knowing the story or the directions the movie is going to take on.
Very very brief story outline of our movie..
Our movie basically followed the story of these four teenagers and each of them had a reason for sending around a photo of this girl and somehow the school found out and so they were all stuck at school after school in detention. There was Brad (aka Michael S) who was the cool kid, Leah (Alanah) who was the popular girl and innocent but a lot very judgemental of people who do what she doesn’t believe in. Damien (Spencer) the mysterious kid that distances himself so people don’t see he is not invincible. And finally Eddie (Jayden), Eddie is the kid that just want to fit in with everyone else, he is an outsider trying to get in.
As you can maybe sort of tell our movie didn’t really reflect and answer our driving question. We did focus on the fact that nothing you put online is private and their is no such thing as privacy when online. I guess when starting the script and even the story building with the whole class we should have always been making sure that we were connect back to that main question.
Things that didn’t go so well (in my opinion)
-right from the start we strayed away from the main purpose of the assignment which was to answer the driving question
-people tired to bud into other people’s rolls
-storyboards weren’t being followed
-not everyone had a clear vision of what the movie was to look like
-some scenes were decided how they were to be filmed while we were filming it
-too many people’s inputs on each scene
On the other hand people did put it time and effort and I personally was proud of what came out of it. Some people on the other hand not so much. Okays let’s talk about my role in this whole project. As I said before Nolan and I worked together as co-art directors. Our roll was to make sure each scene looked realistic and similar to the one before and after it. Since the setting was a school it wasn’t too hard of a task. We made posters that connected to each character and related to their personality and their killer.
For the most part there wasn’t too much change up needed to be done to each classroom because we thought why change a classroom to look like a classroom. We did move desks around a bit and make sure nothing was in the scene that we didn’t want in the scene and no extra people were in the scene. Even if it seemed there was nothing to do in our department I was always there ready to help when needed and in most cases just ended up cleaning up blood and I was even featured as a few of the different killers. Even though our roll didn’t have a ton of things to do I was able to contribute in different ways. I even brought pizza for everyone on one Sunday night people were late filming. I think though now looking back that we could have done a bit more and made each and every scene a bit more realistic and our posters were good in their intent but defiantly could have looked better in how we printed and placed them. I think that each person probably could have done a bit more but also be proud of what they contributed.
Overall I would say our movie turned out in my opinion a lot better than Macbeth. I thought the class overall worked well together and worked well with our tight schedule. There is defiantly some major things that could have been changed in order to make it the final outcome more successful but I think that some things had to be compromised since we had such a tight schedule. I think that our teachers needed to look at this project as a whole and with such a tight timeline and all the good that came out of it because once we finished watching the movie all they said is “well you guys failed that assignment” and I do agree that we did stray a bit away from answering the main driving question but I think that our final project is something that should be celebrated a bit more than that. The amount of hours people put into making that movie and dedication to it doesn’t deserve to be thrown down the drain just like that. I would like to see any other grade 12 class or even PLP class try and make half the movie we did.
Our final movie if you are interested in watching it!
https://youtu.be/KwD8aCgTo30