Production - What Comes After Finishing Our Storyboard?

     Hello everyone, back here again to report my updates on our progress with film opening. As of now, our storyboard is over half complete and like I said from a previous post, we really need to finish this up so the script to be quick to do to begin filming.

    The story board is now getting to the final stages with having done 3 and half scenes for what is going to happen in the filming. As for the second scene, my partner Samuel came up with a great idea of having the first scene cut to the main character waking up from a dream. This would make the movie already imply that it's going to be involving psychological horror by ending the first scene as a dream. He would later explain that the second scene could be just showing the main character waking up in shock and then cut to them going to get a glass of water. 

    Which would then move on to the third scene of film opening which is still a little experimental, but we thought it could involve the main character seeing very dark areas of their house in which they get scared from since they have a fear of the dark. I brought up an idea of having the main character using a flashlight from their phone to point at the dark areas, to see what's there.

    In short, I think we are making great progress on the storyboard and could most likely finish it by as soon as next week. I do have a slight suspicion that there could be potential problems to these scenes we are choosing, since it would require us to going to specific areas in our city. But as long as we can solve that small issue, then I see no reason why the filming process would be difficult to do.

Production - What kind of Camera are We Going to Use for Filming?

     Hey everyone, coming on here to have a quick little update on our progress. Me and my partner Samuel have already completed a good portion of our storyboarding and need to wrap that up, so we can develop a script.

    For the camera we want to use, it can pretty much vary on what angles we plan on doing for each scene, but for now, we think using our phones could be a good idea. I could ask someone if we could borrow a camera for the filming process, but if it doesn't work then we'll stick to using our phones since they could have good quality. I also have the worry that when I upload the videos from my phone to my computer, it could worsen the quality making it much harder to use it as footage when we start to edit.

    To conclude, I think that this might be one of the harder parts for our production since it could either go well or give us issues to deal with in the near future. I still want to be more optimistic about the production and hope for the best for when actually have the filming done so the editing can be quick to do.

Production - Progress On Choosing What setting and Colors To Have

    Hello everyone, here for a quick little blog. Me and my partner have just started to storyboard our scenes and what we want for our film opening first scene to look like.

    I brought up the idea of having the main character leaving their house and walking through a park at night, (in my opinion, a warehouse is more preferable), who is has a deep psychological fear of the dark. I asked my partner Samuel his thoughts on the idea; he said that it was a good idea and that we could start with that. So as of now, this will be our first scene for the film opening. As for the colors, we both decided that the best choice would to be as dark colors as possible-basically black and white if we can do it.

    We also want to have the production done around sunset, since the whole idea revolves on a very dark setting. This can set the mood for what's to come in this short film opening. Overall, I think this is a great start to our production portion, due to the limited resources we have to really capture the scene. I also do need to make sure I have a good camera to use so that there's no issue with quality and frames per second (FPS).

Script Writing - How Should I Start Off My Film Opening?

    Hey everyone, welcome back to another post. For today's post, I want to do discuss my script writing and how it's starting off so far. To note, I'm still very early in the writing process and any changes can occur in the future, so try to take what I say now with a grain of salt.

    To begin with, I want the story to have a very mysterious tone but have something specific happen for it to become immediately scary. Granted, there can be other options but this one seems to really stick out to me the most since I've seen it other movies in the past. One of such, would be the film Lights out, where the main character Cleaner Esther would close up the textile factory that she works in. While doing so, when she would turn off the lights, a dark figure would appear before her and then soon after, would disappear. I feel like this can really represent the idea of psychological horror, specifically for an opening, since a creature or creepy figure would mess with the main character mentally, making them question of what is real and what's not. If anything, I might replicate this scene with some minor tweaks so that I'm not completely copying and pasting it to my film opening.

    Moving forward, I want there to be an instantaneous cut that would imply that the first scene was a flashback. The idea I'm going for is to show that the first scene was through the eyes of the main character and how it traumatized them a lot. Now, I know that this is only a film opening and would typically last only two minutes, however, I still want to give my audience full attention and that they would want to actually watch this as if it were a full length movie. 

