film memo
Conceptualisation
GENRE
Valerie, Klinton, Sharren & I all had some sort of experience with making short films, I had previously worked with Valerie on another short called "Prelude". Both of us agreed on deviating from the saturated genres such as drama, thus we wanted to challenge ourselves by creating a horror short. At the start, Valerie was an oppositional audience towards the horror genre, nevertheless after watching "US" and "Get out" she was keen to take on the challenge with the rest of the crew. The "LunaFilms" team (what we called ourselves) were very confident on the genre. Prior to pre-production, we were seasoned with horror films analysis althrough out our media class, thus giving us a better and clearer idea on the viable concepts for our horror short. The horror genre comes with several conventions that we could take advantage of, such as; jump scares, eerie sound design and evident theme/lesson to be learned.
Initial ideas
plotline
With the genre in mind, the team and I had to brainstorm, yet due to the pandemic, we had met online on Discord, a communication software, to discuss about what the social group and issue of our film was going to be. Being a horror fanatic myself, I gave suggestions on what themes our product could tackle, basing them from my knowledge gained from Youtube videos and Horror films. Figure 1 is a snippet of our notes from our first meeting on discord. The initial plot was set in an urban home, entailing a husband and wife facing an intruder and another idea about a family who had just moved in to a new home, unaware of the prior uneventful history of the land.
From here going forward, our ideas were further refined and came to a final plotline about an entitled teen who becomes haunted by an entity stuck inside a Super8 Camera that her brother gifted her, which she had previously rejected for being too crude and inexpensive. The story eventually coming to a close when she is captured by the entity and imprisoned inside the camera herself, while the entity takes over her life.
This plot created more depth into our product, just like Jordan Peele's films, we wanted to go beyond the jump scares and loud noises, evoking meaning and a commentary that was directed towards the entitlement of some/most teens today.
Pitching
In order to get the green light for "CAPTUM", we needed to pitch our initial plan and concept to the school administration, as they are the producers of our short film. Below is the PowerPoint we had used during our pitch presentation to aid in visualising our idea. The presentation includes all the details regarding our plot and even going all the way to our logistics.
script
"CAPTUM" was written by Valerie, due to her prior experiences as the script writer for our short film "Prelude". As a director, I supervised the script along with Valerie. We decided to try writing the script using Studio Binder since we found it more convenient and professional. Our script
DRAFT 1
DRAFT 2
Draft 1 was our initial idea that there would be a doll that haunts KC, our main character. Instead of being an entitled teen, she was presented to be a immature teen who loves to prank her brother. The main theme was based around karma, thinking that she was being pranked by her brother in return but it was something more super natural. Nevertheless, after reviewing the draft script, we concluded that the theme was not clear, quite difficult to understand and provided issues that we needed to address.
The second draft is where we started to address said issues. I suggested to stray away from the cliche of haunted dolls (seen from films like Anabelle, Chuckie, Slappy, etc.) and pitched the Super8 film camera instead. The team agreed with my notion and decided that it would help establish branding and add a certain vintage, yet eerie style to the film. With the change of haunted object, came with the change in theme, instead of KC being an immature prankster, Valerie suggested that the theme of loneliness and isolation would be a better fit in terms of plot and logical reasons, I agreed. Thus in our draft 2, it was set during a pandemic, where KC was presented to be lonely due to being in quarantine for a long time. Her mental state slowly deteriorating, and was represented through the hauntings and the entity trapped inside the Super8 Film camera.
DRAFT 3
FINAL DRAFT
After reading through draft 3, Valerie and I were concerned about the length of the script taking into consideration the 5 minute time restraint. I compared the draft 3 script and another horror short called "DON'T PEEK" and noticed how the short only took place in one location, a contrast to our script, we would need to shoot in KC's Bedroom, Joshua's Bedroom, then the hallway. Thus to further reduce the screen time and for our convenience, "CAPTUM" would take place in two locations, mainly KC's Bedroom. The change in locations meant that Valerie had to adjust the dialogue and sequence of each scene, thus the adjustments were implemented.
Our Final draft/script for "CAPTUM" was not far from the previous draft. Corrections on grammar and inconsistencies of sequences in writing were refined, further reducing our initial six page script to five pages. With that said, we reached the final version of the script, ending the screenwriting part of pre-production for "CAPTUM".
storyboard & Shotlist
Once we had a concrete script, I, having the role of director and cinematographer, wanted to visualise the story and how it would potentially look like on screen. I drew the storyboard in Adobe Photoshop using a Wacom tablet to sketch each composition. In some boxes' label, I included the type of shot or camera movement I wanted to use. I took advantage of my storyboard, serving as a guide on the production stage of "CAPTUM". Not only did it guide me, but to also serve as a communication tool for the rest of the team, providing them insights on how I imagined the composition to be. This gave a heads up on our Set designer and Costume designer, Sharren, since the images presented her an idea of what prop/s would be seen or needed.
storyboard of "captum"
Scene 1
Scene 2
equipment & budget
It was during pre-production when our team, Luna films, agreed that we would only be using the available materials we already had. Any further expenses such additional equipment or materials, will be purchased solely by said member who needed said material. Luckily, we didn't need to spend much aside from food (in which was covered by Valerie's generous parents.
The equipment I planned to use during production were RGB Pocket LED lights, A lapel, camera stand and my DJI Osmo Pocket. We opt to stick with said equipment and didn't rent from any external parties due to the pressing concern brought upon by the pandemic.