Lucid Elucidations: Official Title Sequence

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CCR: Lucid Elucidations

Lucid Elucidations: Creative Critical Reflection

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CCR Script

 Hi, my name is Ben Isaacs and I am the editor of the title sequence for ‘Lucid Elucidations’, a psychological thriller that showcases the strange happenings experienced by a victim of an attack in which they can not remember. In this video I am going to cover the decisions made by our cinematographer Katelyn Wagner, director Pierce Thomas, and production designer Bianca Raby, as well as the decisions I made as the editor to overall create the intended meaning and feel of the film, and how I have learned and developed as a filmmaker from this experience.

How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups or issues?

When deciding how we were going present the sequence of events for our film, we decided it would be best to follow general conventions of thriller films with our choice of location, mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and so forth, as it would allow us to more easily create the creepy, suspenseful and tense feeling we wanted to give our audience. For our location, we filmed in the health science room at our school, which is set up exactly like a hospital. Hospitals are a very common location for movies with a creepier feel, such as ‘The Grudge 2’ (2006) and ‘The Exorcist 3’ (1990), as they are often associated dark things such as illness, injury, and death, and there is not often a good reason to be in the hospital. Our production designer Bianca decided that the lighting should be dark and blueish to create a dark and sinister feeling, and the protagonist, Robert Thomas should be wearing a hospital gown so that he appears vulnerable and weak. This overall adds to the the tense and dark feeling, as it is clear something bad could very easily happen to the protagonist. Our cinematographer, Katelyn decided to show many shots from behind our protagonist, to show that he is being followed, and a few shots from farther away to indicate he is being watched and is isolated. This of course is revealed to be exactly what is happening at the end when the antagonist finally grabs him from behind the curtains, and what happens past that point is to be explained outside of the title sequence. When editing the title sequence together, I wanted to maintain a slower pace throughout the entire clip, until the end when the action would go down. This would help stay within thriller conventions as it would build as much suspense as possible, leaving the audience unsure of when something is going to jump out at them, until the big jumpscare at the end. On top of creating suspense, I wanted to pace it slowly to show the protagonist’s mental state, as he is out of it, confused and trying to figure out what is going on, so everything is slowly coming to him as he is exploring his surroundings. I used a lot of match on action shots to show the scene from many different angles. This is to clearly explain what our protagonist is seeing and what the scene looks like the more he explores into it. While editing, I had to communicate with our director and sound designer, Pierce, who recorded most of the sounds so that I knew which sounds to use in which places, such as the scene where he is getting out of bed. In this scene, there were three different sound recordings of the clothes and sheets rustling, one for when he is turning off the ink, one for when he sits up, and one for when he gets off the bed. Sounds such as dripping were also included to build suspense and mystery, leaving the audience asking who turned on the sink, and also building intensity as it is a small, echoing sound amidst pure silence. I used musical stings to emphasize certain points of surprise and shock, and often placed them in the middle of pure silence so that the audience would be that much more surprised and startled. At the end, where our protagonist is grabbed, I used the loudest musical stings in the entire video, along with pauses in between the last three scenes to jar the audience, showing the intensity of what was going on and to show only the aftermath of what occured, leaving questions to be answered about what happened to the protagonist. In researching common conventions of representation in the thriller genre, I noticed that females were usually portrayed as vulnerable and were always targeted, and men were always the aggressors and were dangerous antagonists. White characters are often given lead roles in thriller films as well, however other roles such as antagonists and other important characters can vary in race. Our film completely challenges these conventions, as our protagonist, Robert is an African American male, playing the lead role and is the victim to our antagonist, Katelyn, who is a white female, however she is not shown on screen, and instead is a shadow behind the curtains.

How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products?

 When researching for a production company, we were looking for one that specializes in making creepier movies in the horror or thriller genre, as both overlap in many ways and are very similar, and we also wanted one that operates on lower budget films, as we are not a big company nor are we a part of one, this is simply a low budget indie film so we do not have very much of a budget to work with. We finally decided that Blumhouse Productions was our best option, as they specialize in making horror and thriller films on lower budgets. Among these films are ‘Get Out’ (2017) with a budget of only about $4.5 Million USD and ‘The Purge’ (2013) with a budget of only $3 Million USD. Despite such low budgets, these films were met with incredible success, with ‘The Purge’ making a worldwide profit of $86M USD, and ‘Get Out’ making an astonishing gross profit of about $250 Million USD worldwide. Other successful films they have produced are ‘Split’ (2016), ‘Happy Death Day’ (2017) and ‘Insidious: The Last Key’ (2018), none of which exceeding a budget of $10 Million. ‘Lucid Elucidations’ will first premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where many films of its kind have a chance to gain widespread attention, giving us the chance for a large theatrical release, where there is a much greater chance of it reaching our intended target audience. To further promote our film, we could advertise our film to build up hype through numerous methods such as snippets, trailers, and covers, such as this one that I created a while back, and posting them on social media sites such as Instagram and Youtube. This would make it easier to catch the attention of our target audience, which are young men and women aged 18-24, as studies show that young people tend to enjoy suspenseful movies than people who are older. While it shows that more women tend to watch thriller movies than men, the proportion is close enough to try broadening the target audience to both men and women. This audience will be easier to reach out to through social media websites, as more young people tend to obtain information from them than older people.

