Writing the script for the CCR

My teacher gave us a presentation on how to do the CCR as well as some tips to make it as good as possible. One thing that she mentioned was not to wing it as it could turn out sloppy. For some people bullet points may work if they're a natural speaker but for me I think that writing a full out script is the best way to do it.

Though I don't plan on sticking to it 100 percent, I know that it will help me a lot to organize my ideas and probably just make it better in the long run. Just like a lot of my previous tasks, I used google docs to type it out. Before starting I re-watched some examples my teacher showed us and looked at the notes I took from the presentation. The presentation was really helpful as it showed a breakdown of the question which I used to answer each on piece by piece. 

Though I haven't started recording, I do have a general idea of how I want to do the video. What I mean by this is that I think I am gonna do a step by step approach in which I break up the video into 4 parts to answer each question. 

Finishing the editing

 After the last my last blog posts I was about half done with editing but now I am just about finished.  It is getting pretty close to the deadline so I am a little nervous about the upcoming CCR I have to do but for now I think I'm on track to finishing it in time. With the editing I think I've done all the effects, cuts, sounds, etc. that I needed and now all I have to do is put some of the actual credits that are left.

I left black spaces in between each cut as a place to put the credits as I think they work in the context of the opening and don't interrupt the footage. Here's a list of the credits that I put in order-

1. production logo

2. director-Branden Koo

3.Edited by Branden Koo

4. Starring Diego Ricci as Erick

-and Santiago Mason as Santiago

very end- Press play film title

Besides that, I am basically done with the actual film opening. I just need to finish this up, re-watch it a few times, and tweak some things based on if there's any mistakes/errors. Hopefully soon I can get to work on the CCR.

Halfway with editing

In my last blog post I started just inputting the clips into Premier so now I am going to try and edit as much as possible. The opening is meant to be shot from an older camera so I wanted to see how I could create that effect. 

    First I tried downloading after effects cause I thought it might have something I could use but I ultimately found it was too confusing.  Then I remembered a phone app called cap cut that I used with premier in a previous project and felt it would be perfect for what I was trying to do. But since it was on the phone I had to get the premier clips I put in, into the app. To do this, I exported it as a mp.4 file and put it into google drive. I then downloaded it onto my phone and put it into cap cut.

 

Overall the app proved to be extremely useful and easy to figure out. I found effects on it that could help me accomplish that older camera feeling and also was surprised by the amount of things that could be done in it. The ending, which I was scared to edit since I didn't know how to tackle it, was surprisingly not too difficult as I found a way around it that generally fits my initial vision. Though I did get a lot of it done, I still have some more to do as I need to include the credits, the title, and still tweak/add some things until I am satisfied with the product.

Selecting the right footage

     Now that I was done filming and compiled all the clips I needed, it was time to select the ones that would go into the final product. As necessary, I went through each clip and got rid of the ones that had some kind of mess up or had a better alternative. 

    Once I finished with that selective process, I then cut down basically every clip. I did this because I wanted the start of each clip to feel random and spontaneous to replicate the found footage feel that I aimed for at the start, After doing all this, the total time of all the usable clips combined came down to under the 2 minutes the opening needs to be. However, I plan on adding empty black space between the cuts in order to further the time and contribute to the found footage feeling. Plus, this would be where I could include the credits of the opening without having to disrupt the scenes as much. 

After I did this I thought I could get a little editing done, before I get further into it. To start I emailed the clips to myself so I could open them  on my computer and put them into Premier Pro. Once I got to this point, I decided to just arrange the clips into the right order and put the blank spots between them.

Filming

 I finally found a day and time where everyone's schedules were aligned and we could begin filming. The location was the same place as I originally planned, Regional park, and I made sure that it was dark outside by the time we started. After printing our a few copies of my script I left at around 8 pm to meet with my actors at the basketball court. Then once we walked over to the playground area, we began filming. 

    Though I had took time to write a script, I didn't find it necessary to stick to it perfectly which is something I told my actors. Overall I just wanted their interactions to feel as casual as possible. When we got there were a couple people in the playground so we focused on shooting all the scenes that didn't require us to film there. By the end, I had more than enough clips I needed and everything went relatively smoothly. I even got suggestions from the actors that I felt helped to improve certain scenes. Thankfully we had finished just a few minutes before all the lights were starting to go out. 

Some of the footage

The main thing to do now was to collect the bits of footage I had and edit/cut them plus throw out the ones that I didn't need or didn't fit. Right now though, I'm too tired to do anything so I'm gonna have to do it another day.

thinking of a title

    For my title, I wanted to keep it short and simple like most film titles are. As a rule of thumb, I tried to limit the amount of words I used as best possible by keeping a maximum of 3 words. 

