Hello my name is felipe marchan and for this project I have choosen to do a horror based film opening, titled, Lost. I worked with my partners GianLuca Luipca-Tondo and Logan White in order to create the final product. We took inspiration from films such as the blair withc project and the cabin in the woods. Our film follows a male teenager named Chase through his daily routines as he is getting ready to go mountain biking with friends.
The main character shown in the film opening is Chase and he is played by Logan White. The film starts by shwoing Chase getting ready to go mountain biking with little or no thought that anything could go wrong. Although there were a couple examples of foreshadowing or doubt of his safety there was really no sense of anything going wrong leaving the movie up for interpretation. In the very beginning we used bright lighting and no sense of a dark color scheme as well as no sort of scary noises. This was specifically done in order to challenge conventions regularly set up for horror films. While doing our research my team and I found that a large percentage of horror movies started with a sense of fear instead of letting the audience get comfortable. We really felt like this was an important aspect to the film as we really wanted the first conventional “scary part” to really catch the audience off guard. Chase is also portrayed as more uptight and this can be shown by multiple shots of him doing things such as folding his clothes and straightening crooked objects. This challenges the common convention of teenagers as being careless and easy going. We felt that this was important as the portrayl of teenagers as a social group in media typically tends to have a neggative connotaion. I see this as an issue because not all teenagers are careless and irresponasable, in reality many of them are responsible and actually very cautious.
Our target audience was teenagers and young adults as they are the demographic most interested and likely to watch a horror film. We used young actors in order to derive a connection with the audience. The main character, Chase, was created to be relatable and a mirror of many of the audience members. We used Chase as the main focal point in creating a connection with the audience. Also horror as a genre is made to keep audiences on the edge of their seats as anything can happen at any moment. Studies even show the horror films raise blood pressure and center focus more than any other genre. This is important when trrying to build a conection and really captivate the audience. A distributor would be neccesary in order to present the movie to larger amounts of people. My school cypress bay has an annual cypress film festival. The cypress bay film festival would be a good way to distribute the movie and insure that a large amount of people would have the film easily acceseible to view. The cypress bay film festival would be a good place to start as this was the first film project my partners and I had worked on and going directly to a movie theater or a larger film festival such as the fort lauderdale filmfestival would be unreasonable and a huge first step for a first time movie producer.
As the production for the film opening progressed, I began to realize the amount of time and attention a project like this needed. I gained a newfound respect for the production of films and even began seeing progress in my abilities to produce this film opening.I also enjoyed learning about how every component and aspect of the film has to have a purpose in order to fully convey the overall message. Every aspect has to be precise and is done for a reason. Camera angles, specific shots, noises, even lighting all played a special role in fully telling the story. A specific thing that I had trouble with, in the beginning but soon found it to be second nature was continuity. Coninuity is one of the most important factors in ensuring that the film keeps its consistency. Consistency is important as even the most subtle changes can really change the way the movie portrays a certain aspect. Another major thing about production was research. I feel that my abilities to proficiently research a topic was a huge part in my overall improvement in production. As for my post production skills they have increasingly gotten better as my ability to maneuver through editing boards has exponentially improved. I found this to be extremely important as the weight of post-production edits in the horror movie genre can ultimately be a deal maker or a deal breaker.
The use of technology in this project was very important as the whole project was basically created through all aspects of technology. Editing software was the key component of technology as without it, many aspects of what makes the film opening truly fit into the horror genre would be unfulfilled. Hardware was also extremely important as without the cameras we used to capture the footage the over quality would decrease. The quality of the footage being good is neccesary to make sure the shots capture everything needed to be shwon in that specific scene.
Through this process i gained a lot of knowledge on how to produce a film opening and ultimately am proud of the final product. I am extremely thankful for my team members, becuase without them the journey taken to get to the final product would have not been bearly as enjoyable as it has been. Another thank you to everyone who followed my blog through the ups and downs and i truly consider this a great learning experience