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

 When I first began taking AICE Media studies, I was unaware of how much time, money, effort, people, and processes went into making a movie. I used to go to the movies and watch a film only taking in what I’m seeing, but giving no thought into how it was made. However, one we started this project, my whole view on the filmmaking process changed. I now often ask myself when watching a movie, “How was that made?” rather than thinking nothing of it, as I now know how difficult it is to make a movie. I learned that the beginning stages consist of a lot of researching into other films of your chosen genre, and how they represent social groups, use conventions, challenge conventions, the locations they normally use, common plot themes, and other things alike. I also learned how much research goes into choosing a production and distribution company, and how you have to consider budgets, expertise, the size of the company in general and the films they produce, and most importantly, how successful they have proven to be. After figuring out all of these different things, coming up with the story was the next biggest struggle. We wanted to think of something original but something that would also follow common conventions at the same time. Once we eventually figured out our story, our director Pierce wrote out the script, which before taking this class, I did not realize was so complex. Every action, quote, and side note needs to be on the script, as well as descriptions of the scene, what it all looks like, from location, to composition, and so forth. When we shot our rough cut, we had only planned one day to get it done, not realizing how long it would actually take before doing so. There were many errors in filming, problems with continuity, and the location did not work very well. When we decided to completely reshoot, we had to change our location and plot accordingly, this time taking into consideration the supplies, time, and shots that would be necessary. This was made much easier due to storyboards made by our cinematographer Katelyn, which showed us exactly how our shots needed to look so we knew what we wanted from the moment we started. If changes came up, they were small and easy fixes. Our production designer, Bianca also made this easier as she made changes to costuming, lighting, decor and other factors that went with the location, as well as considering what props were necessary the second time around, so we were completely prepared to fix the errors we made the first time. After all of this stuff occured, there came the last step, editing, the role that I was responsible for fulfilling.  Before this class, I had always been interested in editing, but was never quite sure on what to edit and even the capabilities I had as an editor. When doing this project, I learned a lot about filmmaking in the sense that it is much different than editing other things recreationally. It seemed that with other things, you edit it heavily to make it look less real, but with film editing, you edit it just as heavily, except, you’re trying to make it look more real. It was through this that I improved my skills on color correction; which greatly affects the feel of the film and the tone of the story, pacing; as many shots had to be slowed down and sped up to not only fit time limit but also flow with each other, which was a very difficult process, continuity, as a mismatch on anything could be jarring to the viewer, and the use of putting different sounds in different areas. For example, the musical stings. All of these things taught me a very important part of being an editor, and that is knowing how to evoke emotion in the viewer. This part of the process helped me greatly in learning how to work as a team, as I constantly had to contact our director, Pierce to ask where certain shots would go and how different shots would be shown, for example, the shot of Robert opening the curtain to reveal the dummy in the wheelchair was a part of major confusion for me as I was unsure of how exactly to best show what was happening through all of the shots we had taken, but after he clarified how it should be I managed to move on easily. It was also important to contact the cinematographer, Katelyn as well to see which angles would best show what was happening in the film, as we took most of the shots from at least two angles each. The production designer, Bianca was also someone I needed to ask questions to so I knew how the scene should visually appear, for example through the use of color correction, and adjusting saturation, offset and brightness. This altogether helped me understand that every person involved in the making of our film needed each other and were all important in creating a final product that best presented the overall meaning and feeling of the film.

How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware, and online - in this project?

