Hello and welcome back to my blog! I am back with another post to showcase a project that has been in production since September. Yes you heard that right…we have been working on this project for almost five months. However, when you hear the reason, you’ll understand why. For this movie we were tasked with creating a horror movie. This involved learning about horror and how it has changed throughout the years seen in both novels, and films.

This brings me to our first assignment in this project which involved reading Mary Shelley’s β€œFrankenstein”. This fiction x horror novel was published in 1818 and was our starting point to understand horror. While reading I created a document to keep track of the general themes I saw, my character analysis, and responses to the five sections that we split the book into. During this process, we had five small group discussions to share our thinking. You can read more about this process below:

Next, we carried on this unit by watching a series of Horror movies, these included John Carpenter’s β€œHalloween”, Danny Boyle’s β€œ28 Days Later”, and Jeff Meyer’s β€œGet Out”. Although I don’t find Horror movies scary, this was a fun part of the project as we were able to analyze and pick the films apart. Throughout this time I was able to keep track of aspects we could incorporate into our own film which started to spark some ideas. Click on the films below to read my analysis on the three movies πŸ™‚

Now came the time to start getting to work with the creation of our film. As Art Director, my role during pre-production including planning characters, kill scenes, locations, props, and showcasing our groups vision by creating Pinterest boards. I also ended up assisting other team members with their tasks when needed. I found the planning for this very fun especially the kill scenes planning as we were able to get super creative, allowing me to further help make our visions come to life.Β 

When it came time to film, we had to make some minor changes to move our locations to Loon Lake, where we would soon visit for a third time. The entirety of the filming process was definitely an interesting experience. Between the screams that echoed across the lake, the shouting of β€œmore blood” as Claire used her bare frozen hands to add the gory effect, and the debates and discussions about angles and scripts, there was always something to do. Lets not even get started with the arguing about all of the above. Needless to say we showcased both how and how not to collaborate with others, and the β€œjust fix in post” was one of many causes for the prolonged the bicker on our post-film tasks.

As for my role at Loon Lake, I was doing everything from laying on the cold forest floor with tent pegs in my neck, to helping direct and visualize scenes with actors and videographers to make use our time wisely. Although my actual role as Art Director was present, I feel I was able to step into other roles when our group really needed.

I’m super happy with how little we had to film after returning from Loon Lake as we were able to adapt our original plans well to successfully get the majority of the content while we were there. The post-loon lake scenes included Act Three, a quick flashback kill scene, and some b-roll which we were able to rattle off in a day. Once we had all the needed clips, our editing and music started working. This final stretch also ended up to have lots of collaboration involved as many people steps into the editing role to ensure we met the deadline. During this time I gave multiple rounds of feedback on transitions, sound, and video cuts to ensure everything was smooth and consistent.

Overall, I was able to build my knowledge on everything that goes into a film, from the precise planning, to the improvising and collaboration needed. This project truly pushed me to grow creatively and collaboratively. It taught me the importance of flexibility, teamwork, and attention to detail in bringing a vision to life. Looking back, despite the few highs and many lows we overcame and the skills I developed along the way. Creating this film was an interesting experience that showed me just how much can be accomplished…even if it takes an entire five months to complete. Thanks for reading, and if you haven’t already make sure to watch our final movie β€œShattered” because it actually turned out pretty good for a high school production.

-Makenna