CCR #3

Our process evolved by beginning with general research for example, like the A24 horror film openings since I thought that might be useful and I actually got a lot of inspiration from 2 modern horror films, "X" and "Pearl." I really enjoyed the artistry behind each of these and liked how they incorporated the time period into them. I ended up including this in our own film, which takes place in the 1980s. 

Then, I settled on my genre. I did some research on other genres like coming of age films just to make sure that I was set on it.  I just think that horror movie openings can be so unique, I would like to give my take on it. It can show you the end of the story, or just the beginning.

After, I researched some movie credits like Vertigo and Fight Club, because of their uniqueness and I was hoping to be inspired by their creative use of fonts, and color. I took notes of the things I wanted to incorporate for example, the way color is used to symbolize the events occurring, the music reflecting the scenes, and the unique fonts used. 

However, in hopes of making my film as creative as possible, I chose to integrate the symbolic code theory into the film. Me and my partner landed on this because the film Suspiria was honestly our biggest inspiration for our film and specifically the use of the color red. We wanted it to represent danger, blood, and violence, and we ended up dressing the killer in all red to demonstrate this. We chose the red symbol to effectively convey to the audience that the character is dangerous, while still hinting at underlying feelings of love.

However we have the juxtaposition of dull colors in the 2nd half of the opening to convey the complete opposite. It shows that they witness of the crime has fallen into a deep depression, and also as a character generally, is the contrast of the killer character. The scenes are gray and lifeless, this will further communicate to the viewer that the main character is not a reliable narrator and is probably not in a healthy headspace.

After coming up with our theory, we had a summary of our film done with! We actually stuck to the summary pretty well which was to begin with a chase scene for the first minute where a crazy ex decides to kill her ex boyfriend. We will utilize tracking shots for the first 30 seconds to follow the victim at first. Then, we wanted to end this first minute with a group of kids witnessing this murder and the killer sees them but the kids can't see the killers face. Then, a matchcut would occur beginning with the kids witnessing the murder, and then them sitting in school. 

We made a few changes during production that shifted the film slightly. For starters, we had planned for multiple witnesses, but we decided to focus on just one. This change was for two reasons, one of our actors didn’t show up, and we realized that having a single character as the witness would help the audience form a stronger connection with them, making the experience more personal and intense. Also, the second half of the film was supposed to be set in a school, but we had to change the location to a library after we realized we couldn’t actually film at a school. Although this change altered the setting, it ended up adding a unique atmosphere that worked well with the tone of the film. Despite these changes, I’m really happy with how everything turned out. We were able to stay true to the core of the story and be happy with the results.

A lot of the projects I had done in class actually helped me finish this film opening but one in specific was the soundscape project. By being able to learn about foley and all of the individual sounds in a soundscape, I was able to curate a murderous scene that i'm very happy with. Also, the music marketing project helped me identify a lot of crucial things that you need when developing a film opening which is figuring out who is your target audience and how to appeal to them in your film. For example, by blending both slasher and psychological horror, our film is able to appeal to a bigger pool of people, other than just teenagers.

All in all, I am very happy with how my project came out and I think that although I started with something else, in mind, the film came out a lot better then I could've imagined. I think the final result reflects an evolution of my initial ideas into a more creative and original concept.