Foley, Foley, Foley

Throughout the process of editing, Sofi and I have noticed that most of the sounds we need are in the natural environment of our shots. Lucky for us most of these sounds were caught in our shots. Though, after watching the edited 2 minute film, we have found that some sound effects are not as prominent as we need them to be. So, we decided to create foleys for them so we can manipulate and control the volume of that specific sound. 

To record foley's it is important that the environment you are filming in is quiet, so no background noise is picked up. We chose to create the foleys in my bathroom. This bathroom has no windows which helps with avoiding background noise. We chose to keep the lights off in the bathroom while filming because the light in my bathroom is accompanied by a loud humming noise of the vent. We chose to record the sound with the IPhone’s voice record feature. This would make it easy to up load the sound because I can just air drop it onto my MacBook Pro. 

One sound we chose to do was the pen scratching through a paper. This is seen quite a lot in the beginning of the film to symbolize the kidnapper following Veronicas schedule. This action is seen often in the story line so it is important to emphasize the sound with this foley.

Another Sound we chose to do was Sofi’s Angry crumbling the notebook. The sound should be louder top represent the anger she feels.

We have to take another look to see which foley’s we are missing but overall we are on track for the final week of the project! Stay tuned!

Music Overdose

I never thought I would say this but…. I have listen to TOO MUCH MUSIC!! Today I have spent my day listening to dozens of sounds trying to find the ones that match with the film. My goal with the background music is for assist the actual film in building up emotion. In this film we cover several different emotions, including anxiety provoking, fear, and creeped. These are a lot of emotions to find a song that compliments the situation perfectly. What makes the job more challenging is that we must use royalty free music. Luckily there are two websites that have assisted me in finding my perfect tunes. 

For starters, the first website I used was Youtube's royalty free music library, called “Music For Creators.” This music library has an a location to look at all their sounds listed by playlist. The labeling of the playlist made it easy to sort through the sounds as I focused on the sound types that pertain to my story line. For instance, in “sorted by mood” I knew not to look at happy or inspirational because those are not moods in my film. However, one down fall of the website is that a lot of the sounds are electro/ techno which is not the sound that I envisioned for my film.

Since the first source didn't cut it for me, I decided to check out “Purple Planet.” This website was my jackpot. The website classifies their sounds by moods which makes the sound hunt 100 times easier. On this website I decided to stay with in: Emotional, Creepy, and Tense. These are moods that are prominent in my film, so finding a list of sounds full of these moods was truly awesome.

Since I listened to so many sounds, To keep track of which sounds I wanted to use, I kept a list on my phone. For the purple planet website, I wrote down the name of the sound and then which part of the film I would want to use it in.

For the Youtube music library, I chose to just simply email them to myself with the scene i would use them in the Subject line.

Overall, I am very excited about the sounds I have found and cannot wait to put them together. Stay tuned!

The Title Search

Now that my partner and I have the overcame creating the storyline and bringing it to life, so now the time has come to create a title for out film. I decided to do some research on my genre conventions once again, except this time in regards to titles. 

The first thing I noticed when conducting my research is that the titles for Crime thrillers usually are made up of only one to two words. It is usually very simple and straightforward names. The titles usually describe what the movie will end up being about. For instance, movies such as the movies Taken and Kidnap. 

These findings have lead my partner and I to steer our title choices to one to two words. We took into account what our film was about. The main points are that the kidnapper is watching Veronicas every move. So that's where we came up with the name Obsession, because the kidnapper is obsessed with Veronica and her life. Another name that we came up with was “Step by step.” We believe this would be a good title because the Kidnapper follows veronicas day step by step meticulously. Also this title could be relevant to the story because it goes with the mom's journey as she goes step by step to find her daughter.

There is a lot to think about, we are still unsure about the title names. We got to reflect a little and the title will find its way to us… Stay tuned!

Editing

Yesterday Sofi and I got together and edited the footage together that we filmed on Sunday. At first it felt a bit overwhelming because we had about 72 clips to choose from. However we took it one step a time. We set up our shots list right next to my computer and we started of with the first location. As we combed through the shots we looked at 3 things to distinguish what shots were better than the other. The first thing was how natural was the line delivery from the characters. Second, we looked at the quality of the lighting and colors of the shot. Lastly, we listened for which clip had the best sound quality. 

As we put the film together we came across some challenges. For instance, the speed of a scene. In the school scene, there is a shot of a car backing out and driving away. This shot was way to slow, as the car’s driver did it that way to ensure we got the proper shot. However, while I was editing I found a cool editing technique which allows for the shot to be sped up and slowed down.