 During the production process, there were many different devices used to record both audio and video. To film more sophisticated shots, such as shots with more shallow compositions such as the close up of the picture frame, as well as the rack focus from the dripping of the sink to our actor, Robert Thomas, turning it off, our group used Katelyn’s Canon Rebel T3i. However, this came with difficulties due to its heavy weight and poor quality in dark settings. To shoot the more basic shots, which were the majority of them, we used Katelyn’s iPhone X and Robert’s iPhone 8, as the quality is arguably better than the Canon’s, and their light weight makes it much easier to film. For sound, our director Pierce Thomas also decided to take the role of sound design to record sound effects such as the dripping of the sink, footsteps, rustling clothes, and many other small sound effects that were needed to add to the realism of the film. For this, he used his iPhone 6 Plus to record through an app that all iPhones have by default called voice memos, which allows sound to be recorded and easily shared. However, he told me there was one sound he was unsure of how to record, which was the flipping of the wheelchair, so I had the idea of laying my iPhone 7s near the ground and flipping over my office chair to emulate a wheelchair falling over. This took a few tries but after realizing I will probably end up breaking my chair I decided to try just one final time and fortunately it turned out exactly how I wanted. With such a broad range of devices belonging to different people being used, it was pretty difficult to get everything all onto my computer to edit. However, we figured it out by using a few different platforms. Firstly, our director Pierce set up a dropbox group so everyone could drop their clips and audio files into the dropbox for any of the members to download, which made it very easy. For audio, we sent those files mostly through a Snapchat group chat and through Gmail. There was one issue however, where the Mov files from the iPhones were not compatible with Sony Vegas Pro, forcing me to convert them to mp3 files. This greatly affected the quality of the clips, so we needed another method. We came up with the idea that Katelyn puts all of the clips onto her flash drive and I download them all onto my computer directly. I then found a program called Stellar Audio Video Converter to convert the files to mp3 without losing any quality, which helped greatly.  I already knew most of the processes I just discussed before making this film, however the area I improved and learned greatly in is in editing. I learned a lot so I’m going to be talking a lot about this. The program I used was Sony Vegas Pro 13, a program with many more editing capabilities than I thought before. It was upon researching Youtube tutorials on how to use certain tools and effects that I realized just how much I could do. While editing, a huge tool that I became very familiar with and one that became of great use to me are presets.  Presets allow you to adjust your settings onto an effect and save them as, almost a sub-effect so that instead of re-adjusting the settings you can just click on your preset and you have it exactly as you wanted. One part of the title sequence where this was most useful was at the beginning with the text as I decided to put a blinking cursor at the end of the text to make it look like they were being typed out. To do this, I had to use several layers of text, as every fifteen frames I had to keep alternating between the text with no cursor at the end and text with cursor, so it would appear to be blinking every fifteen frames. This would be very frustrating if I had to keep typing the text out over and over again and positioning it back in the same place, but presets saved the day as the allowed me to keep everything I already had on the last layer of text and all I had to do was add the cursor. Another editing tool I discovered I could use with Sony Vegas was masking. This allows you to be able to cover up another layer of video with the current layer. This sounds confusing, so I will explain exactly how it worked in the place I used it at. At the part where Robert is walking away from the bed and the shadow of the patient behind the curtain is shown, the text appears to be behind Robert, being revealed as he walks away. This is where masking became very useful. The way this was done was by creating a clipping of the video using anchor points in the middle of the screen and dragging it over parts of the text to cover it with the video. This wasn’t overly difficult, but very time consuming as I had to move frame by frame and slowly cover the text less and less to give it the effect that it is being revealed from behind Robert as he walks. For the title card, I used a few glitch effects, a flicker effect, and a TV static effect to give it a scarier feeling. The flicker effect and TV static effects were easy, as all I had to do for the flicker was remove a small section of the video so it flashed to black for a frame or two and add the flicker sound effect, and for the TV static, it was a simple video effect provided by Sony Vegas called ‘Bad Sync’, which I was able to simply drag onto the clip, where I just simply raised the intensity of the effect and added a buzzing noise. The glitch effect wasn’t so simple however, as it took about three video layers to do, with one being color bars, and the other two being the video on top of one another. Several effects had to be added to the bars such as pixelation, horizontal and vertical disalignment, and other things. After this, I had to change the project properties so that the ‘Stereoscopic 3D mode’ was set to ‘Anaglyphic (green/magenta)’, giving the edges green and magenta coloring to make it look more like a technical glitch. Finally, I just had to clip out the bars and second layer of the video so that it only fit to the parts I wanted the glitch to be at, and I then added the glitch sound effect. Youtube tutorials helped me greatly in learning these tools and effects and learning how to implement them smoothly into our film.

