Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Nearly Done

So I checked the camera's in CBtv and I found one that worked perfectly, it was called the HMC-80 (I don't know it's full name). I used several flashlights angled to make a certain objects in the shot appear more clear, while making the surroundings still look dark. It worked incredibly well, and the light from the computer, gave the scene a blue tint.  The blue (at least in my opinion) gave the scene a lot of style, and gave it the feeling of a horror film.





I failed to mention this in a previous blog, buy my main character was intended to give off a macabre feeling. Within the story he is a hit man who uses fear when killing his targets. The opening implies he has cut the power of the building, making the entire room his target is inside of dark. Anything that is illuminated in the room has a blue tint. Horror movies commonly use blue tint.

Although this isn't entirely the intro of a horror movie, my main character pulls off his assassinations by giving his targets the same feeling of fear a horror movie killer would give to their victim. These horror traits are why the blue fits into the intro.


"All Horror Movies." Pinterest. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2016.





Friday, April 1, 2016

Filming Begins

     I gathered my filming crew (my friends who I trust knowing what to do with a camera) and we started filming yesterday. The scene's that took place in the morning were filmed first since we needed to take advantage of the day light. We used an iPad to film since it has better resolution than my phone. Unfortunately once it became night. it became incredibly hard to film and shots appeared very grainy. The majority of my film intro is in the dark so before I can film those scene's I have to either find a camera than film with high quality in the dark, or figure out if the iPad has a settings control so I can change the iris and shudder speed (which it probably doesn't have but who knows).  I can get my hands on a TV Production camera but I wouldn't know how well they film in the dark unless I test them myself (or Doster knows for some reason) so next time I'm in my TV Production class I'm going to test it in the studio or sound room.  At this point you're probably wondering why I didn't just use the camera from my class in the first place. Personally I think they're too much of a hassle most of the time, they're frail, if your battery dies then that's it since they don't give you a charger, I have to constantly be shifting the iris and focus nearly every time I move the camera. New Apple products tend to have higher quality images than those cameras, they automatically shift the focus and iris for every shot, this is incredibly useful when you have very little time to actually film. I am working on other people's schedule as well as my own so I need to film quickly. I will probably have a solution within a couple of days, the next post will either involve that or my current footage.
   

     

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Acting isn't easy

     I have a clear image for how I want one of my characters to look like, and that's simply because I projected my own image on to him. As much as I imagined for the character to resemble me, I would much rather be behind the camera the entire time to get exactly what I want, camera work also happens to be something I'm pretty decent at. Despite how little dialogue there is in my script, I would still want somewhat decent actors in my intro. I have plenty of friends in drama who could do it but I would also prefer if they matched my image





   My main characters partner is one I wrote entirely thinking of my friend, because I wanted this character to reflect ratty criminals like Steve Buscemi in nearly every crime movie he's done. My friend loves Steve Buscemi, specifically the character of Mr Pink is "Reservoir Dogs". I loved the idea of basing the character off Mr. Pink so much that I made his proxy name Mr. Pink in the script since his name is never stated in the intro.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

And The Script is Done!!!!!!!

      As the title implies, the script is done! At least for the time being if enough people tell me it's bad there are several things I should change then I'll revise it.  For now I like it a lot more than I expected. I was constantly putting it off, through self-sabotage. I would constantly tell myself things "like my idea isn't complete, I don't have an ending yet, I'm not good at script writing, etc." At the end of the day I was just making excuses to be lazy, and this is a great step forward. For an action/thriller it's intro takes a horror element. The reason for this is because the main character is seen as kind of a mythical figure. He's a criminal enforcer, and he adds theatrics to his assassination, so the opening exemplifies this with a stylized intro
     To get inspired I started to listen to different songs with a grim tone (or jokingly grim) I started listening to Simon & Garfunkel-Sound of Silence, The Specials-Ghost Town, and Pokemon Red & Blue-Lavender Town Music. It was actually really effective to start forming ideas. Once I got to the morning portion of the intro I started listening to  Summer Breeze, simply for the fact that it reminded me of Reservoir Dogs, and I feel like my film idea takes a few pages from that film.
  

Monday, March 21, 2016

Figuring out the kinks

I was finally able to load some of my own test images for the opening. I'm trying to figure out different methods to add more light in the scene (it's intended to be dark but in a stylized way), either through the computer or having a projector somewhere in the room to put a cool effect in the room.

I'm gonna use this website , it gives a step by step guide to making a projector, if it doesn't work or it doesn't fulfill my needs I'll figure out another method.