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Our production skills increased in so many ways as a result of this project. From costuming, to set design, editing, filming, and sound production, we were truly able to incorpoate all these while creating our piece of media. Perhaps the part of this film that I am most proud of is how we were able to create a set in the most unlikely of places. Without having to purchase anything at all, we created the illusion that a yellow sunny children's playroom was in fact an interrogation room within a mental facility. The only materials we used were two black bed sheets, a table, two chairs, a paper and scissors, a mirror, and a floodlight. Nothing was purchased. We made do with what we had, and tried to be as innovative as possible with relatively few resources.
For example, we were able to play around with the lighting and coloring of the film using one of Imovie's features. We used a filter called heat wave, along with a focused blue point in order to create a harsh lighting that was also not too saturated. For the "flashback" scenes, we used another filter called "dream" that added a more misty tone and created a dreamlike coloring. So although the lighting was not spot on during filming, we were able to adjust the coloring to our liking using Imovie's software. The text that appears on screen was also a feature of Imovie.
Originally, it was the intention of De-Ranged Pictures to create entirely original sound effects and music by recording foly sounds and eerie, original piano instrumentals. However, in the very first stage of editing, we began to toy around with the sound effects provided already on the Imovie application. We found a variety of royalty-free stings and instrumentals that completely added a whole new dimension to the quality of our film. Since these sound effectsworked so well with "Shattered" right off the bat, we decided to stick with them. Among some of my favorite sound bites that we used on Imovie are the ambience and suspense collections of music/sound effects. Other faint sounds, such as a heartbeat and ticking clock, also add in creating a buildup of anxiety within the opening sequence. Research has been done which proves that sheer sound and music is accountable for most of the fear audiences feel during scary movies. Without these sounds, the creepy things you see on screen are truly not as frightening. Using this logic, we figured that one of the best ways to signal to our audience a suspenseful tone is by adding suspenseful music that makes you feel on edge. Perhaps it was not always our first instinct, but it worked out for the best!
We Hope you Enjoyed...
Where the Journey In Creating A Psychological Thriller Completes!
Production Galore...
the picture below is
behind the scenes of
the set.
Lighting
The Most Fortuitous of Errors...
Originally, we intended to film in either a legitimate interrogation room at our local police department or in an office of a medical school. Due to issues of logistics, we only filmed in the yellow playroom as a last resort. To our surprise, this mistake wound up majorly working to our advantage. Not only were we able to stretch our creative abilities by creating a set from scratch, but filming at one of the group member's houses allowed us more flexibility in our filming schedule. In order to create the set, we hung a black sheet on the wall and placed the set pieces in front, using a floodlight during the dark to create an eery lighting effect. This all worked without a hitch. The only problem we ran into was creating the countershot. However, we thought of a solution that plays around with audience perspective. Although our set comprised only of one wall, we flipped the shot around so that the actress is now in the foreground. The empty chair of the absent interviewer was now in the area where our character used to be, and we filmed that snippet as an over-the-shoulder shot to create a counter-shot effect. We were happy to see how well this turned out.
Camera shots and angles were also extremely important in the construction of this film. We were quite limited in the shots we could take, considering the space we had to film was very finite and we were unable to do any countershots until near the end of the piece. In order to create a tone of discomfort while also entertaining the viewer, we used a variety of close ups, canted angles, slight tilting and panning, high-angled shots, and a shaky camera quality. Close ups intensify our actress's emotions and mind frame, especially during her monologue. Canted angles somehow convey a sense of insanity in film, while high angled shots reveal the character as inferior, even in her strongest points. To be completely honest, the shaky camera quality was due to our inexperience as filmers, but we decided it fit the tonality of the scene better than steady shots, since our character's psyche is so tumultuous. So mistakes happen! Luckily, we were able to roll with the punches, and create something that we could be proud of despite any mishaps along the way.
