Film Link:
BLACKOUT

Reflection:

Working collaboratively on BLACKOUT was overall a really good experience. I was lucky enough to work with a super committed and organised group to produce something we are all happy with. In some of my previous projects, individual roles haven’t been as clear, so having dedicated production positions from the very beginning made a really huge difference to our effectiveness. I found that having someone definitively in charge of the project also helped a lot with keeping the vision clear and ensuring that we all knew what was expected from our roles. 

One major drawback of the film, which we were able to address effectively during the editing process, was the performance of our lead actress. During filming it was clear she hadn’t prepared much, if at all for the role, even needing her phone on the desk during the therapy interview scene in order to read her lines. She also struggled to provide the more emotionally intense performance we wanted, even at times disagreeing with directions we attempted to give her. This unfortunately resulted in an increased necessity for creative editing choices to try and generate the desired effect. This involved a couple of moments where we needed to use over the shoulder shots of her dialogue rather than the close-up more emotionally resonant shots that we just couldn’t get, as well as additional layered effects to lean further into the character’s disorientation rather than intense emotion. Our film emulates the wider horror genre’s use of the fear of the past and memory through Eshe’s PTSD inspired experiences (Howell and Green, 2024), which I think heavily relies on a clear performance reflective of the emotional meaning of the featured memories. Although, I think that in watching the film, the flatter and less emotional expressions read as an intentional creative character choice as opposed to something lacking from our work, which it sometimes felt like during post-production. I think that as a team we handled this challenge pretty well, getting the most we could out from what we had and I hope that we all feel as happy with the film as I do. 

One thing I might expand on however was our coverage of the protest scene. I think that our planning was really effective in making that scene work within the film, and I might be a little biased, but I wish we could have had more shots of the protest signs to more directly signify the social and political intentions of the film. I was really happy with how the signs look, as my biggest focus during pre-production was getting the signs and messages right in accordance with the position of our film and the real world signs I was taking inspiration from. To me this reflected the core of the realistic horror we wanted to convey, as Kawin discusses, the presence of ‘real’ in horror connects audiences to the authentic “common experience” of real fear (Kawin, 2012). While our film centres around a fictitious protest, the circumstances and setup stem from real events which elevates our ability to convey horror. We likely would have been able to show slightly more of the signs without major structural changes to the film, but unfortunately our best take for the scene features an extra accidentally holding her sign upside-down in the front row, so we decided to zoom in and focus on the intimate emotional position of Eshe in the scene, rather than the scale of the protest itself. I think this was the correct choice overall but as I said I am biased because I was proud of my signs. 

Reflecting on the screening of our final work, the screen brightness became an issue as some of the hallway scenes were too dark to see what was going on. This was very annoying to me at the time as we had played our cuts on various screens in the editing booths and classroom monitors when displaying rough cuts, and this hadn’t been a notable issue. It was particularly frustrating as the audience were unable to see key moments like our shadow hand effect, which I think took away from the atmosphere we intended during those scenes. While I do think that our work was effective in creating our desired psychological vibe, imagining myself as just an audience member while watching our film left me spending more time trying to decipher the darker-than-intended shots rather than remaining immersed.
I do however think that the sound design worked really effectively in the lecture theatre context to create the atmosphere in places where the visuals didn’t meet our goals. Sound in horror has the ability to generate additional unseen meaning and inspire fear by delivering a “heightened physical or physiological jolt to the viewer” (Kattelman, 2022). I think our film demonstrates this effectively, especially in the opening segment’s use of a soundscape to position the audience within the psychological context of our narrative.  

Overall, working on BLACKOUT was a really great experience and I am happy with the film we were able to produce.

References:

Howell, A., & Green, S. (Eds.). (2024). Haunted histories and troubled pasts : Twenty-first-century screen horror and the historical imagination. Bloomsbury Academic & Professional.

Kattelman, B. (2022). The sound of evil: How the sound design of Hereditary manifests the unseen and triggers fear. Horror Studies, 13(1), 133–148.

Kawin, B. F. (2012). Horror and the Horror Film. Anthem Press.

