One girl, one note, one bathroom, and one killer. Your next was our project on filmmaking and thrillers and this was my groups plot. In this post you will learn about the project, the film, what I learned, what was challenging, and what I would change.
The Project
This maker project was called “Thrill Us” and it was all about filming and thrillers. It was by far my faviroute maker project this year because we had so much freedom to be creative and fun. The criteria for the final video was that it had to be exactly 2.15 minutes long, it had to have good shots, and of course it had to be scary or thrilling! We got to pick our groups and make up our own story so there was a lot of freedom. I got to work with my friends (Charlie, Sunny, and Esther). Once we had our groups figured out we of course had to plan so we each had as role and made a character chart, script, and a story-board. For me I got to do the script which is one of my favourite things to do so when I found out I got to be with my friends I immediately asked if I could write the script. This was a really fun project because of how creative we got to be and that I was able to work with my friends.
This is one of the Character Charts:
This is the story-board
When filming our Thriller we also had to think about all of the basics of filming such as:
- Angles: they can help add to the story
- Expressions: the expressions can help say what the person is thinking or the mood
- Lighting: lighting can effect the mood or theme (dark=scary)
- Sounds: add to the mood or theme
- Cohesiveness: it is important that everything makes sense and adds to the story of make it cohesive
- Smooth shots: it is important to have smooth shots and good angles to make it feel more high quality and professional or realistic
- For thrillers the 3C’s (Contract, Clock, and Crucible)
About The Film
Before we chose this idea we had many many others but the one that we were pretty sure we were going to do was where four girls were at a sleepover, lights flicker and one is gone. We all really liked this idea but we were having a hard time finding a date we could do it because it would have to be at someone’s house. Then sunny came up with an idea very similar except it was in school in a bathroom. So this is the plot we used: A friend finds a note in her locker in a school where people are disappearing, and goes to the bathroom, only to find her friend there. I hope you enjoy the film!
What I learned
I learned a lot in this project. More specifically I learned so much about camera angles and how they can affect the overall film, story, and theme. I also learned a lot about editing even though I wasn’t a main editor I still helped when needed and it took us a long time especially when it comes to sounds. We found out that it is much easier to make your own sounds then to try and find them. For example the person speaking at the end is one of us and one of the screams is us.
What I Would Change
If we were to do this again I would have loved to have had the idea down because we spent two classes where we could have been filming not filming because we were trying to find time to do it at a house. This gave us less filming time and I was also sick two days so that also made it a lot harder for my group to film. I feel like if we would have had that time to film we could have experimented with different angles, shots, and scenes more and it could have been more cohesive. The last scene where it is all black and it is the principal on the PA didn’t sound very realistic so that is another small thing I would change.
Overall I had so much fun on this project and I hope to do something like it again. Thanks for reading my blog post and have a good day.