Final Film- Sticky Suprise
on on Creative Critical Reflection #1
on Questions Addressed
- How does your product use or challenge conventions, and how does it represent social groups or issues?
- Discuss your genre research and the choices you made based on that genre
- How did you handle social groups, gender norms, ageism, and societal bias?
Notes
Character Conventions and social groups representation
Teenage girl social group
- The film uses the stereotypical conventions of the behaviors of the average American teenage girl in the 21st century. The film reflects how many teenagers will get home from school and sit on their phones for hours at a time, presenting the distraction that phones bring to high schoolers nationwide.
- This distracted, non-cautious trait of the teenage girl follows along similar lines to the stereotypical slasher film victim.
- Many victims of mystery killers in movies are clueless and unaware of their surroundings.
Middle-aged suburban parents’ social group
- In the beginning scene of the film opening, we see the first victim’s parents for a majority of the scene.
- The mom’s role falls into the stereotypical conventions of gender norms. The mom is initially presented busy in the kitchen making dinner for her family. Costuming includes an apron, a messy bun, and comfortable clothing to give a homely vibe.
- For the dad, the dad doesn’t do much, except for one scene where he is helping put donation boxes in the back of the truck, doing the physical labor. This falls into a gender norm that
Challenging Horror Conventions with the Killer
- A “killer frog” isn’t something that is always seen in horror movies
Although in some slasher movies, killers are supernatural, they are almost always human. - A Sticky Suprise is a spoof film that challenges and uses the conventions of the horror-comedy genre, so a killer frog challenges the stereotypes of horror films while also creating a comedic effect.
- When I did my genre research going into this project, I looked at black comedies, spoofs, and parodies. Basically what I did was I eliminated my options for different horror-comedy tropes.
- Black comedies revolve around the themes of absurdity that shock audiences and the main characters are depicted as horrible people. I eliminated this as a choice becauseit is not what we were going for.
I then looked into spoofs and parodies. - A spoof is a film that plays on the conventions and tropes of a certain genre, while a parody is a play on a specific piece of work, such as Spaceballs is to Star Wars.
- A spoof would be the best bet for our film because we weren’t trying to imitate an already existing film. We wanted it to be original.
Creative Critical Reflection #2
on Questions Addressed
- How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
- Be specific about your trial and error, what problems did you have to overcome: what new things did you learn along the way?
Script
cut back to film day 2 nighttime scene
M voiceover: Camera movements were a little tricky for me since I am new to the whole film industry. I realized a lot of the shots that we had included in the film were non-locomotor, and were still framed shots. These shots while being good for building tension and suspense, would not be effective in making the film look good overall.
insert kitchen scene and Patricia dead and any other still framed shots
M voiceover: I decided it would be best to add a shot where the camera pans over to another angle.
I did this in the scene where the girl is sleeping in bed, and the camera pans over to the window, to show the killer standing outside under the street lamp.
insert pan to window scene and walking to Patricia’s room scene
to Baltazar’s room
B: woah that sounds scary..
M: it was… Terrifying!
B: ahhh! hides under covers
B: is that the end of the story??
M: almost. There are so many new things I learned about film during this project such as reviewing cuts and shots over and over again to make sure they are all there. I feel my production skills improved greatly when I actually took the time to organize and asses all my clips to be ready for editing by Karina.
B: wow.. Sounds like you had a good time.
M: yes it was SO much fun. The end!
walk over to bed and tuck in Baltazar
B: Just tell me one story pleeeeease.
M: No it’s past your bed ti-
B: NOW
M: FINE. just one.
Ripple to flashback
It all started in media class when Karina and I were sitting around doing absolutely nothing.
In media class on phones, listening to music, reading etc.
K: OMG I just came up with an idea for our project!! Ok hear me out… we create a horror comedy about a mystery frog killer!
M: dead silence
M: That is the dumbest idea I’ve ever hear-
cut t baltazar’s room
M: so it happened.
B: how on earth did you manage to do that? Knowing you, I bet a LOT of things had to go wrong before they went right.
M: Hey! Let me continue with my story.
Fade to flashback filming day 1
M voiceover: Lighting and camera shots were the most challenging areas for me. One of our scenes had to be done in the dark and on the first day, we couldn’t film at night so I had to crazy idea to block out any natural light from the window. And to be frank, it was not… very successful.
*” creating nighttime” clip
*cut to filming day one muder scene shot*
B: why would you think that was going to work?
M: Well you see, I had never worked on something like this before, and I wasn’t sure about how lighting and brightness appeared on camera. But after seeing how it turned out the first time, I decided a second filming day was…much needed.
ripple or fade to filming day 2 murder scene shot
M voiceover: Listen, buddy, if you had just been there and seen how much improved the film’s quality looked when it was filmed in the actual nighttime setting that fits the genre tropes of horror films, you would have been impressed.
cut to Baltazar room
B: I’m literally going to watch your film.
M: oh. True. Well continuing on…
Creative Critical Reflection #3
on Questions Addressed
- How does your product engage with audiences, and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
Talk about the target audience, what appeals to that type of audience. - How do you see it distributed: TikTok, YouTube, full theatrical release, streaming service
Notes
- The product engages with audiences by subtly hinting at who the killer is, and if analyzed intentionally, audiences can figure it out.
