Creative Critical Reflection

Candidate#4129 Creative Critical Reflection

Final Submission

The changes we made to our third quarter submission, we changed our font to Courier New Bold as it looked more sophisticated, the original font we had was, DIN Alternate Bold, we did this because it fit our genre more and it is a font that would be seen in most movies or television shows that involve investigation of missing people. Also we gave credit to our incidental music, Drone Dark Suspense 3 which is a sound found in iMovie so we gave credit to the proper creators in the beginning of our film with the rest of our credits.

Critical Creative Reflection Draft 4

When filming our film The Neighbor, we integrated many different technologies to make our film successful and the best that we can make it. Technologies we used were a Macbook Pro, iMovie, iPhone 8 Plus, and the music app Spotify. We incorporated all of our technologies into our film and interacted them carefully and appropriately. Each technology aspect we used contributes to the purpose to our film.

One technology we utilized was a Macbook Pro. This contributes to our film because in our film, in one of the opening scenes of Ally and Ashley listening to music on a Macboook Pro while getting ready. We used the app Spotify on the computer when playing Payphone by Maroon 5 to establish our setting and show the characters getting ready and having fun. This was key to making our film since Ally presses pause on the computer when Sarah begins to call her. Also we used the Macbook Pro when editing our film because it was the best option when having a higher resolution film and to have great picture and film quality.

The iPhone 8 Plus we used to film on was essential. We decided to use an iPhone because when transferred our film from a phone to Macbook, the quality was better and resolution was higher making our film clear and easy to see which makes it more enjoyable. The resolution on our film is 1080 PHD at 30 frames per second which is the highest resolution. Switching to iPhone to film rather than a class camera was very changing to our film.

Another technology we utilized was iMovie, which was the editing tool we used to edit our film. As a group, we decided this editing tool would best help us in creating our movie because it provided good transitioning options, fonts for titles and subtitles and overall an easier editing technique. iMovie also allowed us to put in scary incidental movie in the scenes where Patty is in Ally house to add suspense. The sound was provided through the app and selecting this for our film required less work. It allowed our group to understand iMovies resources better as well.

Creative Critical Reflection Draft 3

In creating our film, The Neighbor, I was in charge of the storyboard and taking the important shots from our film and drawing them out while describing the importance of that shot. Meredith was in charge of the editing for our film, Rachel took charge of directing, and Chelsea created the script and our characters. I chose to do the storyboard aspect of creating our entire film because I had the artistic ability to draw the shots and also knew how that shot represented our film. In doing this as a group, we all came to the conclusion that wanted the genre to our film to be thriller/horror. My production skills developed throughout the film in a positive way. As we went through the process of filming and writing I pointed out important shots and details to consider. I had to change the storyboard a couple times as we changed the main important shots a couple times. I also had some experience with filming scenes as in the past I had filmed short films for other classes. I was able to have a more creative eye when holding the camera and finding good lighting and areas to film that scene.

Our whole group participated by acting well. I played the role of Ashley who is one of Ally's best friends. Although I have participated in acting for some other films made in the past. This experience was far different. I had a bigger role in this film and had more lines in the script where I was talking. The good thing about my group is that we all have been friends and are comfortable with each other but the hard part was since we haven't acted together , it was more challenging for us to cooperate and focus clearly. Remembering our lines and moves were difficult because since we are a close group we would laugh and say the wrong words. Although it was a struggle, I believed in the long run we provided a great film with the little experience we had together or in general with acting and filming.

One last production skill was time management. As a group, we all came together to discuss when and where we would start filming and work our schedules around that time. Our film required us to film during day and night to go along with our script. There were times where my group and I found this hard to schedule. People in the group had work, appointments and family plans so finding a specific day to work for everyone took some time.  To come up with day times and night times was something we spent time figuring out. However, we always found a time and day to plan scenes and film the scenes in a good amount of time.