BLACKOUT Film Link:
BLACKOUT

Production Paperwork:
Link

4x Weekly Blog Posts:

Week 8:

This week I started developing my production documents, including the mood boards for the apartment set, the therapist’s office and the protest signs, as well as the prop list for the first version of the script. Initially I struggled to create a mood board for the apartment as I wanted to emulate what I pictured when I thought about people with agoraphobia. In my head I pictured very cluttered and messy homes akin to hoarders, but after some research I discovered that I knew nothing at all about agoraphobia. However I decided that regardless I wanted the cluttered vibe to remain as I thought it would make the space feel lived in but not particularly comfortable. Eventually I decided it would be easiest to look for shots with what I wanted in terms of items and set dressing and then alter the colours to create the right mood. Overall I’m not sure if I ended up finding the mood boarding process for the apartment super helpful.
In contrast however, I did find the mood boarding super helpful for the protest sign props. I think for the protest scene to work really effectively, the signs are a key factor to legitimising the crowd and defining what the protest’s goals actually were. For this I collected a variety of images from Black Lives Matter protests with signs I felt had the most effective messages and looks for the purposes of staging a clearly intentioned fake protest. Through this research I also decided to replan my approach to the construction of the signs. When first imagining them I had pictured stereotypical signs on sticks, but across the images on my mood board it was clear they aren’t as common as I initially expected.

Week 9:
This week we completed camera tests for the shadow monster / creeping shadow effect. We initially had trouble working out what lighting equipment to use, as well as what the shadow shape was actually going to depict. At first we wanted a humanoid figure as a more direct ‘monster’, but after testing with people casting the shadow, as well as attempting to use Power Ranger action figures, we decided to instead opt for just the shadow of a hand creeping up behind the character. We felt that this was more effective as it both enhanced the creepy introspective nature of the horror effect, allowing it not to rely on a significant ‘monster’, while also maintaining ease of production and the ability to do the effect entirely in camera.
I also created all of the protest sign props prior to shooting the protest scene next Wednesday. I started by finally planning all of the messages, taking inspiration from real signs on my mood boards as well as documenting my ideas for the materials necessary for each sign. Physically creating the signs ended up being a really simple process, after the first test one I made and the decision to opt for simpler construction more emblematic of real protests, it ended up being primarily a challenge of trying to effectively and authentically display the messages. I was really happy with how the collection turned out and I am looking forward to using them with the extras next week.

Week 10:
This week we completed all of the shooting for BLACKOUT across two main filming days and one additional day on set for equipment and production design setup. On Wednesday we shot the protest scene on Bowen Street with our super helpful extras and lead. After concerns last week I got lucky and found a giant christmas gift bag that we had sitting around at home to transport all of the protest signs easily. Since we were shooting so early in the morning to avoid disrupting regular campus activity, I also had a very easy time on the train with the extra luggage. While filming, the signs really assisted in blocking the shot and I think also helped give the extras a better image of what they were expected to do. I was really happy with how the crowd looked visually with help from the signs. Prior to starting filming I was a little concerned that the crowd would look thin and not give the effect we needed, but after rehearsal with everyone it was clear that our planning had paid off.
On Friday we coordinated to meet on campus to collect all of our gear and travel together to Olivia’s house to prep everything we could before the main filming day on Saturday. Upon arrival we worked to block out all external light coming into the house and I dressed the desk area and bedroom to make it appear cluttered with all of the additional items I had gathered last week. I was pretty happy with how the room ended up appearing, especially with the contrasting lighting setup from the other scenes around the house, as I used warmer light to signify how the desk is Eshe’s only persevering link to the outside world.

Week 11:
On Saturday we completed all of the primary filming at Olivia’s house after transporting and setting up all the equipment and set decoration on Friday. Due to some issues with transportation, we started shooting a little later than intended, but despite this we stuck to our shooting schedule really effectively and were able to capture everything we needed with very few major hiccups. Our considerable planning prior to Saturday really paid off as we were able to find time to experiment with a few of the more complex lighting ideas in the hallway without worrying too much about losing time for other major shots.
Despite the technical ease of shooting we did have a little bit of trouble with our actor. Throughout the day it was clear she hadn’t prepared as much as we expected, at times asking to have her phone just out of frame in order to read her lines as she didn’t have them memorised. She also argued against Olivia about directions for line reads, only performing the line the way we wanted one time before stopping the take early anyways and not returning to it. This was super frustrating for the whole crew as she slowed down some aspects of shooting and wasn’t able to provide the quality of performance we were hoping for. Overall however, we are all really happy with how the shots appear as we head into post-production this week.

