Genre Research: IT

Camera angles, shots, and movements: This movie contains mainly eye level angles, but also includes some high angles, low angles, and canted angles. The movie also has a lot of medium shots and close-ups. As well as some long shots and medium long shots. Hand-held, zoom, tracking, and flash pan movements are present.


Mis en scene: The costumes used in this movie are casual clothes worn by the kids and people, and the clown costume worn by Pennywise. The lighting is both light and dark. There are scenes during the day and also at night or in dark rooms. The makeup they use is the clown makeup that is used for Pennywise. The setting takes place is multiple places such as the kids school, house, and neighborhood. As well as in an abandoned house. The props used are red balloons, a paper boat, a yellow coat, bikes, and cars.


Sound: The sound in this movie is mainly dialogue and incidental music, but also includes diegetic and non-diegetic sound.


Editing: The movie IT shows cutaways, reverse shots, inserts, and eye-line matches.


Elements of the genre: This movie uses the feeling of suspense, anxiety, anticipation, uncertainty, a rush of adrenaline, and terror.


Liked elements: The elements of the genre thriller, that the movie had that I liked was the feeling of suspense and the anticipation because it kept me on the edge of my seat.


Unappealing elements: The elements of this genre that the movie had that did not appeal to me was the anxiety and terror.

Genre Research: A Quiet Place

• Common camera angles in A Quiet Place are high/birds eye view, long shot, medium shot, medium close up, over the shoulder, close up, and two shot. Some camera movements were zoom, tracking and pan.

• CLAMPS-
• A Quiet Place was filmed in an isolated place with just a house surrounded by woods. Also by a waterfall and the streets.
• The actors used old, dirty clothes and with cold weather outfits.
• They used dark make up for crying and looking dirty, blood for cuts, and water to make it look like they were sweating.
• Many props were such as flashlight, weapons(guns), bags, maps, lights, security cameras, televisions, radios, and household tools.
• The sounds they used through the film were souls effects like creaking, foot steps, and animal/alien sounds. Also there was orchestral music and high pitched sounds.

• Common editing used were flashbacks, reverse shots, jump cuts and action matches. The elements in A Quiet Place were the feeling of suspense, excitement, anticipation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety, terror and a rush of adrenalin. Also the feeling not knowing what will or will not happen next.

• The elements I did like was the suspense, excitement and the feeling of or knowing what will happen next.
• I did not like the jump scares/terror and anxiety that i felt.

Genre Research: Thriller & Horror

   My group and I had to choose two other genres and research them. We decided to research about the Thriller and Horror genres. Some requirements we had to research about these genres were the common camera angles, mis en scene, editing, and elements.

         Horror genre:
* Common camera angles in the genre are pull-aways, reverse shots, close-ups, tracking, pan, zoom, wide shot, low angle, over the shoulder, hand-held, birds eye, and cantered.
* Mis en scene:
Lighting- low lighting, usually at night in the dark, shadows and shapes to create fear.

Costume- the victims are usually dresses casually, and the villains are dressed in particular costumes such as masks to disguise themselves.

Makeup- bruises and cuts to show damage.

Setting- somewhere deserted, abandoned and isolated places.

Props- weapons such as knives, axes, chainsaws, rocking chairs, dolls, creaking doors.
* Common editing in this genre are cutaways, smash cuts, jump cuts, and fade outs.
* Elements of the horror genre are the dark, scary places, spooky music, suspense, creepy crawly things. Some other elements of this genre include foreshadowing, fear, mystery, and imagination.
* Example films of horror are Halloween, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Annabelle, The Conjuring, and The Ring.
* Common sounds in this genre include diegetic sound, non-diegetic sound, sound bridge, sound motif, dialogue, silence/no sound, score, and incidental music. Sound effects are also very common such as footsteps, creaking doors, echo voices, and animals howling.
* The elements of this genre that I like are the suspense and fear because this is what makes horror so good and appealing.
* The elements of this genre that do not appeal to me is the spooky music.

        Thriller genre:     
* Common camera angles in a thriller are high angles/birds eye view, tracking, pan reverse, tilted, point of view, zoom and over the shoulder.
* Mis en scene:
Lighting- low/dark lighting but also light/warm colors. Also lights could be used to form shadows.

Costume- some costumes used are dark or black clothing, creature like costumes, masks, hoodies, and teared clothes.

Makeup- makeup can be used to make dirt smudges, runny make up due to crying, bruises and cuts. Also dark make up is used to look scary.

Setting- most thrillers are filmed in isolated locations, dark allies, haunted places and are also filmed at night time.

Props- there are many props used like phones, money, broken glass, fake blood, notes, and brief cases. Also weapons like knifes, chainsaw, household tools, and guns.
* Common editing like flashbacks, montages, slow mo, jump cuts, graphic matches, and action matches are used in lots of thrillers.
* The elements in a thriller is the feeling of suspense, excitement, anticipation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety, terror and a rush of adrenalin.
* Some examples of a thriller are Get Out, A Simple Favor, Us, A Quiet Place and Split.
* Common sounds are animal or extraterrestrial sounds, sounds when walking, orchestral music and in general just sound effects. Also dark, eerie sound and sometimes just silence.
* The elements I like in this genre is the feeling of not knowing what will happen next and the rush of adrenaline because that’s what makes a thriller movie so interesting.
* The elements I don’t like are terror and anxiety because I’m just not a fan. 

