My Final Title Sequence

My CCR Video

CCR Script

Hi, my name is Katelyn wagner, and you’re about to watch my CCR for the title sequence of our thriller film “Lucid Elucidations.” I took on the role of Cinematographer my group, which consisted of my group members Bianca Raby (production designer), Pierce Thomas (diretor) and Ben Isaacs (editor). During the production phase of our project, we mainly followed typical thriller genre conventions due to the fact that we wanted to make our film as creepy as possible without stretching too far from the basics of thriller. For our setting, we filmed in a mock hospital on our school camps. Hospitals have been successful settings for thriller movies in the past, such as the critically acclaimed 2017 thriller film “Get Out” which contained a hospital scene towards the end of the movie. Hospitals, which are directly associated with death and despair, gave our film the instant spooky vibe we were aiming for. When filming, I found it best to obtain a lot of shots from behind our actor, Robert. Doing so makes the audience feel as if someone is watching and following him as the title sequence goes on, which is later proven to be true towards the end of the title sequence when we can see an on-screen antagonist/shadow figure attack Robert. Another common camera shot often used in thriller films are over the shoulder shots, which I filmed numerous times during production. Over the shoulder shots are very effective for building tension and fear, because they put the audience directly in the action of the characters on screen. It makes them feel as if they are experiencing the same fearful events our character is, which is the feeling I want the audience to be exposed to when watching my film. During the editing stage, we added on a blue filter to our clips, due to the fact that the lighting at school had previously been too warm to give off the suspenseful and eerie vibe that we were aiming for. The blue tone reduces the happiness of the scene and makes the character much more vulnerable to scary events, such as the attack from the shadow figure. The pacing and rhythm of our film remained roughly the same throughout the title sequence. In the beginning and middle, it felt slow and steady so as to tell the audience our character is exploring his surroundings and getting used to them. Towards the end, however, the pacing suddenly speeds up once Robert is attacked by the shadow figure. After he dropped his computer, Ben used a flicker effect to dramatize the events happening on screen. This allowed the speed of events to feel faster, which is how we wanted to convey to the audience that our character was suddenly in a state of panic. This, simultaneously, evokes panic in the viewers as well. We also used a combination of musical stings during climatic parts of the title sequence, including when the dummy was reveled behind the curtain, and after the attack of the shadow figure. Musical stings are especially important in thriller films because they dramatise important moments in the film, making the scary parts louder and more aggressive for viewers, thus creating more fear. In terms of social group and representation, our film challenged typical modes of representation in thriller films. Our actor, who is a male, was portrayed as the victim, while a mysterious female shadow figure was the aggressor and antagonist. This completely switches up typical representations of gender, as females are almost always portrayed as easy targets and victims in thriller, while men are the stronger antagonists, including examples of movies such as The Boy (2016) and Split (2016). Along with that, Robert, who is African-American, was casted as the lead role in our thriller film. This is a very uncommon thing to be seen in the thriller genre, as white males or females typically take the lead in thriller, but we chose to challenge that normality.









Our film will be a low-budget indie film produced by the independent production company BlumHouse productions. BlumHouse specializes in making thriller films on low budgets, such as Truth or Dare, which was released in 2018 with a low budget of 3.5 million. This will work in our favor as we are high school students and won’t be able to accumulate a high budget for the film. As with most indie films, Lucid Elucidations will first be released at film festivals such as Sundance to gain an audience and promote its popularity. If things go well at the film festival, we hope that it will gain enough attention to be picked up for a wide theatrical release, which could help us make a large profit if the customers like our product. We could create our own teaser trailers before theatrical release, considering we might not have enough money to pay another company to do it for us. By uploading these trailers onto popular social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, we will be able to reach out to our target audience. This group consists of young women aged 18-24 years old, because 57% of young females prefer to watch thriller movies versus the lower 43% of young males who do. This younger audience will be easy to reach out to on social media platforms. Along with that, a younger audience is more likely than older generations to enjoy watching a film that consists of twists and suspense, making it easy for our target audience to want to watch our film.









