Here we go again! Another unit wrapped up which always means another blog post. As per usual we have a driving question, this time around it’s…

Why is horror such an effective way to reflect and comment on our society?

To answer and learn from this driving questions we travelled to Seattle, read books, watched horror films and we even made our very own full production movie. There were too many ups and downs to count but in the long run I learned so much. 

Feels like ages ago, but we originally started this unit reading the original Frankenstein novel. Let me tell you, it was not at all what I was expecting the book to be. Throughout reading the book we did lots of reflection sheets that we had to hand in as well as some in class discussion. The book itself was very confusing, it jumped through different periods of times and places and was written in old English. We played with the idea of who was the true monster, and why the book was so terrifying.

I hate to say it, but I don’t think I’ve ever read something as difficult as Frankenstein. As I said before it jumped through different timelines a lot which made it quite confusing. I felt like it was a challenge which I oddly enjoyed. When reading the book I really had to focus and get rid of all distractions (phone, music, etc…). From this I became very good at summarizing and taking notes after each chapter. I found that if I used the note taking tool in iBooks after reading a chunk of the book it would help me absorb what I just read. This also forced me to think and reflect on different themes, in turn synthesizing what I just read in my own words. This will hopefully come in handy for university next year! 

Frankenstein lead perfectly into the movies we were going to watch. We began with Halloween (1978), then Frankenstein, Gods of Monsters and Get Out. Each one played with the idea of who the true monster is, why we were so afraid, and what they tell us about our society. For each movie and book I wrote other posts doing a large breakdown of my thoughts, click each title above to read them!

We were also lucky enough to go on a trip as part of our learning. We headed to Seattle for a few nights to learn about continuity, change and horror. We went to the LeMay Car Museum to deep dive into what continuity and change looks like throughout time in the automotive world. We also visited MoPOP museum specifically for their horror exhibit. MoPOP always does a very good job with their exhibits, but the horror one was exceptionally well done. They had everything from the Jason mask to decapitated heads. It was super interesting to see how horror evolved and how technology helped that change. For example while there we learned about the use of audio and sound fx. A lot of the time when they didn’t have the technology or resources to make a gruesome scene they would just get a different angle without the “gross” part in the shot and just play some sound fx. Most of the time your imagination of what might be happening will actually be ten times scarier than what you might actually see on the screen. 

Our next big stop in Seattle was the Georgetown Morgue haunted house. It was a full blown haunted house experience, it was about 5 minutes but it felt like 30 minutes. It was absolutely terrifying, and Mr. Hughes shrieking the whole time didn’t help. We were chased with chainsaws, crawled into rooms and jump scared every corner we turned. Although the haunted house was super fun, of course everything was a learning experience. After we talked about what scared us and why, this kind of lead us to our driving question about what fears can tell us about our society. 

The night we got back from the morgue we met in the lobby of the hotel to begin one of the biggest projects we would do as a class in high school. The production of a horror movie. We started with a brainstorming session and job interviews. We were interviewed for either producer, director or screenwriter role. I decided not to sign up for any of these roles, I was more interested in doing something I had never done before like creative director or script writer. In the end, my job was prop master and script coordinator. This meant I was in charge of finding all the props for the set and writing the script alongside the screenwriter and script team. 

So after many contemplating, brainstorming and discussing the class came up with an idea for the movie. The goal was to bring light to a social issue and comment on it. Since we were a bunch of high school kids and didn’t have access to too many sets we had some parameters. We decided to focus on the issue with stereotyping teens and the issues that lead to that. We had decided it was going to be about a bunch of teens staying after school to clean up a prank they pulled, an angry janitor ends up taking revenge on the teens.

As a member of the script team it was our job to get the back rolling and start creating some outlines and prototypes for the class to critique. After many, many drafts of an outline we decided upon one rough draft. 

We then began writing the script. This took many long nights and early mornings to complete. We completed it in the Celtx application to make sure we included annotations and details about each character. We also went through multiple extensive critiques, sometimes we would have to scrap the whole script and restart. On top of this, as we were working hard on the script, the rest of the class wasn’t doing much. This definitely wasn’t their fault but it sure made it harder on us. We would complete a whole script only to be sent back to the drawing board. We revised the script too many times to count. It was so frustrating to work so hard on something then get it critiqued by people who weren’t doing anything. I was so proud of my team for persevering through that critique process and trying our best to not give up and come out with the best possible script. The revisions showed hard work even when it was the last thing we wanted to do. This whole experience taught me the importance of critiquing and the purpose of them. Sometimes I would take the critiques a little to personally just because I had put so much effort into each draft of the script. Through this I learnt that critique was really to my benefit and learning, and not something to view as a negative rather a positive. 

Once the script was written we began the long process of preparing for filming and gathering all the resources we needed. I gathered all the props we needed like a murder weapon… a broom. When I was done organizing all the props I helped were I could like with the storyboard, making fake blood, and reading lines. After a few weeks of preparing it was time to film! We made some call sheets with all the information we needed for one day of filming. We had a full schedule of after school filming, even Saturday mornings! 

As smooth running as everything may sound it really wasn’t… we had our fair share of rollercoasters. The biggest thing I think the whole class learned from our success and failures was communication is key. Without it everybody would be lost. We learned this when we would schedule full days of filming and actors and key team members would need to leave halfway through. This made it extremely difficult to get the shots we needed in our tight timeline, and in the end what left us without all the shots needed. After many days of filming, the production was officially over and it was time to send everything to the editing team. Without all the scenes they couldn’t actually put a movie together so they made a trailer! I thought it was a pretty good plan B. The trailers attached below!

Overall I thought this unit was super interesting! This biggest thing I took away from the whole project was that COMMUNICATION IS KEY. From now on with every project I do I make it a priority. Throughout this project we had a lot of failures but also a lot of successes and most importantly learning opportunities.