    After the cut from the first scene, I want it to go right into the main character talking to a therapist about his problems. This idea is still experimental since there could other factors that would challenge it and make it hard to do it; like props or setting. I'm just being optimistic here and hoping for the best opportunity that this can work out for my production. One other idea that could be a replacement to the one I said before, could be the main character would zone out after reliving the moment in a flashback while in a interview about what had happened that night. But, overall, I still have to work on what to decide on with my partner and if these could play out right for when we start officially producing.

Citations

https://whatculture.com/film/10-horror-movies-with-spine-chilling-opening-sequences

Planning - How Do I Plan To Start My Production?

    Hello everyone, I wanted to come here quickly to give my ideas of what I want to do for my production of the film opening. Now, as I had said previously, I would like to begin production very soon but I'm still having trouble making time to actually sit down and write a script to be able to record.

    In the worst case scenario, I would have to go out of my way, during the weekday, to actually have my partner come with me to create a script for our opening. However, I want to think more optimistically and let's say in the best outcome, I can have certain days of the week dedicated to me and my partner writing our script or brainstorming on where and when we should have the film opening be set at.

    In reality, most of this really depends on my partner since he can at times be busy doing other activities outside of school that prevents him from actually making plans with me: the same can be for me. Recently though, I did ask if he could make time to start writing a script or a storyboard if he doesn't want there to be so much talking in the film opening, and said that he'll try to. I'll try to give more updates on if he does say yes 100%, but for now, it's still a maybe from him. I can say that some ideas I was thinking about for putting on our storyboard was having the film opening start out with a traumatic event occurring that would scar the main character and go on from there.

    Although I'm still in the early stages of starting the production, the window to officially start working on the film opening is slowly starting to shrink. Little by little, if I don't have this sorted out with my partner, it could end up a disaster for the both of us. So, overall, I think that this planning phase can be short if I take action. I just need to focus on getting this part done so that the rest of my actual production phase can take affect and can finally be done with these random thoughts I have on the project at hand.

Planning - Storyboards & Production Timeline

     What's up everyone, welcome back to another post! In todays post I'm to give my thoughts on what I plan on doing for storyboards and what could my production timeline look like. I do want you guys to keep in mind that these ideas are prone to change in the near future so take it with a grain of salt when I say this.

Storyboarding

    Firstly, let's discuss my storyboards. Before I can talk about what my storyboards could potentially look like, let's talk what is a storyboard. So to start this off, I decided to search up what are storyboards to get a better understanding of what I am going to do. From what I've seen so far, the idea of a storyboard is having rough sketches of what I could want to happen in each scene of my film. There has been many times where storyboards are used such as Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man in which they would show behind the scenes footage of how was the process of creating the film. In the photo shown, they have rough sketches of what they imagine the fight between Spider-Man and Doc Ock would look like by having the moving train as the setting along with Doc Ock using his tentacles to attack Spider-Man.

    Next, now that I did a quick research on what is storyboarding, let me actually give the run down on what I plan on doing for storyboarding. So, in this instance, honestly anything could play out for when it comes time to start sketching ideas for storyboarding. The only thing I could say for sure that I would like to put down on paper is having the first scene of the film opening be very mysterious to engage the audience and put some hints of symbolism by displaying random objects.

Production Timeline

    Now, let's dive in and talk about what I plan on doing from now until Spring break for production of my film opening. For the beginning, like I was saying earlier, me and my partner should really focus on making time for brainstorming ideas of what to do for the actual film opening before producing. That's why I wanted to talk about storyboarding first to give attention to the more important matters. Anyways, I would like to start as soon as possible on the brainstorming for storyboarding with my partner this upcoming weekend but I would have to double check with him if he can or not. If he can, then we could potentially stay over at my house and discuss what we think we should do in my room to really get some progress done. However, this is still all a "what if" and need to actually make the plans with my partner to ensure that we can get this started soon and finished quickly.

Citations

https://boords.com/storyboard-examples

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-storyboard/

Planning - Script Writing

     Hello everyone, it's yours truly; back at it again with another blog post. This post, I wanna talk about what are my plans for the script of my film opening since obviously it won't be a silent film. 