Sony Vegas: What I Learned

 I have had a long-lasting interest in editing throughout my life but wasn't entirely sure on what I could edit or why I would even do it, so for a few years Sony Vegas has just been sitting on my computer and I didn't know the full extent of its capabilities, which are actually quite extensive if you put the time in to learn them. There were three big tools I learned during the editing process: presets, masking, and using stereoscopic 3D adjust. I will explain all of these the best I can here, however, this will be covered more in-depth in my CCR as I will be able to record myself using these tools and talking over it so it will be easier to show visual examples while explaining. Firstly, presets allow you to be able to add an effect to a clip, adjust the effect settings, and save it as your own sub-effect. For example, say you wanted to place text that says "example", turn it pink and place it in the corner. You would add your text, customize it as you would like, and save that as a preset. So why is this important? Well, say you wanted to place this same exact text in another frame. If you place a text box on it, it is going to say "Sample Text" and you'll have to customize it all over again.. unless you use the preset. If you click on the preset you saved it will put the exact text from the other frame on this one, and you got it! I used this tool for color correction, saving a preset of the exact adjustments to tint and lighting I made on the first clip and applying it to all the other clips so I wouldn't have to redo it every clip, and I made adjustments as I went, as clearly some shots were brighter than others so it was necessary to adjust the lighting and tint accordingly. There is a part where I used this, when Lionel is getting up off the bed and the text "Music by Lucas King" is revealed from behind him as he walks, giving the illusion it is actually behind him. To do this, I used the masking tool to create a clipping of the video around the text, and dragged the anchor points over the text, blocking it with the video. I made slight frame by frame adjustments to this so it would reveal more and more as he walked away. Lastly, the stereoscopic 3D adjust. This is an interesting tool, as it allowed me to use a glitch effect I put at the end of my title sequence for the title card. In order to use this, I had to duplicate my video track in the spots I wanted the glitch to occur and place a color bar track over top of them. From here I had to add numerous effects such as pixelation and vertical/horizontal disalignment to the bars and change the project properties to fit the effect. This is very difficult to explain in words, so my CCR will talk more about this one. I would say overall I improved greatly at editing as I am now more familiar with using multiple video and audio tracks (this video had 31) and I am also more familiar with certain effects I previously knew nothing about, along with a better ability to use keyframing, which simply allows me to make frame to frame adjustments with a clip. Youtube tutorials helped me greatly with the glitch effects and masking, as well as some other aspects such as using chroma keyer to green screen text onto the clip to blend it a certain way. I will link the videos that helped me most with the whole editing process.

Links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wq7mCKpOK4&list=WL&index=2&t=260s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgAf9TnZj8Q&list=WL&index=8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MSPeYydErc&t=331s

Titling: Following or Challenging Conventions?

Titling is a very important part of making the best title sequence possible, as it creates the mood of the film and if it doesn't reflect the film's feel or meaning then it will not work right. Below are some notable thriller titles and the fonts they use in their title sequence.

 As you can see, the title card for 'Get Out' (2017) is very serious looking and feels intense to look at, building suspense, and the title cards for 'A Quiet Place' (2018) and 'IT' (2017) are scary looking fonts that instill fear in the viewer. Ours turned out a bit different. The font I used in the beginning of the title sequence was VCR OSD Mono, which is the font that VHS time stamps are in. The reason I used this font was because it challenges conventions, leaving the audience unsure of what to suspect, but it is still unsettling as it is vintage and ominous. It also ties in with the technological aspect of the film, as the typed word document is shown at the end when Lionel drops the laptop.

For the ending title card, I decided to use the DVORAK font, which follows conventions a lot more, as it is scratchy and much more menacing than VCR OSD Mono. This is shown after Lionel is attacked, which is important because now the audience knows that this is a scary/intense film and the font now reflects how they are feeling. If this font was used at the beginning, it would have raised the audience's suspicion from the start that it was going to be scary, so using this only at the end was effective in my opinion.

 I decided to keep the blinking cursor at the end of the text in the title card as well so it would stay similar to the way the text was shown the whole way through. On top of this I also included the green and magenta edges to the text, which was to make it look more digital camera-like if that makes sense. This was not much for a particular reason but I decided it was a nice touch to make it look a bit more intense.

What Sounds am I Adding and How?

  In our title sequence, there is a lot of silence accompanied by our protagonist Lionel moving in different ways such as walking, getting off of the bed, etc. Because of the fact it is so quiet throughout most of the title sequence, it is important that we recorded those very small diegetic sounds to ensure that it is as realistic as can possibly be. Also, because of the intensity factor we are trying to achieve, there is bound to be a jumpscare or two, or three, in our title sequence, so I needed to add musical stings to those parts that fit with the scene. There will also need to be a very low and natural ambient sound to hold suspense, which we agreed would be the slight breeze of the air conditioning. Our director Pierce chose to also take the role of sound design, where he was responsible for recording the sounds so that I am able to place them into the video in the spots they need to be. After he got done recording them, he sent them to me through a Snapchat group chat that our whole group is a part of, where I downloaded them, emailed them to myself and then put them in the video. Getting the sound in the right spot can be a challenge however, so there are a few ways I have chosen to make it easier on myself. Sony Vegas has a marker tool, which allows you to place a small orange line on any part of a video track by pressing M on that specific frame so that you are able to use it as a reference when adding sounds. For example, say I needed to know the exact point to add the dripping sound, I would just go through the video frame by frame and pause it exactly where the droplet would hit the bottom of the sink, and then press M on that spot, where it would be marked, so I now know where to put the audio of the dripping.

