Production Day 2

 Hi blog, we just wrapped up our second day of shooting!

Today we filmed all the scenes set in "the void" as well as the new opening scene, and the scene where Claire arrives to Andre's house. I'm sure you're confused, because the script has changed so much, but fear not,

here is the final script:

SCRIPT

It was finally completed on Saturday, and we are all happy with the result.

Personally, I think filming went very well, we did go a bit over the time we set to film, but we completed everything we scheduled, which made it worth it. 

We started off by setting up "the void," which was made possible by using a large black backdrop Samuel's dad already owned. (He's a photographer!) 

We did get a little bit behind schedule because we had to pick it up from Samuel's dad's friends house, but it was only a 15 minute drive so it wasn't anything too severe. 

Thankfully we already knew how to set up the backdrop and lighting because we have already used it for a film that required a similar "void" 

BTS pictures of a previous film Samuel, Nico, and I have worked on

Filming the void scenes went very well, Claire is an incredible actress and takes direction very very well. If we give her a note she immediately takes it and fixes what she was doing. Zach is a great director with a clear vision, and he works well with Samuel to get dynamic and interesting shots.

We also filmed a few shorter scenes, like the new opening scene which takes place in Claire's bedroom as she gets ready for school. We filmed in Samuel's sisters room and set up the desk to look more like a vanity. 

We decided to add this scene to the script because we didn't love our previous opening scene after we filmed it. As a group we thought it through the viewers into the story too fast. Our new opening has a bit more exposition and helps viewers understand Claire's character a bit more. 

We also filmed the short scene where Claire arrives to Andre's house, as the sun was setting, which gave good lighting and made it accurate to the script. 

Overall, filming day 2 was very productive, and when we finished I made a post for our social media to keep followers updated and give exclusive BTS content!

Watch W!TCH

 Helloooo blog

It's influencer time!

Or...

more like niche micro filmmaker influencer time 😝

SO!

Social media yayyyy

Step 1 was finding a good username. Our film title "W!TCH" made this a bit hard, since you can't add special characters to usernames on instagrams. After some brainstorming we decided to abbreviate our title to wtch, just for the username. 

We settled on the username watch.wtch because the alliteration is catchy and it gives a good slogan. 

For our first few posts we are doing crew intros and bios. Making a template for our posts took some time, we didn't know exactly what theme or imagery we wanted, we just knew we wanted to use deep jewel tones

social media color scheme

As Nico and I played around with ideas, we had the amazing idea to do tarot cards! Tarot cards are an important image in our film, and can be customized easily. 

We did the front of the tarot card with a picture of the person, and the back with a short bio of them. They will be posted together to give followers a brief intro of our crew. 

Here is an example of one of the posts:

The posts were made on Canva. We started by just using the line tool to form a rectangle (the outline of the card) Then we changed the background color to a deep purple to match our proposed color scheme. The I found some tarot card backgrounds on google, imported them in, and changed the color to a purple to match the background

Original tarot card backgrounds

Then I imported pictures of each member of the crew, removed the background, and put them into the tarot card. God bless Canva Premium! While I was working on the front, Nico was working on the back, which I think turned out great! He also found the fonts we used which I think match the witchy, tarot card aesthetic. 

We finished the posts by adding some final details like the stars in the background.

That's all for this post. Call me a graphic designer because for never doing anything like this, I'm very proud of myself 😸

Andre please lock in

 Hi Blog! I'm backkk

Spring break is sadly finished but that means its crunch time for our project. As the producer/head of preproduction and planning, I made a filming schedule for the rest of our project and shared it with the cast/crew. We plan to film on Sunday March 29th, Monday March 30th, and potentially Tuesday March 31st if we still aren't done. 

We are cutting it a bit close, since after we finish filming we only have a little over a week to finalize the short film. However, I think if we edit as we go, and have productive filming days it should be doable. 

Our only potential issue is that Andre, who plays our main antagonist, may be in Tampa to visit her future college. This would be very bad as this is really our last weekend to film to give us sufficient time to edit and complete all the other components of our portfolio. She said she would update us by Thursday, to see if she's going out of town or not, so lets pray she isn't. 