    With that, let's start with what would be typical in a psychological horror film opening and how would I be able to recreate that within my own film opening. Now, we can see this films such as the Scream 2 where it starts off with a replay of the scene of ghost face killing his victim at the end of the first film. They would then show ghost face along with a girl watching the scene like a film who would soon realize that he's the real ghost face and would stab and kill her. I think with this, it can really show that this trilogy of films can be very connected by doing things like this in their films to give unique scenes to the movies. It also would use the typical horror of much older horror films that would start by having two characters watching a horror movie and one of the characters turns out to be a monster.

    Moving forward, I want to talk about another film that can do a great job at starting off their film to engage the audience. The film I am talking about is the original Jaws movie. Although this film isn't the type of horror film I plan on creating, I do still want to look at other horror films to get some ideas on what to do for my own. For example, in this film they would pan the camera towards a woman swimming in the ocean where we as the audience would be looking in the water. This is meant to signify that we are looking through the eyes of the shark that is going to attack the woman since in most cases sharks would be stalking their prey. With this, I think I can begin painting the picture of what I would like my film opening to look like by viewing these film openings.

    Overall, I still am very ensure of how or what I want to have in my film opening since i haven't even decided where to start doing the filming. I think that once I can have a setting for my film, it can be much easier to have my starting angle for the first scene. Just know that this is most likely going to change in the future.

Citations

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/the-20-scariest-opening-scenes-in-horror-movie-history-ranked/

Planning - What I Want to do for the Beginning of my Production

     Hey everyone, here's another blog post from yours truly. This post is solely for the purpose of explaining what I plan on doing for the beginning of my production. This can vary throughout my next couple of posts for the future.

    Starting off, I would like to talk about how I should begin creating my production; so basically, the platforms. The most obvious choice to use for my production would be Premiere Pro since this is the only app that I am the most familiar with due to my small amount of experience using it. With Premiere Pro, I can do many actions such as importing files like videos or photos and editing them to however I would like. I remember doing small practices with the app such as editing and cutting out a file that I was given to play around with. These small activities are what gave me small amounts of experience to be more confident in using this software versus a completely different software that I would have no experience in.

    Using Premiere Pro is also going to have its difficulties since there are many times where the software would not allow me to properly send or save a file that I downloaded. For example, when I was in the process of finishing an assignment that involved creating a small film with a short interview of a ice cream shop, I was not able to send myself the file since it was an out-of-date software since it was the 2024 edition. Because of this, I had to finish the whole thing on the same computer I did it on since there was no other way, making it very difficult to use the software. However, since I will be doing this project mostly at home, I won't have to experience this same issue due to there being no reason for sending myself the files.

    Putting these things behind though, there really shouldn't be any reason for me to struggle with using this app. Both me and my partner have access to computers at home and can easily run this app on them; allowing us to work on the production smoothly. Now, the only thing I could say is that the files can be large and might require to have a good amount of storage to have to save them. If we were to find ourselves in this situation, me or my partner could simply make space due to this most likely not being that big of a problem. So, in conclusion, I would say this is going to be one of the easiest obstacles to tackle while creating our film opening and starting production.

Citations

https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/campaign/pricing.html?sdid=SYBNLTYL&mv=search&mv2=paidsearch&ef_id=Cj0KCQiA18DMBhDeARIsABtYwT1cnt4w51ojwCstcnPTTzwCgZwwg09ZHBx3y54OTp3AJnWBb84e24caAlnoEALw_wcB:G:s&s_kwcid=AL!3085!3!700626653699!e!!g!!premiere%20pro!1712852043!83993219728&mv=search&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=1712852043&gclid=Cj0KCQiA18DMBhDeARIsABtYwT1cnt4w51ojwCstcnPTTzwCgZwwg09ZHBx3y54OTp3AJnWBb84e24caAlnoEALw_wcB

Project Proposal/Breakdown

     Hello everyone and welcome back to another blog post with me. For todays blog post, I want to give a more direct planning to what I want to do for my project since my previous post was a bit "iffy" of what to actually do.

    Going straight into it, I'll start off with who's going to be working on this project with me. It will consist of me, Nikolas Velez, and my partner, Samuel Duque, who want to have our project be a film opening with the subgenre of psychological horror. The reason why we both decided to pick this as our genre is because we both love watching horror movies and how they can vary on small elements such as how it can affect the audience to what objects are used to display symbolism and having meaning behind them.