This is one of those films that, by your second or third viewing of it, you already know the ending, you will pick up details that you didn’t see before. This could include things such as
- If the full-length- feature film were to be released, I believe it would be released on a streaming service such as Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Apple TV, and more. This movie caters more to an at-home audience because it is a cheesy, whimsical horror-comedy that one would watch on a Friday night at home.
- It is not serious enough to earn enough revenue if released in theaters.
Creative Critical Reflection #4
on Questions Addressed
How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware, and online – in this project?
- Talk about using Premiere to edit, After Effects or Blender for world building, animate for animation, Storyboard Pro for storyboarding, apps or other programs used to create your final film
- talk about cameras used
- talk about foley sound, and soundtrack/score music sources
Script
intro gameshow music and audience clapping
Interviewer – Hello! I am Bertha Dobbyson, your favorite host ever keeping you up to date with the latests trends and news. Today I am joined by (name) on video call, and we wil be discussing the technology she used to create her film opening “Sticky Surprise”. (name) say hi to the cameras!
Interviewee- * pause* OH. hey guys
Interviewer- Can you give a quick introduction to you and your film, and then tell some of the programs you used to create this amazing film?
Interviewee – Yeah of course, so Im (name), one of the directors of “Sticky Situations”, and sadly my co director couldnt join us today but dont forget about her. So when creating this film the main software we used was Premiere Pro, which is what we used to put together our film and edit it. We also used Edu Blogs to track our progress, writerduet to write our screenplay, and bensound for our songs.
Interviewer – Oh wow that’s a lot. Honestly I don’t know how you did it, I mean figuring out how to use the different platforms like that. I’m curious.., could you tell us a little bit about your experience editing with Premiere?
Interviewee – Well when using Premiere to edit our film, I honestly had a lot of issues. At first I could not for the life of me figure out how to get rid of the tutorial section, so everytime I left the website, no matter how many times I clicked save, my progress never saved. Thank god I never spent too much time editing at one time so everytime my progress was lost it wasn’t detrimental. Towards the end of my editing, I had a whole day where my timeline disappeared and again, I could not for the life of me figure out how to get it back to finish editing it. Of course I figured it out eventually, but because I had so much trouble on so many occasions I took a lot of calming breaks.
Interviewer – Ok so personally that would’ve driven me insane!! Unfortunately technical difficulties are a challenge that every great editor has to face but it seems you handled it well. Well anyways moving forward I guess the next question I wanted to ask you was what exactly you used to film. Was it a phone, a camera, something else? Please tell us more (name)!
Interviewee – Yeah so funny you mention that.. Actually we had to use two different IPhone cameras throught the production process. For the most part we used a (miriams phone), but towards the end of the film where we filmed in a super dark room, we used a (jailyns phone). We switched cameras at the end because our original camera couldn’t pick up enough light to make the screen not completely black, so we switched to the (jais phone) because it had good enough quality to light up the screen.
Interviewer – Interesting… you know these apple products man. I swear they’re making the quality of the older phones worse just to make the new ones look better. But honestly, I couldn’t notice the shift in quality of camera, it seemed cohesive to me! Ok (name), final question nd pf course, we’ve GOT to talk about sound effects! Especially with a fim opening like this with little to no dialouge, I’m sure you had note even the tiniest of details. What was that like for you?
Interviewee – Great question Miss Dobbyson! Most of the different sounds we used were diagetic, such as setting a plate down, closing a door, and screaming. But we did use a non diagetic song throughout the majority of the film. The diagetic sounds, which means sounds the characters can hear, we recorded the day of. They were all loud enough to be picked up during filming, so we didn’t have to add any foley sounds afterwards, except for the axe scene. That sound was from an online website that provides little noises for films. And then for our song we found a suspenseful song on Bensound, which is a website that provides non copyrighted music.
Interviewer- I love that you were able to cut down some time in the post-production process. I’m sure not having to worry as much with foley sounds made it a whole lot easer to edit.
Interviewee – Yeah. tell me about it.
Interviewer- Well (name), the pretty much wraps up today’s interview! Thank you so much for being here even though your co director could not be. I hope you have a nice day and please, call me Bertha.
Interviewee- Of course, and thank you so much for having me Bertha it’s been a pleasure.
Script Adjustments
on There were some parts of our script that we had to change because they simply didn’t look right. Karina and I learned that what we sometimes envisioned in our mind on paper doesn’t end up the same when arranging the clips together. For example, there is a scene where Priscilla is rolling around on her bed watching TikTok on her phone to show how time was passing, but when editing, it came out very jumpy and just didn’t look right. It may have looked better if we had more clips or longer clips, but we couldn’t have another filming day due to scheduling issues. Instead of having a bunch of short clips, she just edited one clip and had it fade out to our next scene to show the time skip. This created a jump in the story’s timeline versus the gradual shift we intended for.
