Little Tease...

Here's a little sneak peek of what our footage looks like. I'm sure this footage is going to look twice as good as soon as we throw in some colors and the black bars, that for some reason make everything look better.

What's in my Camera Bag?

Before I get into the main idea of this post, I want to make it abundantly clear that having all this crazy, expensive equipment is in no means necessary for making a film. We could've easily shot this film opening by simply using our iPhones. All it takes is a great understanding of camera shots, angles, composition, lighting techniques, and creativity. Personally, I feel more comfortable shooting with my DSLR as I've been doing so for the last 4 years. Now that that's out of the way, allow me to show you some of the equipment we used for this film.

The Brain
- For this project, we decided to use my camera, a Sony A7SII. By using this camera we were able to shoot at 120fps, which would allow us to slow down the clips up to 20% of the normal speed without ruining the quality of the clip.

The Eyes
- For the lens, I used what seems to be my favorite lens, the Rokinon 24mm. This lens takes the spot as my favorite one because of it's manual aperture capability. Just like the focus ring, this lens has another ring that allows you to open and close the aperture manually on the spot. This makes it extremely easy to fix the shot when the lighting condition changes. It is also a pretty wide lens that allows for more field to be covered.

The Mouth?? Ears??
- I did have a Rode VideoMic Pro microphone mounted on the camera to help pick up some of the NATs. Although we won't be using much of them on the final project, it is always nice to have them in case we want some specific sound effects.

We also used a tripod along with a dolly to get some nice tracking shots. Again, none of this equipment is necessarily needed in order to make a film. This is just what we are comfortable working with.

One Alpha Take One... Action!

Production day is here! Today we shot the entire project from start to finish. We met up at Klaus' house at around 10 A.M and did not leave until we were done with the project. Klaus built both parts of the set that were used in his garage. It wasn't too difficult of a task to make it look like it wasn't shot in the same place due to our great use of lighting and composition. During the shoot, we ran into a couple of problems with the story as we realized that we weren't going to be able to achieve some of the shots we had planned to, therefore ruining the entire ending we had thought of. We took a break from shooting to brainstorm and plan a different ending that worked with what we had available and are confident that it's gonna work out in the end.

We played a lot with the lighting and fog machine to make the place look creepy and dark. It may seem all over the place from the pictures, but just wait until you see what the shots look like. Both "sets" were right next to each other, but with the right angles and composition, you won't be able to tell that they were shot in the same room. 

Set Design

We're gonna be shooting the entire project in Klaus' garage. Klaus has a great understanding and is very skilled building sets with the materials he has at home. Previous to this project, we shot a music video in the same place and the outcome was great. I'm excited to see what Klaus does for this set. Below are some pictures of what the space looks like and some tools we will be including in our video.

In the first picture, you can see what Klaus' garage looks like. I will provide a picture update during our production day to see what the place looked like after Klaus does his thing. In the second picture, you can see a lot of tools that are also part of Klaus' garage. We have a little scene in our film opening that includes these tools. The last picture is an example of what Sam is going to be wearing during production, as he is the creepy scientist of the film. Pretty simple stuff, just wanted to keep everyone updated.

Time Management

I've learned over the past years of making weekly videos, that the most important process of making any type of video, is the planning behind it. That being said, my partners and I decided to spend a lot of our time planning everything out for the shoot.

We began by listing the things we would need in order to execute this shoot. Some of the things included in the list were:
 - Laboratory Flasks
 - Laboratory Beakers
 - Lab coats
 - Fog Machine
 - Tools
 - Black backdrops
 - A dark room

...and the list goes on. Immediately, after finishing the list of all the props and materials needed for this film, we agreed on production dates that worked for all of us during spring break. We picked 3 different dates to be able to overshoot as much as we could and get everything we needed in case we previously forgot to do so. Our proposed days of production are  March 26th, 27th, and 28th. We will now begin to work on our storyboard for this shoot.

Partial Storyboard and Other Visual Examples

Below are some pictures of what we have done as far as the storyboard goes. We have included where the titles are going to be and how they're going to look. 

