AICE Media Studies

      Hello once again, today we started choosing and exploring our music options! For this process, I started out very confused and, honestly, totally lost. For my first step, I needed to figure out where to begin searching for the music. My group and I were quite unsure even about what kind of music we wanted to include. Our starting idea was that we wanted a playful yet eerie-sounding song to be playing in the background for the majority of the film. My plan was to have whatever song we chose to play when the record player, in the beginning, was shown, and then I would adjust the volume as needed according to dialogue scenes. I was also planning to add a few sound effects, so we would need to look for those as well.      I thought a good start would be to search for 'eerie children's music' on YouTube to just get a baseline of what I wanted to look for. A playlist called "Creepy Old Songs" showed up and I looked at a few songs in there. Some possible con...

     Our last day of filming was finally here! Today is the day we film Marissa looking for Riley and Riley being found in the garage. For this, Marissa and Riley had gone out and bought some supplies we would need for this day. The supplies included fake blood and rope. The previous day, I had gone out to Party City in search of a fake kitchen knife, but all they had in stock were medieval daggers and pirate swords, so I went to the baking section instead and bought a plastic cake knife which I painted grey and black and sealed it with mod podge when I got home.  We all moved to the bathroom where Marissa would look for Riley behind the shower door. I wanted to film this scene in a certain way, where the camera would be inside the shower, slightly showing what is past the door of the shower, and then Marissa would open the shower door. To do this, I gave my phone to Riley since I didn’t feel right standing in their shower. I definitely wouldn’t want anyone but mys...

     Hello again readers, and welcome back to another blog. Today we got super close to finishing filming. We started off on the couch scenes where Marissa and Riley are talking to each other after coming inside. Before this, I had made sure to bring my tiny backpack with me again to shoot part of scene thirteen which I had forgotten to do last time. I had Riley and Marissa place their backpacks down on the table that was a straight shot from the door. I filmed the table straight down and had Riley hesitate a little bit before setting down her bag so It would look like they were still walking to the table. I also had her wait a little bit so I could put a title on the table, and then it would disappear when she laid the bag down on it. When Marissa put down her bag, the plan wasn't for it to fall over, but we kept it anyway. We did this because it fell in such a way that I would be able to put a second title on the bottom of the bag, which we all agreed would look pretty ...

     Hello and welcome back to another film production adventure. In this blog, I will talk about how my group and I tackled the mechanics of working with moving vehicles in the film! To start off our filming session, Riley was inside the house when she started having an asthma attack. I watched as she rushed out to her car to grab her inhaler to relieve her symptoms. I was quite concerned for her but she did whatever she had to do, said she was fine, and we went on with filming. We went back outside to Riley’s car and I had Marissa and Riley get inside to start on scene eight. This is where they pull into the driveway inside Riley’s car after an outing.   For this scene, I was about to start filming when I noticed that my dad- who was waiting for me in his car parked beside the sidewalk- was in the way of our shot. I went and knocked on his window to ask if he would mind pulling up a bit so as to not be in the shot, to which he happily obliged. I felt a littl...

     Welcome back to another successful day of filming! Today was actually a bit of something I predicted- gloomy skies! Now this wouldn't usually be said with joy, but this is exactly what I was hoping for as a contribution to our gloomy and eerie lighting efforts. I was happy to see that our indoor effects would match the outdoor ones.   Arriving at the twin’s house on yet another time crunch, we started filming scene three- young Mackena and Riley skipping together down the street. The two changed into their kid costumes from the previous time we filmed and put their hair back up. We went outside onto the sidewalk to begin. I hadn’t yet decided on whether I wanted a shot from the back or front, or if I wanted the camera to track them from the back as they skipped forward. So, what do you do when this happens? Film them all ways of course! I had them start skipping away from me as I held the camera stationary. I didn’t like this way very much, as it seemed a...

     Today was a blessing from film production heaven, we finally started to make progress! We all met up at Target to buy clothing for Mackena and Riley’s little kid characters. Originally, we were planning on using two little girls that Riley knows to be their younger selves in the flashbacks. Apparently after talking with their mother, Riley said she wasn’t too fond about the idea of her children in a film she was personally involved in. She was also concerned about her children not listening to our directions and said they were overall just going to be a handful, so we ditched that idea. I then offered to try to get my eight-year-old cousin to participate, but that was only going to be one kid, and we needed two. Other than that reason and the fact that my cousin can be a bit unruly at times, we abandoned the whole idea of getting extra children and decided to just get them to look as close to children as possible. At Target, we were able to find younger-looking dress...

       Today was our first attempt at starting to film. Marissa, Mackena, Riley, and I were excited to finally get the ball rolling, but the weather had other ideas: It was pouring rain. So with this, filming our outdoor scenes was off the table. Riley, the main character, got caught in the torrential downpour on the way to Marissa's house, which almost ruined our entire filming schedule. Picture this: our main character shows up completely drenched and late from the rain- not the look we're going for.      To make matters worse, our schedules were only compatible for a singular hour, meaning we had to start production immediately after everyone arrived. For me, of course, the transportation problems arose right away. I live about half an hour away from Marissa and Mackena's house where we were filming, and we were filming on a weekday when we had no school. This meant I had to get my dad to take me in the middle of his work day thirty minutes out west...

      Hello bloggers, and welcome back to another episode of "Trying but Miserably Failing to Align our Schedules." This month has come so quickly and is already halfway through in the blink of an eye. All my groups talk about getting ourselves together and filming as soon as possible has quickly turned about and went downhill. At first, we had plans for filming at the beginning of the week, then of course work got in the way. We then tried to reschedule for the middle of the week, but with those of us being involved in the school's dance team, it was hard to work around that as well. As the week went on the school's tech week for drama started up. I am personally part of the stage and tech crew for my school's play Cinderella, and if you aren't familiar with tech week, it usually lasts until nine o'clock at night every day for a week leading up to the show. It's amazing that it had to be this week right!     Putting the sarcasm and misfortunes aside, ...

      It's the start of a brand new project, which means it's the start of brand new challenges. My group and I had finished with our planning for the opening sequence which we felt confident in. We had all contributed to writing the research we needed for our title design, genre research, and scheduling and backups. After we completed the storyboard, we had planned to start filming that following week so as to now waste time. We all learned this less collectively in our music video, so we were eager to get a head start. Despite our ambitions, the universe ultimately had other plans for us.     That week, members of my group were consistently down for the count with illness. I had a feeling this would happen since I noticed starting the week we completed our storyboard that something was going around at school. For me specifically, I had the unfortunate luck of getting sick almost right as another member would get healthy again. What was even worse was that I ha...