Filming Wrapped

 Aside from one shot, the POV urinal shot to show Bob's expression when he hears the screaming and collapsing from outside the bathroom, we've officially finished filming! On Monday after school we all went back to the school for what would be a short, hour-long wrap up - or so I thought. Unfortunately a few mishaps and unfortunate occurrences were involved that dragged everything out made us rush a little bit in the last few minutes of filming, one of them being that Alejandro's girlfriend, the wife actor, started feeling pretty sick that day and we had to rush to get a back up, but luckily our classmate Nina came in clutch. This meant that we had to refilm some of the teacher's wifes line which we had already recorded, but we only got about 3 lines in and it only cost us about 10 minutes

I also got some quick shots from the outside of the school building to use as either cutaways or some extra shots for exposition or the creation of a teaser later on. This flickering light would serve particularly well in creating a  sort of eerie and foreboding tone so I made sure to get about 15 seconds of footage.

Also, once I begun editing, I hadn't really planned on doing this while it is a key convention of thrillers, but the scene where the wife confronts Bob seemed it like it was screaming for a jumpscare like "RYAN RYAN PLEASE MAKE THIS A JUMPSCARE" so I added a very sharp sting in addition with loud pounding knocks which I found on Pixabay in order to create this:

                                

Additonally, we opted to create the effect of the body having woken up by Alejandro operating the camera, and me standing behind the cart in which the body bag was placed and shaking it aggresively. I also added some muffles to add to the overall comedic effect.

And finally, something I can admit was definitely my fault, but going into filming, I honestly could not for the life of me figure how I wanted to end the piece. Whether it be the tone, or action, I just couldn't figure it out and was hoping once I saw everything there I would decide in the heat of the moment. This is pretty much what happened, and because of how emotional Alejandro's acting was when the teacher passed away for real for real, I decided ending it on a more gloomy note would be best. I decided to recreate this by having him walk back out into the hall, what one can assume is a few days later, and slowly, almost painfully, place the wet floor sign in the middle of the floor. I added my song to it as well and I think it matches together quite well honestly:

Overall, now that I've gotten a rough edit of most of my piece and finished filming, I feel I now have a pretty clear vision of the brand I'm aiming to develop and how I envision my piece turning out in the end.

Postcard/Social Media production

So apparently there's other parts to this portfolio project beyond the short film and I have to do them, so in the past few days I've done a decent bit with respect to developing my postcard and social media branding/presence. 

First of all, for my postcard, remember that idea had...

Well upon further consideration, I've ultimately decided that it sucks. Why, do you ask? I feel it doesn't really serve as a creation of visual interest or even promote any sort of branding beyond the font, especially because of how dull the color scheme is.  So I decided I'll work towards creating a new one. As I'll discuss in a separate post, I've been messing around with some color grading in premiere pro, and this new scheme really emphasizes the blues and yellows within my piece so I feel the branding I should create should put emphasis on one of these two colors. Additionally, I talked in the past about my concern with postcards that spoil the whole thing, but for my piece I feel a postcard visual that avoids the central conflict would just turn out boring because - no offense to janitors- but it just would be hard to find something that would make the postcard something that serves as a source of generating interest among people I would hand it out to. Therefore, this shot below of once Bob first discovers the body would reveal there's some sort of dead body involved and create the visual interest I'm going for.

 

After all, the main conflict is separate than the 2 big plot twists, he's alive and the the whole ordeal was the teacher's wife's doing. We've also elected to make this yellow figure our logo. As I talked about in the past I've been considering making some design similar to this one below (minus the guitar), as it hints that there's a body involved to generate mystery. We made it yellow to uphold the consistency of our branding with the yellow caution sign serving as a key element of the film, and foreshadowing the climax. 

Thus, I've officially made my first teaser. I found this copyright free sound on YouTube and ultimately elected that it would be good for a teaser that emphasized the shocking and thrilling nature of the film. As I discussed in my social media research, a somewhat even emphasis on both the thriller and comedic aspects of the film in our marketing would best represent our genre, and for this teaser I opted to not really focus on the comedy behind it at all.

With Alejandro handling more of the marketing side of things and me handling post production, I figured I could best communicate my vision for the branding to him through the creation of this teaser.

CCR Brainstorming

Today, I'll be doing some brainstorming and discussion of CCR questions 2 and 4. 

2) How do your products engage with the audience?

Firstly, this question requires a clear definition of the target audience to answer completely. I would say the primary target audience for my piece is dark comedy enthusiasts, primarily male, and aged from 18-35 years old. Fans of shows like Barry would naturally gravitate towards my piece, because of its similar emphasis on both thriller and comedic aspects. They also gravitate towards more cynical humor-esque stories that feature an antagonist that is intelligent and bold. And finally they tend to gravitate towards a very clear style through soundtrack and cinematography. I feel my piece embodies the stylistic aspect through my original composition which I featured, as well as the repeated use of handheld and dutch angle shots to reinforce a visual style. There is certainly a presence of both auditory and physical humor as seen in Bob's confrontation with Lewis in which he convinces him not to go into the bathroom, and the jump cut sequence when Bob drags the teacher out of the stall.