    Next, you might ask "what audience would psychological horror be targeted towards?" Now, this can depend on the person and their interest in watching horror films. What I mean by this is that if someone such as myself were to say that I love watching horror films, more than likely I would say a specific subgenre of horror is my favorite because of the certain elements they use in that subgenre that isn't shown in other subgenres of the horror genre as a whole. So, if the person says that they enjoys watching psychological horror films, this can mean they like seeing small things be used in those types of films such as random objects or text that are mysterious and have a specific meaning behind them allowing for the person to analyze what it could mean. In most cases, this subgenre can be popular with the ages between 15-30, but like I said, it varies by the person.

    Moving on, for what we want our film opening to represent or have meaning behind is still one of the things that we are working on the most. Since this is probably the hardest part to finish for our film opening, we will have this figured out much later. Now, I do have an idea of what could be the representation for the film opening and it's about ICE and the events that currently happening in the United States since it's a reoccurring topic.

    Finally, for what software me and my partner will be using to create our film opening, it's going to be Premiere Pro. We decide to use this app mainly due to our knowledge in using it from the beginning of the school year and have the basic skills to using the app to be able to work on our film opening. The way we plan on practicing to be able to film and create our film opening is learning how to talk naturally without feeling nervous while being recorded so this can be applied to making videos on apps such as TikTok, Instagram, or Youtube. As you make more videos on this platforms, the more well adjusted you will become to talking to a camera or talk to other while being recorded making it more easier to record for the film opening.

Planning - What is to be Expected for my Film Opening?

     What's up everyone, welcome back to another blog post with me. Today, I want to talk about a much more different topic than my last blog posts. In particular, I want to explain what I have for my plans for creating my film opening with the subgenre of psychological horror.

    Starting off, there's obviously the title. Now, for what I want as my title that's still little experimental and I really need to work on what it should be for sure. I've had some ideas as to what it could be; somewhere along the lines of "little lamb." As of right now, this might be the name I would choose but I would have to discuss it with my partner and see what else we can come up with. I do however, want the name to be simplistic while still maintaining the ideal title of a psychological horror film so that's perceived that way. This can be see with the movie IT where the title is only one word and gives a mysterious tone to intrigue the audience into watching the film since they would want to know who is this "IT."

    Next, let's talk about the script writing. For this in particular it's still very early to tell what can and will be on the script but for sure it should start with a very vague and dark tone to set the mood for a psychological horror. It could start off something like having a important character/figure be killed or taken away from the main protagonist. I feel that this could hurt the mental of the main protagonist since they would most likely have a strong relationship with said character. However, this is still all just thought and there can always be changes to this but I feel this might be what I would start with for the film opening and for the script writing.

    Finally, I would like to give what my thoughts are on what might the setting and the props would be. And my answer to that is that it would have to be in a very dark area which could vary depending on how dark the place is, one, and two, how long would it be dark in the place before it starts to get brighter. Now as for the props, that can be very easy to do since in most cases it could be small and simple things such as a fake weapon or something that could represent something for symbolism that can be seen in many other psychological horror films like Ghost Face or the Saw movies.

Research - What Are Some Successful Scripts and Color Theory for Psychological Horror?

     Hello everyone, I'm back again with another blog post! In todays blog post, I wanna talk about successful script writings that are within the psychological horror subgenre. 

    Diving right into it, there is the script of the film The Shining. This movie was able to capture the idea of psychological horror by utilizing slow-building tension as the film progressed. When in the beginning of production, the director Stanley Kubrick was working closely with Stephen King to make sure that everything that is made on set is exactly how Stephen pictured it when he wrote the book. Although, Stephen was at the time worried that this adaptation would still not be to his liking since it was going to be produced by someone else. Kubrick has three and on going decades of experience with working on movies such as "Red Alert", "A Space Odyssey", "A Clockwork Orange", etc. This allowed Stephen to give his full trust in Kubrick and let him do the best he could to adapting to The Shining without Stephen having to constantly tell him what parts to do exactly.

