The Slicer Critical Reflection

 The Slicer Critical Reflection

How do your products represent social groups or issues?

When thinking about what kind of movie my group mates and I wanted to make we knew we wanted it to apply to and reach a large group of people. In our movie, we hope to bring together thriller and horror lovers, teenagers, and people who have been affected by murders. My entire group is interested in crime-solving and mysteries so right from the start we knew we wanted to make a film of our own with this kind of storyline. Thriller movies are usually a hit or miss amongst people and that’s why we wanted to include other factors to bring in those people who usually aren’t drawn to these types of films. We wanted to bring awareness to murder and the dangers of being a teenager in the modern-day. Being teenagers ourselves, we wanted to combine our interests with our knowledge to make a film we were proud of. As 2/3 of our group is female and lives in a large city, we experience several dangers on the daily basis and have to walk around scared when we happen to be alone. We wanted to bring awareness and create a voice for others our age and to be able to represent the things we have to think about and deal with. Situations, like the one we created in our movie, has happened in our area before and we are well aware that the world is much bigger than our town and that things like that happen in different places all the time as well.

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

In addition to our film, we had to create a website and several social media. We created a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to post about and reach a larger audience. As most teenagers do, we use social media on a daily basis and know the impact it could have on films and other projects. We wanted to be active and post about our film on social media in order to reach a greater audience and for it to get noticed overall. Nowadays social media is the way to find out about most things going on in the world and what is being released. We ended up using Instagram the most because it is the app, we all use the most and have found would be the most beneficial to our film and its growth. We started posting and gaining a following which we were hoping for. The social media were a way to spread awareness of the film and to gain an audience, the website was to give more information about the film and the inside workings of it, and then there was the film that we created. They all work together to get the best possible outcome for our film and for it to do as good as possible. Since our group basically grew up with social media and have seen it evolve, we know the importance of it in the film and entertainment industry and we knew we needed to do the same in order for ours to be successful.

How do your products engage with the audience?

Our film raises awareness of how dangerous life as a teenager can be and how things could end if they are not careful enough. We have seen and know how teenagers, especially girls, get treated on the streets of big cities and we wanted to spread the word to further inform others. It is an issue that hits close to home and something that we deal with ourselves. We wanted to connect with our audience on a personal level and be able to have them relate to us and our film. We posted behind the scene pictures on our Instagram to get the audience and fans to feel like they have been involved since the start. When we post on Instagram we try and interact with our followers and comment back as much as possible. We want them to feel as close to the cast and movie as possible when watching the film. We wanted to create a bond with the people who have seen and experienced similar situations as us and for it to show the world that it happens more than they expect. It is something we realized needed to get attention and have attention brought to and we couldn’t think of a better way to do it than a film. We especially thought a film would be a good choice since COVID-19 is still around and keeping everyone inside. We decided that the film would be distributed on YouTube so that the audience can be safe at home while enjoying this new movie. We practiced all the precautions needed to make the movie safely and to give our audience a good image of us being careful and thoughtful.

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

We had already decided to go with the thriller genre before we even decided on what the plot of our movie would be. The people in our group enjoy watching thrillers and we realized that this would be the easiest for us to film and come up with a story for. As a group, we still decided to research the genre to make sure it was the one we wanted to go with and that we fully understood the meaning before committing to it. We came up with the idea for The Slicer and it follows the conventions of the thriller genre. We used a lot of suspense and keeping the audience on their toes throughout the film. We tried keeping the suspense up with matching non-copyrighted music to fit the genre. Most movies that are similar to the ones we created are usually seen as thrillers, mystery, or horror which can all be seen throughout our movie. We wanted to have a good variety of all three because they are all correlated to create movies like the one, we did. We used the most thriller and it seemed to be the fittest, so we ultimately decided to identify it as a thriller. Throughout the filming and editing of the movie, we would change certain scenes or add certain music or transitions in order to try and fit it in the thriller genre as well as we could. Looking back at the movie we did a good job when comparing it to other movies seen within the same genre.

The Slicer Short Film Package

My Short Film Package

The Slicer

Link To Short Film: https://youtu.be/qLS1GohqwTo

Link To Website: https://theslicermoviee.wixsite.com/theslicer

Postcard

Editing

    Our group has started editing. We filmed all the scenes on my phone. We chose to film with my phone because it's the newest and has the best camera. I airdropped the clips to Stephanie. She will transport them on her computer. The editing software we want to use is both available on our phones and Stephanie's computer. We have used this software (iMovie) before so we already know how to use it. We think it's easier to do on the computer so we will airdrop the clips to Stephanie's computer. We decided to use the airdrop feature rather than sending it as a message because it keeps the quality of the footage good. Since we used my phone/camera for the quality we want to make sure the quality stays good.

