Location Scouting

Living in South Florida, we wanted to find a forested area to shoot the film in. My film partner Kim suggested a wooded area by her house. It is not private property, so we gave it a shot!

The importance of this location is that it is suitable for both trailers I am creating. The associations with being lost in the woods and even the woods in general in most modern movies, are negative! This existing audience expectation would be heightened using intensified sounds and tense music for the horror trailer. On the other side, the irony of teenagers being lost in a creepy woods is what makes it funny in a different context. The same location can have so many meanings when utilized differently in film. 

Casting and Costumes

My partner Kim is in theater and did most of the casting to the five roles. 

The leader will be played by Sean

The camera guy will be played by her partner Tony

The Sound guy will be played by Andrew

The Leaders person will be played by Jackie(Sean's Twin Sister)

And The Expert will be played my Malaya 

With casting done we can work on a filming date which we agreed with march 5th since the majority of them are doing a school theater project and that's the next day they don't have rehearsal. This will completely shorten my time for editing but with a solid plan for the post-production process I think I can finish everything since after production I'm on my own. 

Moving on to costumes, we agreed this film would be taking place in the early to mid 2000s right when YouTube first came out. As I've stated before in my post titled "Our Pitch" they will have a vibrant color scheme that would be out of place for trailer one but will fit nicely for trailer two. 

I googled "Men's clothes from the mid 2000s high school" to see what a basis of clothes should be for the male actors. 

Google search of costume designs. 

Fashion trends for men in the mid-2000s were influenced by various cultural and subcultural movements, as well as technological advancements in fabrics and design. Here are some key styles from that era:

1. Baggy Jeans: Baggy jeans were popular among men in the mid-2000s, often worn low on the hips with a loose fit. This style was influenced by hip-hop and streetwear culture.

2. Graphic Tees: Graphic t-shirts featuring bold designs, logos, and slogans were a staple of men's casual wear during that time. Brands like Affliction, Ed Hardy, and Abercrombie & Fitch were particularly popular.

3. Hoodies and Sweatshirts: Hoodies and sweatshirts were essential items for casual wear, often worn with jeans or cargo pants. Hoodies with large logos or graphic prints were popular.

Women's clothes consisted of skirts and vibrant clothes during the 2000s, but for the trailers that would not be appropriate or safe so it would be best for them to wear the same as the conventional men's clothing from that time. 

Takeaways from this is baggy jeans and tee shirts, since they are supposed to be high school drop outs. Brighter colored shirts would be best for them due to the mise-en-scene of the film differentiation. 

Planning the poster

Moving onto the poster, my plan was always to have the camera on the floor of the woods. The two main elemental parts of the film are the found footage camera and the location-the woods of Pine Barrens. 

Kim wanted to do the footage on a cellphone camera and if we did do the footage on an actual camera then I would have to do it myself since she didn't know how to use those- so cellphone it is. Since we will not be filming with an actual camera it will have to be a prop I'll borrow from a friend. 

I drew some pictures and came up with this plan:

sketch of poster design

This is a quick sketch for the poster. I want the camera to look broken but since it will be a prop I will try to edit it the best I can with Adobe Photoshop. 

Using my preliminary research blogs titled "Preliminary Research: Minor Print Tasks (1, 2, 3)," my main takeaways were that the setting and atmosphere of the film was shown in the poster. The tone of the film was heavily emphasized in the main posters which is something I would like to transfer over to mine. 

The sketch shows the main two elements of the film while avoiding any cliches. 

More to come!

Planning Social Media Minor task

Now that the majority of pre-production is done I can start planning my minor tasks. 

Starting with identifying the target audience of my film, which will be the same as the actors in the film, young adult. 

After a quick google search for some extra information, I found these websites that I'll reference and draw points from. 

nofilmschool-youngadultsocialmedia

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/national-child-day/tips-for-adults-engaging-youth-social-media.html

beginnersocialmedia

Here are some tips I found for creating an effective social media account for a young adult film:

• • Understand your audience

  Consider your target audience's demographics, interests, and online behavior. You can use demographic analysis, audience interests, and similar films' successes and techniques to tailor your content and messaging. 

  • Choose the right platforms
  • Research where your buyer personas would go online, and emphasize those platforms in your strategy. For example, young adults often use Instagram and Twitter.
  • Create engaging content

  Write engaging posts about your film. You can share your thoughts on the film industry, discuss your inspirations, and provide information that's uniquely useful to your audience.

  • Use hashtags

  Hash tags can attract a targeted audience who may be looking for information related to a certain area.

  • Post regular updates

  Create an editorial schedule.

  • Use attractive visuals

  Use high-quality visuals. 

Taking what I can from this information I can plan six posts I will do for an Instagram page. The reason I'm choosing Instagram is because based on this demographic list: instagramdemographicslist, the main people who use Instagram are people within the ages of 18-24 (young adult) and it would be the most effective platform to use to reach the correct audience to get this film the most amount of views. 

As for the content itself, using preliminary research from other horror genre films in a blog post titled "Preliminary Research: Social Media," The main posts they had were behind the scenes and promotional trailers. 

I will be planning out six posts; three videos and three pictures. Two of the videos will be the two promotional trailers and the other one will be a video of the actors describing their characters. The three pictures will be behind the scenes pictures of the cast. 

The profile picture will probably be the picture of my poster I will do and the Instagram @ will be BarrensOfficialFilm. The forest will be called Pine Barrens as our camera guy actor will say in the first shot in the trailers, therefore we have officially renamed our film to Barrens.

More to come! This is a basic plan for what I have so far. 

Scripting

Now that we have an alright plan for production/filming, my director Kim started working on the script. She shared the document with me and since she is the director I let her have more creative freedom with this so I could focus on the other half of the production. 

Script of "Barrons" film

This is the script she sent me, but since she will be taking more of the lead during production since she's also doing cinematography I'll be focusing on how I will edit their voices and put in a coherent flow.

The goal of editing dialogue in a trailer is to create a compelling and cohesive narrative that entices the audience to watch the film while accurately representing its content and tone.

My main goal for filming is to record their dialogue on the HMI Recorder I've used in the last two productions and manipulate the audio either for comedic effect or for context in trailer one. Then using Adobe Audition I will edit the audio specifically the dialogue appropriately for each trailer.

For instance the first chunk of the camera guy giving context for the film will be overlayed throughout the next couple of scenes to make it coherent and not have a long scene in the trailer. Other dialogue such as scenes where the expert is talking will create a sound bridge over multiple angles of the same scene, into the next one of either them in the car or in the woods.