    Moving on, another very successful script that has become famous over the years is Rosemary's Baby. Made in 1968, the book was written by Roman Polanski who created the book with many elements as to why it became so well known such as the slow rising tension and symbolism. Polanski had first thought of this book when several years before had a thought about how the most suspenseful part of a horror story is when the horror itself happens before, not after the horror. From what I could understand from this, Polanski believed that the idea of a horror story just throwing in the villain or monster in a horror story without any build up to revealing said character would ruin the horror story as whole. So, I think that this why he also added lots of foreshadowing into this book specifically to reflect on that idea he had came up with.

                Color Theory

    Finally, I wanted to explore what does color theory mean and how does psychological horror have a specific type of color theory. So, I searched up with the simple question of "Color theory for psychological horror" and clicked on the first link. Immediately after skimming through the text, I could tell that the writer of the article would give detailed information on the topic that I wanted to cover. When I read the first half of the article, it tells that in the majority of psychological horror movies, there would most definitely very dark colors used in many scenes with some exceptions like green grass or basic environmental colors. By understanding the reason for this, it give me a clear understanding of why psychological horror films are able to give almost perfect showings of what traditional horror film would portray while having certain elements of its own (in this case color theory). As I kept reading, it is also said that by using colors can give symbolism in many ways. I found this to be very true since in many movies that I have watched in the past have given a somewhat small foreshadowing of what's to come in the movie or have a meaning behind the use of colors or lighting in certain scene.

Citations

https://nofilmschool.com/horror-script-download

https://elliotchan.com/2019/08/24/stephen-king-vs-stanley-kubrick-how-the-shining-went-from-book-to-movie/

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2541--stuck-with-satan-ira-levin-on-the-origins-of-rosemary-s-baby?srsltid=AfmBOoo0B4epGuG_t9i_jdWzRyWZREX4Tt0Jgi2d5jGUdeCl2w84mYHi

https://slowburnhorror.com/2021/09/10/the-meaning-of-color-in-horror/

Research - Where Does the Psychological Horror Genre Publish and How Frequently?

     Hello everyone, welcome back again to another one of my many blog posts. For todays post, I want to continue off of what I was talking about in the last post regarding psychological horror publishing and add on by discussing how frequently it's published.

    So let's start off what I found first. When I searched up the publishing of the psychological horror genre and how frequently it's published, I saw an article giving the top 30 magazines and Anthologies that publish in the horror genre. 

    

    Looking at the first example, there is the Flash Phantoms, specifically in the Halloween section. In this, they prefer any horror story that has about 1,000 words and sometimes 100-word drabbles. Creating horror stories with a word limit, to me, sounds like a challenge since you would have to make a very quick plot to be able to meet the word count and might sound rushed which is why they will pay you $25 if your story is selected. On top of the word count making it a challenge, there is also a short deadline starting from the beginning of August to September 30th. Also, this would typically occur every year.

    Upon looking further, I stumbled across another place that psychological horror can be published and it's through "Kaidanki." This is weekly podcast where they have outlets for stories of the supernatural and they give any kind of literature ranging from poetry, romance, and especially horror. The Kaidanki was created during Edo Japan, in which, they would have 100 people gather in a room and share scary tales while blowing out a candle after each story to make it more ominous and spooky. I think is really cool since it allows for people to create and share stories live on a podcast so people can actually hear reactions of them in real time.

    Moving forward, I kept looking for other examples that can give more insight on where does psychological horror get published and how frequently. So, another good place where psychological horror can be published would be the "Black Hare Press." This press specializes in very specific subgenres of horror and psychological horror is definitely one of them. Their goal is to have people create and send them very gruesome, creepy stories and pay them $5-10. The word limit for this press is much more flexible than the previous one I had mentioned where it was only up to 1,000 words, whereas this press allows anywhere from 500-3,000 words. This gives writers much more freedom to create their stories in more detail so they can portray and truly haunting story. They also have the same deadline as the other press which is on September 30th.

    In conclusion, I would say that reading this article and giving a good amount of places to find and publish psychological horror stories or any other types of horror subgenres. Also, I learned that presses, podcasts, etc. prefer the stories to be sent in before October to give them enough time to review and decide whether they should pick a story to publish for the public to see.

Citations

https://authorspublish.com/30-magazines-and-anthologies-publishing-horror-fiction/