• Research (400 words):

My script, titled Reflected, is a psychological horror set in a corporate office that uses the unsettling nature of reflections and liminal spaces to explore the loss of individuality in corporate environments. 

My idea takes a lot of thematic and visual inspiration from Ben Stiller’s Severance (2022 – ). The show is a thriller that explores concepts of identity and work-life balance as a critique of modern workplace culture and corporate control. Stiller makes use of the media and horror staple of the evil corporation, in order to immediately draw links to audiences’ expectations of malicious business entities and explore the social expectations of limited personal individuality in similar environments. For my script I wanted to focus on the personal story within these types of corporations. By limiting the scope of my narrative to a single person encouraged to limit his individuality, I imply the nature of the company rather than showing it directly. This echoes Croft’s (2024) analysis of the ease for modern creators to establish an evil or oppressive corporate entity through audiences’ existing expectations.

My frequent use of the hallway setting within my script is directly inspired by Severance’s recurring and iconic hallways. The colourless and seemingly endless maze that makes up the show’s primary setting invokes a strong sense of isolation and confinement, this is used within the show to further its message of the dehumanising nature of corporate work and control. I wanted to emulate this both to invoke the same isolating feeling as well as establish the workplace environment as a critical source of the narrative’s message and horror. My use of reflections as a source of horror also draws on Bernard Rose’s Candyman (1992), which uses mirrors as both a literal and symbolic portal for its ideological discussions.

Another influence for my script is Jordan Peele’s Us (2019), as it uses the horror idea of doppelgangers to craft its message of inequality and privilege. As discussed by Fonseca (2007), doppelgangers and other forms of the ‘evil-twin’ across horror media create an uncanny sense of unease or eeriness, providing a valuable way to explore a character’s sense of self and psychology within a horror film. In my script, I took a lot from Peele’s depiction of the confrontation between his protagonist Adelaide and her ‘tether’ Red. I wanted to echo his concept of a discussion between a person and an alternate or ‘better’ version of themselves as a symbol of the false ‘improvement’ following my protagonist’s replacement. My script and Peele’s Us both utilise duplicates and their surrounding psychology to invoke characters to reflect on their actions and behaviours through the unsettling imagery of talking to one’s self. 

Crofts, P. (2024). Evil corporations in horror fiction. In P. Crofts (Ed.), Evil corporations: Law, culpability and regulation (pp. 125–140). Routledge.

Fonseca, T. (2007). The doppelgänger. In S. T. Joshi (Ed.), Icons of horror and the supernatural: An encyclopedia of our worst nightmares (pp. 225–253). Greenwood Press.

• Reflection (300 words):

I initially had a lot of trouble trying to get started on an idea for my script. During the first few weeks of semester I focussed on concepts and themes that personally interested me in other horror media, mainly grief and isolation, but I struggled a lot with trying to build a story around them. The idea for my script eventually came from sitting at my work in the drab office environment and considering a story of how similar environments and harsh corporate cultures devalue individual personality in exchange for ‘perfect’ workers. I liked this idea as it allowed me to use the ideas of isolation and apply them to a more purposeful message, inspired by my recent watch of Severance. The idea to base the concept in mirrors and reflections stemmed from there as a way to make the character feel alone in the weird other world and create a haunting presence through unsettling imagery. 

I was really happy with the idea of using reflections and manipulating them as the main horror concept throughout the script. I knew that it would be a pretty strong technical challenge but after a bit of research into how other films do these kinds of effects I was confident that I would be able to pull it off. However I feel that my final script doesn’t make the most of my initial concept. I think that before writing I pictured much more unsettling background fear for the audience than the more abrupt linear and antagonist focussed narrative I ended up with. I think that this mainly came from wanting to heighten the horror across the short runtime, it was pointed out to me that the audience would figure out the scenario pretty quickly so the film would need to build from there to remain scary.

• Script: Reflected

Write about what drew you to this studio? What you think this studio is and what are you interested in exploring?