Another trouble that we went through was the differentiation in the lighting of the shots side by side. This made the film seem unprofessional, and that is not the vibe that we are going for. During our editing journey we found a setting called color match, which allows the editor to edit the shot to have the same colors as another shot.

Our last challenge that we have yet to overcome is that our film is over by 20 seconds. We have to figure out which scenes are not essential to our story line which is going to be really hard. 

After we were done editing we made a to do list. includes : adding titles, music, and making the foleys necessary. That is what the rest of my week will be consumed of. Stay tuned!

Lights, Camera, Action ( Part 2)

Today has been a productive day! Sofi and I have conquered 3 out of 4 of our filming locations! We are so excited with how our new additions to our storyline are developing.

To begin with, our first filming location was originally supposed to be the library because we believe the school would be closed during spring break. However, i did not want to settle for this, so I went to investigate and it turns out that the teacher parking lot was in fact open. This location was perfect for filming because it had the perfect distance from the school to the parking space.

Our second location was one again the “ fitness spot “ and the woods. We decided to redo these scenes because the previous conversation in the fitness spot was really awkward and did not flow as good as the second one we wrote.

One bad thing about the woods, is that every bug and their mother decided to show up and attack us… let’s just say that the experience was unpleasant, and that I have about 15 different bug bites on my face and legs. We for-sure filmed that scene the quickest to get out of the bug infested forest.

Our last filming location today was my closet. My closet was transformed to the kidnappers hiding place for the kidnapped. This is where Vernie woke up and realizes she has been kidnapped. This follows to her losing her mind trying to escape. This was definitely one of my favorite scenes, vernie did a great and convincing job, in playing this role. 

We have one more location to film at, savannah commons. This scene will be of sofias mom putting up the missing person flyer. We are looking forward to be done filming so we can move on to editing and adding music. We are finally getting to the fun stuff...Stay tuned!

The Ultimate Makeover

Our make up skills were tested today when vernie gave us the bad news, that she could not find her fake blood. So, I went straight to my makeup box and gathered all the makeup that I wouldn't miss. From there I tried to think what colors are in a bruise: black, purple, green, and blue… depending on the stage. When I looked at the pallets, I found blue and black eyeshadow. Since the bruises/ cuts were supposed to look fresh, we decided to throw some melted red lipstick.

We cut a piece of the lip stick and microwaved it for 3 min. The consistency wasn't where we wanted it, but we had to make due. We began by applying a streak of the red lipstick on the skin, and then we blended it in with the blue and the black eye shadow, with a blush brush.

We decided to scatter the “ bruises” all around vernie body, making sure that the one on her head would stand out because that is where she got hit with the stick.

To give the effect that Vernie’s character was dragged through the woods after being knocked out. We decided to use coffee grounds as our fake dirt. We rubbed it all over her face, knees, and fingernails.

Lastly, to finish off the dishevelled look we were looking for, we cut up the dress, and rubbed some coffee grounds on it. INstead of her hair being pinned back the pin is lost and her hair is messy and frizzy. Lastly, she is no longer wearing glasses when she is trapped, they were lost in the commotion.

Before

After

This look made sofi and I think on our feet to execute what we were looking for. I am very happy on how this look came out. Stay tuned to see how the make up came together with our scene!

Preparing for filming

Hopefully second time's the charm… Tomorrow is filming day round 2, and I am excited to get it right this time. Vernie, Sofi, Alejandro and I have all agreed to begin shooting at 1pm and are hoping to get all filming done tomorrow. We have 4 locations to shoot at, so we have to use our time wisely and work hard. 

Today I have been finishing up some final details which are essential to our films. I have just finished making our missing person flyer. At first I attempted to create it on Canva, but it looked to pretty compared to the examples I found online.

I then tired to create my own by free hand on google docs , but they were not looking the way I envisioned the flyer. So, I finally had the bright idea of searching for a legitimate missing persons template for the flyer.

I was able to find this template on http://www.pollyklaas.org/yourchild/flyer_templates.html . 

This was the final product:

Lastly, with the help of my awesome boyfriend, I was able to clear out my closet. The walk in closet is one of the locations for shooting. So to save time, it was vital to do this the day before shooting. The closet serves at the place where the kidnapper hides the kidnapped. Since it is narrow it gives a sense of being trapped. After clearing out my closet I was able to set up the closet to actually look like a kidnappers hiding place. 

This is what the closet looked like before: 

If you want to see what the kidnappers hiding place looks like...Stay tuned for my following post!