What the markers look like

 Another way I've chosen to add the audio more easily was through using multiple layers throughout the video. A difficult part of adding in sound is picking out which ones need to be louder and which ones need to be quieter. The way I decided to adjust the levels of audio was to have several audio layers each of different audio levels so that the quiet noises can stay together and the loud ones can stay together.

The Layering of the Sound

How am I Using Color Correction?

 For our title sequence, we have decided to use a blue-toned color correction as suggested by our production designer Bianca Raby, in order to create a more sinister, dark, and unwelcoming feeling about the setting and the happenings occurring within it. This is commonly seen in thriller/horror films to create a dark and sinister feeling, such as this scene in 'Get Out' (2017), in which the blue color correction made it all the much scarier.

 The program I am using, Sony Vegas Pro 13 does not have your basic 'filters', but instead has a more  manual form of color correction. While there are effects that allow you to adjust the colors of midtones, there aren't really filters and once you apply these effects you have a menu that comes up where you can adjust highs, lows and mediums to be the color tone you want as well as adjusting gamma, offset and more.

Effects

Manual Menu

   As you can see, I adjusted mostly everything to the blue side of the spectrum, however I tried not to do it too much and went for more subtle changes so it did not start to look unnatural. I most heavily adjusted the highs as those were the most prevalent in all of our shots, with there being a lot of light colors and especially with the bright curtain. Adjusting the lows and midtones too heavily started making it look very unnatural, so I am sticking to mostly adjusting the highs, I also lowered the gamma and other lighting tools (as seen on the slider bars underneath the color wheels) in order to darken it slightly, not only to create a more sinister feeling but also because the light from the curtains was slightly overwhelming.

Creating Meaning Through Editing

 A huge part of editing that occurs before the actual 'editing' even starts that is often overlooked is shot selection. When editing 'Lucid Elucidations', I am going to try my best to keep in mind the intended meaning the film is supposed to hold and how the camera angles are supposed to indicate what was going on, so I do not want to deviate much from showing the long shots and over the shoulder/tracking shots unless it makes sense or is necessary, as we want to be able to convey the message that Lionel is being watched and followed. I will only be really including those into the film while editing. Along with this, the whole title sequence is one long situation occurring, so I will need to make use of match on action shots as the scene needs to fluently flow from one shot to the next without jarring the viewer. I will use sound in various ways to also create meaning. In the beginning, we have decided to include music from the start up until the first jumpscare when Lionel encounters the dummy. The song we have decided to use is 'Psycho' by Lucas King, as it is a soft piano song which helps to serve many purposes in the beginning. For one, it is easing for the viewers to hear, which lowers their suspicion of anything occurring, but is also ominous and eerie because it is higher pitched and sounds peaceful at first, providing a contrast to the dark and unsettling setting.

Lucas King: 'Psycho'

  Along with the music, I am going to add musical stings when creepy things occur, both small and large. For example, I am going to add softer musical stings to emphasize realizations, rather than drawing fear, such as the part when Lionel will walk through the curtain where he sees the shadow through but nothing will be there. I will then add loud and shocking musical stings at the more intense actions, such as when Lionel is attacked at the end. This will add to the shock and scare factor and will be what the tension builds up to.

 I am not really going to add any special transitions or effects until the end, as I want to keep the realism factor high. Adding a transition would make it feel less real, and not to mention in a film where the whole thing is practically match on action shots, transitions would not be a good idea. At the end however, when Lionel is attacked, I want to add pauses in between the shots of him dropping the laptop, the laptop hitting the floor, and the screen shown close up. This will greatly emphasize the chaos and shock of the event, jarring the viewer and almost making it seem surreal, This will be paired with slow pacing all the way up until this point, with Lionel slowly exploring his surroundings and slowly building tension, and then this faced paced, hard hitting ending will happpen and I think that will make it so much better.

What Technology Did We Use During Production?

 We used quite a broad span of technology while filming since we had to record audio, film our shots, use props, and light up the set. I am going to go over all of the devices used for each category: audio, video, and on-set technology.

