Pre - Production stage
For this short film i have been asked to produce a short film that is less than five minutes long and revolves around a minimum of two people having a conversation. i have decided to choose a film that i had plans of making years ago and remastering that idea.
Original idea Treatment
Contextual analysis/idea research
Horror in the last decade has developed into many different sub genres and has brought in many more fans such as younger audiences being introduced through horror games like 'Five nights at Freddys' or 'Slenderman' which have added an entirely different atmosphere and type of horror to the genre through their dystopian and personalised feeling through use of first person POV and lack of other friendly characters. For my film i decided to create a similar feeling of isolation and confusion through the same technique with having no other characters that assist the main character on his journey, i decided to make the only other character the antagonist to enhance that feeling.
For the second act of the film i took inspiration from a project called 'The Backrooms' which is a youtube series created by Kane Pixels. This series is an idea brought to life, On May 12th of 2019 the original ‘backrooms’ image of a corridor with an oppressively bright strip light, manilla walls and no furniture was posted in 4chans/x/ paranormal board in response to a request for images that were ‘unsettling’ or which just felt ‘a bit off’. The image had initially been posted on a 4chan discussion about ‘cursed images’ anonymously, almost a year earlier (April 21st 2018) with no accompanying text. This is the first known posting of the image itself.
On Jan 7th 2022 Kane Pixels released a video titled 'The Backrooms (found footage)' which has around 47 million views as of April 5th 2023, the popularity of this horror concept rose exponentially since the release of this video not only for its depiction of 'The backrooms' as an idea being done so well but also the CGI being so impressive for its time especially when it was all created by one artist. Kane then decided to continue this series and has released 15 backrooms themed videos since.
Each of this videos contain different stories from different years and even feature hidden videos links in the descriptions of the videos containing more lore about the story and universe, which if pieced together create a very interesting story.
With how horror is evolving currently i wanted to try out something a bit more interesting taking ideas from modern horror styles expressed from more independent creators like Scott Cawthon and Kane Pixels as their work was always an inspiration to me.
What will i be changing?
The main premise of this film will remain the same, however i have changed some things due to the new requirements I must meet as well as some changes that I believe will suit my film more.
I've changed the title of the film to be much more open ended 'the man' character has also been changed to be more reserved to make him feel much more mysterious, ive done this through changing his dialogue mostly to be more repetitive and empty of information. I believe this will work well as it makes the viewer relate more to Alistair sharing his search for answers and bringing more intrigue to the story.
I also extended the final scene to have much more dialogue to create subtle answers for the viewers and also to make the film more dialogue focused to meet the requirement.
Tagline
Alistair wakes up in a hospital with no memories, can he trust the man at the desk?
Script
Location Recee
I first got the idea to remaster this film when i found out about a hospital room nearby on campus that could be used for filming. As another student also wanted to use this room for his film we decided to take a location recee together in order to get a better understanding of how to plan the film.
When i first saw the room i knew it would work perfectly for the opening scene of 'Subject 17x' with plenty of beds that could be used for the first two shots, plenty of plug sockets for recharging film equipment/mobile phones if needed and also a desk by the front entrance that could be used for 'The Man'.
One issue at first was the amount of dolls that were left in the room, as these were delicate and expensive i knew i had to be careful when moving them for the shoot. Luckily, the shots i used dont focus on the other beds as much and so the dolls could just be covered up with blankets.
Shot list
Permission form
Production stage
Post-Production stage
Evaluation
For this film i decided i would try an old idea for a film i had planned years ago and remaster it with some changes. I first got the idea to do this when i found out about a hospital room that could be used for filming on campus which quickly reminded me of this film. Through the process of making this film i believe i learned a lot about where time management and planning can take me if thought out properly and also the downsides to lack of planning/communication.
