Reflection

Before we started this project, I had seen some examples of some past projects and saw that

one of the biggest flaws, in my opinion, was a lack of direction in terms of the plot. Many

people were not able to really think of this opening as literally the beginning part of a movie,

and that kind of myopic approach toward the stories turned some the openings into more of a

short film. Coming into this project, I felt it was imperative to come up with a pretty detailed

plot about the rest of the movie, that way we could be more intentional with what the goals of

the introduction should be. After coming up with a pretty elaborate idea for a feature-length

movie, my partner and I thought that the best introduction would be one that introduces the

main character and kind of hints at the complexities of his personality and also hints at the

theme.

This opening is truly an amalgamation of a lot of my favorite psychological thrillers both from

the past and the present. The genre is incredibly versatile, many of the movies lean more

towards horror, but others are able to portray the same psychological  distress in a less

traditional way.

If you were to just judge the  opening to this film you might say that the movie leans more

toward the horror side of psychological thrillers, but that isn’t exactly our intention with the

movie as a whole. While the movie will not shy away from violence and gore, this movie, just

like the subgenre, is able to distinguish itself from Horror because of the nature of the main

character acting as both a protagonist and antagonist.

For our main character, Trevor, we drew a lot inspiration from the character Travis Bickle

from Taxi driver. Their names are obviously similar, but they are alike in a lot of other ways.

Travis is a strange character who takes on the role of vigilante in his city, wanting to clean

the streets of prostitution and crime, yet he is a participant in that same immoral culture. As

  mentioned in the film, “he’s a prophet and a pusher, a walking contradiction” This

complexity, or maybe even hypocrisy, that Travis is able to express is something I really

wanted to bring into our movie.

Our theme is kind of built on the premise that the line between good and bad is not always

very clear can also be completely twisted by manipulating ourselves or manipulating others.

Our character Trevor, was a perfect catalyst for exposing this theme because he truly cares

about the people he kills (which is seen when he hides the hammer to avoid frightening him,

cries at the sight of the victims wounds, and how he keeps boxes of what’s left of them in his

room to almost keep him company in a way) but his obsessive need to keep these people in

his life pushes him towards violence. This raises a lot of questions about his values because

if he truly cared for these people, why would he have brutalized and killed them?

This draws a lot of parallels to the daily lives of the viewers and makes them question the

way they see others and themselves. Most people see a serial killer or other violent, mentally

unstable people and think that they must be the most evil people alive, with no morals or

sense of right and wrong. But what is the difference between a killer and a politician who

fabricates wars that kill thousands or a corporation that exploits their workers or poisons and

pollutes people’s drinking water. I’m not really one for overt political statements and I don’t

want the movie to be some kind of political propaganda, but these are very real fears and

sentiments that exist especially now with the political climate we live in, and in the real movie

we would’ve wanted to bring in politics by including different characters that help do that.

But, on a smaller scale, this theme and story relates to the viewers themselves and their

personal lives. Because psychological thrillers usually are marketed toward an audience that

is seventeen plus, these people usually are mentally developed enough to see these and

characters on screen, and really think about the people in their own lives and about how

people they love or cherish, can also be affecting their lives negatively, and also maybe how

they are not treating the people they care for in the most positive ways. This isn’t necessarily

going to mean that they should change, but it is more of a way to open up the audience’s

mind about how humans don’t always stay 100% true to of their values.

Although we brought a lot of the psychological thriller’s gore, mentally unstable character,

and the theme, there were of a conventions that we didn’t necessarily adhere to. One of the

most prominent the title. Most of the title’s in this genre tend to be short and concise, I was

pretty drawn to the idea of a long poetic title. This truly stems from my profound adoration for

the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but I didn’t really think a long title would

work in this genre until I remembered that the Silence of the Lambs exists and it was a both

critically acclaimed and a box office hit, so I had a bit more confidence in making my title

longer. I took my title from a poem from Stephane Mallarme because I am an avid reader of

French poetry, i’m really not that pretentious, but the truth was I was just reading some

quotes and that title happened to be in a line of poetry I really liked the sound of and the

themes were pretty similar.

Some of the conventions in the realm of production that we didn’t follow was the use of eerie

music and low key lighting. Although there are some brilliant approaches to eerie music, I

wasn’t fond of putting music in our movie because the music would have been too cheesy or

really poorly made had we gotten it royalty free or if we composed it. I opted for silence

because it really made it just as eerie as music would have and the title also literally has the

word silent in it so…

We did have a lot of problems regarding sound because there was a lot of white noise with

the stuff we recorded into the camera so I had to reconstruct the soundscape in post-

production. Also, movies aren’t ever truly silent (even silent movies had music), so we had to

add some kind of noise in the background. I chose rain, which I muffled and lowered, but

according to my partner it sounded like a bathroom fan… either way, they both fit the story

and add an element of controlled silence, which was what I was going for.

Mixing the sounds was tough because I have a cold, so there’s lots of fluids in my ear, I can’t

really hear that well. I have also never really been good at sound mixing, so that aspect of

the film really suffered as a result of all these things.

The high-key lighting was kind of a choice because I knew low-key be too hard to pull off in a

bathroom because of the fact that it is such a tight space and there would also be a lot of

light spilling and reflecting because of all the white that's inside bathrooms like: the tiles, the

sink, the tub, the toilet. We opted for high-key lighting because, not only did it make it a

thousand times easier to light the scene but also created kind of a sterile environment that is

as equally unsettling as low-key lighting. it also helps to highlight the blood, because the

bright red stands out beautifully in the white setting.

The  production of this opening was quite fun. I have quite a lot of experience making films

and working with a camera, but to my partner this was relatively new to her, and kind of

teaching her some of the stuff I knew about lights, cameras, blocking, etc. was quite new and

enjoyable.

Something new that I did with this film that I really haven't done in the past is acting. Usually

I'll be behind the camera and I have a lot of control over how the shots are guided and how

the blocking goes, but this time I had to put a lot of faith in my partner to make sure the focus

is right, exposure was perfect, and the camera movements flowed. Although there were

some slip ups I think I learned a lot about how to delegate the tasks on set that normally I

would do.

I have also struggled in the past with breaking the 180 rule because I have a pretty horrible

sense of space, but I made sure not to mess that up in this one.I also learned a lot about

production and efficiency. The production went pretty smooth because we were able to stick

to the schedule we made and detailed in the pre-production stage, and we did a lot of

planning and discussing a lot about what we wanted out of the shots and out the

performances.

Technology played an enormous role in obviously the creation of this digital piece of media,

but also how me and my partner communicated. Every time we talked about something or

came up with an idea for costumes, production design, a shot we really liked, or really any

step of the pre-production process we shared examples on Google Drive. We made folders

which included lots of pictures and documents detailing exactly what we wanted to make with

this project. We also collaborated a bit on the script with a really great screenwriting software

called WriterDuet, where my partner and I could both edit and comment on the script.

Some technologies we used in production were my DSLR (Lumix g7) and my microphone

(Rode VideoMicro Pro). For editing we used Premiere Pro, which is a very great editing
software that gives a lot of freedom to be creative (but loves to crash).

Overall, I consider this project a success, and moving on from this point into distribution, I

think the best way to get this to a lot more mainstream audiences is bringing it to some horror

film festivals because it is a niche audience and the genre is not too far off. This could help

generate a following of lovers of this movie, and hopefully aid in bringing it forward to more

mainstream audiences. Streaming is also another strong contender for this content,

stemming off the popularity of shows and movies like Making a Murderer or Mindhunter

which have found lots of success in streaming.