Reflection Script

     Hi, my name is Emna Houichi, candidate number 0798, and welcome to my creative critical reflection. This project was very fun to work on, me and my teammates kept ahead of the game and did not procrastinate. While it was very time consuming to complete, that was mostly because we were driven to make it look professional and clean cut. Even though that meant a lot of hours would be spent on film and sound editing, and we would have to do retakes for shots. It is thanks to our foresight that we were able to get it done in time and have it look so good.  

First of we created the opening to a horror film that we named after the wake. The reason it was named this is because the character whose name is Cassy just came from a funeral. We tried to show this by having the costume be dark colors and the character too look tired like she has been emotionally drained. Also, in the beginning car scene we had a pan to the passenger seat where there was a letter that said condolences. But after having people view the test video we made and them saying they didn’t catch that we ended up re shooting that scene to make it clearer because it was an important detail. In the reshoot we angled the camera so you could see the words directly instead of at a tilt. We also added some extra words like sorry for your loss, to hint to the fact she just came from a funeral, or at the very least had a death to someone close to her. 

Also, when filming that first shot where we did a 180 degree turn around the car, we ended up having to re-shoot it with the window rolled down due to the fact you could see me holding the camera in the window in the first shot. That of course was majorly unprofessional. Although it was unfortunate for the sound of the song we were playing. We had the song superstition playing in the car as foreshadowing the impending events. But the cool part in the first shot is you could kind of hear the song but when the phone went in the car the sound became super clear. It had a nice effect but when we re-shot with the window down the song stayed the same level of clarity the whole time. 

The next thing we changed is that in the original story board and even the first time we were shooting, we had a scene that showed right before Cassy walked up to the house, she took a deep breath like she hardened her resolve. We ended up cutting this after doing a ruff edit mostly because we were about to go over our time limit. While was a major concern of ours when we saw we had over 140 videos to shave down to 2 minutes. But the other reason we cut that clip is because we believed we were being repetitive with the show of hesitance.  

So, we didn’t really start sound editing till Cassy approached the door to the house to showcase that something bad was about to happen and create depth even without any dialogue. The sound is like a suspense full droning. We have it overlap with some other minor sounds, but it is the dominant one playing. It plays through when Cassy realized the door was already partially open, so she hesitantly pushes it open the rest of the way. The creek of the door sound was natural and not implanted, it tied in great together with the theme of the film. Then the droning sound continued to play through my favorite part, the silhouette scene I think makes the house look abstract and scary. Because we see the character from the house's point of view, and she looks dark and dreary. Then we view her for a final time from the outside of the house that is full of light and warmth. In fact, when I was doing color editing, I made sure to increase the yellow for the shots outside and the blue for the shots inside to show a contrast between the two. At last, the droning sound stops as soon as the door closes to symbolize that the path to the outside had been cut off.  

Lighting was something me and my partners didn’t even think about till we were filming, because filming the outside part took longer than expected and by the time, we went inside it was dark. Normally this could be solved by turning the lights on, however we decided we did not want the house to have electricity. This is why when Cassy flips the switch to turn on the lights they don’t come on. The only way we could make this effect is by going to the circuit box and cutting the power of that light switch. Then she feels her pocket for her phone and realizes she left it in the car and returns to the door. We needed to think of a reason she would try to leave the house so quickly after coming in and that was the best we could come up with. So, with is unable to turn on the lights we had do use the video light mode the camera provided but it would create shadows showing the light was unnatural. Due to that we had to point a flashlight in the shadows place to make it seem like the house was naturally lit. 

After the character leaves the always to go back to the door, we planned to do a dolly zoom on the hallway for foreshadowing purpose. However, it didn’t look good, so we just edited in some light fluctuation instead. Now that we have reached the climax of the video, which is of course the repeating door sequence we faded in and started playing a different suspense full droning. The difference with this one is there are a lot of different sounds mixed in and at times different ones dominate. It was hard to make them flow together so nicely but the end result was defiantly satisfying. After Cassy came out the second door there was trouble with the original audio, she made a weird sound when she fell that didn’t mesh well. But what I did was cut out that part then duplicate the first part of the audio and use that to fill in the gap.  

Each time Cassy comes through a door she speeds up and becomes a little bit more disoriented like she is slowly losing her mind. While we definitely have conventions for horror used in our video such as a mysterious and supernatural element. We also tried to challenge the conventions a little by having the character be in morning and lonely, the insanity she is feeling by being unable to leave the house could very well be hysteria from losing someone close to her.  

By the time she reaches the front door for a fourth time she pauses, afraid of what's on the other side is just the hallway instead of the outside world. So, when she sees that it's just a hallway she falls into despair. The Special effects for the hallway scene were done by one of my partners, she told me how it was not easy to do but she is proud of the end result. Personally, I'm glad she was able to finish it, but I wish the image was a bit clearer.  

The purpose of the very final scene of the phone ringing in the car is supposed to be something that could be used to work with later in the film since we were only creating an opening. It also is meant to show she left the phone in the car in case the viewer did not understand that when she looked in her pocket for her phone and it wasn’t there. It was not actually raining for the final scene we created it using a hose to really help the Mise En Scene. We believe that through everything we did to make this film look professional and like a real media project that the mood of the film defiantly was well created. By having it shot in a house, there being a loss of life, and it happening to a young girl. All these things really connect with audiences because they make it seem more personable. I can say for sure that this project helped my editing skills big time. From previous projects my film editing was somewhat okay, but I learned how to do a lot of color editing this time around. The biggest thing I had to learn from scratch was sound editing because I knew nothing about it, but I still needed to work on the sound to really put that final level of professionalism into it. Even though it took a lot of hard work, planning and re planning, I am very happy with our product.