Another thing we had to do was make the clips as long as possible. We worried our clips wouldn’t fit within the desired two-minute range. Like we expected, it came out short. Karina worked to extend the clips longer than originally intended, and some of the credit clips were awkwardly long.
Film Title
on Throughout the production and post-production process, Karina and I faced a major obstacle in editing the title for our film opening. Karina took charge of editing the film, and when she included the title in the film, she accidentally made the title “Sticky Surprise” instead of “Sticky Situation” as mentioned in earlier blog posts. When I took my first look at the edited film, I realized this mistake and told Karina. After a discussion, we found out the obstacle came when she faced technical difficulties with Premiere Pro, the editing platform she used. When attempting to go back and revise the film title, the software wouldn’t allow her to go back and change it, and the timeline for editing was erased.
To overcome this challenge, rather than giving up we decided to just change the title permanently because this is a mistake we believed would be off-putting and distracting to the audience. Although this mistake isn’t desirable for any filmmaker, I believe it’s a great example of how peer review is very important to make sure the film turns out the best it possibly can.
Editing
on Audio
Our editing process took about a week once we had all the clips and audio prepared. In order to split up responsibilities between Karina and I, I focused more on the pre-production process, and Karina focused more on the post-production process. She is more experienced with editing within the Premiere Pro software, so she took the initiative during editing. However, after discussing it with Karina, we both realized it may have been easier to edit between film days rather than waiting because it would have saved time and stress.
Timeline Difficulties
There were many issues with filming, starting when creating the title sequence. The timeline on Premiere Pro completely disappeared as Karina was editing, and she could not get back in, no matter what we tried. Although we were not completely satisfied with the way to title looked, we had to keep it that way for the final production.
Timeline issues seemed to never end, especially when she had to restart editing at least four times because the timeline kept disappearing and not saving.
Finally, another major issue with the timeline was when figuring out how to add more editing rows in the timeline. Karina wanted to have more room for embedded audios, but since she couldn’t add another row, she had to fade them together on one row, which created a weird jump and left an unnecessary silence between two of the audio clips.
Here is what a normal timeline on the Premeire Pro editing platforms supposed to look like. The clips and effects are supposed to be easily accessible to discard, alter, and add.
Conclusion
If we could go back in time and re-do the production process, I believe we would. I wish we could’ve refilmed some of the scenes so they could be longer without looking odd.
Production Company Logo
on When my partner Karina and I originally started concocting ideas for our production company logo, we both decided we wanted to create something physical rather than in an animation style or digitally made. I researched production companies that had already used this technique; however, I did not find many promising results. We were very intent on going through with this idea, so instead of being discouraged, we decided to create one anyway. Our whimsical production name “Beef Meat Studios”, added a sense of lightheartedness and humor.
As mentioned in planning for the production company logo, the clip will be of a girl, (who turned out to be me), eating cereal and then accidentally spilling the bowl onto the ground. The camera cuts to the mess on the floor and it spells out “Beef Meat Studios”.
Originally, we were planning on it to be a bowl of pasta, rather than cereal but with our resources at the time we had to improvise and use cereal instead. I actually liked this idea better because we would not have had to make pasta just for it to go to waste on the floor.
In the shot, the bowl of cereal is in the corner of the frame knocked over, making it seem more accidental than intentional.
Below is a timelapse of Karina and I creating the title’s words out of cereal.
Diagetic and Non-Diagetic Sounds
on Diagetic Sounds
Diagetic Sounds are the sounds within the film that the characters can hear or are making. Much of the film includes diegetic sounds, with the exception of the music being played. I wrote down on a piece of scratch paper as I watched the clips to see what sounds were made, and which ones we needed to add Foley sounds to.
In the film, one of the characters is scrolling through TikTok, watching and listening to videos. We see her scrolling past videos and in the editing process, TikTok audios will be put overtop of the video, syncing with the visuals. For this, we have to time it well so that there is no audio lag.
Another scene where attention to audio is needed is when the mom screams. This happens when the screen is black with the title being displayed, as shown. Although nothing is happening on screen, the scream is still a part of the setting, and it is a noise one of the characters is making, classifying it as a diegetic sound.
Below is a clip from our film that uses diegetic sound when watching TikTok. Although it is not the scene where she is actively scrolling, it is still a scene that uses diegetic sounds.
Non-Diagetic Sounds
In the very beginning and end, a suspenseful sound effect is played when the mom is in the kitchen and when she starts calling for her daughter. This sound plays through until Patrica is found dead, and the title is displayed across the screen. This suspenseful music comes back during the credits to set the mood. It then appears for the final time when the second death happens. This is considered a non-diegetic sound because the characters within the film cannot hear the suspenseful music.
Transition between Diagetic and Non-Diagetic
Another important area where sound is important is in the night murder scene, where Priscilla falls asleep with a TikTok video playing on her phone. Since the TikTok videos loop, the sound plays over and over again. However, if the same short clip of music were to play continuously, it would distract the audience. Karina and I had a conversation about how to fix this, and in the editing process, she worked on fading the music out as the scene progresses. This sudden absence of noise is considered non-diegetic because within the film, the characters would actually still continue to hear the same audio playing over and over again.