   We have also posted more on our social media. So far we have only posted on our Instagram. We don't usually use the other social media apps ourselves so we kind of forget about them. We are definitely more active in Instagram than the other apps which reflect on the project. We want to post on the other apps but we don't really know enough about them to just randomly post. We posted some behind the scenes pictures to our Instagram today. We went with our personal accounts and commented to keep the account active and interactive with the audience. We want it to look as legit as possible. Later this week we will finish our marketing campaign packet. We are almost done with the project which is both sad and a relief.

Editing our webpage

   Today we edited our webpage. We already made one but it was bland. There wasn't a lot about the film there. All we had was the name and the social media attached. We decided to add text and pictures to make it more personal to the film. We added several things. The first thing was an "about us" page. This is where we explain why we created the movie and some other background information. We also published the time of release for the movie in this section. It was just a brief summary of how the film came along and simple information.

   We also added "Our Team". Here we showed the final cast for the movie. There are 9 cast members so there wasn't a lot to put. We put everyone's pictures and names. We even included how many teenagers and adults/parents the cast consists of. There wasn't much more to add so we decided to move to our other social media. We decided to post the first thing on our Instagram. We decided to post the cast. We thought this would be a good start to posting on these platforms. We have other things planned to post later on like bloopers and behind the scenes.

Finishing and exporting

    Today we finished filming. We shot the scenes with Stephanie, Olga, and me. We filmed at Stephanie and Olga's house. It was the last footage we needed before editing. I went over to Stephanie's house to film the majority of the clips. Dominic went to Europe so we have to work without him. We still include him in decisions. However, he can't work with us in person so we have to work around it. We had the storyboard and script to follow. Everything went smooth because we only needed to be 3 people.

   Now that we finished filming we need to go to the next step. We had to export the footage. It was easy because we filmed on a phone and will be editing on the same one. We filmed with an iPhone and will edit with iMovie. We did the same thing last year. Since it worked for us then we know how it will work for this year. We haven't started editing. We just wanted to export it and make sure all the footage was there. Last time we tried exporting we lost footage and had to film again. We wanted to make sure we had enough time if that happened again. Now we need to start the editing process. 

Filming the main part

    Today we filmed the climax of the story. It was Stephanie, Mats, and I. Dominic went to Europe so we have to film without him. He is still involved in the decisions about the movie. He just can't be with us physically. Today we filmed the part where Stephanie gets killed. There was not a lot to film so it went pretty fast. Since we only needed 3 people we could find time easily and get it done. We all met up at my house first. We then drove to the location where we were going to film. 

   We already knew the location where we were going to film. Since we had filmed prior scenes for the movie we already had a spot. We drove to the same park we were at last time to continue filming. We are filming on a separate day because the people that were in the movie on the first filming day does not have to be there for this part. We wanted to make sure we didn't use anyone's time if we didn't have to. Also, Mats didn't have to be there for the first part so it wouldn't make sense to waste everyone's time. We went back to the same spot we found and recorded the last time. We filmed the last scenes we needed outside. We made sure to film each scene multiple times just in case. We don't want to go back if we don't absolutely have to.

Having to refilm

    Today we had to refilm. We were starting to put the footage into the editing software when we realized some footage was gone. Everything we filmed the first time at Stephanie's house was gone. This meant we had to go back and refilm everything for that scene. We were mad at first. We had spent so much time on getting it right the first time. We were disappointed, to say the least. We looked through our phones to see if we could find it. After we looked through our camera rolls and recently deleted we gave up. We couldn't find the footage anywhere.

   We realized that the only thing left to do was refilm. We all met up at Stephanie's house where we were going to film. We looked over the storyboard and script once again. After that, we talked and tried to remember what we changed. Last time we filmed we changed certain angles and movements as we went along. We wanted to use the same changes again. We tried remembering as much as we could and just followed the storyboard. Dominic was the person filming most of it because both Stephanie and I had to be in the same shot. This time we knew better how to act and say certain things. It set us back a little bit but I am happy that we realized it on time and were able to film again.