Months after the events of a grad camping trip gone horribly wrong, the surviving girl is deeply affected by the trauma of this event and is trying to move on, but her nightmare is far from over when she starts seeing the killer everywhere she goes.
We just finished the most horrific PLP project I’ve yet to do – literally. Over the last four months, we’ve been working on creating a short horror film (as you can see above). While some aspects of this project might have been a tad horrifying, I am incredibly proud of our final film: it ended up looking far better than I thought we would realistically be able to accomplish. Keep reading below to learn about the process we went through to create it!
As it turns out, horror is more than just a fun (according to some people anyways) form of entertainment, but is actually a way to comment on society. Prior to this project I had no idea that horror films and books had so much hidden meaning to them.
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Frankenstein
We started this project by diving into the world of horror and gothic literature by reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We divided our book into five sections, and held small group discussion sessions for each one. Mary Shelley would have been excellent at far exceeding maximum word counts were she in school today: never before have I read a book so full of fluff (we’re talking at least four pages just to describe a person’s personality). Although definitely an impressive and deep book, as a result of the fluff and more old-English vocabulary, I was very grateful for Sparknotes as I never would have been able to understand the book without them. You can see what I learned from the book below:
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Horror Films Analysis
We then watched three horror films: John Carpenter’s Halloween, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, and Jeff Meyer’s Get Out. My favourite of the three was Get Out, as it was creepy in the form of mysterious behaviours, instead of just complete gore like 28 Days Later, and more cinematic than Halloween. You can read my analysis of the three films below:
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We then began creating our film!
Pre-Production
My role in the pre-production phase of our film was to plan the kill scenes and create our shot list. Makenna and I (with input from the rest of the group), created our plan for each kill that would occur in the film. This was a little challenging as we had to try to make it look real without actually putting anyone in danger of actual harm. You can see what we came up with below:
Once the script was completed, it was my job as the Director of Cinematography to create a detailed shot list for every single shot we needed to get for our film. It took forever to complete and so much brain power deciding the camera angle, camera movements and filling out a grand total of ~3,864 cells for 184 shots on the shot list spreadsheet. Check it out below:
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Shooting
Our class then returned to Loon Lake for the third time during our years at Seycove. There we began the process of shooting all our planned shots for the location. This involved some of the most challenging teamwork I’ve ever experienced in my 5 years of PLP. Every shot seemed to require ten minutes of arguing and everyone quickly got annoyed with each other. Needless to say, we learned a lot about collaboration and how to (or maybe how NOT to) navigate stressful group situations.
Despite these challenges, we were able to have some fun, some highlights of mine being a Loon Lake party for our party scene, a foggy morning on the lake dock and taste testing the onions that we used to make Gwen cry for a shot. Enjoy some photos below:
I also created a slate (or clapperboard, depending what you call it) for our film group in woodwork!
Once we returned from Loon Lake, we filmed additional scenes at Declan’s house and Cate’s Park, where I directed cinematography and helped to set up sets. Directing cinematography required me to work with everyone, especially the producer (Faith), the director (Ava), the art director (Makenna), the production designer (Sabrina) and most of all Sylas (the other Director of Cinematography and our very skilled camera operator).
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Post-Production
During post-production I helped to edit the film, working specifically to take the third act of our film from rough cut to completion. Through doing this I learned some new editing techniques in DaVinci Resolve, such as colour grading and masking.
I really enjoyed editing and spent almost all my spare time during the week before it was due on it. I worked with the main editors Sepaus (act one) and Ines (act two) to get their sections completed and consistent with act three. After Declan added the music, I compiled the three acts together and created our YouTube thumbnail to create our final film which you saw at the top of this post!
If you’re interested in a more specific breakdown of my contributions to this project you can read the document below:
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I learned so much in this project, from the vast amount of planning that goes into a film shoot to the deeper meanings that can be gleaned from horror films and literature. I’ve been looking forward to doing this horror project since grade 8 when I first learned we got to do this project, and I’m so proud of the final film we were able to create! I hope you enjoyed it too, feel free to give it a like or share it with your friends. Thanks for reading, that’s a a wrap on this post!