Video
In order to film our more sophisticated shots such as rack focuses and shots of more shallow composition, we used Katelyn's Canon Rebel T3i, a camera with numerous things that can be adjusted such as the lenses and lighting. However, for all of the other shots, we used Katelyn's iPhone X and Robert's iPhone 8, as those are the two best quality devices we had, and we wanted to film at least two angles of each shot. The reason we didn't stick to using the camera as much was because of a few things: firstly, the camera's large size made it more difficult to shoot with, especially when in tighter spaces. Also, the camera had very poor quality when shooting in darker settings, while the iPhones the better option quality wise. Lastly, the iPhones are just overall more convenient as Katelyn was easily able to transfer the clips to her Macbook through iCloud and send me them. It was only when there were shots the camera could do that the phone couldn't that we decided to use the Camera.

iPhone X and iPhone 8

Canon Rebel T3i




Audio
 Since Pierce took the role of sound design, pretty much every single sound recorded was with his iPhone 6+, through a pre-installed app all iPhones have called 'Voice Memos', which allows you to record audio as much as you want, trim it, and share it. Using this, managed to put the files into an audio editor he got and manipulated the noises to make them sound more real. Once he completed this, he sent me the audio through our Snapchat group chat, where I downloaded the file and sent it to my computer for editing. There was only one sound Pierce was unable to record though and that was the sound of the wheelchair falling over, so I used my iPhone 7S to record the sound of my office chair falling over.

On Set
 On set, we had to use Pierce's industrial lights that he brought to the set as lighting through the curtains. We did this by plugging the light in on the other side of the curtain and had someone hold it steady on the other side so it illuminated the set and the curtain was more lit up. This also allowed for shadows to be cast through the curtain. We also used Pierce's laptop for the final scene with the computer.

Influences While Shooting

When recording our film, we used some commonly seen ideas for some of our shots, such as the dummy and shadow behind the curtains. Of course, we've seen these before and thought that they would be something we could create our own spin on. There were a few ideas that were inspired by certain movies or famous scenes, such as this scene we have where there is a repeated sentence typed up on the computer screen after Lionel dropped it. If you haven't already immediately figured it out, this was inspired by the classic film 'The Shining' (1980), in which the phrase 'All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy' was repeatedly typed out for pages and pages by Johnny, the father who is going on a spiral into insanity. We thought this would be a good addition as it would spark confusion in the audience and leave them wondering what it means or why someone would type it out so many times, further adding to the eeriness.

On top of this, the idea of the dummy was a heavily inspired touch seen in many movies, so many that I can't really name a particular one, but movies like 'Annabelle' (2014), 'The Boy' (2016) and the 'Saw' series, where there is creepy dolls/dummies/puppets used as the main antagonists in the film. This sparks fear in the viewer as it brings an inanimate object to life and on top of that portrays them as dangerous. Lastly, the idea of the shadow behind the curtain was not an idea specifically sparked from a specific film, but is just a common sight seen in horror images in videos that we thought would be creepy to employ in our film. It definitely had a creepy effect as it maintains mystery as to who or what is behind the curtain.

(right is from Lucid Elucidations)

Day Two of Reshooting

Today was very successful. We stayed after school again from 2-5 PM and managed to get all of the remaining shots, as well as correcting some shots taken the day before, such as the shot of Lionel encountering the dummy as he walks out of the room, which we shot from a different, and much better angle.

 We shot everything from when Lionel enters the next room up until the final attack, where the title card will be placed. With that last shot, if I'm being honest, we were not too certain of how exactly to execute it going into this, as it was very easy to make that part look cheesy so we wanted it to be as creepy as possible. Our director Pierce came up with the idea that the final attack should be from the silhouette behind the curtain grabbing Lionel. This turned out to work very well as it looked creepy, maintained the mystery as to who or what the shadow is and has a very valuable jumpscare effect.

 In order to take this shot, we did the same thing as yesterday that we did showing the silhouette through the curtain, this time I held the light from behind the curtain where Katelyn, the shadow figure stood in front of me, casting her shadow through the curtain.

When shooting, we stayed in keeping with the principle of long shots and over the shoulder/tracking shots as our main go-to in order to further convey the message that he's being watched and followed all the way through. These are some examples of such.

 At the end, we wanted Lionel to pick up the laptop that was on the floor, which had the words "I should have been there" typed out on it repeatedly, which we'd reveal after he drops it when being attacked. However, there was an obvious problem with that, as we did not want to risk breaking a perfectly good computer. Luckily, Pierce owned two of the same exact computers, one already being broken and the other one in good shape. So what we did was we used the broken one for when Lionel drops the laptop, and the good one when showing the screen.

Good Computer

Broken Computer

 Overall, today was very successful as we now have all of the shots we need along with several angles of each one so we have options, and we corrected some errors that were made yesterday. However, we still do not have the sounds recorded, so Pierce is going to record them once I have edited the film together so he can decide which sounds are necessary when watching it all together and recording them accordingly.

