Project Components

     Well, that's a wrap! Bellow are the links to the project components! Enjoy :)

Instagram: @stare.shortfilm

Postcard: Front of Postcard

                     Back of Postcard

Short Film: 

STARE One Drive Link or

Critical Reflection

     STARE explores the many perspectives and emotions that one can feel towards death, and how each belief is valid in its own right, as death can be whatever one perceives it to be. These different perspectives are highlighted through the colored lighting and costuming throughout the short film. The haunting depiction of Death seen through the emptiness of the room they reside in, as well as the quiet buzzing heard whenever their presence becomes increasingly prevalent.

   The short film concept for STARE was inspired by Netflix's BoJack Horseman for the way it addresses heavy topics, Jack Stauber's Opal for its disturbing atmosphere, and the short film World of Tomorrow. Through these three pieces of media, I was inspired to create something that created a tense and almost ominous atmosphere, while also having a true meaning behind it. When watching World of Tomorrow, I got the idea to make my piece about death, and how people fear it, this later evolving into addressing other perspectives of death and how they would react when coming face to face with death itself. 

    The short film embraced the conventional use of color in film in terms of what color can symbolize, while also over exaggerating each perspective's color through lighting and costuming. By doing so, each perspective's emotions is brought to the forefront through more than just the dialogue or the acting. The piece has embraced aspects of the psychological film genre, through the exploration of human emotion and how two people can feel drastically different about the same subject. 

    Certain perspectives, such as Green and Yellow's, required careful research as they respectively represent survivor's guilt and those who have illness anxiety disorder. Through the use of sources such as the National Library of Medicine , the representation of people with those disorders is carefully fleshed out, to show different sides of those with the disorders. The pairing of the color green and the character dealing with survivors guilt after the death of a friend, works well as green is often used in film to represent guilt. The person crying and even becoming irritable are more exaggerated depictions of how someone who has survivors guilt may act or react to certain people. The none-diegetic audio in the background shares an insight into the mind of the character, who is forced to relive the events that she so wishes she could change the outcome of. 

As for those with Illness Anxiety Disorder, known to some as Hypochondria, the character Yellow represents someone who is incredibly hyper aware of their physical body, even going as far to believe that none symptoms and feelings, are caused by something much worse which is illustrated through their dialogue. In this particular case, the character has what some may call death anxiety, which further causes them to believe that their physiological feelings are caused by something serious that could potentially kill them, causing them to become more anxious. It may sometimes cause people to take or ask for prescribed medication that they don't really need in order to treat these "symptoms". The color yellow adds to this idea of hype fixation, as yellow can be used in film to represent obsessiveness. The none diegetic audio of a heartbeat in the background also helps to further represent the hyper awareness the character, and some people with Illness Anxiety Disorder, feel over their own body. 

    Along with those two, Blue is representative of someone who is very at peace with death, perhaps someone who is even religious and believes that there is a life to come after one dies. This is why there is very peaceful none diegetic music playing in the background of their scene, and why it is particularly noted in the script that Blue physically hands Death a flower as a sign of goodwill and peace. Blue being the only character that reaches out to Death and physically hands them something is also an indicator of how accepting and at peace they are with the concept of dying. Purple is representative of those who are reckless and for one reason or another, do not think that their dangerous actions will catch up to them, this is conveyed through him smoking, as well as the various alcohol bottles indicating drinking. This character is the only one that is implied to actually die of the characters shown on screen, almost as a warning for those who continue to be reckless and do things that actively hurt their health and well being. 

    The branding of STARE is developed mainly through the social media, this including stills from the short film itself, as well as a lot of teasers featuring each character, but always featuring the empty room in which the personification of death spends the film in. The buzzing in the background whenever Death or the room is visible or whenever Death's presence is more prominent creates an ominous and looming atmosphere which is well depicted throughout the social media. Even on the postcard, the multicolored gradient in the background is reminiscent of the ending of the film where all the colors begin to flash on Death, representing how death is whatever someone views it to be, and how each perspective or belief is equally as valid as the other. Even the profile picture of the social media, contains each color that represents each given perspective, and includes the blank wall from the room in which Death resides in, the plain cool light, creating an almost "backrooms" style feel to the room, making it that much more haunting.

    Throughout the social media the target audience of young adults ages 16 to 26 are able to view content to do with STARE, including the various teasers and Instagram story highlight of each character. The short film itself is meant to provoke thought and shine a light on how various perspectives and opinions on subjects such as religion or death can coexist and still be equally valid. By also creating representations of these different perspectives, it allows for those within the audience who may identify with some of the aspects of the characters to feel more seen, and like their view on life is valid. 

Social Media Update (again)

    So I started a countdown which includes a daily teaser of some sort for the release of my short film. Yesterday, I used a clip from Yellow's section and created a teaser with suspenseful music and a heartbeat in the background. I'm planning on making posts which create a full image of the grid on the 10th, to announce the release of the short film, so I'm calculating at least four more feed posts. As for story posts, I took full advantage of the eclipse that happened today. It may be a little cheesy, but I honestly really love it, I think its silly. And the picture I got fits the ominous vibe that I try to emulate through the social media so I think it works perfect! Here it is: 

Post Card !

    As I mentioned a couple posts ago, while doing a group meeting, someone had suggested that I did a Tarot card style post card, with the card being that of Death. Well after searching for what felt like forever, I realized I wasn't liking any examples or templates I found. So I found a completely blank page with a dark double boarder. I then removed the background from one of the stills, of Clara as Death and put it near the bottom of the inside of the black boarder. I made it a little transparent, and then added two different multicolor color gradients that I also reduced the transparency of to mimic the look of the lights on the white wall in my film. I decided to place the Instagram handle on the bottom of the front of the postcard and not on the back as well since the back only has the name of the film, the logo for the Subtropic Film Fest, and where and when the short film would screen, and I feel like it would have been way too wordy. 

