My role in the group was the actress and the supplier. We didn’t really have any assigned out roles in the beginning, things kind of just fell into place. We worked on but mostly improvised the script. Yoonjin and I were actresses that starred as vampires in the film. While Grace and Sonoko both worked as the cinematographers. There really was no MVP in our group. In my opinion I thought everyone was a key component in making the film. Our group decided what we wanted to do during the time given to us during class. We came up with various ideas such as re-creating shows like America’s next top model or Top Chef. We were even thinking about doing a documentary of a dancing hobo in NYC. Which I thought would have been interesting because the city has a lot of unusual structures and big buildings that would help to make the film more interesting. But through the process of elimination we finally chose what we wanted our film to be about. During production and post-production my group worked really well together because everyone knew about each other’s plans for the week, and we all tried to make meetings as convenient as possible for one another. Everyone got along with one another and all ideas were taken into consideration.
I guess you can say that the inspiration of our group’s film came from the media frenzy over vampires due to Twilight movie. Vampires are hot right now in the entertainment world. There are so many television shows featuring vampires, for example true blood and vampire diaries. But each show changes the vampire stereotype into something more confusing and more elaborate than the original. The title of our film basically sums up what our film is about. It is a mockumentary about the life of two vampires. I play the role of Harpor Hathos and Yoonjin plays the role of Winter Frankenstein. In the film we follow two vampires for one day to reveal the life of a true vampire. The vampires in this film are like normal people; they do their work, go to school, and chill out, but not everything they do is normal. They have their moments when the vampire stereotypes kick in. In-between scenes there are interviews with the vampires that help explain the situation in the preceding scenes. I think our film was pretty successful considering the amount of time we had to film and edit it. Most of us were very busy either getting ready for all-county, going to academy, and I was busy swimming. So we didn’t have a lot of production time, but when we did have time to film we got down to business and tried to complete as much as we could.
One of the strengths that the film had was the editing. When we were shooting scenes we would edit it by recording what we had envisioned. This made editing a lot easier because we didn’t have to cut scenes we would just put the clips right after one another. Another strength our film had were the environments used in the scenes. One of the scenes was in the woods down by the track and field. That turned out to be a great place to get a shot of the vampires hunting and running around like animals. It made the film more believable because there was no green screen or fake wallpaper in the background, it was an actual forest. Also the other environment we took advantage of was the school. We filmed in the main hall once the last period was over. The students walking towards the doors to leave made for an authentic feel of what the school day is like for normal people and vampires. A weakness of our film was the unsteadiness of the camera. We had to hold the camera most of the time because we didn’t have a tripod to get a steady shot. In the beginning of the film the camera was unsteady because there was no place to put the camera down. Another weakness is the discontinuity of the background sounds when Winter Frankenstein is at the fridge grabbing the red flavored drink. We decided that we would mute the sound clips of that part because the tv was on in the background and the sounds did not match up when we put it together. So if you listen carefully, you won’t hear anything.
My favorite scene is when I’m doing my homework and I start to nosebleed. This scene was really fun and hard to film because I had to try not to laugh while there was ketchup going down my face. We had to put enough ketchup so that it would drip on the table and since the table was glass we decided to shoot the scene from under the table. In the unedited takes of the scene you can see Yoonjin putting more ketchup on my face with a spoon. It was really hard not to laugh. The experience made the scene more enjoyable to me. I was pretty satisfied with everything except for the diegetic sounds in some scenes such as the one where Yoonjin grabs her red flavored drink and when she was watching tv. One of the reasons why we put music in the scenes was to make the discontinuity of the background sounds not so obvious.
. We incorporated a long take in the film, for example when we are in the woods hunting, the scene starts as a low angle and then moves into a long shot of Harpor Hathos and then it moves back to a middle shot of Winter Frankenstein then it returns to a long shot of both of us running away. This long take made the scene seem more real and the low angle on Winter make her seem more animal like. Another technique we used were jump cuts of Winter Frankenstein’s face when she’s watching tv in her living room. And in the same scene we copied the director Fritz Lang by filming a crotch shot of Winter. This can be interpreted as the same way Fritz Lang wanted it to be interpreted in “M.” Don’t be fooled because we may seem to be human but we really are vampires. Another technique we used is the insert when Winter Frankenstein is talking about how she slips in the snow and there is a quick scene that shows her falling in the snow and then after that it goes back to Winter talking in the interview. Another cinematic technique we used was the scene when my character was doing her homework. The camera was under the glass table, creating a low angle shot. We just thought it would be cool to use the glass table that way. The clips and films that we watched in class influenced our film’s creation a lot because we took cinematic techniques from them such as “M.” I learned that making a good film takes a lot of time and patience. Now that I have experienced a very little part of making a film, I can fully appreciate movies because the amount of effort in acting, filming, and editing is tremendous.
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