The Writing Blog?

 

Yes, the writing blog. Instead of blogging about filming scenes, I'm here to talk about rewriting my short film. Throughout the short filming process of my original story, I've gone through trials and tribulations time and time again. While I could work through it and make the original story, I imagine doing that would lead to a final product that I'm not happy with. So to avoid this, I've decided to rewrite the story I want to tell and take a more meta approach to it. Instead of filming a story about a shut-in being haunted by his past, I'm going to film a story about the filming of the story about a shut-in being haunted by his past. I want to make a mockumentary about the production of this short film. I feel as if this will lead to a better product due to most of the blunders and mistakes I'll be talking about in the mockumentary have actually happened during the filming of my original story.

I'm not going to just throw out everything I've done in preparation of filming my horror story. Instead, I'm going to use my promotional website and social medias as pieces of lore in the film. They'll play a part in the characters' journey through filming. I haven't figured everything out yet, which is why I took today to start writing and figuring out how to make this idea work. With what I've written out so far, I expect the film to be one long interview about the upcoming movie. I'm going to exaggerate my clumsiness in the dialogue of the characters and have them reflect some of my own feelings throughout this project. Just like my original idea, this new film is going to rely on my acting. Since there's no special effects or action packed scenes, I'm going to have to carry the film with my performance. Hopefully writing that down will ensure I do a good job.

The (Almost) Filming Blog!

 

With the small break I took yesterday, I plan to jump back into filming soon. I've been unable to film due to some issues on my part. With any luck, I'll be able to start filming once more tomorrow. To make up for my long absence, I'm going to need to film as much as possible for the next few days. My situation may not be that dire, but it's what I plan on doing. I'm not too worried about the filming itself. Instead, I expect the editing to take the most time. Out of everything, masking is definitely going to be what causes editing to take the longest. While masking, I need to go through each frame and make sure that the path looks good and doesn't move unnecessarily. It's what caused the first scene to be a hassle to edit and it'll repeat throughout production.

What I hope to happen while editing is that I'll get better at masking. Not only so that the final product looks better, but also so it takes less time to do. My favorite part of doing these projects is always getting better at something. Last year, I improved at filmmaking in general. I learned just how much filmmaking relies on the editing. Before, I treated editing as just cutting clips and putting them together. After making just my commercial, I learned that editing also included fading in and out, correcting mistakes, and changing how the scene looks. This year, I've learned the importance of lighting in a scene and I'm off to learn how to mask better. Despite the quality of my final product, I'll be able to look back and be proud of my growth. I still want to make a good final product though.

Finding Sound Effects

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILtw7SKMjCQ

I didn't plan on finding the sound effects for the film today, but I decided to get it out of the way. The search for these was a lot easier than the search for music. While I knew what I wanted for both the music and effects, there were a lot more sound effects to choose from. Shown in the picture above, the video I'm going with contains 5 different impact sound effects. I'm sure I'll appreciate the extra choices when I'm editing. I'll appreciate it even more considering that I'll need to change the sound a bit before use. For example, I'll need to change the volume and maybe the pitch of the sound. I expect to use this sound effect whenever the Dark Figure disappears off-screen. When I do use this effect, I don't want it to be extremely noticeable. I'll aim to make it subtle, that way it won't ruin the experience in any way.

I plan on making another post for Christmas tomorrow. I'll have to come up with what to post. I plan on making another picture, but I might also be able to make a video. I'll have to put a lot more thought into it. I've already done a picture with the Dark Figure in a Christmas Hat, so if I use him again it'll have to be different. I don't want to recycle the same idea and have him in a hat again. Instead, I might use a Christmas present to make it different. Of the few ideas I have, I'm considering making a Christmas card. It would be a fun side project to work on while I have the time. I'll figure it out soon.

Finding the Background Music

 

In preparation for the grueling filming and editing process I'm bound to have, I decided to look for some creepy background noise to put in the movie. I knew I wouldn't need hours of ambience, so I found this one video to be sufficient. Even better, the creator doesn't require permission for me to use it, not even credit. Of course I still plan to give credit, but it is nice to not need to worry about any extra processes for gaining permission. Here's the link to the video: https://youtu.be/1nD3Sp_saz4

I don't plan on using this music all throughout the film. While writing the story, I didn't picture there being any music other than some the main character potentially will be listening to. I wanted to focus on the content of the scene and using it to create a sense of unease. I've decided to include music because I realize how much of a bad idea not including it would be. Not only can music intensify a scene's mood exponentially, but it can also prevent the movie from feeling "empty." A movie feeling "empty" means that there's a lack of sound and, as a result, it is too quiet at times. This can be done well if those making the film want to use this effect in their film. I, however, didn't write this effect into my film so including it will only ruin it.