  

  As for the film festival I picked for my short film, I decided to pick the Subtropic Film Fest that focuses on highlighting works by creators and filmmakers that are located in south Florida, and creating an overall better environment for local filmmakers. The film festival is also known to work with other film festival organizations and art institutions which could help my film reach broader audiences that are potentially interested in this type of short film.

Social Media Update

    Along with editing, I've also been working on the social media aspect for this project. I have created a highlight for each of the characters, including Death, and have posted an interactive story post where I asked followers what they would say if they came face to face with the personification of death (morbid I know, but very fitting if you ask me). I also posted and uploaded an updated version of the profile photo, one that only includes the four colors of each character, instead of all six colors that were part of the original concept. I like how this profile photo looks a lot better, since I feel it's more dynamic, than the original which had the different transparent colors all stacked in lines. This one has the four transparent colors overlapping each other across the photo, which looks a lot more visually interesting.

    Along with this, I've also created a short teaser, announcing the release of the short film for April 10th, the same day this project is due. I posted this teaser on the main feed of the profile , as well as on a story post which was added to the black highlight, both captioned "come face to face with Death on April 10th". I thought this would be a good way to create excitement for the film, and I even posted it on my personal account's story, garnering the project more attention from fellow classmates and even a few family members who now follow the project's account and reposted the teaser on their own stories.

 

    As for other feed posts, I posted stills from the film, of each color in pairs, with death in between each color, to show the contrasts of each character's perspective. For example, yellow and purple are paired since Yellow is overly concerned with the idea of death, while Purple is unphased. Then, green and blue are paired up since they too are opposites as Green is not at at peace with the death of their friend while Blue is completely accepting to towards death. 

How Editing Went

    Over this whole week I've been working hard on editing my short film with the goal of finishing it this weekend. I'm pleased to say I've done just that! I had originally mentioned that I had issues with the length of my short film, but after adding some clips and getting the footage I forgot to get of the empty room, I made the short film get to 4 minutes and 55 seconds. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I had planned on editing on Adobe Premiere Pro, but unfortunately neither of my computers were able to support such a heavy program, so I ended up using CapCut after talking to my friends in the class, who mentioned they also had to resort to the same thing. This worked out really well, as it allowed me to work on the project during my spare time at school and when I was out of the house. 

    I split the the days up by priority, first focusing on the look and coloration of the short film and then focusing on sound. For coloring I made it so each color character was incredibly saturated, while Death was very undersaturated, but would slowly gain saturation and they also gained another colored aspect from the other characters. I messed around with a grainy filter here and there, and realized I didn't really like the look, so I kept the filter very minimal.

    As for the sound, this took the longest (almost two whole days). For the ending, I already knew what I wanted which was something very peaceful, yet intense. It wasn't hard to pick copyright free ambient music off of YouTube (where I got all of my sound effects). 

 

For Yellow's section, I decided a heartbeat in the background would be most fitting since they are always so worried about their physical "symptoms" and what they could mean, and as they began to panic more, the heartbeat gets faster. For Purple, since the character itself doesn't care about death, I figured I'd keep it simple and just add some outdoors noises to the background, since I had to remove them from the original clip since it was way too loud and drowning out Graesen's voice. 

    Green's section was by far the hardest as nothing seemed to fit right with the scene. I tried everything, from sad music, to no background at all, but nothing fit. I knew I needed audio in the background because it felt too empty, so I turned to my friend Grace who had taken this class last year for advice. I showed her, and couple of the people who were in the project what I had and asked what they thought. They liked it, but also didn't really know what to put for the background. Grace agreed that something was missing from Green's section. That's when my sister Mariana, who plays Green, suggested something like traffic noises. And so that's what I did. I made the background noise for Green's section be an auditory representation of Green reliving the car crash and moments after, with the sound of the car crashing and an ambulance in the distance. 

After sending the first draft to Ace and Gaby for some feedback, and making some final adjustments, like adding a zoom out animation to the end credits to make the empty room a little more visually interesting, it's safe to say I'm finally done! Overall, I loved how the film turned out and I am so proud of myself for what I've created. Getting this short film edited has been my main priority this past week, and I'm pretty sure my friends and family are ready to stop hearing me talk about it all the time. Still, I'm so excited to show everyone what I've created!

Final Group Meeting (oh my)

    My oh my the clock is ticking and the end is terrifyingly near. As we enter the last week for the project, we had one last group meeting to check on everyone. Its safe to say that overall, everyone in my group is doing well, and has a plan for where they are going. Same for me.

    Although not mentioned yet on my blog, I have started editing and have most of the film at least sequenced together. I tried to use Premier Pro at first, but my computer wasn't able to support it and would constantly shut on and off, so my next best option was to edit on my phone using Capcut (more on that later). But I mentioned to my group that I did have most of my project sequenced together, aside from a shot of the empty room that I forgot to get which I am getting later today, and the end credits. That being said, I am currently at a four minutes for my project, which has me a bit nervous, but I have a solution! In the end sequence, when the colors are flashing on death, when a color that matches a character appears, it will cut to a flash of the character to add time to my project. 

    As for social media, I told them I was planning on creating a banner post and some story posts for each character. For the post card, I mentioned highlighting Death and having a picture of them holding the flower like at the end. Tai mentioned a really cool idea that I'm thinking of doing of making the post card look like the death tarot card. Abby also mentioned a website that has royalty free sound effects and music that could be useful for my project called artlist.io.

    While the pressure is most definitely on, I feel confident that I'll be able to get everything done well!