The main reason I put this studio at the top of my preferences was because I had heard from previous students that they enjoyed their time in it and got a lot out of the practical practice it offered. While I personally wouldn’t consider myself the biggest fan of horror movies, I’ve always been interested in their production and the different avenues of creativity they offer. I think horror is a really effective way to explore political and social concepts in a memorable and impactful format that sticks with the audience both through its concepts, as well as the lasting effect a good scare can leave on viewers. Through this class I’d like to expand my knowledge of horror as an influential genre and explore how it impacts audiences. I’d also just like to watch a bunch of horror movies to finally decide whether or not I am a fan of the genre. 

In this studio I hope to develop my production skills and work towards creating an effective short film that I can be proud of. I don’t think that horror is the best genre for my personal style, but I want to diversify my abilities and work outside of my comfort zone in order to become a better, more well rounded creator. I’m inspired by movies like Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) and the Philippou’s Talk to Me (2022), for their ability to weave intricate detail into every element of their creation, telling impactful stories that work to criticise the social systems and issues they function within, and in response to. While I know aiming for something like that is a little ambitious, I’d like to emulate the focus on a specific social concept or issue in order to provide a successful and memorable piece of psychological horror.

Choose one of the workshop activities (in class or homework) that we’ve done so far.
Write a reflective post about this activity

In week three we completed a workshop activity in class wherein we got the chance to experiment with cameras and lighting equipment to create horror using RMIT Campus as our setting. My group struggled a lot with deciding what to try and film, as well as where to do it, so we eventually opted to use the studio classroom to create a simple shot of a person walking towards the camera in the dark.
For me, this ended up acting mostly as a practice in setting up lighting and experimenting with how limited lights can help to augment a space on camera. We had a challenging time trying to work out how best to darken the space, as we were unable to close some of the blinds out of the room. I think this served as a good practice in making the most out of a set while filming, and how to change or augment planned approaches in order to fit what is achievable in a specific set.
I had a lot of fun practicing with the lighting equipment. I’ve used the lights a few times in the past, but never with the intention of making a room appear darker than when we started. After lots of tests, we eventually experimented with using cardboard to block out light from the LED panels, and I think effectively created the unsettling effect we were going for.
After that class, we saw another group closing the curtains on the outside of the room to block out all of the outside light, which served as another annoying lesson in scoping out the inside and outside of a set while shooting to really make the most out of it. In future shooting experiments I’ll hopefully remember this and also hopefully be able to create a self-contained short narrative test, rather than just a single test shot.

Essay Video:

Across this studio I have learnt a lot about the creative process behind comedy and the challenges that come with being funny on screen. I really enjoyed working on the final project, wherein my group produced our reality show inspired short film about Santa and Mrs Claus going to couples therapy, entitled Nicholas and Elaine. I believe overall that we were successful in creating an effective and funny film about the other human side of Christmas. 

My personal favourite aspect of the film was the initial concept itself. Approaching characters like Santa and Mrs Claus as real people with emotions and relationship struggles outside of their mythos was a really good source of comedy and allowed us to not rely on the expected Christmas puns in order to produce a funny film. The pairing of Mr and Mrs Claus in a television therapy setting also follows Trapp’s (2022) discussion of the unexpected connection, as we find a couple in surprising need of the help. A key goal of the film was to establish the context and then the comic frame efficiently. We had a lot of discussions about how the film would start – whether we’d just jump straight into the action with the opening shot of Santa and Mrs Claus in therapy, or an intro sequence to first introduce the reality show reiteration. We ended up deciding upon the TV intro version, and I think it works effectively to establish context and the comedic frame together.

I think that the problem that stands out to me the most in the film was the issue with the footage from the second camera. A couple days after shooting we discovered that all of the footage from one of the cameras appeared very grainy and desaturated due to an incorrect setting or issue with the equipment that we didn’t notice on the day. I tried for a while to get the most out of it without making it appear even lower quality by playing with colour settings. In the end we decided that the best thing to do would be to instead alter the colour grading on the good footage to match the second camera. This was a tough decision as initially I had wanted to stick closer to the form and reiterate the highly saturated and attention grabbing colours of most reality TV. I was worried that the duller colour and the bluer hues would make everything look like it was supposed to be more dramatic than funny and would take away from the established comic frame . If I were to continue working on the film I would want to either reshoot the affected footage, or spend a lot more time tweaking the colour grading to try and make sure it is as consistent as possible across all the changes. I think I would also lean a bit further into the Christmas puns and jokes. I like that we stuck to the form and considered our characters as real people – not just holiday symbols – but I think we could have included a few more admittedly cheap jokes to make the most of the audience’s expectations upon seeing Santa in a film.