Day One of Reshooting

We have managed to schedule two days for shooting in the health science room on our school campus: today and tomorrow after school. This will last about 3 hours from the times of 2:00 PM to approximately 5:00 PM. Today we plan on getting the first half of the title sequence done, up until about the point where Lionel examines the picture frame, as well as recording most diegetic sounds such as the dripping of the sink, footsteps, etc. I will update this post once we are done shooting for the day!

(Later)

 Well, today was a success, for the most part. We managed to get the shots we needed, however, we had issues getting the sounds in our location so we have decided to record them at another time. If there was something to be learned from today, it was how to improvise. We made great use of patient dummies in the health science room, as we used them to create silhouettes behind the curtains, and we also used them for creepy effect in the title sequence, as dummies and dolls/puppets are common things added to movies of the horror/thriller genre as they tend to scare people.

We wanted to start off the film calm and unsuspicious, however, we wanted it to be ominous and nerve-racking at the same time. To do this, we took a shot of the clock ticking and sink dripping in order to create almost an eerie rhythm, which ties into how we want to pace the title sequence, slow and steady, gradually moving into the action. The constant noise occurring at a steady pace also makes the audience uneasy and nervous, as if they're on a time limit, exactly what we're trying to achieve.

The above shots particularly came with many difficulties. With the clock, we had to move many things out of the way and watch where we stood because the clock had a reflection on it where the background could be seen. We solved this by moving everything out of the way and standing elsewhere, as well as finding an angle to shoot the clock that wouldn't just reflect the camera and person holding it. The sink dripping was hard to do, as we used the Canon Rebel T3i to shoot the rack focus, and as mentioned before this is quite a sizeable camera, so squeezing it in at such a tight angle was tough, but we managed. We definitely decided Katelyn's iPhone X was definitely the best option for the other shots.

Below is a shot of our protagonist opening up the curtain to leave the room to reveal the creepy lifeless dummy slouched over in the wheelchair outside. This part is planned to be one of quite a few jumpscares in the film, in which I plan on adding a musical sting over.

This next shot will be shown after Lionel turns off the sink and sits up in his bed; a dual-layer shot revealing the shadow of the dummy laying on the bed in the room right beside him, creating a feeling of intensity and dread as it is unknown who or what is in the bed, as well as just being a creepy sight overall.

 The shot just shown was done in a certain way. We had our production designer Bianca stand behind the dummy shining a light through the curtain to create a shadow, where our director Pierce recorded from the other side of Lionel's bed to get a view of the entire scene.

 Our cinematographer Katelyn had the idea of having many long shots and over the shoulder/tracking shots. The reason for this is to send two meanings: the protagonist is being watched, and is also being followed. This of course is because he actually IS being followed and watched which will be revealed at the end with the biggest jumpscare. Below are some examples of these shots.

'Lucid Elucidations' Shot List

This is the official shot list for 'Lucid Elucidations', written by director Pierce Thomas.
This outlines all of the shots that we are intended on shooting when we reshoot our film opening.
Things are subject to change of course, but we think that this is a great outline to base our filming off of.

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Key:

(1, 2, etc.) – Multiple possibilities of the same shot; different angles/methods

(*) - a specific shot that occurs within a description

Shot List for Upcoming Shoot:

• Close-Up: Straight on shot of clock ticking
  
• Sound Match – Dripping at same tempo as clock fades in
  
• (1. Mid-shot – sink dripping in foreground, rack focus to Lionel stirring in background

2. Close-Up – Lionel opening eyes)

• Mid-shot – from back, Lionel comes into frame as he sits up, sink in background
  
• (1. Mid-shot – sink in foreground again as Lionel moves to turn off sink [Shot/Reverse Shot]

2. Medium-Long Shot/Tracking Shot – from front of bed, tracks Lionel as he moves to turn off sink

3. Wide Shot - from far away, Lionel turns off sink and sits back in bed in same shot)

• (1. Wide Shot - from front; holds as Lionel looks around, takes off bedsheet
• 2. Over-the-shoulder/Tracking Shot - from behind Lionel, moving with him as he looks around the room, lands on silhouette laying on bed in other room)
  
• (1. Close-Up - Lionel’s confused reaction to silhouette
• 2. Pull Back from Close-Up - Lionel’s reaction to silhouette, allows us to see him begin to pull off sheets)
  
• (1. Close-Up - Lionel putting feet on the ground

2. Mid-shot - from behind Lionel as he throws his feet off of the opposite side of the bed; lingers on shadow as he walks to open curtain)

• (1. Tracking Shot - from back as he walks to curtain; Lionel pulls back curtain

