Reflection

Hello everyone! My name is Sophia Jauregui and I was a part of creating the film opening for

“The Call”. My partner’s name is Giuliana Ribas, she and I have worked extremely hard on the entire production of this film opening. To specify, our film opening is based on this popular teenage girl who watches a news broadcast that states an ongoing problem of mass-suicides. The problem is that when somebody answers the phone, a demonic spirit enters their body and makes them want to kill themselves. At the end of the opening she is seen performing the ignorant action of answering a phone call which automatically makes her a victim to this problem.  

Since the start we knew we were going to do a film in the horror genre because we knew a lot about the suspenseful shots that we could include. In the horror genre there are two movies and two shows that we got inspiration from. The first movie we got inspiration from was Bird Box, from which we obtained the idea of using a news broadcast to state the problem we were going to cover in our film opening. Another idea that we got from it was the issue of mass-suicides and the apocalyptic vibe from the movie. The next movie we got inspiration from was Scream, which is where we got the idea to use the phone as a way for the demonic spirits to enter the body. The show Criminal Minds is what inspired us to make our film opening one scenario of the problem that is happening during the whole episode, but before the episode starts, in this case before the film begins. From the show Vampire Diaries we used the way that a vampire’s face turns all veiny and black, and applied it to the main character’s face when she answers the phone.

Moving on, our film opening follows genre conventions by using the sub-genre of apocalyptic horror, mostly through the use of the news broadcast since it is very informative and used in many horror films to state the occurring problem. We made sure to make our news broadcast look as realistic as possible with formal outfits, the setup of the props, and the editing to make the headlines. Our film opening represents the stereotypical popular teenager because she is on her phone constantly and she is very ignorant to the world around her.

Moving on, our film opening has a target audience of ages 13-24 and since horror films like ours contain a substantial amount of suspenseful scenes, it attracts viewers that love movies having to do with a sort of end of the world feeling. Our film opening engages with our audience because it is depicting the age group that most of them can identify themselves in, which would make them more interested in watching our film. It also gives them the anxiety and stressful feeling that they get when watching horror films. If we would ever distribute our film opening as a real media text we would probably enter it in our school’s film festival since it would be a way to bring attention to it and it would work out really well since a high school’s age group is from 14-18. We also have to keep in mind that it wouldn’t be realistic to choose a huge distributor since we are so upcoming and we aren’t professional movie directors.

Now to talk about my production skills that have improved substantially during this whole process of filming and editing. In the filming portion of this film opening, there were a lot of techniques that we applied, like camera shots, angles, and movement. We had to really think and plan out all of these different aspects on our storyboard to be prepared for filming. We used extreme close-ups, over the shoulder shots, close ups, and establishing shots. We also did some creative shots like having a small depth of field in the first scene of the film opening with the control remote, and using a pull focus with the over the shoulder shot of the main character watching the news broadcast. Another thing that we did when actually filming the movement of our main character was using a tracking shot beginning with a high angle and followed her into the bathroom as she turned on the shower and then answered the phone. Lastly, we had to make sure that our camera movement was really stable in order for it to look as professional as possible.

In the editing portion of our film opening, we had to place all of our video clips in order and make sure that they all flowed smoothly and that there were no continuity errors. Then we had to create our sound effects manually by recording with the voice memo application on my phone. Then we also found suspenseful music and added it throughout the whole opening so that it wouldn’t be a silent film. It truly created the suspenseful atmosphere that the audience is looking for when watching horror films. Moving on to the tedious part of editing our film opening, which would be the text-message conversation. Since the start of developing ideas for our film opening, my partner and I had planned to use the editing application After Effects to create a conversation on the screen while showing the main character texting on the side. But when we began to use this application, it was extremely difficult and complicated.  What we ended up doing was using an app on my phone to create a fake conversation and then using iMovie to overlay this on top of a video of our main character texting that we filmed using the rule of thirds knowing that this clip of the conversation would be included on the left side. Overall, we did have many editing problems including continuity errors and the film being too long, but now we know how to fix these problems and how to deal with them in the future.

We integrated the use of many technologies to fully create our film opening, such as the software. For the software we used the application iMovie because i have been using it for a while now and I am most comfortable with it. I wanted to make sure that I would be successful in creating this project by using what I know best. For the hardware we used my sister’s computer since my computer low on storage and my partner’s computer doesn’t work well with iMovie. Lastly from an online website, we obtained the suspenseful music sound effect which aided in giving our film opening a dramatic feel to it.

So that was it for my CCR, I just wanted to thank Cambridge for helping me improve my production skills and giving me this opportunity to explain my whole filming and editing process, Bye!