Saim Yasin's Blog

After a lot of thinking and going through my scenes again and again in my brain i have come to the conclusion that there is nothing dangerous or risk taking takeing place in my film. The only thing that i will need to look out for will be the fake sharp nails as they have to go on the neck of the actor. I will make sure to smoothen them out before shooting.

After looking and talking to a lot of people i have finally found an actor that has agreed to act accorrding to my film. He is a good friend of mine and his name is Sumeed Jawad.

My film is going to be a low budget film as its being filmed in one house. No fancy equipment, green screen or vfx are going to be used. Some of my equipment even will be rented.

After a lot of careful consideration i found a place where my filming should take place. As you can see in my Narrative, Script and storyboard my film takes place in just one house. So according to it all the rooms and driveway is perfect for my film.

Here is my storyboard for the film opening.

I have put a lot of thought into my character and you can also see how he is in the script and narrative i posted but here is a dry run of my charcater. Young adult who works late night shifts. Has a nice home and car meaning he is either well payed or comes from a wealthy family. Wearing a suit meaning he can be a manager, broker, buisness man etc. Comes late at home, takes a shower and liew down meaning he is tired.

This is the script for my film and all the camera shots that i have planned with every single scene are written with it.

As i mentioned in my last post i have thought of how i want my story to be and after a long time i have finally figured out my story and i am ready to execute it on film. NARRATIVE: Its a dark and silent night and a working man called Harry like any ordinary person comes home from his late night shift at work. It was a late night shift so he looked very tired. He drives into his driveway and comes out looking a bit groggy. He is wearing a professional suit attire but his coat is in his hand showing he is quite exhausted and is feeling warm. He walks inside his house and goes straight to his room for a good night sleep. As soon as he enters his room he immediately throws his bag, coat, puts his watch on the nightstand and gets into the washroom for a nice and refreshing bath. Takes a long bath and comes out drying his hair. He stands in fornt of the mirror just to have a look at himself but as he does his watch that he placed on his nightsstand earlier falls off on its own. He doesn...

As i have selected the story that i shall be executing i had to know all the codes and conventions that were to be followed in a horror film. So i studied them properly from a site: https://www.slideshare.net/amberloo20/codes-and-conventions-in-the-horror-genre. I learnt the narrative structure and themes that were to be followed e.g death, revenge, survival etc and i also learnt todorov's narrative theory. What kind of sound and misc en scene that really helped the horror film to look good were also important and i learnt those too.

After having ample time to think through each scenarios and stories i have thought about it and i finally landed at story number 5. I carefully thought of everything for example props, location, cast etc. I took all major factors in account and also thought of how all scenarios are possible and not possible and after very careful consideration i chose this story:

 Today I was brainstorming and thinking of ideas on what the genre of my Film Opening Sequence should be and I ended up at horror. I thought of many stories and here they all are:

 This is a trailer I made for the movie "Brothers (2009)". I took selective clips from the movie which I thought would fit best in the concept of a trailer. I put those clips together. I played around with the audio a bit. I took suspense music and stress music from YouTube. You can access the trailer from this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11qMRQkEm1ADDRzBFboYw1dXqayYNW6mH/view?usp=sharing

Today i learned about new editing techniques from the internet. Normally i used the software Filmora 9 but as i took Media studies i have started using Premiere Pro and have seen that their is much more to editing. I learned how to mask one clip onto another, i learned how to add an adjustment layer which helps us to make changes to the original video which is very helpful, i learned how to make a video jumpy, i learned to place a text and make it track a certain object in a video. The biggest challenge for me at the moment is color grading as it is quite difficult and not easy to learn but i shall play around with it and learn it in time.

Today i learned about Camera shots and compositions. I learned new types of shots e.g Dutch Tilt, Dolly In, Dolly Out, Crane shot etc. and i also learnt about camera angles and what they represent e.g high angle shows a character to be weak and low angle shows a character to be strong or big. I also learnt about the rules of third and 180 Degree rule. I watched a lot of short segments from films like heat in which de niro and pacino are having a conversation at a table, that scene perfectly shows the 180 degree rule as the camera keeps switching as the person speaks.

Today i studied the deconstruction of film openings. Specifically speaking i learned deconstruction about the film Silence of the Lambs. I learnt how silence of the lambs being a horror has long pan shots to intoduce the audience with the environment. It's title is also shown at the centre of the movie's frame to show proportionality of a horror. I also learned a lot of other things about it which were quite helpful to me. I learnt it form this site: https://www.slideshare.net/monstersinc3/deconstruction-of-film-openings

Today i studied about the representations in film openings. I studied how many films follow conventions and many dont. I saw how horror films for an example represent a person to be weak in situations of danger whereas action films always show protagonist and antagonist to be at the same level in a fight. I also saw how even the smallest details can show the feeling of a movie for example if a person is wearing all black he could either be a robber or a spy or he could be in danger etc.

I studied genres previously. I also studied about how each genre has different types of openings. Action has a very jumpy and quick opening, Horror has a dark and slow opening, Crime has an opening in which usually in the start there is a deal going on or a gang fight etc. This helped me with my knowledge on Film Openings.

Today i studied about film genres. The ones that striked me the most were Action, Horror and crime. These ones striked me the most as i always loved movies like Avengers, Insidious, The Godfather, Scarface etc. I read how these genres communicate with their audiences and what kind of audience does each genre get.

 HI. I am Saim Yasin, I study in AS Beaconhouse Margalla Campus Islamabad and I take media studies. Ill post my progress and methods on this blog.