The final project:

https://youtu.be/nTCrh0ELXZ0

My CCR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVkLPplSqAY&feature=youtu.be

Our film will be taking place in Detroit, Michigan. Detroit is the most "violent city in america", according to the FBI. Most crimes that occur in Detroit are gang related crimes, so we made sure to have our main characters report to a boss at the end of our intro. This makes our movie idea seem more realistic. A thought that usually goes through peoples heads when watching a similar movie is "Could this be happening right now?" And yes, it could be happening in Detroit.

We wanted to use the most violent city in America on purpose, we wanted to bring attention to the city and maybe even create a little awareness to the issues, which is a big possibility if it was an actual high budget film. Bringing attention to Detroit could actually lower the amount of violence and maybe even bring in some tourism.






Fisher, D. (2015, October 29). Detroit - pg.1. Retrieved April 07, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/pictures/mlj45jggj/1-detroit/

Baldas, T. (2017, September 25). Detroit is once again the most violent city in America, FBI says. Chief Craig disagrees. Retrieved April 15, 2018, from https://www.freep.com/story/news/2017/09/25/detroit-crime-violence/700443001/

Our film challenges many ideas that are portrayed in society. We use comedy to twist the image of the film from an action to a dark comedy. The main characters in our film are criminals. Usually criminals would usually be portrayed as heartless, desperate, etc.  but we wanted the audience to build a relationship with the characters. In most comedies intense scenes arent usually a main part of the movie. This kind of humor could easily be compared to Quentin Tarantinos Hateful Eight, a movie that featured a lot of violence, fellatio, and harsh language. Even though Quentin Tarantino's Hateful Eight had all these harsh elements, the movie still made me laugh even in the most gruesome of scenes, we hope to reach that point of film making.

The Hateful Eight (2015). (n.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2018, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3460252/

Gabe and I were curious as to how a big budget movie makes its way into theaters and how they are distributed, so we looked them up in class and found out the process.

If our movie were to be a full budgeted movie made professionally, we would have to sign an agreement with a distributing company and show them the movie. If it is deemed worthy of entering the movie theaters, the company will play the movie in theaters for a couple of weeks. 

After the movie is withdrawn from theaters, the distributing company can make blu-ray copies and sign with T.V. stations. Since our movie is not tv-pg, we would have to censor it or cut it in order to be movie appropriate. 

Gabe and I also think that in order to make our intro seem more professional, we would credit a fake production company in the beginning of our film.

Tyson, J. (2000, September 18). How Movie Distribution Works. Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-distribution.htm
Film distribution. (2018, March 31). Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_distribution

In my opinion, dialogue in student made films have always looked mediocre. I do not think that there should be a lot of dialogue because most student actors can not make a conversation look believable.Writing believable dialogue with good actors takes time, so we took some time to thin of some dialogue and decided to have a intro with a small amount of dialogue.
Dark comedies usually rely on the dialogue, so we might have to change the sequence of our story a little...

We also had a discussion about how we were going to film the intro. Since we both only have our phones and our ideas, I decided to look up some tips for low budget films. We will most likely film using mostly natural light, borrow a good camera, and most importantly put the story in a higher priotity than the cosmetics.

7 Tips for Low-Budget Filmmaking. (2017, May 09). Retrieved April 13, 2018, from https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/7-tips-low-budget-filmmaking/
Dialogue. (n.d.). Retrieved March 26, 2018, from http://www.elementsofcinema.com/screenwriting/dialogue.htm

In order for our actors to look like they are in character, we had to work on some costume ideas. A costume is meant to reflect upon a character's personality, character, socioeconomic status, etc.

We made sure that our costumes were black costumes because it is easier to match, and most actors that we cast have black clothing. We have to take into account if the characters are wealthy in order to determine whether or not to rip the clothes, or choose fancier clothes, etc.

Gabe has been asking his family and people that he casts for their ideas and their feedback on our intro ideas, so I told my friends that are also into good films and received plenty of feedback, Gabe and I might change the idea to our project.


Costume design. (2018, March 06). Retrieved March 21, 2018, from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costume_design

I noticed that the lighting in our movie had to be a certain way in order to create a dark humor vibe. Gabe and I discussed how we can create this atmosphere without confusing the audience and to look more professional.
We wanted to use high key lighting during scenes with dark endings or twists and low-key lighting in order to create mystery or suspense. Gabe and I looked up some guides on lighting and found some articles that helped us during our filming.
During our outdoor scenes we realized that we have less options than those given to us on the first article that we came across so we looked up specific tips to make the sunlight work for us.
Gabe thought that finding guns for our scenes that contain guns would be a problem but we resolved the problem when we found bb guns that look very much like real guns.








Hardy, R. (2014, October 28). Here Are a Few Simple Tips to Make Your Exterior Lighting Shine. Retrieved March 13, 2018, from https://nofilmschool.com/2013/11/simple-tips-daytime-exterior-shine

Lighting 101: A Quick Guide for Lighting Film. (2016, September 13). Retrieved March 13, 2018, from https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/basic-light-placements/

Cinematography. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2018, from http://www.masteringfilm.com/set-lighting-fundamentals/

For our filming Gabe and I wanted to use places such as Peacemound park in order to make our scenes for the forest.

So Gabe called me at midnight and had an amazing idea for a movie. We decided to ditch our last movie because we ran into too many issues, such as length, and locations.

The new movie idea is meant to begin like any regular action movie, its meant to have elements of violence and drugs, and intense music to match it. After the two main characters get ready for a mission they enter an elevator and before it closes, an elderly lady walks into the elevator last second and they share an awkward scene. We will make sure to swap the action-esque themes into comedic elements for the rest of the scene. I told Gabe that dialogue isnt really a high school actors best suit, so there wont be a lot of dialogue.

