Another year, another full class movie. In correlation to our horror unit, this film is to be horrific, bloody, and comment on an aspect of contemporary society. Our field study to Seattle’s MoPoP for their horror exhibit and haunted house has prepared us to make this movie. Watching the movies “Halloween” by John Carpenter and “The Exorcist” by William Peter Blatty gave us a sense as to what horror should look like.

The movie was to be produced like an actual film with all the roles and positions. Maria, Michael F, and I were in charge of the storyboards.  We would draw out the scenes to be shot and the directors would follow these drawings to make filming quick and orderly. We initially thought about doing each story together so our styles would not clash if we had drawn different scenes. But time restraints led us to just assigning ourselves different scenes to draw so we would have all the drawings done in time for producer Teva’s aggressive timeline.

In terms of the effectiveness of my work, I found that it grew as the project progressed.  Initially, I did not know what I was doing, my drawings were pretty bland and left quite a bit up to the director’s imagination. Eventually my storyboards grew more concise and clear. This led to my scenes finally showing up in the film! In contribution, it was really up to the directors, the people in the same position as I faced a similar fate as many times, we found that our storyboards had been largely ignored because of reasons unknown to us. We asked the directors but they could not give a coherent response. Therefore, our contribution was limited.

Another aspect of my work is to act, I had a small role as a janitor because I had dressed up as a car mechanic and the producer decided I would be a good janitor (for some reason). I gave acting my all and I believe my acting was convincing. Some editing problems caused some confusion as to who I was in the film, and some of my actions in the film. Regardless, I believe my acting was effective and contributed to the project.

As a work of art, are movie fell short in many aspects but the biggest was the failure to comment on an aspect on contemporary society. The script did feature what seemed to be a message about the dangers to posting to the internet but it was barely made relevant in the later part of the movie therefore making it unimportant in the film. It is troubling when members of the production team do not know what comment we are trying to make. Some good parts include most of the acting according to the directors and script. Even when it did not make sense at times, the actors still did very and acted convincingly. In regards to the horror, there were a couple of scenes that we the screenwriters wrote that made it into the film that were somewhat horrific. These scenes in particular were the death scenes and in my eyes, they were done well. Everything in between seemed a bit vague and lacked direction and logic. In the end, he horror was overruled by the weaker parts of the story that were not as horrific. Special effects again came through like the last film project and did a great job. I would have liked to see a bit more blood to fully capture the horror that was excessive blood.

So far, this post is pretty neutral on whether or not this project was a success or not. In my opinion, although a complete movie was made, it failed artistically. Some of the mistakes committed in the Macbeth movie project reappeared in this movie. Lack of communication, big egos, ineffective time management, woeful continuity, abysmal quality control, and shoddy editing because of our time left all contributed to this failure. I believe that the doubling of roles in the executive team was a massive mistake. I suggested to them that the two directors and producers should split and film different scenes or have only a producer and director film and the others to assist the other aspects. All of this could have saved time but non of it was applied. What manifested no action was the two directors who lacked a common goal trying to work together. This why the film is disjointed and why the plot is shallow. The two producers barely worked together with one not being able to do much. The potential power of the partnerships were therefore wiped out. When the big management shakedown happened, putting in an inexperienced director proved to be a massive mistake as quality suffered dramatically. Last but not least is the editor, he did strung everything together well, but lacked the time to fully edit everything making for all the mistakes that occurred in the final product. To say that I am unsatisfied with this project is a understatement. I am bitter, bitter of the fact that the mistakes happened from the previous movie were committed again. Bitter of the fact that our redemption to movie making was flushed down the toilet. Unsatisfied with many decisions made by the management team. I feel like I should be a bit more lenient towards us as we are only 17 years old, but this project calls for more.

Looking at this project in full, there were some good parts but the mistakes were too glaring to make this a good film. I believe that our team gave a solid effort and most of us did our work effectively. I really wanted this to be a good project but in the end, we fell short again. I really do praise the acting and all the work the production team put into this short film. I am happy for us being able to finish this film. Hopefully, we learn the lessons that this project teaches us. Many of which are essential to joining the actual workforce in the future, and being an adult.

Here is the film that took us 2 weeks to produce. I hope everyone that sees not only sees the various mistakes, but also the excellent acting.