    Something I found that made thinking of a title especially difficult for me was that I felt like I didn't have a good enough idea of what the rest of the film would be like outside of the opening. Because of this, since I didn't have much of an overarching story to base the title on, I thought it would be good to reference the found footage aspect of the film. 

    While brainstorming ideas for a title, I looked for inspiration through titles of other horror films. What I found was that the titles were often very simple but in that simplicity they also felt cryptic or alluding in a way. Some examples of this would be films like The Ring, Mother!, etc. After a little bit of thinking, I came to 2 possible titles. "Press Play" or "Press Play Record" Ultimately thought, I think I prefer Press Play because I think the simpler the title is the better.

Rescheduling again

 Unfortunately, I am going to have to reschedule the day for filming again. Similarly to last week, this is due to conflicting schedules between me and the actors. Though this is a problem, at least I am gonna have plenty of time to get stuff done during spring break which should help alleviate the multiple reschedules I've had to do.

    However, with there being spring break, that also means that a lot of people are going on vacation. This is the case for one of my main actors who was going to play Erick. Thankfully though, when I first started casting, I had more than enough people who offered to help in some way so finding a replacement is not an issue.

    For now, I guess the course of action is to do what I did last time I had to reschedule and work on other aspects of the production that I can do without having to film anything. Most likely I'm going to start thinking of a title as that is obviously an important part of the opening and something I have to figure out before the post production starts.

    

Group meeting

    Today we met in groups in class to discuss our projects and see what we could gain from each other's insight. Going through each of our projects one by one I found that music was a common concern. Though I am not going to use music (being as my opening is meant to be found footage) I feel like there was a larger overarching concern of creating the proper tone. 

    When it got to my turn my main concern was whether the place I planned on putting the credits were too intrusive/problematic. The feedback I got was generally that it worked fine. Using a fitting font would be important. Possibly start off the film in found footage perspective and put credits in between cuts of black. Another concern that I had was whether the plot point for why the boys were filming was fine. Again, the feedback was generally that it made enough sense and wasn't too strange. 

The meeting was overall really useful for me and my project. Getting outside opinions really helped me to see which of my ideas could use improvement and which ones worked. 

Filming problems/ production logo

 Unfortunately, I was unable to film anything today like I initially planned.  One of the necessary actors had something come up that led to them being unavailable for the designated time we were going to shoot. Additionally, there was an event at the location we planned to film at, Regional Park, that may have been a obstacle for us if we were to go. Because of this, I plan on rescheduling to next Saturday. This time I will look more into if anything is happening on that day to better ensure that I will be able to get it done on that day to stay on track. 

Despite the setback, the best thing I could think of to do is spend my time doing some of the other aspects of my opening in advance to stay as productive as possible. So, instead of filming, today I focused on creating a production company logo that could be used during the beginning of the opening. To do this I used a site called Canva as well as the software Microsoft paint. 

I'm not sure If this will be the final logo I will use but I think it's an okay start. 

Script

 To prepare for the filming of my project I needed a script/screenplay  so that I have actual structure and substance to my story. 

Screenplay

Park playground - Night

We open on a playground in a park. We see 2 boys sitting on a bench illuminated by a street lamp above. One of them holds an old digital camera

-Erick  “are you recording yet?”

-Gabe “mhm” nodding his head

Gabe points the camera around and the pov switches to that of the camera. He points it towards Erick

-Gabe “so how do you feel right now”

-Erick “what?”

-Gabe “i'm interviewing you”

-Erick “fine I guess. What are you even trying to record”

-Gabe “I don’t know i'm just winging it”

-Erick chuckles

Gabe puts the camera down cuts to next sequence

Gabe hands camera to Erick

-Gabe “here record me real quick”

-Erick “ok?”

-Gabe “watch this”

Gabe does a trick on the swings

-Erick “that was lame”

-Gabe “I’d like to see you try”

Erick hands the camera back to Gabe. Erick replicates the trick

-Erick “easy”

-Gabe “ok buddy”

Cuts again to another sequence. Gabe films him and Erick going down the slide.

Cuts again to the chasing each other in the park. Gabe runs while Erick chases him. 

Erick sees a dark silhouette under the gondola and stops chasing; Gabe notices. 

-Gabe “what”

-Erick “do you see that thing over there”

-Gabe “where?”

-Erick “under the thing over there”

-Gabe “oh yeah… was that always there?”

-Erick “I don’t think so”

-Gabe “weird…”

Gabe zooms in with his camera

-Gabe “I can’t make out what it is.”