In the pre-production stage of this project I was quite confident on how i wanted this film to look and feel due to my idea research and planning from years ago with my original idea, However, I decided to use a new shot list creator website instead of using pen and paper which was helpful in its accessibility to add detail with shot types but became a problem when trying to find images similar looking to what i had intended, i did the best with what images i could find although it can be pretty unclear how i wanted most shots to look. As useful as this website was for creating good pre-production material i will definitely look at better ways to plan my reference shots next time like using pen and paper again or maybe a sketch tool like microsoft paint. As for the script for this film, i had originally planned for the dialogue to be very different in some areas especially in the final scene as some lines felt unnatural and non nonsensical for this scene such as lines like 'network, voltage, appliances ...incredible dont you think?' didnt feel right with me on the day and was also requested to be changed by the actor delivering this line. Most of the dialogue was changed in this final scene in some way or another which im happy with as i feel the dialogue flowed much better than it did in rehearsal with the original dialogue, in the future i could check with the actor before shooting to make sure they are able to get a say in what they think of the dialogue and how the delivery feels for them. When I arrived at the hospital room for the first time doing a location recce i ended up only taking photos of the beds in the room and ended up missing out on lots of planning as i was missing pictures of the entrance, reception desk and hallway which all could have been very useful for planning my shot list and other pre-production material rather than planning it all from memory. For future location recces i now know how valuable these pictures can be and I will also start to film these locations where i can so that im able to get as much visuals to go back to as possible.
When i started the production stage of this project there was some issues with timing as me and another student were using this space in the same time frame and we were helping each other with our films it meant that we were on a crunch for time since that room had only been booked from 8:00am until 12:30pm, an issue occurred with lack of communication where i had showed up for 10:00am thinking that we would start at usual class start time as i wasn't told the exact time we'd be starting filming. This became a big issue for me as it was decided before hand that I would be filming after the other student and by the time he had finished filming i only had 10 minutes to film before the room needed to be left so i had to simplify the first act of the film and use the same shot types throughout the conversation between 'Alistair' and 'The Man', although it did give me a good idea to repeat the same shot of 'The Man' when he repeats his dialogue to add that unnatural and unnerving feeling to the conversation. When beginning the shoot we began to notice a small black smudge on the shots we were filming, we soon realized that it was an issue with the camera's sensor which is very highly sensitive and delicate so we didn't want to attempt cleaning it without proper training so we didn't cause any damage to it. Unfortunately the black dots are very noticeable in the first act due to the bright lighting of the room, however they aren't visible again for the rest of the film. In the future i will make sure to have someone on crew check the camera before shoot in case of something like this happening again.
The image below is one of the most noticeable shots for the black smudges
After producing this film and reaching the post-production stage i began editing and started thinking about how i can create more story through my edit. I decided to begin the film with some sort of computer start up and wanted to imply the truth behind this film more which i believe i achieved very well with the resources i had. I found some footage of an old computer starting up but then took a screenshot of an startup pop up and used a colour copy tool on premiere to wipe out the text and write my own text in to say 'Operation: Restore' with a question of 'Do you want to quit the testing phase' i think this works well as it raises a lot of questions for the viewers but also adds lots of context once pieced together at the end of the film. After this pop up i then added a key pressing sound followed by a screen turning off to imply that the testing phase had begun, after this i made a title sequence for the film which i made look like it had been typed in by somebody and timed this with typing sound effects which was tricky at first but i managed to get it synced up well in the end and made for a satisfying sequence. As the second act of the film felt quite empty in terms of sound i decided to add some quiet copyright free ambiance music for the background which helped add to the horror aspects in this film, at the end of this section 'Alistair' approaches a door that leads to a completely different room in real life so i had to add a glitch video effect and made it seem intentional as it suits the theme anyways. In the final scene i realized how well it links to the intro sequence of the film as 'The Man' taps a key on the keyboard and everything resets again, i imply this by using the first shot as the final shot.
To conclude this evaluation i would say overall i'm quite happy with the outcome of this film and i feel like I've learned a lot about whats needed in order to make a film consistent and high quality from time management to communication and even to pre-production material. I believe if i were to remake this film i could achieve a much higher quality piece of film through the changes mentioned in this evaluation among other things like using better sound equipment, hiring actors and getting more crew members to help out. I'm mostly happy with the cinematography through the second act of this film and i believe that it is where this film shines most, i'm also very happy with the general atmosphere/theme of this film and i'm happy to say it was represented well.