Final Film Opening

This is our Final Film Opening. 

Incase the YouTube link fails, this is the Google Drive link to the original video :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13D1TSLGwpUAkpbfZM-d9h7N-rZinXO4P/view?usp=sharing

CCR 4

 This is my Critical Creative Reflection (CCR) 4

CCR4 by bams

Incase this embedded poster fails or unable to be seen, this is the link to the poster :

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGhYbrSXEQ/6WbqtGQWXwdurYjYnlHn_w/edit?utm_content=DAGhYbrSXEQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

CCR 3

 This is my Critical Creative Reflection (CCR) 3

CCR3 by bams

Incase the embedded presentation fails and is unable to load, here is the link to the poster :

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGfm6uZ80s/Hz7HaUpftBxIdmtxORmasw/edit?utm_content=DAGfm6uZ80s&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

CCR 2

This is my Critical Creative Reflection (CCR) 2

CCR2 by bams

Here is the link to the poster incase the embed is faulty : https://www.canva.com/design/DAGhYKTq_fc/7jdmtdA4DyqwSNAUUMK1Wg/edit?utm_content=DAGhYKTq_fc&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

CCR 1

This is my Critical Creative Reflection ( CCR ) 1 

CCR1 by bams

Here is the link to the presentation incase the embedded presentation is faulty. 

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGewLoEy0E/OQA2robpX-wlIiKqL89hbw/edit?utm_content=DAGewLoEy0E&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

Screen Test : Audience Feedback

This post explains how we showed a rough draft of our film opening to some members of our target audience in order to receive helpful feedback. This blog post was made by our team member Shannon.

The purpose of a screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if their are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use google forms to create a survey to share with our audience because it is convenient to use.

https://forms.gle/yF85gndJy9ovn6bZA

Here are our questions: 

1. What do you like about this horror movie introduction 

2. What are your thoughts on the characters of the movie ?

3. What can we improve on ?

4. Which movie title for this horror movie ?

5. if all of these feedbacks were implemented in this movie opening would you watch the rest of the movie?

6. If in the previous question you answer no then why?

We chose these questions because we wanted to understand our audience's dominant reading on our characters and how we could further make this movie introduction interesting to the point where our target audience would watch the whole movie. We showed the clip to 3 members of our target audience to ensure that the feedback we receive is appropriate and it was "horror" enough and suit their expectations. We also provided title options to them so the title wouldn't sound "cringey" or "weird" but suit the whole premise of the movie. 

Finding people for the screen test was quite difficult for me especially because most of my friends or people I know don't watch horror movies in general so it's hard for me to distribute this survey and get useful feedback from them. Luckily my teammates Max and Bamz do have friends who are horror / adrenaline enthusiasts as such we were able to get 3 people to answer the 6 six questions. 

Here is the draft that we showed audiences for the screen test:

The purpose of a screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if their are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use google forms to create a survey to share with our audience because it is a convenient way to get information without wasting time finding people around the school to interview. A link also allows our group to reach people outside to school without going to another school physically which is convenient.  Here are our questions:

Here are the results from the audience feedback:

• What do you like about this horror movie introduction ??

• What are your thoughts on the characters of the movie ??

• What can we improve on ?

• Which movie title for this horror movie ???

• if all of these feedbacks were implemented in this movie opening would you watch the rest of the movie ?

• If in the previous question your answer was no please explain your answer ?

From the feedback we learned that we need to make our movie deeper, which means add more story / foreshadowing in the movie intro so they would be more interested. Another said we need to add context, it makes sense since the movie introduction is unfinished and our editor hasn't added any scene that moves the plot forward and the context / information on each character and their traits and what will happen. The dominant reading of the character were mysterious which is concerning as each character in the movie introduction should have different somewhat dominant readings than just "mysterious". The last thing they touched on is the fact this movie introduction leans more into mystery than horror. It's great constructive criticism because we can make that happen via editing and honestly after reviewing the footage again I completely agree. 

We are going to change the font of the title and add blood splatter animations to make it more horror filled. We might add more red to the introduction as a semantic code for death and destruction. The music can also be changed to more eerie and "ritual" like non diegetic or diegetic music so the movie can be more recognise as a horror movie. For the context part we can tell our editor to stitch up the important parts to add description into each scene and also add more depth to each character in the scene. 