-Erick “you wanna go check it out?”

-Gabe “Im good”

Cuts again we see them walking along the path

-Gabe “I challenge you to a race”

-Erick “Do you want to embarrass yourself on camera?”

-Gabe “I’ve been practicing”

-Erick “ok sure then”

-Gabe “plus im holding the camera so if you don’t win this its not looking too good for you”

-Erick “don’t worry about me”

-Gabe “we stop over there at that tree”

They start the race and Gabe is in the lead. Gabe reaches the end first

-Gabe “tsk tsk what do you have to say for yourself Erick”

Gabe turns around but sees nobody. 

-Gabe (shouts) “this isn’t funny Erick where are you?”

Gabe starts looking around trying to find Erick.

As he walks around he hears something behind him and turns around.

Nothing is there but when he looks back he sees the gondola and sees that

the black figure is now gone. He breathes heavily as he starts frantically calling for his friend.

Gabe runs over to the  bathroom to see if his friend is there.

A startling sound leads him to enter one of the stalls. There he quickly locks the door and waits.

He keeps recording just in case something bad happens.

Lights turn off and as a last resort he shouts “not funny Erick!” the monster peaks above the stall door-end

Despite the script being a rather crucial part of my project it is likely to be subject to change during the actual filming. This is because my end goal is to have the language be as natural and fluid as possible. Since I have never wrote a script before, I am not necessarily positive that the lines will read the way I want them to. For that reason, I think its best to keep an open mind and not feel that it is super important to stick to the script verbatim. 

costumes

    For the costumes of my characters, I envisioned something very casual and mundane that would fit into the context of the story.  Since its just 2 teenage boys filming something in the park I didn't find that it was that important to stick to a specific design. Nonetheless, I decided it could still be of use to put down my vision into an actual image to help me get a better sense of what they would look like. 

    To do this, I used the digital program photoshop to draw some quick mock ups of what I envisioned the characters to wear. 

Ultimately, though it would be preferable to get something close to this as possible, It's not crucial that it is. As long as it fits the general criteria of being something casual and common for boys around the ages of 16, it should work. In terms of the monster however, I may have a stand in actor who would fill in the role during filming before any post effects. For them, the clothing doesn't really matter but having them wear all dark colors may serve to be useful and could help the other actors have a more realistic reaction. 

Starting the Storyboard

 To get an idea of some of the different shots and scenes I needed to create a storyboard for my opening. I had few things to keep in mind going into it. For one, I wanted to keep it clear that the footage was being shot by a teenage boy and so many of the shots wouldn't necessarily be done that well. I also wanted it to feel natural and something that somebody really could've shot for fun with their friend. 

This proved to be difficult at times since it could be hard to justify certain shots under the idea that it was being filmed by someone casually for fun. 

This is what I have created so far for the storyboard

I focused on only putting in the key scenes in before going into further detail about certain shots since I didn't really have a clear image of what this park/playground area at my location looked like. Instead I put shots of certain things like the slide, monkey bars, and bathroom that I knew for a fact was at the location I planned to film at. Later on I plan on doing a little more filling in the blanks before I get to the actual script and shooting process. 

Creating a schedule

 As one of the last prepping stages before starting the actual filming of the opening, I wanted to make a schedule to help organize and structure my work so that I don't get overwhelmed and do everything on time. To do this I first visualized the main tasks that needed to be done in the next upcoming weeks. I refrained from going to far with the schedule and stuck to making one that didn't stretch to long just in case things come up and an adjustment is required.

I went to Google Docs to create my schedule as I felt that going digital would be more optimal since it saves automatically and I don't have to worry about losing it.  Currently I only planned up to the Saturday of next week. As time goes by and I see which goals I was able to accomplish, I plan on adding more each week to try and stay ahead of the curve.

Casting

    Since I had both my story and an idea of where I could shoot my opening, I needed to find possible actors. I already knew that I needed at least 2 actors since there the opening really only involves to 2 characters: Erick and Gabe. 

    This process though was relatively simple for me. Since the characters I envisioned for the opening were my age (and didn't have any specific physical requirements) it was pretty simple finding people who could do it. I just asked my friends to see if any of them were willing to participate and it wasn't long before I hade my 2 actors. 

    

In terms of them having good acting abilities, I wasn't really too concerned since I felt like for what the opening was, the acting wouldn't be too difficult.  On top of the 2 main actors I got, some of my other friends also wanted to be a part of it so I have a lot more people who can help. I haven't quite decided what they could specifically do but I think either way, in general, having more hands will be useful.