Before starting this project, the closest thing to a camera that I had ever truly used was the one built into my iPhone. I had owned a Canon Rebel T3i for a few years prior to the creation of this film, but I had never actually taken a picture on it, much less understand how to work it in general. After deciding I wanted to be cinematographer, I had dedicated time into learning how to film on my Canon through sources such as YouTube and Google. Now that post production is over, I can proudly say I learned how to use many of the functions on the Canon. I started with the basics of learning how to actually record a video, and advanced all the way to controlling exposure and aperture manually and even learning how to record a rack focus. I also learned a lot about the importance of limiting the amount of times a video file is transferred, due to the risk of its resolution or quality being substantially lowered. This is why we mainly kept all 132 video clips saved in folders on my computer, and would transfer most files via flash drive, to help maintain video quality. Before starting this project, I would watch movies in theatres without having any idea of how much work went into the movie making process. Though I don’t want to call any stage of the film-making process “easy”, I will say I found pre-production to be the least difficult. The production stage required lots of dedication to acquire all of the shots necessary and making sure we obtained things such as continuity since we had to shoot over multiple days.I learned that the production stage is much more difficult than it seems, because factors such as creating the right lighting and filming on multiple cameras at once to get various angles is a hard task to achieve. These were many important elements to the production stage that I never knew existed before I began this project. Along with that, I had never realized how vital post production, or editing, was. Without editing, we would have never been able to arrange the shots in the correct order, add color corrections or even add our music, to name a few. Editing is the stage in the process where emotions are created for the audience to experience, which is something that the pre-production & production stages cannot achieve alone. Editing also proved to be the most time-consuming stage, which came to a surprise as it does not seem that difficult from an outside viewpoint. However, editing is the stage that takes every piece of the film and makes it one solid masterpiece, which I learned during the process of this project, so it makes sense as to why it takes so long. Working throughout this entire process has made me a better filmmaker in many ways. First, I was able to spend a large mass of time learning how to operate cameras and how to control lighting since we split up roles and I requested cinematographer. Along with that, being in a group has taught me vital skills such as communication and teamwork along with learning how to compromise in tough situations. This closely simulates what it’s like to be a real filmmaker when working closely with a large team to create a movie, and practicing these important skills has allowed me to leave this class a better filmmaker than when I started.






Considering our production designer Bianca does not have an iPhone like the rest of us, we couldn’t use an iMessage group chat as our main form of communication. We did, however, use the popular social media site “Snapchat” to form a group chat that won’t be affected by the type of phones used. This way, all four of us could text, share photos and videos, and communicate important ideas to each other at any time. During production, we used my Canon Rebel T3i to film complicated shots such as a rack focus. However, I was quick to put down the Canon and use the camera on my iPhone X instead. I found that the Canon was extremely inconvienent, due to its heavy weight making it hard to hold the camera steady. Along with that, I learned that the camera quality on my Canon lowers substantially when the lighting becomes darker, making the videos appear grainy. Personally, I found my iPhone to be a much more effective way to film, because it was lightweight, it made recording shots easy due to its small size, and the video quality on my phone was just as good, if not better, than the Canon. On top of that, when recording on my phone, the videos were instantly saved to my camera roll and could be transferred easily between my iPhone and Macbook due to Apple products being extremely compatible with one another. Obtaining shots off of the Canon was more complicated because I had to extract them off of it’s SD card. All in all, I learned that using my iPhone X to film, along with using Robert’s iPhone 8 at times as well, proved to be much more convenient than the Canon. For creating my CCR, I decided to use iMovie, which took me a few hours to understand as I have never touched it before. After googling many questions, I eventually discovered that the software is rather user friendly, and made creating my CCR much less intimidating as I can find most of the answers to my questions on the Apple website. When editing our title sequence, our editor Ben used a software called Sony Vegas Pro 13. This was far more complex than iMovie, though it does have a much wider range of capabilities. I found it was too complicated for me to try and use since this is my first time at editing, so I just stuck with iMovie. The internet itself proved to be a huge help in the creation of my project as everything was stored and created digitally. I used YouTube and Google vastly to research other thriller title sequences in order to gain ideas for what cinematography should be used in my title sequence, and to get an over-all feel for the visual aspects and genre conventions that we should have hit during production. All in all, this has been an amazing learning experience that has taught me what it takes to be a filmmaker, and I hope you enjoyed watching my CCR. Thank you!