This screen test was a useful part of our process because we are able to fully understand what the audience's preference so they could be intrigued into watching the whole movie. Even though the introduction's editing isn't finish and our editor left many parts behind leading to some of the criticism some of them made us change some parts of our movie so it can greatly improve. 

Reflection : This blogpost was made by our team member Shannon, it gave us an overall idea on what the audience wants to prefer within our film with the genre of horror which opens us to a wider ideas that should be inputted to the film to give a better immersive feeling towards the audience.

Typeface Development : Title & Credits

This is the Typeface Development which includes the title and credit ideas for the project, this is entirely made by Maxine and Shannon.

Title ideas:

Silent whisper 

Silent stalker

Dark secrets

The haunting shadow

Whispers in the dark

In the shadows

Sinister Lurker

The night's prey

Dark pursuits

Veil of fear

Silent terror

Lurking shadows

Behind the shadows

Typeface ideas:

Thinker (capcut)

Thinker-RG (capcut)

Relax (capcut)

Ravenly (capcut)

Merchande-Rgh (capcut)

Sticky (capcut)

IM FELL (capcut

Reflection : Our team members Maxine and Shannon made this blogpost which shows which fonts should be used within our film so that the audience would receive the message of that font being terrifying or giving off fear towards the audience.

Production : Behind the Scenes

 This is the Behind the Scenes for this term's group project. Kenneth will be doing the behind the scenes however, we forgot so our team member Maxine did all the behind the scenes within filming.

Director: Max, Shannon

Cast: Max, Kenneth, Bams

Production company: Regents Media Production

Editor: Kenneth

Mise-en-Scene manager: Max, Bams

Reflection : Our team member Maxine didn't take that much images for behind the scenes due to the bad weather making it a bit hard to take extra images to see how the filming is going. Overall, the behind the scenes images were taken clearly on what the team is doing.

Post-Production : Editing

The editing is done by Kenneth.

Kenneth uses Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects 2025 for the editing of this project.

He began editing as soon as we finished shooting. Initially, he started off in After Effects, where he color graded the raw footages to look like nighttime.

before

after

He found this Youtube video explaining the process, and it really helped a lot. Though, he ended up tweaking the little details of the color grading settings to achieve a result of my liking.

He also experimented with light leaks, which he had planned to apply on some shots.

he again made use of a Youtube video explaining the process of achieving this

But shortly after, he found out that putting it against a black background makes for a really unique shot, much better than putting it straight above the shots. So, he decided to use this for the first few seconds into the opening credits of the movie intro. he chose a simple fade animation for the credit texts.

Moving on to Premiere Pro, he placed all the dark version shots that he wanted to use for this movie intro, and aligned them in order on the timeline.

Then, he added vignettes to all the shots and made some more changes to the color grading, which in the end improved the look of the shots and make them feel more cinematic.

At first, he had the idea of having voiceover throughout the movie intro, as if a mind-reading machine is being used to enter the mind of the killer, in hopes of finding the truth behind the murder. And we as the audience watches through the POV of the machine entering the mind. He even went on to create a wormhole on After Effects, which he had planned to use at the very beginning of the intro, when the device enters the killer's mind for the first time.

This is thanks to a Youtube video tutorial he found at the time.

But after discussing with my team members, we decided to drop this idea, since the mind reading device plot doesn't suit horror that well, and leans more into sci-fi.

Meanwhile, choosing the right audio was also quite a challenge. he initially had footstep sounds play at the first few seconds of the intro, then followed by a swoosh sound as the wormhole plays. But, dropping the mind-reading device plot meant choosing a different set of audio as well.

Picking and rearranging shots on the timeline was also a back-and-forth task, with new ideas cancelling the previous arrangement. But in the end, he found the arrangement of shots that he loved and sticked with that.

Finally, Kenneth opted for a creepy-sounding music to play throughout the whole intro, and he found the perfect one to do just that. He used this music as a base for the timing of the transitions between shots.

So far he used several moon stock videos at some points of the intro, which he really loved. But halfway through the editing process, my media teacher reviewed the edit and told me to not use stock footages, so he removed the moon shots and opted for our own shots of lighter instead.

The rest of the editing process went smooth from then on, and most of the clips were arranged based on the beat of the audio he chose for this intro.

There's one particular clip that he put extra work on, which is this shot below.

The silhouette of the killer behind the main character is actually fake. It's an image that he tracked into the shot using the "3D Camera Tracker" feature available in After Effects. The addition of the silhouette isn't perfect, since it is static, but it definitely helped intensifies this last scene of the movie intro.