Here is the filming schedule I mentioned eariler in the blog:

Sunday  

2pm: Crew arrive to Samuel's house

2-4pm: Set up and review shot list/ what we’re filming 

4pm: Cast arrives 

4-8pm: Film 

Monday 

3pm- Crew arrive to quinn 

3-4pm- Set up/review what needs to be filmed 

4pm- Cast arrives 

4-6pm- Flm 

6pm- Cast leaves 

6pm-7:30pm: Crew edits 

Tuesday 

Same schedule only if filming isn’t done 

If filming is wrapped: Crew meets to edit 3-7:30pm 

Postcard: The Print Component

 The short film portfolio project contains a print component in the form of a postcard advertisement. The postcard is meant to be handed out to persuade potential viewers to watch the film at a film festival showing. After a lesson by my teacher, I felt a lot more confident about the postcard component because she explained exactly what should be on it and what Cambridge is looking for. 

The postcard should contain: the name of the film, the name of the director, director's contact information, and when/where the film is showing. The postcard can also be vertical or horizontal.

Here is a real world example of a postcard advertisement made by Samuel's sister (a film student!)

Front:

Back:

For our postcard I am thinking of doing a dark color scheme: think dark red, purple, green, etc.

However, I want it to be very traditionally " teen girl movie" font and layout wise. I was thinking of doing something like the mean girls poster, but with the witches. I think it could be cool to contradict the standard conventions but still hint to what the film takes inspiration from. 

We summon the devil on a teacher planning day pt 2

Hellooooo Blog!

Our shoot went well! We're making a film! Yay!

I am so so happy. To be completely honest this project has been stressing me out so much and just knowing that we have part of it shot makes me feel so much better. 

Yesterday, Zach and Samuel met up to write the scene that we filmed. I will say, we are behind on writing...

Thankfully, spring break is next week which gives us plenty of time to finalize a script. Here is what we have so far:

Onto filming..

I would say the shoot went very well. Since it was a teacher planning day at school we were able to film in an empty classroom which gave us freedom to move around the desks to get cool shots. Our actresses did very good too, and I think we made great choices casting wise. For equipment we used Zach's tripod and hollyland microphones, and Samuel's camera, which is a Lumix S5. 

Here is a video from the shoot:

Deciding our cast

 Hi Blog!

Tomorrow is my teams first shoot and we have just finalized our main cast. Actors are crucial to the film, as they are the people bringing the story to life. When coming up with our story and writing our script I already had someone in mind for the "queen bee" character, and the main witch. This character needed to be portrayed by a strong actress, which is why I was thinking of my close friend Andre. 

Andre has been involved in our schools musical theatre program for 4 years, and has played roles like Malificient in Descendants, and Sharpay in High School Musical. 

Thankfully after a quick text and phone call she agreed to be in our project!

After casting our queen bee, the other two witches were easy to find. I asked one of my best friends, Ambar, who I know through my schools television production club. She is one of our main actresses whenever we make short films, and has acted in countless short films, so I knew we could trust her to do our character justice. 

For our third witch we asked Sarina, another member of the television production club, although she doesn't have AS much experience acting, she has been in a few projects, and we trust her to portray the character. 

Finally...

casting our protagonist.

I'm not going to lie blog, this wasn't an easy task.

We debated for days about who could play our lead, and asked multiple girls if they were willing to. However, since we plan to film during spring break it severely cut down our options, since many people had plans to travel. 

But then! Samuel had a lightbulb moment and came up with a perfect actress! Claire is a freshman in our tv club, so she has that innocent look, but she's also involved in our schools theatre program and she is truly an amazing actress. (She just played the lead in our schools spring musical.) Thankfully, after asking her she agreed to act in our film! Yippee!!!

I'm so glad we casted our leads! Stay tuned to hear about the shoot tomorrow :)

We summon the devil on a teacher planning day

 Hi Blog!

We are stressed. Like very stressed. 

After switching ideas for the third time we realized that we actually have a lot less time then we thought. In reality we have next week (spring break) and the week after that to finish our project. Because of this, we want to finish filming as soon as possible to have time to edit, and complete the other components of our project. During spring break, one of our group members (Zach) will be on vacation, so we have planned to begin filming this Thursday and Friday to get the big scenes done before he leaves. However, this means that we need to lock in and finish our script in the next few days.

Thankfully, Friday is a teacher planning day, so we have a full day to dedicate to filming. On Friday we plan to film every scene that takes place in school.  A big advantage we have is that Zach's mom is a teacher! And since we need a classroom to film in it works out perfectly. 

On Thursday we're planning to film the big seance scene, as it is a very important scene to our film and will take time. Thursday is also a half day at school, so we will have plenty of time after to film. 

A seance film from a previous film I produced

Yes the stress is definitely stressing, but thankfully this week gives us a good amount of time to film.

I'll update you next week blog....