 However, one manner in which One Body Problem may fall flat in convincing the target audience is through the intelligent protagonist, as the whole reveal comes about by a cliche Freudian slip in which the wife says Bob's name without ever having been told his name, revealing she has been plotting on him all this time. The cliche nature of this whole twist may be too overdone to completely retain the engagement of the audience that I gained through other aspects of my production.

4) How do your products represent social groups and issues?

First, my story basically centers around a member of the blue-collar class, and therefore naturally must develop some sort of commentary about members of this group. It reinforces the notion of these workers being widely and historically overlooked and undervalued, as that's pretty much the entire reason why he was chosen as the teacher's wife's victim. However, it challenges this traditional representation through the incorporation of this brief, yet important detail. 

Bobert's son set as his wallpaper provides logical and relatable motivation for the extreme lengths he goes to hide the teacher's body and reinforces his humanity. Through reminding others that he too has motivations and purpose beyond simply cleaning the school floors, One Body Problem clearly challenges this preconceived notion.

A further issue I am able to commentate on in One Body Problem is workplace hierarchy. Once again, Bob was chosen because no one would "believe" him and I reinforce that through Lewis's condescending dialogue with Bob. Lewis's higher overall ranking on this hierarchy reveals it to be a problem as it makes it signficantly easier, and even probable to scapegoat Bob successfully and essentially ruin his life.

Overall, the most prominent representations and issues I provide commentary on are workplace hierarchy and undervaluing of custodial staff and bluecollar workers as a whole, and through placing this comentary under the guise of purely being comedic, I am able to subtly alter common preconceived notions of these issues.

We filmed p.2

 So as I said in the last production post, I was pretty confident that going into Thursday's filming, everything would go more smoothly. And yes, while we got up into the final confrontation between Bob and the wife, after going through the raw footage I have come across a huge dilemma. Let's see if you can spot it!

yours truly as "LEWIS"

I'll give you a hint - it's not the lighting. What's that? Yep you got it! The mics are EXTREMELY VISIBLE in some of these shots. This is where its made super obvious that I'm an amateur who is figuring stuff out as they go along. Right now it looks like I'll be relying on extreme close ups through zooming in post, but honestly it might even help elevate the claustrophobia and tension I aim on creating, so maybe my ignorance and stupidity is actually a blessing in disguise! Also, backing up a few shots, you see that one shot with kind of bad lighting where Alejandro is clenching his teeth, this shot was completely improvised on the fly. I had this vision I attempted to convey in my storyboard of jumpcuts being used from an eagle eye perspective as Bob drags the body out of the stall after hiding it from Lewis.

one of the many outtakes

the final shot

 While we did remain faithful to this aspect in the end, after thousands of interruptions from either me completely losing composure or Alejandro or Lucas breaking character because of how purely chaotic getting the shots were, we also had the idea of getting a POV shot (maybe not a POV because his eyes are closed because he's "dead") looking at Alejandro's face as he desperately tries to drag the body out of the bathroom stall. I think this shot came out pretty well and also would be a cool front postcard design, something like this:

Another notable moment was the creation of the teacher's wife's contact card. I didn't think it would be that big a deal and I told Alejandro to set his phone to a black screen but he opted to use a skull emoji with heart eyes which amused him quite a bit. 

Maybe there's some deeper symbolic significance I'm unaware of but we definitely had a good laugh, which brings me to my final point: We didn't finish :((((( which means we are officially behind schedule. This is all part of the trial and error that comes with learning to effectively do something, but the time we lost breaking character and getting distracted added up and while the actor for the wife was present, we didn't get to finish filming her parts. Fortunately, this upcoming monday we are able to go back to the office building once more to film the final sequence, and finally wrap filming.

Music Production

 Today, I decided it was time to finally record the original composition I discussed into Ableton Live, the DAW I use. Because of the limited edition I have, I could only record up to 8 tracks, which kind of limited my production ability as I prefer to double track everything I record. I think it turned out really well and I even edited the first minute or so footage and put the track over it to see if it aligned tonally, and I personally think it worked great, but you can have a listen down below if you wish.

I'm contemplating adding something more to it in its reprise, because I'm planning on bringing the track back at the end of the short film after the climax where the wife is defeated. I think a good way to make it feel even more conclusive would be to add drums that don't overpower it but just drive it forward. For example, when the drums kick in at 3:30 of "Dimensions" by Arcade Fire. 