Meanwhile, for the main title animation, he initially considered going for a bluish theme.

But at this point, my teammates suggested me to change the font to a scratchier hand-written style to further enhance the horror feel. And with a different font in use, he ended up changing the main title animation as well, to this blood-dripping style from the Youtube video below.

End result, with new font and animation.

Reflection : Our team member Kenneth edited fully with all the footage although, in the beginning he used multiple stock footages taken from YouTube which was not allowed therefore, in the future he changed it into footages that we took when were at the location filming. When he changed it, his editing skills greatly improved.

Dominant Reading

This is our Dominant Reading, our team member Shannon made this blog entirely.

	List	Our intended  Dominant Reading	How we will achieve this with technical elements
Individuals	Greg, Kenneth, Max	Kenneth = a paranoid  teenager  Greg = Kenneth's good friend, mindful of his surroundings  Max = careless, ignorant teenager	Kenneth  Mise en scene: The actor constantly looks at his surroundings and whatever's around him.  Camera: There is a close up of his concerned expression. There are also medium shots of his concerned body language. The camera pans from Kenneth to what he is looking at.  Editing: Multiple cuts of different camera angles. There is also an eyeline match of kenneth looking to his surroundings  Sound: Diegetic sounds of rustling leaves and footsteps of the stalker.  Greg  Mise en scene: The actor performance contained looking for his friend (kenneth) when he disappeared  Camera: There is a tracking shot of him trying to follow Kenneth's tracks. Medium shots of his body language turning around to find Kenneth.  Editing: Multiple cuts of different camera angles. There is also a reaction shot  of his worried face and Kenneth's “blood”.  Sound: Diegetic sounds of the actor’s dialogue contained words that worried about Kenneth after he disappeared.  Max Mise en scene: The actress carries headphones and has her emotionless expression when the camera focuses on her.  Camera: There are close up shots of her expressions that show that she doesn’t really care.
Social group	Teenagers	Teenagers should not be left alone without adult supervision.	There are multiple camera angles / close up shots of the paranoia of the teenagers. There is a tracking shot scene where Kenneth gets killed. The body language of both Greg and Kenneth are shaky and scared.
Places	Forest	Forests are a bad place to hangout.	There will be low key lighting that’s used to present the place. Many bushes and leaves will be used that hides hidden cameras that makes the scene unsafe for the characters and the audience.  Discordant non diegetic sounds will be used.
Events	Murder	Murder is bad / traumatic.	There is a medium shot of Greg worried for kenneth. There is blood in some scenes and the color red on blood is a semantic code for death, anger, etc.
Overall Message	Teenagers shouldn’t be left alone in the forest because tragedies may happen as a result of murder.

How similar is it to the statement of intent ? 

I think this is almost 90% similar to our statement of intent like the name
of the characters and location is exactly the same taking place in a forest.
However, we changed the storyline from a bunch of detective to a bunch of
reckless teenagers who are left alone in the forest hanging out which changes the
overall message / the dominant reading to the social group. 

Reflection : Our team member Shannon made the dominant reading which gave us an idea on what the audience should perceive on our message from our film. 

Production : Organising our Footage

👾This is the blog post that shows on what tech or applications used ( with screenshots ), how it helps and what systems did we use to do this 👾

To communicate with the group members :
WhatsApp

To download & store footage :

Google Drive

To edit the footage & organizing the footage within the application :

After Effects 2025

How Does it Help?

- It helped with sharing the files to others so, instead of one person that only has the access to the footage, everyone in our group has the access to the shared file this minimizes more work with exporting through communication apps such as WhatsApp as the app reduces the resolution and quality of the video which ruins the whole immersive aspect of the film opening. In addition to that, our editors used After Effects the latest version which has more features such as the CGI as we have an idea of using CGI although, it may look off that is why we are still figuring out the editing process with the editor to make the audience feel immersive and more realistic and since it is the latest version of the editing software, there may be less glitches or bugs during editing which can ruin the edited footage because technology improves overtime. We also used WhatsApp to show the part where the editor is finished with the video so we can see segments of the video so we can make less mistakes instead of showing the full clip and finding it all in one that way, we also used that app to communicate when and where do we group up and shoot and we talked about other important things within that app.

Reflection : I made this blogpost which shows how we organized our footage which made it easier for compiling footage, and make it easier for other team members to comment which footage should be kept or removed for the editing process and how other software such as WhatsApp helped with our communication together.