From my experience on this project I’ve learned how important it is to have a clear and strong main idea heading into a film. As I discussed earlier, the concept was my favourite aspect of our film and I felt that especially during the script writing process, having a clear theme allowed us to take the story wherever we thought was best. Basing the concept off of a clear premise allowed our brainstorming to have a solid focus (Bent, 2009). In past projects I’ve struggled with nailing down story details because I wasn’t as clear on the main concept I wanted my work to follow, but with this film we were able to have conversations about how our version of the characters work within the bizarre Santa lore without losing sight of what the film was focussed on. Since our story was so clear during writing it became more about the comic personalities of our characters rather than pushing the narrative forward, similar to Toplyn’s (2014) approach to sketch writing focussing on the comic character and their goals.
Another key thing I learnt was the importance of being able to cut good ideas if they don’t have a clear place in the film, rather than trying to force the film to include everything. Initially we had written a scene where the crew of our reality show had acquired a collection of clips of Santa and Elaine’s home life, which functioned essentially as standalone Christmas sketches within our larger film. During writing we really liked this scene as it enabled us to explore more visual humor than the Couples Therapy format usually allows. Unfortunately however, we were well over our goal runtime and the scene didn’t contribute to the main narrative, so we decided to cut it entirely. I think this was ultimately the right decision, as difficult as it was to say goodbye to seeing Santa snort lines of cocoa powder as he succumbs to his cookie addiction. In future projects I will be better able to remain ruthless and honest with myself about what works and what doesn’t in a film, and how ideas contribute to the overall goal of a project, aside from individual interests.

Working collaboratively on this project was a good experience. I was initially worried about the size of the group as I wanted everyone to be able to contribute equally, and I was concerned that too many conflicting ideas and voices would slow rather than assist our process. While I don’t think our teamwork was perfect, I think we maintained consistent group cohesion on main ideas and each completed our assigned roles effectively. However, I think that the most effective part of our collaboration came from when we broke off into smaller groups to complete tasks, especially the script.

References

Bent, M. (2009). Types of Sketches. In The Everything Guide to Comedy Writing : From stand-up to sketch – all you need to succeed in the world of comedy (pp. 99-114). F+W Media.

Toplyn, J. (2014). In Comedy writing for late-night tv : how to write monologue jokes, desk pieces, sketches, parodies, audience pieces, remotes, and other short-form comedy.

Trapp, M. (2022). The Basics #2: Surprising Truth. Chuffah.

This week we completed the rest of the shooting process. On Monday we met at Bonnie’s house where she had prepped the therapist’s office set and waiting room. Once everyone arrived we set up the cameras and mics and checked that everything was working before we started filming. Overall the shooting process went pretty smoothly. While it was very time consuming and we ended up using the full day, we had planned to take longer than expected so it wasn’t too much of a problem. To make sure the length of the shoot day didn’t change the lighting conditions too much we blocked out the natural light from the window and only used the artificial lights so that we could control it and maintain visual consistency throughout shooting. Because we used two cameras we also didn’t have to do much work in moving equipment for any of the main shots, we were able to just run through the scenes quickly while capturing everything we needed. After we finished with all the scripted shots we got some general b-roll and extra footage to cut to throughout and took some photos for the epilogue segment and posters. I think being there in my Santa costume made the acting a little easier as I could in a way hide behind the fake beard and just deliver the lines in the way I pictured when writing them with the others. The whole group was happy with what we were able to shoot and I am looking forward to getting it done. 