The song itself is beautiful and emotional but the drums coming in after building so well for the past few minutes feels so conclusive and impactful and I feel doing something similar in my track could work really well. I unfortunately don't have access to the materials necessary to play let alone record drums, but after reaching out to my friend Jacob, he said he would see what he could figure out. I'm still not 100 percent sure and I'd have to do the sight test after I edit everything, but exploring my options would prevent me from being too rabbit-holed into one specific tone I'm forced to end on.

We filmed p.1

 So as I previously discussed in our first day filming we just brought the 2 main actors, my partner Alejandro and my friend Lucas who's playing the dead body, as well as my friend Pedro who let use his camera. I've never really filmed a full complete narrative of this length so I wasn't sure how long it would take, but I was relatively certain we wouldn't get farther than the main set up when Bob first discovers the body. 

Unfortunately, despite being scheduled to film at the school district office from 5-9, we didn't really get started until about 6:30 because PEDRO forgot his SD CARD and I had to stop at WALMART to GET ONE. 50 dollars and 90 minutes later, we filmed for the next 2 hours and it honestly went pretty well. We remained relatively faithful to our script and storyboard, but there were some surprisingly cool improvised and spontaneous elements that I think turned out pretty well. 

To provide some examples, I knew I wanted to assert that Bob was a generally unpopular custodian, especially compared to his fellow custodian Lewis, which is why the teacher's wife would view Bob as a perfect subject for framing. While I planned on making this clear in their conversation when Bob has to get Lewis away from the bathroom, I feel like it had to be introduced early on, and with my mother on site, we figured out a way to do just that. Basically, she would play another teacher leaving the building, Bob would say "Bye Ms. Bernstein (not her actual name)", and my mom would just straight up ignore him, like Bob was basically a ghost who's not really respected by anyone. Again, this wasn't in my script or storyboard at all, but I think it turned out pretty well.

Another thing we improvised that I absolutely loved was this two shot from a sort of eagle eye point of view looking down at Bob and the apparently deceased teacher. In the moment, we all immediately jumped to the similarity to the iconic shot from the Breaking Bad episode "Crawl Space".

I like this shot a lot and I'm glad it came to us in the heat of the moment because obviously the high angle would reinforce Bob's lack of control in the situation but it also places him and a literal dead person in the same light, showing Bob too is dead in the sense that his life is kind of over as he's responsible for someone else's death and will face the consequences if he doesn't act quickly. It would be cool as the back of a postcard but it does kind of give the whole thing away about someone dying so hopefully some more shots will come to us that could be used on the postcard later on.

Also, to further establish a sort of moral grounding and motivation for Bobert's actions, because I was unable to print out a picture to put in his wallet before the shoot, I opted to just use a picture of my brother from when he was around 4 years old as Bob's wallpaper on his phone, as it works as a small detail that subtly provides some moral background to why Bob goes to such extreme lengths to hide the body. 

Overall, we only got up to around a minute or so into the film's exposition, but this first day provided much needed icebreaking and warming up to one another so that on Thursday I'm confident everything will go much more smoothly and we can get the filming process out of the way.

Shooting Schedule/ Costuming

 As I outlined in my schedule, this upcoming week is spring break which me and Alejandro plan to make great use of to tackle what seems to be the most intimidating aspect of our film. My mother who is an employee for the school district in which I attend, knowing we needed access to a school building over break, offered her office building which is literally a shut down elementary school which works perfectly. 

Whilst scouting the location, I met the head janitor, Claudia, who generously said she would allow us access to her supplies while we filmed. Up to this point I’ve kind of overlooked the prop side of things but this really fixes that hole without me having to do a whole lot of extra spending and research so I’m incredibly thankful.

Me (Lewis), Alejandro (Bobert), Alejandro’s girlfriend Claire (Teachers wife), my friend Lucas (Teacher), and my friend Pedro (Camera operator) all agreed on Tuesday and Thursday of spring break to film. On Tuesday we plan on filming from the start through Bob’s interaction with Lewis, and on Thursday we plan on filming through the end.

Alejandro's costume is a pretty straight forward depiction of a custodian, as I already own a jumpsuit as part of a past Halloween costume.

For my costume, I'll aim for something a little less stereotypical to present myself in a cooler, more respect light to make the difference in other's views of Bob vs Lewis clear.

The teacher will wear relatively stereotypical attire, with a formal dress shirt and dress pants, and the wife will wear something very outlandish to create uncertainty as soon as she appears on screen.

Cruella from 101 Dalmatians comes to mind as a sort of inspiration and I feel this can be recreated in a different light. My mother owns a leopard print fur coat which I feel would work well when paired with black glasses. Seeing someone who presents themself as innocent and clueless wearing something so bold would create an immediate juxtaposition forcing the audience to question what the teacher's wife actually wants.