2. Medium-Long Shot - from back; still, as Lionel walks to curtain)

• (1. Low-angle Shot - outside of curtain, dummy in foreground and Lionel in background, shocked, Lionel steps around carefully

2. Close-Up - both straight on and angled, getting Lionel’s reaction)

• Over-the-shoulder Shot - Lionel looking at dummy (cuts back to low angle)
  
• (1. Wide Shot - Lionel steps around carefully, looking back at dummy before looking once again at shadow

2. Low-angle shot - of dummy, from different angle, able to see Lionel as he steps around)

3. Medium-Long Shot - from angle that looks down “corridor” dummy in foreground as Lionel steps around)

• High angle shot/Over-the-shoulder shot - Lionel looking down at dummy in wheelchair
  
• Close-Up - from side of Lionel’s face as he looks back at dummy in wheelchair then turns to look at silhouette (in background)
  
• POV Shot  - silhouette behind curtain
  
• (1. Close-Up - still shot of front/face of Lionel, looking at curtain, he begins to walk forward, camera does not follow

2. Close-Up/Tracking Shot - front/face of Lionel as he looks at curtain, camera follows as he begins to walk forward)

• Over-the-shoulder shot/Tracking shot - following Lionel from the side as he walks to next room, which is empty. The room beside the empty room has its curtains drawn
  
• Mid-Shot/Close-Up - still shot as he looks into room
  
• (1. Push in/Whip pan - front of Lionel as he looks into room, camera turns suddenly when a crash occurs, wheelchair tipped over in background, dummy is gone

2. Over-the-shoulder shot/Whip pan - looking into room with Lionel, turning suddenly when crash occurs)

• (1. Close-up/Rack focus - spinning wheel, empty wheelchair in foreground in focus, focus shifts to see shocked Lionel in background

2. Close-up/Shallow focus - spinning wheel, empty wheelchair constantly out of focus in foreground, only see shocked Lionel in background entire time)

• Mid-shot - front of Lionel, looking to right at the fallen wheelchair; a shadow flashes in front of the camera, Lionel looks forward in direction of camera
  
• (1. Rule of thirds - camera from behind, looking into previously empty room, it is now filled with items; Lionel a third from the left edge of the screen (not the middle)

2. Rule of thirds/Pan - the camera moves to the right, from being Lionel (who is standing to the left), the last ⅔ of the screen is the now the room in the background)

• Mid-shot/Tracking Shot - from the front of Lionel, walking into room
  
• Mid-shot/Tracking shot - from back of Lionel, walking into room
  

• Close-Up - Yellow roses in a vase/ on bed
  
• Close-Up - Candles
  
• Wide Shot [Experimental] - shot is from the side of the room, the background being the room to the left, with the silhouette laying on the bed; the angle is fairly low, lining up the silhouette laying on the bed with the bed in the current room, making it seem like she’s lying on it (meanwhile, Lionel is strolling into the room)
  
• (1. Close-Up - only shows framed picture of Lionel and girl

2. Close-Up/Tilt - from side of picture frame, framed picture of Lionel and girl, Lionel walks up, his hand comes into frame, camera follows hand arch as he brings it closer to his face

3. Close-Up/Tilt [Experimental] - straight on shot of picture frame, Lionel walks up, hand comes into frame, camera tilts upward and backward until Lionel is upside down in frame)

• Over-the-shoulder shot - looking at picture frame with Lionel, over his shoulder
  
• (1. Wide Shot - Lionel is on the right side of the room, the entire set can be seen; silhouette in back is obscured by Lionel, as he moves, it can be seen that the silhouette is sitting up

2. Mid-shot - Lionel is holding picture, *he looks at flowers on other side of the room, as he moves to go look at them, the silhouette can be seen sitting up in the background, looking at Lionel)

• (1. *Over-the-shoulder shot - we see the flowers on the other side of the room over Lionel’s shoulder

2. *POV shot - the flowers are shown on the other side of the room; Lionel’s shoulder is not included in the shot)

• Tracking Shot/Long take - Lionel walk around the bed is tracked in a mid shot, as he walks, the camera pulls out slightly and stops halfway as Lionel keeps walking, revealing that the silhouette is now standing at the curtain
  
• (1. Mid-shot - from left, we see Lionel bend down to grab the flowers, but turn quickly as he notices something in his peripheral vision

2. Tracking shot - from front, following Lionel as he walks to flowers, goes to the right slightly as he gets closer to the flowers; background still obscured - before Lionel reaches flowers, he looks to the left (at the curtains where the silhouette was previously) and the audience can finally see that the silhouette is gone)

• Close-Up - Lionel becoming frightened as he realizes that the silhouette is gone
  
• Close-Up - Lionel’s hands detracting from flower