Genre Research: Drama

In this project we had to research a genre, and we got assigned Drama. My group members and I had to research all the different aspects of this genre. We had to make sure not to limit the project to a single sub-genre. Some requirements we had to include were the common camera angles, lighting, movements, and mis en scene. We also had to include elements of the genre, such as the ones we liked, and the ones that did not appeal to us. Our group decided to split up the requirements and then share the information with each other. Once we each got our information, we got together and put them all into one powerpoint.

The Final Pitch

When we first started this project we had to come up with three pitches for it. In this blog we’re gonna be narrowing our choices down until we find the pitch we want to do. When we started to look at our pitches we decided to get rid of one of them because we thought it was the weakest of all the choices. This idea was about someone having a dream about a family member disappearing and then waking up to their family member being gone. We enjoyed this idea but didn’t feel like it would work for a two minute opening to a film. Narrowing between the choices was difficult because we did like all the ideas we came up with. This led us down to two pitches left.

        Our first remaining pitch is about a person getting drunk the night before and waking up with blood on their hands trying to figure out what could’ve happened the night before. This is a good pitch because it could create suspense. Audiences love when movies are suspenseful. The viewer would want to know what happens next. They would feel reeled into the plot. However, there are some cons to this plot. We don’t believe we’d be able to make it a two minute opening sequence. We also think the idea would be during the night so the lighting really wouldn’t be the best.

        Our other remaining pitch is a person planning an attack and commuting the attack but someone’s notices the attack. Will the person get ratted out or will he catch the person who knows what he did? We believe this is also a very good pitch idea. We believe this is a very suspenseful plot and like we said earlier people love suspense. We think the pitch would make people want to know what happens after the person sees an attack being committed. A variety of props could also be used for the scenes involving planning. We also think we’d be able to fit this in 2 minutes. The only downsides could possibly be figuring out how to use our surroundings to make the plot make more sense but we could make it work.

        Overall, we decided on the second pitch. The finals pitch is a person planning an attack and commuting the attack but someone’s notices the attack. Will the person get ratted out or will he catch the person who knows what he did? Filming with this plot will make it so that audience will be intrigued for the whole two minutes but still want more after it ends. This pitch seemed easier to do and more enjoyable with the props aspect. The suspense it can create just appeals to us. We are extremely excited to do this pitch. 

The Beginning of the Final Task

   Hello, my name is Madeline. I'm Currently a sophomore and 15 years old. I would say that I'm very friendly and hilarious. I love staying home and watching movies on Netflix. But I also enjoying hanging out with my friends and family. I often hang out with my family every other weekend and than with my friends, the weekend I'm not with my family. Throughout the year so many things gave changed like making new friends and learning new things in school. For the final task I will be working with Brooke and Leonardo. I would say we make a great team because every project has been just us three working together successfully. I can't believe were starting our final task, I'm so excited.

   I have learned so many new things in this class, even tough its only been around 4 months. When I first started this class I thought that all we needed to know was how to edit a video but it turns out theres so much more to it. Like knowing camera angles and movements. Because these help portray the idea of the shot. Also learning what mis en scenes. Another major thing I learned how to do better was editing. I knew how to edit before but only simple things like trimming a shot. Now I know how to use the tracks to apply sounds and titles. I'm very excited to learn more about the distribution of a film. Also how two different companies come together to produce a film.

   For this project we have to come up with three pitches. A pitch is a hollywood term to describe an idea where a film is encapsulated in 25 words or less. A pitch is usually one sentence. We came up with a couple of pitch ideas for this project. We narrowed it down to 3 ideas:

* "A person gets drunk the night before and wakes up with blood on their hands. What happened the night before?"

* "Person is planning an attack and commits it, someone sees and he can’t let him get away. Will he catch him or will he get ratted out?"

* "Person has a startling dream about a family member being taken but when they wake up they’re gone. Did they run or way or were they kidnapped?"

Finally Filming

   My group mates and I just finished filming all the footage we needed for our music video. We made a plan about a week before to meet up and film so we could be prepared and have everything we needed. We started filing towards the end of thanksgiving break on Friday at around 12:30 PM. We started at that time to get good natural lighting. Also so we would have maximum time of sunlight before the sun went down. We filmed at Leo's house and at a park called "Elizabeth Hays Civil Park". At the park we had to look for a good spot because there were lots of children playing. Since we had a few scene's where all of us had to be in it, we had one of our friends help record. Her name is Paige and her help was much appreciated. Also she made the filming process more fun and exciting.

   The first scene we filmed was Leo in bed waking up. In this scene our friend Paige had to stand over the bed to get a high angle. Next was getting an action match shot of Leo opening the bedroom door and then to him opening the car door. After that scene we started going out of order because it made sense to film scene that had the same location all at once. So the next shot was just a pan of traffic on the way to the park. Leo then walks up to me and Brooke at the park. After that we just start singing and doing funny things. We jumped off of benches and did cart wheels. Also we filmed Leo and Brooke on the swings side by side. There were lots of scene with just Brooke and Leo because the song kind of sang about love.
   Once we filmed all the main scenes we started filming little moments like me and Brooke getting fake tattoos. We used a hot glue gun to make it look like a tattoo gun. Also we filmed me falling as a funny clip that may go in the video. Overall i think we had a good filming day. We finished filming sooner than we thought, which was good. After we went to go eat so we walked to a restaurant and on the way there we got a few shots of all us walking together. Now were ready to start editing. Editing might be a little difficult because there were so many good scene but our music video can only be one minute to one minute and fifteen second. But we'll make it work. I'm so excited to film because I know the end result will be perfect and look very cool.