Creative Critical Reflection Draft 2

The target audience for our film "The Neighbor" is advertised to people within the age range of 14-23 that live in the United States as it aims toward teenagers and college students. Our film not only is directed toward teenagers but female teenagers because our characters are female. Ally, Ashley, Sarah and Patty are all female characters in The Neighbor. Both the protagonist and antagonist are the same gender (female) which is unusual for modern day films. Our film also engages with the higher and lower class. The protagonist, Ally, is considered higher class and this is depicted when observing her house, living conditions, clothing which all relates back to popularity.  Patty our antagonist character is lower class. She does not live in the nicest house on the street, her clothing does not match the others and she is not known as the "popular" girl. Both classes are used in the film to show a clear difference in lifestyles and to capture the jealousy Patty has for Ally in the film. The Neighbor and The Quiet Place are similar because both are thriller/horror. Also, using the same social media tactics to advertise to the younger generation, we have similar audience as we both are advertising to younger people. It is proven that more of the younger generation uses social media so advertising the film through apps such as Instagram will attract a wider audience. We used Instagram to market the film because we knew other films had done the same such as Get Out, The Quiet Place and Kidnap. By making this page, we will be targeting audiences worldwide. In 2017, 2.46 billion people in the world used social media (Statista ,2019) and 86% of these users are 18 to 30 years old.  By making a mark on this generation people will follow the movies pages where they will get more details on the upcoming film while being able to send it to friends and family. To distribute our film we will distribute through theaters and utilize streaming through Youtube Movies, Netflix and Amazon Prime. Distributing our film will attract the younger generation because this generation likes to watch movies at the comfort of their home or driving in the car during a road trip.  This distribution also involve Blue-Ray as our movie will be played in high quality, faster and enhanced network and internet.

Creative Critical Reflection Draft 1

We utilized the conventions such as costumes, shots, font and incidental music. In our film we used costumes such as in style fashionable clothing when fitting the characters Ally, Ashley, and Sarah because their characters were popular teenage girls that lived in the area. When focusing on Patty's costume we wanted to portray her character as an antagonist by having her dress in black clothing and put darker makeup under her eyes. This showed a clear difference in lifestyles between Patty and Ally. This also reflected the jealously Patty has for Ally and her best friends because they have nicer and fashionable things that Patty does not have. Ally's outfit included fashionable jeans and a flowy pink shirt, her friends Ashley and Sarah wore similar outfits like jeans and a nice shirt. The outfits all were similar and made Patty's outfit stand out more than theirs because hers was dull and not colorful. In the movie, Hush when focusing on her costume you can tell she is wearing casual in style clothing and when evaluating the antagonist in the film he is wearing darker clothing to indicate a more creepy effect. For our shots,  the establishing shot shows the road that both houses are located on. In this shot you can see both Ally and Patty's houses. This shot is important when utilizing the social classes of both Patty and Ally due to house size and the outside appearance of the houses, it also reflects back on jealousy again when it comes to Patty's feelings toward Ally. The two thirds shot was captured of Patty walking in front of her house picking flowers. This shot showed Patty toward the right half of the frame allowing her house to take up much of the shot to show the audience a close up of Patty's current living situation and where she lives which is much different when comparing to Ally's. The mid- shot of Patty walking in Ally's backyard when she was not home shows how Patty is about to go into her house without permission because no one is home and it leads in to her opening the sliding class door. The font we used in the beginning of the film for opening credits was called "DIN Alternate Bold" and it was used to represent Ally's life. The font is slick and formal which compliments Ally's lifestyle. We choose this font due to how well it replicated her character in this film. For incidental music, we used this music in the creepy scary scenes of our film or the scenes where you did not know what to expect next. This music was also used in Get Out and The Quiet Place. These films used the incidental music the same was we tried to portray it in our film. We used this music in the scenes of Patty broke into Ally's house and when she went through her belongings.
When reflecting on issues in social classes and relating that to our film we understood this issue is a real life thing. We know girls in high school that form clicks and "groups". There is also the people that strive to be in one of these groups and that is when jealousy comes into the picture. There is higher and lower classes especially in the school system. The higher classes are looked up upon and lower look down upon as they are stereotyped this way. Ally looks at Patty in a bad way and Patty wants to be Ally and have her life. However, Patty psychologically was obsessed with Ally and took matters too far by messing with her life. When looking at social classes many groups are diversified and this can cause personal problems. When looking at films with female lead roles, the films we looked at such as Sinister and Get Out used males for leading roles. In our film, we used not only a female for a leading role but used a whole female cast in our film. This eliminated gender discrimination when using mainly males in films.

Third Quarter Final Submission

Our Third Quarter Final Submission with revisions