Genre Research: Psychological thriller

PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

Psychological-thriller is a thriller story that emphasizes the psychology of its characters and their unstable emotional states. Psychological thrillers often incorporate elements of mystery, drama, action, and horror. Thriller is mistaken for horror a lot because they have similar elements but thriller is just mysterious and suspenseful. Although it can have a bit of horror Incorporated I personally don't want my film to be scary by any means. I do want it to be slightly mysterious and suspenseful but differently not horrific. I also wanted to incorporate some drama into it because I feel that the storyline is sad and melodramatic. Z is at a somber state but I want it the flashbacks of her life before and during their death to be impactful and tragic.

Genre Research: Genre selection

Genre Options

There are two genres I am interested in researching. One being thriller,  which has a dark, engrossing, and suspenseful plot-driven story. Two Psychological which takes you further into the character's emotional and mental state which is critical because I really want the audience to truly feel everything Z feels. 

CAMS- Camera Angle Movement Sound

CLAPS- Costume Lighting Actors Props Setting

Thriller

when we talk about thrillers one of the most iconic movies comes to mind, psycho. Psycho is a thriller film released in the year 1960 and was one of the first movies to really tackle thriller head-on. A lot of the elements in thriller movies revolve around the Claps. 

CLAMPS

• Costumes in thrillers are usually dark and contain mute colors, dresses are usually dirty and ruined. Males typically wear long jackets or coats as well as hats and suits. Woman if/when they wear dresses its either white or black a majority of the time. There is usually a wide shade range of red, brown, and blue.
• Lighting in thrillers is one of the main conventions because lighting allows the audience to feel suspense and tension throughout the movie. Movies like split use dim, minimal lighting to engage the audience and keep them on their toes at all times.
• Acting in thrillers is super important when it comes to dialogue it's not as critical but when we talk about emotion, you have to be able to read the actor's emotions whether they're scared, sad, or happy. Elements like lighting and music build suspense the role an actor plays is to relate with the audience so expression is crucial.
• Props in thrillers sometimes have an important back story. Props like guns can have an important reason for being used or involved. Also things like knives, a dripping water tap, and blood are heavily used. Especially blood, most thrillers usually involve death, and typically when someones being murdered, blood is everywhere.
• The setting is pretty basic in thrillers, the suburbs, houses, rural areas, even basements. The protagonist is usually having to deal with an issue or find a way out of it so like an escape, solve a mystery, or finish a mission.

CAMS 

• Common angles in thrillers can be birds eye, close up shots usually on the actor's face or important props, extreme long shots, low angle shots, point of view, and over the shoulder.
• Common camera movement tracking shots, panning shots, dutch, handheld, rack focus, and zoom.
• Common sound is typically dark and eerie. Music starts off at a slow pace and speeds up at certain times to build suspense reaching the climax of the situation or film as a whole. Sound bridges are constantly used along with the non-diegetic sound.

Psychological-thriller

Psychological Thriller films

• Costumes in psychological-thriller movies are usually dark and contain mute colors, dresses are usually distressed. Both genders typically wear mute colors and black.
• Lighting similar to thrillers. 
• Acting in psychological-thriller films is typically raw and is usually the make or break of the movie. Its what tangles all the convections together so expression is crucial.
• Props in psychological-thriller films sometimes have an important back story. Props vary but most are weapons, drugs, and technology like phones.
• The setting is usually based in homes,  rural areas, and commonly involve therapy type settings. The protagonist is usually having to deal with an issue or find a way out much like thrillers.

CAMS
(same as thiller)

• Common angles can be birds eye, close up shots usually on the actor's face or important props, extreme long shots, low angle shots, point of view, and over the shoulder.
• Common camera movement tracking shots, panning shots, dutch, handheld, rack focus, and zoom.
• Common sound is typically dark and eerie. Music starts off at a slow pace and speeds up at certain times to build suspense reaching the climax of the situation or film as a whole. Sound bridges are constantly used along with the non-diegetic sound.

Genre Research: Dance

Back in December my old partner Lucas and I created a PowerPoint together.
It's a genre PowerPoint on dance. Common lighting in dance films, according to the dance itself if its hip-hop the lighting is more likely going to be more harsh and dramatic ad full of color while contemporary is more likely to be minimalistic. Lighting is typically white but dim. Usually the camera angle is wide and slightly long so you can see the whole stage and the dancers choreography.
The Dance genre as a whole is usually energetic movies like grease is a perfect example of the dance genre.
Dance PowerPoint

The Perfect Pitch

WHAT IS A ELEVATOR PITCH?

