CCR Script

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

    Our product leans into the traditional conventions of a horror movie rather than subverting them. The very first edits we made after compiling all our footage together were all to do with visual atmosphere. Emphasized the shadows, increased the contrast, took away the warmth and saturation. I wanted to ensure that if someone were to pause the film at any point, they would be able to tell or at least have a strong idea of what the genre is from a single shot alone. There was no dialogue, and the only two times anyone is heard talking is from the short voicemail played in the car and the echoey "hello?" towards the end. This is similar to many horror films, where they rid the audience of the comfort of anything other than ambient sound. 

    Our product represents the issue of grief. The main character is haunted by her friend, immediately after leaving her funeral. This is symbolic of how the thought of a recently deceased loved one is so strong that it feels like they are still there, especially if they hold on to this person more closely than others. The fact that the main character was the last to leave her friend's funeral shows that she is exactly this person. 

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

    Our product uses suspense and intrigue as a way of engaging the audience, which is built through a lack of information, leaving the audience to interpret what happens on screen before clarifying the reality of the situation. The opening closes in such a way that the viewer does not know whether or not the main character is really being haunted by their friend, or if they are just imagining it. While they may assume that something paranormal will eventually happen based on the given context, they question whether or not it would happen so early on the film. This may lead to them to continue watching to satiate their curiosity as to when the haunting will be confirmed (i.e., when her friend actually appears for the first time). 

    If our product developed into a real horror film, I would most likely just upload it to YouTube publicly. It is the simplest way to make it available to a wide audience and would also suit my intention to create the film for entertainment, not for commercial purposes. 

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

    Initially, directing did not feel natural to me. While I had many strong ideas for scenes, it felt different when we actually began filming it. At certain points I questioned myself as to whether or not what I visualized in my head actually matched what the shot turned out to be. When I played back our footage for the first time, I was worried that what we had was not enough to tell the story we wanted to tell. When I started editing though, I found that there was indeed a way to arrange the shots to effectively communicate the narrative while also blending seamlessly together and looking visually nice. That was likely the most challenging part, but it was also satisfying once it was all complete. 

How did you integrate technologies in this project?

    The project was filmed with my phone as that was all we had access to and edited using CapCut as we are the most familiar with the software. A major advantage to using CapCut is that sound is very simple to manipulate, and it offers you many options as to what you can do with it. It also gives you a variety of visual effects to add as well as the ability to layer them over each other so you can create your own. There are so many features, but the platform is laid out in such a way that figuring out how to use them is almost intuitive.