Our product will engage with audiences in a very modern format: using click to watch software and tools as well as downloadable content. The primary distribution of "Shattered" will occur through youtube, which is the grandfather of all modern media streaming sites. The other main platform De-Ranged Pictures will use to distribute our content is "BitTorrent", a revolutionary peer-to-peer sharing site that allows feedback on both consumer and producer ends of the spectrum, while also generating profit in a mutually beneficial manner. Also, "Shattered" will never go straight to theaters. Instead, the film will be directly released through "Netflix", the streaming site that has revolutionized the industry and raised the bar in film distribution. This form of distribution is based on a new phenomenon in the industry, known as self/alternative distribution.
Sound production
The main software we used to edit the opening to our film, "Shattered", was Imovie. This app like device that comes along with many Mac products is simple and efficient when it comes to editing film from a holistic standpoint. My first time using Imovie was for a prior assignment challenging us to create music videos. I found the program easy to learn and fun to use, and could not wait to tackle the task of editing, which truly makes or breaks the quality of film. Imovie provided De-Ranged Pictures with a lot of features that helped us to enhance the overall aesthetic of the film.
From Our Screens to Yours
We filmed the opening for "Shattered" using the Canon EOS 60D camera, already owned by a group member. We were then able to export our footage into Imovie using a memory card, where we proceeded in editing the final product. In order to make the screen title for "Shattered" at the end of the introduction, we used fontspace to generate the image we wanted to create, along with a background already provided by Imovie. Truthfully, we were not able to computer generate the effects that we had in mind for a screen title. Although it was not as professional looking as we hoped it would be, it sufficed. Lastly, after weeks of hard work, thinking, and effort, we exported the two minute film introduction of 'Shattered' to Youtube. The link to this can be found on immensesuspense.blogspot.com.
An essential part of our protagonist's character development and story stems from the fact that she is schizophrenic. This psychological disorder has notably been misrepresented in many examples of media: for example, the visual illusions in "A Beatiful Mind" are uncharacteristic of the condition because most schizophrenic hallucinations are in fact auditory. Also, many slasher and horror films depict how schizophrenic people are likely to harm others and unleash violence on the community. On the contrary, people with this disorder are more likely to hurt themselves, an issue which is not often addressed.
De-Ranged Picture's new film, "Shattered", toys around with many conventions that are characteristic within the genre of psychological thriller. Abigail's story is a basic plotline, with a 180 degree twist. In films such as "Shutter Island" and "The Machinist", the male protagonist goes on a mindbending journey that helps him come to terms with a horrible crime that otherwise went psychologically unnoticed. In "Shattered," the female lead is institutionalized for confessing to a murder that never truly occured, and may only be released once she comes to this realization.
What makes this film different?
As a group, we decided to give our film more legitimacy by coming up with a catchy name for our hypothetical production company. "De-Ranged" was picked because it contains a double meaning. It reflects the creepy vibe and aesthetic of our 'deranged' piece while also going out of range, or out of the box. We would have loved to create a short sequence for our production company's logo before the film is shown, but with so much great footage to show in only two minutes, we decided that all two minutes of our introduction took precedent. This worked to our advantage because we wanted to metaphorically throw the audience's mind into the world of our twisted heroine, Abigail. For this reason, we paired the caption of "De-Ranged" pictures within the first frame of the piece, along with creepy music that instantly puts our viewers into the fragmented world of Shattered. We really hope we were able to create a creepy and twisted tone along with a dark and mysterious mise en scene that we were trying to achieve!
It is seemingly impossible to create a creepy psychological thriller that truly does justice in representing this complex disorder, with symptoms that can often vary from person to person and from time to time. However, we did the best we could in portraying the schizophrenic condition in a manner that is both disturbing, but also not terribly inaccurate. We attempted to convey audio hallucinations, exaggerated symptoms of anxiety, disorganized speech and thought, as well as paranoia, within a plotline that retains eerie suspense while also not being too far fetched.
Erica Steinkohl's AICE media project
An original film
The Creative Critical Reflection