Now its time to pick a pitch. For our movie we have to make an elevator pitch.

An elevator pitch is a twenty-five letter pitch that is made to intrigue the viewers. Our teacher gave us a really good example. She said to imagine you're in an elevator with someone like Quentin Tarantino, Jordan Peele, Greta Gerwig and you want to say your pitch before you reach the bottom floor and they leave. We want the audience to be interested and get a feel of the storyline without actually seeing the film YET. So I have to create a good storyline that will gravitate towards the audience without overly giving away any information about the film itself. Before I introduce and discuss any of my pitch ideas I would like to inform you on what the storyline is.

PITCH OPTIONS

"16 years living in a body she can't even control, tackling school, sexuality, and society can this depressed teenager refuse her lust for blood."

"Seven voices controlling her mind, already battling the death of her parents, depression, and society. Will Z be able to refuse her urge to kill."

"Tackling the death of her parents, depression, and seven different voices in her head, Will Z finally find happiness"

"16 years full of trauma and depression, trapped in a mind she can't even control will Z be able to refuse her urge to kill"

PITCH SELECTION

"Seven voices controlling her mind, already battling the death of her parents, depression, and society. Will Z be able to refuse her urge to kill."

STORYLINE

The Film Follows  In the early 2000s "Z" a sixteen-year-old girl suffering from depression, anxiety, and dissociative identity disorder. She has no parents just her grandma, Lilian. Her mother died from Leukemia when she was eleven and her father suffered from insomnia. Shortly after the lack of sleep lead to hallucinations. He tried taking antidepressants to help. He shortly got addicted to pills which lead to more dangerous drugs like cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl. His insomnia got so bad to the point where he started Hallucinating, his hallucinations were so bad that he committed suicide. He killed himself with a 9mm gun on Z's twelve birthday. Z found him dead and was too scared to call anyone. That day Lilian was over and after calling Z after some time she goes to see Z standing a couple feet away from her dad's body. While her father was doing all these drugs Z was doing them too. No one ever noticed and just like her father she also fell into depression. After the death of her mother her first personality came, Iliad. He was like a bodyguard for Z. He gave her strength when she needed it most and turned anger into passion. He could get aggressive at times but he respected Z and wanted her to be safe. Not too long after the other five came. Elliot came after a while of her drug consumption. Katana came after the death of her father. Then Lenox, Quinn, and Ace. All her personalities always were at war with each other, they were usually loud, and didn't even allow Z to talk. Z was never happy, not after her twelfth birthday, she hated herself and a part of her hated her dad for not being strong enough to take care of her or love her. Her only reason to live was her grandma, she didn't want to hurt the only person who she cared about. But Z was never happy, her personalities never were, her mind was always clouded with darkness and despair that was until she killed her first simulator. Simulator is the name of the people she kills, her victims. Murder is her only source of happiness and without it she just feels pain or numbness hence they simulate happiness. Her happiness only lasts five minutes and five seconds but it's a time where all her voices calm down, its like euphoria to Z, better than any drug. It makes her feel some sense of purpose again. Her only problem now is successfully killing all her victims without getting caught. (She either feels numb from the drugs she takes every day or happiness after she kills.)

Starting the final task

Hi my name is Alanys I’ve been in AICE media for about six months now.

I’ve learned a lot about editing and filming. I’ve learned about the pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution process. I’ve learned how the grading scale works for Cambridge.

Not only that this is my first year in high school and I’ve learned so much about how different people are. High school is a time of figuring out who you are and who you want to be and a lot of people are in the process of doing just that. Now I'm definitely considering directing when I’m older and going to school for film production. I’ve always leaned towards either the entertainment industry and just working with cameras or computer science. But I’ve been attracted to cameras since I was 4 or 5.

 Also, I’ve always found it interesting how the film brings imagination to life. And the entertainment industry works hard to make visual art that everyone can enjoy.

Now that we’re beginning to work on the end of media studies and starting the final assignment it’s time to create the intro of a movie. It’s supposed to be two minutes or shorter. And now we have to create an elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is usually twenty-five seconds and gives the audience a small glimpse of what to expect and what’s gonna happen. I already have an idea of what I want the movie to be and the storyline as well. I’d also like to address that I will be working independently on this assignment. I want my vision to be executed the way I want it to be and everyone has a different vision they want to bring to life and shots they want to have so I’m going to work by myself to do what I want. I want it to be based on a girl name “Z” for Zoe and she’s around 16 years old who suffers from depression and has a dissociative personality disorder and there are about 5 to 7 personalities she has to battle. She’s either incredibly sad or numb from antidepressants she has to take. And her only form of happiness is from each personality being happy or feel accomplished at something. Her only way of doing that is by killing people. But her euphoria only last five minutes and five seconds.