On Thursday we met in the editing suites and started the post-production process. We ended up spending that entire time just labelling all the files and syncing some of the footage with the other audio sources. Nick also made the first poster for the project and the first People’s Magazine front page for the epilogue slide-show. During this we discovered that there was an issue with all the second camera footage resulting in it appearing very desaturated. Unfortunately we have no choice but to use this footage so we are going to have to do a lot of work in altering the colours of both the affected shots and the normal ones. I think this should be fine as all the b-roll was unaffected, so the bleak couples therapy setting will be enhanced by its juxtaposition with the bright normal colours of the shots we cut towards. While very annoying, it shouldn’t take away much from the final video.

This week we had our Work in Progress presentation for the rest of the class. Since we hadn’t had the chance to film anything yet we decided to just do a table read of the first two scenes. I think it went pretty well and we got some valuable feedback from the class resulting in some key changes to the script. Most notably was the suggestion to give Santa a more defined reason to act the way he does in order to break up the repetitive nature of Elaine’s complaints.

Prior to the presentation we decided to cut scene two from the script entirely. From discussions in class we were worried that we needed to cut so much time from the script and we were struggling with small line changes and shortening the script word by word. Scene two was also one of the more involved scenes in terms of shooting as it required a few more locations and props. While we all really liked the jokes in the scene we wanted to make sure that we could get the most out of the rest of the script without sacrificing story for the sake of smaller bits.

After the presentations we had planned to begin filming with the only scene not set in the therapist’s office. Initially we had expected this to be a relatively easy process, but due to an evacuation drill on campus we were delayed by quite a bit and had to rush through setting up the scene and equipment. Because neither of us were in the scene, me and Bonnie took charge of the shooting and audio. I think I would have preferred to postpone shooting the scene to a different day so that we could have spent more time working everything out rather than rushing to just get the takes before we needed to return the equipment. It also would have been relatively easy to coordinate an additional shooting day as we were filming on campus during class time. Despite the limited time we did get the entire scene done and we were all happy with how it turned out.

This week we had no class on Monday, so myself, Jay and Nick took the opportunity to finish off the remaining scenes prior to our Thursday class. I think the draft script turned out really well, although it is a little long. We estimated it to be about 20~ minutes of a script when we were aiming for around 15 minutes. We spent some time cutting down lines and shortening and revising some sections but ultimately we decided to show the draft script to the rest of the group keeping it longer so that we could collectively decide what was strongest and what could be cut. I also personally was pretty biased towards keeping jokes that we had written in, so I thought that the rest of the group’s more objective perspective of what was strongest would be more helpful. 

However when we got to class on Thursday we decided that our time would be better spent with everyone reading through the script together while swapping roles in order to determine who might be best to cast as each character. Usually I am not super comfortable acting, but through this course and because I really liked the script we had written I decided to put my hat in the ring and offer to play Santa. We also gave the role of the therapist to Hugo, and the role of Elaine to Bonnie with the other roles spread across the group. I am pretty happy with this cast and am looking forward to the shooting process from an in front of camera point of view. 

Overall at this stage of developing this project I am really happy with the collective work of the group. I think the script and its ideas are funny and I am looking forward to seeing it all come together as we move into the next stage.

This week we presented our group’s main ideas to the class and asked for feedback to help us decide on which one to pursue. We landed on exploring Nick’s Santa and Mrs Claus’ Couples Therapy idea as it was the most popular and we determined it would be the most achievable given our limited time and budget. We then started working together on story specifics and ideas but it became a slow process with so many people contributing ideas, so we decided to shift and first allocate roles so that we could work more efficiently. We decided to allocate the script writing process to Nick, Jay and myself with the goal of having a finished draft script by week 9. 

I really enjoyed the script writing process, while it was a little slow at first once we planned out the scenes we were able to flow and write a really solid first three scenes of the script and equally solid plans for the final two scenes. We had some trouble deciding how closely we wanted to reiterate the form of the reality show couples therapy premise as we had tons of small ideas for visual jokes that worked better as self contained Santa related skits like cutaway gags. Eventually we decided on explaining these smaller clips by establishing that the producers of the show collaborated with Santa’s elves to acquire at home footage of the main characters. Through this we were able to tell the therapy story and include the smaller jokes that we liked without damaging the premise of the project. I am a little concerned that his scene might not flow as well as we hope it does but I really like the jokes throughout it and think it is worth including. Overall while the script isn’t quite finished on the time that we wanted I am confident in it and am looking forward to showing the rest of the group.