Gabe and I decided for props that we were gonna use our houses and Nerf guns that are spray painted down, we have a couple of Nerf guns just laying around. We thought it wouldn't look convincing so we looked up some videos on them and found it to look pretty realistic, especially with our "budget".

On the recommended page I started clicking around and found some really cool stuff. I found a video of a man that custom built a Nerf gun and made it look insane. He buffed the gun and spray painted it to make it look really realistic.

I think that even though we have a low budget well do fine with makeshift props and what not.

In order to be believable, Getting the right actors in my opinion is one of the most important aspects to a well made movie, show, etc.

TV shows that I see on Netflix are mostly boring, cringe worthy, and almost seem drawn out. I saw this happening when I saw a couple of episodes of Santa Clarita Diet. This show has a great plot and could have been done well, if it weren't for the actors that make it seem as if they are role-playing, and not actually representing a character. The punchlines are sometimes over exaggerated by the actors and sometimes the actors are just unnecessarily loud.
I feel the actors simply ruined a great idea for a movie, shame. In the case of Zathura: A Space Adventure, the opposite seems to happen. The movie is clearly trying to coat tail from Jumanji's success and uses the same idea of a board game that comes to life. Usually im not fond for unoriginality, but, the actors in Zathura made me enjoy it even more than Jumanji. My love for space might have created a bias towards it, but I believe the actors really sold that they were outer space and actually in a disaster of a situation.
In the Netflix series, Stranger Things, I believed that the kid actors were not believable. A controversial opinion, but it is still my opinion.

I was pondering on what sound components I could use in a dark comedy so I did some research.  I learned about how to score a comedy and decided to stick with those components to keep in mind while I edit the intro. My brother has made sounds for me before since he is an artist that has made many songs. He is into EDM and goes to almost every festival, because of that I can use him to make the sounds that we need and not worry about the copyrights of it as well.
We also intend to Foley any other sounds that we wont be able to make and to help us we decided to use a guide online.


The guide will help us figure out specific noises such as an arrow flying by "Use a thin bamboo stick, such as the type used to hold up plants in a garden. Whip it past the microphone.".





The Guide To Sound Effects. (n.d.). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from http://www.epicsound.com/sfx/

How to Score Comedy. (n.d.). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-score-comedy--audio-20733

In our groups we discussed our various ideas that we made in our individual groups. We criticized each others ideas and suggested new ones. Gabe and I were told in both of our groups that our ideas would take to long and so we had to decide which scenes were irrelevant or how else we could portray our ideas.

Since we needed to figure out how to write this flashback, I decided to look up how to make a flashback scene. I found an article that shows you the 7 steps and goes in depth into each rule.
This article helped me to understand how to organize our flashback scene in order to make the most sense to the audience.

How to Write a Flashback Scene: 7 Key Steps. (2017, July 11). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://www.nownovel.com/blog/incorporate-flashbacks-flashbacks-into-a-story/

Gabe and I made the storyboard to our movie opening, here’s what we came up with so far:



The purpose of the story board is to help us when doing the filming of the project. It keeps us organized and prepared. It also will keep us prepared instead of winging it on the set, like we have done before. In the story board it shows how it goes from the man to the flashback, we decided to cut this later because it was time consuming. We wanted to use irony in the scenes and use dark humor to make the scenes funny.

When I was a young boy in elementary school I use to come home and watch t.v. for an hour (like scheduled) and I always seemed to like a certain show named the Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. The show was notoriously known for its dark comedy and twisted scenes. After the show was cancelled I didn't know what to watch so I turned to Youtube where I found my biggest influence in my life, Chris O'Neill. He was one of the best animators on Youtube. His humor consisted of the darkest themes paired with friendly and colorful animations. In Leo and Satan, a show by Chris O'Neill, the series features a friendly story about how a child prayed to God for a friend, and got Lucifer himself to be the candidate. This unfortunate twist creates a happy atmosphere paired with satanic and graphic scenes, which create a perfect dark comedy. Another inspiration to my mindset was Zach Hadel, another retired animator that contributed a lot to my humor. He was the owner of PsychicPebbles on Youtube where he created many parodies on society, such as in HOW TO BE A YOUTUBE FAMOUS VBLOGGER, where he made fun of many famous Youtubers (at the time). Their parody videos has led me to love dark comedies ever since laying my eyes on their channels.
Thanks to the inspiration of Zach and Chris, I believe that creating the intro for our dark comedy film will be interesting to make...

We began the storyboard today. Gabe and I began to talk about how our story would unite all of its elements to create a thriller. Halfway through the story board we kept coming up with flaws and continuity errors in our ideas, so we made a compromise at the end of the class to make our thriller a dark comedy instead. We decided this would be a better idea because me and Gabe really like dark comedies, so I did some research on some dark comedies that could be similar to our film.
I really liked the idea of a film that resembled Pulp Fiction, but within the budget that two students in high school could do. I looked up lists of dark comedies to see which ones I've seen.

Welcome to my blog

My name is Nicholas Sivaji and this is my blog about my intro for Aice Media class. My partner and I have begun brainstorming ideas for our intro. So far we have come up with many ideas however, many of them are bad. We have figured out the genre to our film will be a thriller and we began research on it. We plan to challenge ourselves by learning the elements to making the audience feel in suspense.





















Pribbenow, B. (n.d.). A Brief History of the Thriller Genre. Retrieved March 06, 2018, from https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/a-brief-history-of-the-thriller-genre