As you know, we’ve talked a lot about horror over the last few posts.
Funny enough, we are not yet done with exploring this genre or answering the question: Why is horror such an effective way to reflect and comment on our society?
To help answer this question we read a book focused on horror, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and watched a few horror movies that asked the question: Who is the real monster? That was very interesting and it made me think a lot about how we view the obvious monsters but who are actually the monsters in society. These included 2017’s Get Out, written and directed by Jordan Peele and the ironic movies franchise, Halloween.
You can read my past posts below for more information:
To help prepare us for our next project, my class took a trip down to Seattle in mid-October to visit the LeMay Car Museum to explore the theme of continuity and change, as well as go to one of the top rated haunted houses in North America. We also spent a ridiculous amount of time in the horror exhibit of the MoPOP, which I really liked because I was assigned with overseeing sound and video effects in our next project and the visit was very helpful.
Now on to our horror movie project, which I alluded to above.
Ok, first I need to share with you that the project was a horror movie but we did not actually end up making a movie.
Making a horror movie is a very, very big endeavour, I discovered. And it’s made a bit more difficult when you have many “cooks in the kitchen”.
Our class has worked together for going on five years and I thought that this would mean we could work together in a pretty productive way but whether it was the fact this is grade 12 and we are all so busy with many classes and activities or because we had too ambitious of a timeline, I don’t know but things did not go quite as we hoped.
Our first order of business was to get the staff positions assigned. We did this just before leaving for Seattle. This was probably helpful as it gave everyone a focus for their time in Seattle, depending on which position they were assigned. I found it helpful because I had audio and visual effects assigned to me so I as watching for how these were done in at the places we visted.
When we got back, the script team immediately began work on their first draft and after a lot of critique and rewrites, we finally had a script everyone was happy with. Unfortunately, time got away from us and it was November before we actual began production of the project.
The good news is that the first day of filming went fine. However, when we went to review our work, we discovered that the footage was kinda grainy, there was a lot of background noise and the work was just not what we required so we had to scrap most of the footage.
The following day put a bit more pressure on us as a result of the day prior. We started out the say with plans to do the majority of the filming. Due to some scheduling challenges and mis communication, we did not get all the timing completely, at least not based on what we thought we would get down. On this day, I learned a lot about setting realistic expectations, especially when you have to coordinate a lot of people. A mild sense of panic began to set in after this day of filming.
As a result of our challenges, our executive producers had to weigh in and the end result was a shifting of responsibilities and roles. This included a nearly complete overhaul of the key creative team. I also had a lot of my assignments taken away from me and as I was not feeling particularly happy or motivated by the assignments I received from the beginning, this did little to help with that.
At the start of this project I had a few roles. I was acting, assistant directing, overseeing music, audio effects, visual effects, and assistant editing. After the “job turnover” day, I was left with only the responsibilities of acting and visual effects. I didn’t mind loosing assistant director since it was almost impossible to do it while acting, but loosing the post-production roles of music and editing was really disappointing and I found myself becoming increasingly less motivated. However, the show must go on and we had a new deadline to meet and it was set for the last day of school before winter break.
Sadly we didn’t quite meet the deadline because we were still a few scenes short, which we could have edited around if those scenes weren’t the ending of the movie.
We realized we had to create a new plan and find a way to salvage the work we had done. After long talks with the producer, we decided the only thing we could do is make horror movie trailer. Thanks to the post production team, I present to you, Dirty Work the official trailer:
This unit certainly was a journey. Even though we never actually created a full scale movie, I have a truly new found respect for those in the film making profession. I think doing it again I would like to have more umbrella style job descriptions. Essentially more simplicity and diversity so people can understand their job and it interacts with other jobs better.