As you can see, we are not the best artists out there, and you really don't have to be in order to have a working storyboard. The graphics should be good enough to help you and the rest of the crew visualize the scene and find problems before they even occur. This also saves a lot of time during the time of production, this way you're not stuck trying to figure out how you want a scene to look.

In all honesty, I'm not one to stick to and rely on these sheets. Whenever I'm on the field shooting, I'll always  come up with different things to add in or some other things to replace, but they are always extremely handy at the time of production. 

Scheduling

Today, while still trying to complete and perfect our planning, we worked on a schedule that we are going to try and follow for the completion of this project. This is completely subject to change and may do some things earlier and some things later. This will give us an idea on how to pace ourselves. Here's what our schedule looks like 

Week 1: (2/26-3/4)
- start brainstorming
- start thinking of plot
- conduct research on chosen genre (thriller/suspense)

Week 2: (3/5-3/11)
- keep brainstorming/float ideas
- begin planning
- brainstorm title

Week 3: (3/12-3/18)
- start planning logistics for shoot
- complete the plot for Week 4

Week 4: (3/19-3/25)
- finalize details of film opening
- finish storyboard
- gather any remaining items necessary for shoot

Week 5: (3/26-4/1)
- shoot opening
- begin editing

Week 6: (4/2-4/8)
- edit, revise any necessary portions of opening
- re-shoot if we are missing anything

Inspiration

Since the beginning, we knew we wanted the film opening to be very dark. We started brainstorming ideas about what we could do with dark rooms. Not your typical photograph-developing dark room, I'm talking about an actual room that's very dark.

Klaus suggested a very cool example from the Netflix show Stranger Things. It displays one of the main characters in what seems to be a completely black room, otherwise known as the void. I thought this was a great example but I didn't want to base our film off of that, so we started looking other places while keeping a tab on his example.

I watch a lot of horror and suspense movies, so I had an idea of how I wanted it to look; but I couldn't find the perfect example for it. We started watching YouTube videos and eventually we found a film that greatly highlights some of the features we want our film to have. Here's the the link to the film opening for Resident Evil, pretty much our inspiration for our project.


Resident Evil Film Opening

Rough Draft...

what we have so far is a suspense film that keeps the viewer on edge. We are going to start off with our main actor tied up to a chair in a empty room. There is nothing in the room except for him and a table in front of him with a bunch of tools and a box. The actor manages to get out of the chair and walks out of the room into a very bright hallway that seems to be like a laboratory. He sees a bunch of scientists and hides behind a table, he turns around for a second and knocks over a test tube and it shatters. All the scientists look over and it ends.

Suspense it is

After careful consideration, our group decided to go with the suspense route for our film opening. We chose suspense as we like the idea of working with lighting, dark surroundings, set design, and what better way to put all those things to use than making a suspense film? We wanted the viewers to feel intrigued when watching our video, and most importantly provide the audience with a nice cliffhanger that will leave them wanting more. 


We decided to center our opening around audio, or lack thereof. In our film, we decided to incorporate no dialogue. This technique creates a sense of tension for the viewer. This tension rises as the music changes and the sound gets more intense.


Our plot as of now is not set in stone, and we do not know how long it will take us to seal it off. This is because a project this big demands a lot of pre-production. Surely, this is going to be a great challenge for me, as that is the area I'm the least skilled in.

Quick Introduction

Hello! My name is Jose Cabrera and I'd like to welcome you to my blog. I am an 18-year-old aspiring filmmaker with a little twist. My passion does not revolve around watching films, reading and learning about directors and other professionals, and I'm certainly not much of a writer. My passion revolves mainly around the practical side of things; working at location with lights, props, set design, etc. I love picking up a camera and just filming everything that catches my eyes, in hopes that I can create something that catches yours.

That being said,with the help of 3 classmates, I would like to create a 2 minute film opening in which we allow ourselves to get creative with the use of lights, props, and a cool set design to create a scene that delivers a feel of suspense and thrill to the viewer. I will try and document every step involved in creating this film so that you can be as involved as I am with this project.