Alivia Watts' Blog

     Suggested by Elise's dad, "Where Dead Things Lie" was originally meant to act as a stand-in/filler title for the movie, but we decided that we liked it and chose to keep it. It has a very ominous and mysterious tone, hopefully enough to draw the audience in. The "dead things" could possibly be interpreted as the dead dog shown in the opening scene, or could it be more...     We created this logo for our title using Canva. We edited red and yellow squares behind the white text to personalize our logo and make it our own. In order to implement this image into our film, we had to make the background green so it would act as a green screen and we could remove it.      As you can see, our title card is transparent, allowing for the end scene to fade into the title while still remaining visible until it all fades to black. 

Color Grading      We went for a realistic approach for our color grading to try and make the footage seem authentic; similarly to how the naked eye would perceive such events. We did this so there would be a clear yet subtle contrast to how the camera picks up visual content vs. that of the human eye.      Regular Footage:           Temperature: 9.8           Saturation: 97.4           Exposure: 0.3           Contrast: 52.9           Highlights: -9.2           Shadows: -7.8           Whites: 8.5     Camcorder Shots:          Saturation: 50 (For a "low quality" look/style) Ungraded vs. Graded     As you can see, the color graded footage looks warmer and overall less synthetic. The greyer tones in the origin...

 PARANOID ANDROID  by Radiohead     Inspiration : Thom Yorke took inspiration for the song after coming back home from a night of visiting clubs and bars throughout Los Angeles. Into the night, people desperate to talk to the musician kept trying to interact with him, leading to unwanted harassment and violation. Yorke later stated: " Everyone was trying to get something out of me. I felt like my own self was collapsing in the presence of it, but I also felt completely, utterly part of it, like it was all going to come crashing down any minute ." He described these obsessive fans as "demons," saying, " The people I saw that night were just like demons from another planet. "     Yorke also states," It's about being exposed to God, I dunno. It was that one night, really. We'd been rehearsing the song for months, but the lyrics came to me at 5 o'clock that morning. I was trying to sleep when I literally heard these voices that wouldn't l...

The Dog & Knife      We borrowed a pocket knife from Elise's dad to stab the chihuahua plushie and make the scene come to life. We covered the knife in fake blood and spread it around the dog's chest, making it look like the dog was stabbed in the heart. The Fake Blood      We mixed corn syrup, starch, chocolate syrup, and red Jello dye to create fake blood for the scene. Before filming, we took a trip to Publix to buy everything we needed, then came back to Elise's grandpa's house to mix everything together.      The Dog     We used Elise's Taco Bell Chihuahua beanie baby to act as a real dog in our film. In the scene, she repeatedly stabs the dog in the chest. Surprisingly, the dog was left unpunctured and was cleaned up back to normal shortly after.

      We took a few videos from behind the scenes of the blood process. The first one is a parody of Wicked, I took the song from when Elphaba casts her spell (No Good Deed) and put it in the background of her mixing the blood to sort of give it a "witch mixing a potion vibe." This was taken when this song and trend was circulating TikTok, where other people would do something similar and add this song to those videos. The second one is when Elise dipped her hand into the bowl of fake blood, ready to smear it all over her face. In these videos, you can really see the texture of the blood and how thick and sticky it turned out.

  Behind the Scenes Collage     This is a collage of a few photos we took during filming. As you can see, the process was really fun and we had a great time, all while being productive and getting our filming done.     The first few photos are of day one where we went over to Elise's grandpa's house to get a feel of the area and make a rough plan of how we wanted filming to work. We meant to begin filming today, but by the time we got there, it was already dark out. We tested our cameras and tripods and found an area where we'd later record our footage.      The second batch of photos show the camera set up on the tripod and the ingredients for our fake blood. Since I'm the cameraman, I managed to take a quick photo of the camera after I got it all set up. For the fake blood, you can see the ingredients and bowl ready to get mixed together.     Those last couple of photos show our filming in action. You can see Elise smearing the blood a...