Post Production: The Gratitude

Now that we are in post-production, I figure it is time to say my thanks to my cast and crew for giving me this amazing learning experience. As cinematographer, working with my group has been nothing but smiles as I was able to not only learn a massive amount on what it means to be in charge of the lights and cameras, but I was able to do so under the extremely creative influence of my friends whom I made this title sequence with. Working with a greatly inspirational director, Pierce, an astonishingly talented editor, Ben, a beautifully creative production designer, Bianca, and a wonderfully dedicated actor, Robert, has taught me so much more than simply cinematography. I have walked out of this project knowing what it takes to be all 5 roles, and I have learned different skills that each person has picked up along the way. I also have a new found respect for those in Hollywood, because participating in a 2-day long production schedule was super stressful. Trying to imagine months at a time with hundreds of people and big money on the line is even scarier! But I can truthfully say that I have ended this project with a newfound knowledge on what it takes to make a movie, and I have picked up many skills along the way. Here's to AICE Media Studies!

From left to right: Ben (Editor), Robert (Actor), Me (Cinematographer), Pierce (Director), and Bianca (Production Designer)

What I Would Change If I Did It Again

My beloved teacher Mr. Engle had kindly warned us at the beginning of the school year that AICE Media Studies would be a slight challenge for us because of the work load. "This class is fun! .... Until 3rd quarter. Then it gets tough" ~ Engle 2018/2019 school year. I did not believe him at first, because all my teachers claim their classes are hard to their own extent. But Mr. Engle wasn't kidding this time! Though I would like to point out, I don't find this class to be difficult academically. Rather, it is a very demanding class. It requires a lot more time and attention than what I am used to. And I mean a lot more. HOWEVER! This class has taught me a lot as well, and I genuinely have enjoyed the entire process of creating a title sequence. It has been an exciting, long and rewarding journey.

Now that my sob story is over, I would like to take time to reflect upon what I would change if I did this whole process over again.

1) Understand that the Canon camera does not have to be used for everything

During our first round of production at Super 8, we had shot on the 2 Canons all night long. And, personally, I found that my iPhone was taking better footage than those cameras combined. I feel like as a group we had subconsciously agreed that because we were doing the closet thing to a "professional production" that we had done in our whole lives, we felt the need to use "professional equipment", even if it wasn't the best idea. If I could go back, I would honestly set the Canons on the shelf until we needed a rack focus, and just use the glorious iPhones. The Canons were bulky, heavy and sometimes straight up gave us grainy quality.

2) Understand that production does not have to be squeezed into one day

Again, this was another mistake we made during our first found of production at Super 8. We spent all day trying to cram all of our ideas into a few hours before it got too late. Even during our re-production in the health science room at our school, we became extremely anxious as a group when it got late on our first day of shooting and we weren't done. In reality, we just needed to step back and say "it's okay to take another day!" Similar to how writing a whole essay in one day can be a mistake, the same goes for shooting if not played out correctly. It's okay to take more than one day to film.

3) Tighten up on loose communication 

I had an AMAZING group, don't get me wrong. But, as with any important human interaction, there always seems to be some form of communication issues present. There were numerous times in the beginning of the title-sequence making process where none of us were on the same page. At times, there was confusion over what the plot of the movie was, there was a lack of communication over the shots that needed to be filmed, and there were misunderstandings over props, to name a few. All in all, we were able to communicate quite efficiently towards the end of the project and especially towards the editing stage, which is the most important. But over-all, better communication techniques would have essentially made the whole process smoother as a whole. "Perfect" communication can never be reached, considering we're only human, but we did try our absolute best. Never the less, I love my group so much and we came together to film a brilliant project. 

