Have you ever heard the saying “first the worst, second the best”? Well that saying is irrelevant in the PLP movie industry. It all started off with one of Mr Hughes’ brilliant schemes. As an on going addicted of the exhilarating adrenaline rush of horror, Mr. Hughes and Ms. Willemse bestowed upon the class of our new unit “HORROR”.


This all began way back when the seed of inspiration was planted in all the students minds as the trembling opening tune of the “Exorcist” burrowed deep down inside all our minds. But luckily for us the week after we got to watch an even scarier movie…… “Halloween”, yay… But little did we know, these movies were supposed to influence us into creating our own original scary movie called… “LOCKED IN”.

(Amazing title slide)

Now, this caught the whole class by surprise as we thought the movie industry was permanently banned after the catastrophe of “The Scottish Play”. After a class of explaining how this is a second chance, that we will not fail and there is a set deadline, you’ve must have heard a similar spiel once before. Our first actual task was to sign up for our production roles, there were many to pick and choose from , funnily enough, I decided to pick the department was I lacked most confidence in, Screenwriter.

The first task involved signing up for what position you see best fit. A list was given out of all the rolls that were up for grab, but there was a catch, you had to sell yourself to the executive producers (Ms. Willemse and Mr. Hughes). My way around this was using past examples of work and how I’ve had creative ideas and I was be an asset towards the screenwriters as I am creative. And can tell you, it worked! Once everyone was assigned into there given roles, some pleased, some not pleased, we got to work. Screenwriters first task was to meet after school and have a talk with the directors, (Jackson and Zakaria) So Gabi, Kirby, Mathew, Zak, Jackson and I all got together and spewed every idea that came to mind. Ideas varied from a boy being sexually abused at home and takes it all out on his peers from to sketchy websites and assassins killing everyone. But me being me I didn’t like any of them unless it was my idea, but everyone agreed with my idea, even the Executive Producers, so we moved on. Teva, our Producer assigned the Writers six scenes, fully ready to be filmed in less than a week. We accomplished over half the script, in an 18 scene script, so you could Imagine everyone was quite proud of us, also as it was a huge change from the last movie. Not long after we finished the script fully, my contribution towards the script was more than enough. I’m trying to say this without sounding rude and condescending, but a lot of the scripts ideas were from me. But we worked as a team and I can say I spurted out ideas and Kirby and Gabi did a great job of interpreting them, also enhancing them to their full potential. After finalizing the script and sending it off to the movie crew, my work was done as a screenwriter and my work as a floater began. I was the Jack of all trades in this movie, I showed up to all but one production days and I helped in all departments. I first started off as a behind the scenes recorder, and got lots of footage to look back on.

 

 

 

 

(Dentition=recycling)

After doing that for awhile, I helped the props department set up scenes and worked as a stunt double. Another key part of the movie I helped with was the soundtrack, the music department and I spent a couple of hours coming up with the music for the movie.

Also some co-directing occurred by my behalf,

(The directors and I rewatching footage)

not to mention I acted as one of our main killers in the masks. While acting, the latex mask gave me a serious allergic reaction, I broke out in hives and turned all red and puffy.

(Me as the pidgeon killing spencer as demian)

So I guess you could say I physically and mentally put myself on the line for this movie. Personally I feel like I put a significant amount of effort into this movie and have found many new skills I can use for future work.
Now, what was the whole point of this movie? No it was not just a student film tasked by teachers who needed to take some extra time off our hands, it’s a PLP project. The driving questions of this movie was, How does horror reflect and comment on our society? Remember when I talked about that little brainstorming session in the beginning of this post? Well during the session, we tried to aim this movie into answering the questions. We started off with what does our society look like today, you can answer that by going outside and seeing Everyone with their heads slumped over their phone. So of course technology played a main roll in our movie. Us script writers decided that technology would instigate the horror aspect of the movie. The movie started off with cyber bullying and how it got some teenagers into detention. While serving their punishment of detention, a mysterious text sends to all the teenagers. This text represents who they are as a person and explains their flaws also their reasoning to be murdered. Although this concept is irrational, after all it is a horror movie and the killers always have a screw or two lose, making them unpredictable which is the scary part. So to answers the driving question, “how does horror reflect and comment on our society”, the movie my class created reflects on our society by the use of technology on how it causes a significant amount of trouble.

Now this comes the hardest part of the post for me and all my peers. A critique on our short movie, hence the title of this post. It really distresses me to bring up this movie as it was going so smooth until we hit a nail and the rest was problem after problem. I put so much effort into this movie but I have learnt that even if 1/4 of a team puts maximum effort in, the outcome will always be disappointing. The movie had multiple continuity errors if not in every scene, due to poor understanding of the script. When watching the final cut of the movie I made a list throughout the duration and it ended up rather long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Yes this is very harsh, but only because I was very disappointed of the outcome of the movie)

 

The main problem with the movie and everything in life is that we always need time, but I know that is not a viable excuse, so I do not blame anyone specifically, but I blame us as a poor team.