Scenic Decisions:     We chose an isolated, forest-like area to shoot our film. This isn't for no reason, of course, we took preexisting archetypes from other slasher films as inspiration and chose our setting accordingly. A forest area in slasher films typically acts as a representation of isolation and the unknown, usually serving as a location where help is unattainable and rules or laws don't apply. This is reflected in our opening scene, where our main character is found by herself stabbing a dog to death, nobody around to find or judge her. The woods create an eerie, disconnected atmosphere, and we wanted to incorporate this into our film.       We chose to film in broad daylight mainly due to operational restrictions, since on a previous night we tested filming in the dark and it didn't work out. However, the daylight could be interpreted as an "in broad daylight" scenario, implying that she has no shame in what she's doing and isn't trying to hide ...

Little Shop of Horrors  (1986) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPZVjxWMLpo     Camera Shots, Angles, and Movement:       This horror-comedy film opens up with a fade from black into an insert shot, revealing some sort of bottle falling into a murky puddle of water. As we pan away from the puddle, we're met with an establishing shot featuring Mushnik's Flower Shop, a run-down, flower shop in skid row. Our logo fades in, reading "Little Shop of Horrors" in a funky red, blue, and yellow font. As a car drives by, the camera slowly pans in its direction and leads us to 3 women singing Prologue (Little Shop of Horrors.) The camera continues left as the women walk in the opposite direction before stopping. We cut to a medium close up shot of each of the girls singing their respective "look out!" parts. We then cut to a medium long shot of the women singing and dancing as lightning flashes around them. We cut to an insert shot of a black cat, possibly symboliz...

  Horror as a Genre:      Horror is a film genre that aims to invoke psychological stress or fear into its audience. Horror films tend to explore darker themes like murder or death, typically featuring demonic or monstrous entities. The book The Film Experience: An Introduction defines horror as a genre with origins in Gothic literature that seeks to frighten the viewer. Various subgenres of horror stem from this, mirroring the many ways fear and suspense can be created in media. Psychological, supernatural, slashers, and more all aim to invoke a fearful emotional response through the audience. Psychological Horror:      Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror that focuses on mental, emotional, and psychological response and caters more towards disturbing or unsettling the audience rather than making them scream out of terror. This subgenre often utilizes characters with unstable or unreliable psychological states to enhance mystery or paranoia of...

Planning:     We're finally starting, the new and improved, Where Dead Things Lie! After showing the opening to our classmates and receiving criticism, we're ready to start the next step to our film. Things will be different however, since one of our group members dropped the class. That shouldn't be too much of an issue, since she didn't help out too much...but different nonetheless.     We're filming at the same spot, Elise's grandpa's house, and likely using the same or similar equipment as last time. For props, if we decide to use fake blood again, we'd obviously have to make a new batch. But other than that, I think we're using about the same props. (Knife, etc...) Elise's Grandpa's House (Behind the Scenes)      Elise is going to play our main character yet again, but we're going to need to find someone else to play a newly introduced character. That shouldn't be a problem, since a lot of our friends are in theatre. The reason t...

Donnie Darko (2001) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAlCPeOuOAw     Camera Shots, Angles, and Movement:       We start the scene off with a long, establishing shot, slowing panning towards our main character, who appears to be laying on the ground. This opening shot creates an ominous feel, leaving the audience questioning where we are, who this guy is, and if he's okay. As we're slowly getting closer to him, we get to see his bicycle on the ground with him, implying that he might've fallen off of it. As he starts to get up, we now know that he's not dead or severely injured, and the camera starts to move around him. The camera moves closer and closer until we're able to see around half of his face in a mid shot. We cut to an establishing shot of the sky as it slowly pans across the screen. The back of Donnie's head quickly pops up, and we're left with an over-the-shoulder shot with the background still in focus. As he turns around, the background begins to...