Editing: The Font & Other Meanings

As noted in a much earlier blog post, font is an extremely important factor in filmmaking (You know, I find myself saying that about a LOT of steps in the filmmaking process... maybe everything in film is equally important *mind blown*) Anyways, thriller films typically have slasher type-fonts or other aggressive/spooky visual aspects. Along with that, they are commonly found written in red ink, as it is a color directly associated with fear

In our title sequence, we challenged typical thriller and horror conventions in multiple ways but one way is specifically the font. Our choice of font during editing does not directly follow along in the footsteps of other thriller movies, because it doesn't exactly feel scary upon first glance. It does, however, match perfectly with the film because it feels abnormal (which, is a big factor of our brand. Abnormality is cool, kids.) Instead of scarier fonts such as Nightmare 5 that was used in the movie "IT", we used and

added the font VCR OSD Mono. (Right ⇢)

We used VCR OSD Mono when giving our credits throughout the title sequence, but when the title card is flashed at the end, we used a separate font, called Dvorak. Dvorak, along with VCR, both feel less threatening and intimidating when looking at them head on. But when being incorporated in our film, they make the audience feel a mythical sense of the unknown... exactly what Lucid Elucidations promotes. (Left ⇠)

The following show examples of how we used the VCR font for our credits, and the Dvorak font for our title card

Another huge way in which we challenged thriller conventions is by having an African American male as the lead character, and by having a mysterious female figure as the attacker and/or aggressor. Usually, in the cinematic universe as a whole, males are portrayed as the stronger beings, and females are the targets for harm and weakness. Yet in our film, these roles have been completely switched. Now, the female is the attacker, and the male a victim. Along with that, Robert is an African American, who are even rarer beings to find as lead roles but, more specifically, are rare to find as leads in thriller films. By using him as our lead role we have further challenged typical thriller genre conventions.

An Editing Miracle: The Long Lost Shot

So, a little update.

We have made pretty good progress in the editing phase, and we had every shot in the order we liked, but there was just one spot none of us could get past.

During the film, there are spooky shadows that pop up everywhere, making it obvious to the audience that Lionel is being followed by someone... or something. Anyways, once Lionel walks into the second hospital room, he bends down to pick up a mysterious open laptop on the ground. Then, he turns and looks at the curtain across from him, as if he felt like something was possibly watching him. The problem here is that, out of all the shadows we had incorporated into the title sequence, we didn't use any shots that told the audience a shadow was watching him in that specific moment. This threw off a few seconds on the scene, because, if we never used dramatic irony in that moment (the audience knowing a shadow is watching him, but Lionel being un-aware), then it may seem odd for Lionel to look at the curtain for no apparent reason. Here is the shot, for reference.

Notice how he looks at the curtain as if something was there? Well, in the title sequence, we never placed an earlier shot showing something actually there. It makes no sense that Robert would turn his head like that if we never suggested to the audience that something was watching him.

But then Pierce spoke up.

He INSISTED that there was a shot he filmed of me (I was the person forming the shadows) behind the curtain as Robert explored the second room. We searched and searched and searched, but never found this mysterious shot. Eventually I handed him my computer with my 2 folders full of shots and said "have at it!" After some time passed, wouldn't you know it, he found it! Here is the long lost shot.

Notice how this shot actually uses dramatic irony by showing the audience someone is most certainly watching Lionel, while Lionel is simultaneously oblivious. This shot also explains the first shot I demonstrated at the start of this post. It gives context as to WHY Lionel is looking back at the curtain, telling the audience that Lionel either feels like someone is watching him, or he thought he saw a shadow, but the camera shows us no one is there. This also helps to increase the trill level amongst viewers, because the audience now knows that whoever that was, is no longer behind the curtain. So where did they go? *dun dun dunnnnn*

This shot was exactly the one we needed to fill in the void in our video, and thankfully it was simple for Ben to edit this clip in . Thanks, Pierce, for unearthing it under our hundreds of clips! Go team! 

May the editing process continue.