Before editing any of the scenes, I'm going to predict that I'll use the music more heavily in the scenes where the main character has left his room. I imagine the shot of the main character surveying the house he's shut himself out of will work well with the ambience of the music. If I use the music in any of the scenes inside of the room, it will most likely be quiet and fairly unnoticeable. Barring the scenes before the main character leaves the room, I don't think the scenes inside the room will need the music. Instead, I'll focus on sound effects for whenever the Dark Figure is on screen and/or when he affects the main character. After I get deeper into the making of the film, I look into what sound effects fit into it better. I'm gonna need to find out where to find those sound effects as well.

Social Media Managing

 

Today I made and posted a Christmas photo on my social medias. I didn't plan on posting content that was directly related to filming, but a few setbacks have stopped me from being able to film and caused me to do this. Above is the photo that I made earlier today. The quality isn't the best due to the photo being taken on my phone, but I find that to be acceptable. I think the quality is fine because of the inclusion of the Dark Figure. It implies that his presence distorts the footage, which I think is a cool piece of lore to have. I don't plan on incorporating this into the film, which is why I'm not filming with my phone, but it is fine if it's for a picture.

The easiest part of making this picture was editing it together. Since I wasn't able to use a proper camera, I couldn't use my phone to remotely take pictures. This meant I had to record myself getting into position as both myself and the Dark Figure. Hopefully it isn't a surprise that both people in this image is me. I've been getting good at blending together images to clone myself. I've practiced before working on the film and I feel as if I've hit my stride. Now I need to get better at masking shots together. While I don't necessarily look forward to masking together my next scene, I am excited for the practice I'll get while doing it. I expect to make a few more images like this, despite whatever setback I'm facing. Whenever I edit a photo for this effect, I feel proud of myself for getting better and better at it. The first picture I made wasn't the best, but I was able to improve as I made more. I learned to keep the camera angle and lighting as close as possible to the first shot, which makes the editing 1000 times easier. I plan on filming as soon as I get the chance, the problem is when that chance will be.

Editing the First Scene (Masking, Masking, and More Masking)

 

After a few days of slacking off, I decided to get to work on editing the first scene. I didn't expect it to be too much work and was looking forward to finding out how I was going to achieve the cloning effect the short film will rely on. Before I got to the few seconds that the dark figure was on screen, I found out that I may need to reshoot some parts of the first scene. The reasons why varied for each shot. The shot of me walking back to my desk with the plate of food was out of focus. The shot of me walking into the camera/toward my door was unusable due to the laptop I was pretending to be working on going into sleep mode. Despite a few of my shots being unusable, I was able to piece together enough footage to make up the first scene up until the parts with the dark figure. When thinking of ways to create my cloning effect, I decided to mask out my character and to add him into the shot. The problem with this was that I ended up having to go frame by frame adjusting the masking path so that my character was cut smoothly. This has been a grueling editing process.

The period of time that the dark figure appears is only 2 seconds. This doesn't sound too bad, but it gets worse when you factor in how many frames are in those 2 seconds. In those 2 seconds alone, there are more than 50 frames. This means that I have to make or manage the masking paths of 50+ frames. I appreciate the time to myself, but this was more than enough. While going through each frame, a few problems presented themselves. One of them being the shadow I casted on the wall. The way I was masking out my character, excluded anything else in the scene but him. This included the wall next to me and the shadow I casted on it. The other problem was my door. On my door, there were 2 jackets on a towel hanging there. One of those jackets is a part of the dark figure's costume, meaning that it isn't hanging on the door during the 2 seconds he's in frame. This means that my character's moving in front of the door will make the mask look awkward. A solution that I have for both of these problems is to finish masking out the main character, then to mask out the wall and door as well. Hopefully it works, I'm tired of masking things out.

Filming the First Scene

 

Today I recorded the first scene of the short film. The scene itself will most likely last less than a minute, but the filming took a lot longer than just a minute. Before I started filming, I had to prepare a plate of food to use. I had a choice of just putting together a sandwich or waiting until Thanksgiving to have a full plate of food. As you could tell by the date this is going up on, I didn't decide to wait. When I had the sandwich prepared, I had all I needed to start recording.

My story gave me no scenes to film before the first scene with the dark figure. The first scene of the film will be the dark figure's first scene. This meant, I had to shoot additional takes as the dark figure. He didn't do much this scene. All he does is bang on a table before disappearing. Despite being in the costume for about 30-45 seconds, my glasses had enough time to fog up inside the hoodie (which I was wearing backwards). In hindsight, I should've taken off my glasses before recording, but whatever. Alea iacta est. 

Other than the plate of food and recording as the dark figure, I had to constantly had to transfer a light bulb from one lamp to another. This is because one lamp had a white light bulb while another had a bulb with a yellow tint. I didn't want to have a yellow tint to my lighting, so I resolved to swapping the bulb back and forth depending on where I needed the lighting. In the end, filming went fairly smooth. I'm expecting editing it to go well too. I'd move onto filming the next scene, but it needs to be dark out for to do so.