I’ve already came up with one pitch. Being “sixteen years trapped in a mind that she can’t even control, will Z be able to refuse her urge to kill” that's twenty-one words which aren’t bad but I do feel as if I can make it more intriguing. I want people to read it and be interested and want to see it. I want it to be more enticing and so far a couple of my classmates have said it good but I want it to be more than just good. I’m kinda envisioning it being on Netflix reading it and decided whether I want to watch it or not. So far I’d probably contemplate watching it because not only do I love tv shows I’m a huge sitcom fan I like shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation and I also like sci-fi like CW’s The Flash. Along with dramas like Mr.Robot and HBO’s Euphoria. So when I read a pitch like mine it’s fifty, fifty and I just really want to perfect it as well as possible.

Editing my Music Video

First I had to dump all my footage onto my computer. Then individually save all my footage to my google photos. Google photos allows me to save and view videos on any device and personally I like editing on my phone. After that I get all my footage from my google drive and add it onto my editing software. I had about three minutes' worth of footage. I had to remove all the audio from all the footage. I screen recorded the music on my phone then added it onto the editing software.
I had to only add the audio aspect. after I layer the audio into the software I take all the audio off the actual footage. Now I can edit the footage as I wish.

I cut the audio down so that it starts at the right time. Then after that was done I could move the footage to where I wanted it to be. I cut a lot of the footage and moved it to the beginning of the song where there is a lot of transitions. I took both day and night shots which I took in busy streets and the beach. I took the shots and had a simple jump cut added to the footage. From there I added smooth transitions to most of the other scenes. I want the flow to be really good and well rounded. We added the title of the song in the first couple of scenes. A little bit after that We added text that said directed by then our names. Both those sense happened under fifteen seconds.

The remainder consisted of mostly jump cuts. Lucas and I are debating whether or not we want to add a filter over the whole music video or leave it as is. We also had really cool panoramic shots that transitioned well together. We managed to cut the three minutes down to the appropriate time necessary. The minimum time the music video could be was a minute and eight seconds while the most was a minute and fifteen minutes. Our commercial ended up being a minute and thirteen seconds so it was pretty good timing. Towards the last couple of seconds we allowed the audio to continue playing while the footage itself was slowly dissolving off the screen. We thought this would be a better way to end the music video rather than just ending it while seeing both the visuals and audio. Overall the editing process was smooth sailing and not hard to edit we still aren't done so far. We still have a lot of work to get done and editing to complete but we hope that the outcome of this music video is nothing less than amazing.

Final filming blog

This past week we had six days off. We had a break due to Thanksgiving.
Tuesday after school I got day shots at the beach. Tuesday was a Blue day which meant we had media studies so my partner and I had a bit of an idea of how we wanted the footage to be structured. Wednesday I didn’t film much due to being home. I slept over my best friend's house and got some night shots on my way there. Thursday came around, thanksgiving. My best friend and I went to Jupiter Florida. We were on the highway for a bit so I got a couple day shots as well as night shots. We passed city areas with tall buildings which seemed like it would be cool to film.

I got a lot of pan shots and close-ups as well on Thursday. Friday I went to the skating rink but sadly couldn’t bring in my camera. On Saturday I got the most shots. It was my partner Lucas’s birthday party at Fort Lauderdale beach so I went and decided to bring my camcorder. I got some day shots with the sun nice and high. I got shots of my friends talking and the moon behind them. I got a sunset shot which looked pink in the camera. I also got night shots of the beach and the buildings next to the beach. I got moon shots and sun shots that day which I was proud of. Our song is day and night by kid Cudi which just says those lyrics over and over again. The shots we took were good and can serve us well for the music video.

Our music video is due December ninth. We still have some time to film a couple more shots.  I would like to begin editing now so that once most of the video is complete we can simply add on anything we need to add. I want this video to have a darker more Melo aesthetic to it. And I believe if I begin to edit now the video can come out really well. Lucas and I want to film some more this weekend. I can edit and place all the shots where they need to be. I can also make sure that the transitions are smooth and flow well into each shot. We can film some more, upload it to my google drive, and edit from my device from home which should allow me to complete the whole project fairly quickly.