'The Reflection' - Jax Kirkham
Pre-Production
My group is doing Jax's script
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The assigned roles for each member:
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DIRECTOR - Harsh (me)
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR - Sonny
DoP - Ivaylo
SOUND - Rueben
PRODUCTION DESIGN - Jax
The script follows Roxy, a young woman who returns to her bedroom after a long shift. She finds herself trapped in a frightening encounter with a twisted version of her reflection. Strange noises, dimming lights, and delayed movements in the window reflection build into a full-blown supernatural attack as the reflection starts to smile unnaturally, move on its own, and torment her. The room shakes, the door locks itself, and the reflection shifts between warped expressions. Roxy frantically looks for a way to fight back. Using a broken shard of a mirror, she faces the entity as it reaches through the glass to grab her. In a final act of defiance, she hurls the shard at the reflection, shattering it and ending the nightmare. The room returns to normal, leaving Roxy uncertain if the ordeal was real or just a bad dream. Still, she feels relieved that the terror seems to be over.
This is the script, that we will be using, it has been highlighted and broken down.
Storyboards
What I like about this storyboard is that, its very clear on how the scene will playout. I like how it shows arrows on how the scene will progress in the live action.
Not that much that i would change, but i guess a bit more text, so it would be a lot more clearer for the director, crew and animators, so they can perfectly create the scene.
This button will take you to the video of this storyboard taking place in action.
Completed storyboard for our script
"The Reflection"
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This the animated video of the storyboard for the script. The voiceover was taken from our table read
Post/Production
Screenshot of me doing vfx on after effects, to make a broken crack on the mirror
Screenshot of me making the short film and editing it on premiere pro
This is a picture of outside the house, where we made our films. This is Shiya's house in Kingston.
This is my final film
How this window crack effect was made, was first by putting my footage in, and then opening the tracker panel, I used tracking motion, and added points on the subject I wanted to track. I edited the size of the tracker depending on how big the point of the object I was tracking. I then clicked play, and after effects will track the movement of the object I selected. After this I created a null object, then went back to tracker panel and made the target the null object. After this, I then added my png of the window crack, and turned the layer into a 3d layer, and placed this in my desired position, using the position feature on after effects. I then precomposed the layer and changed the mode to overlay. Finally, I added drop shadow from the effects and preset panel to make it look as realistic as possible.
This is the bts and bloopers from our short film
Given that it was my role as the director to be on set, the most important task was to make sure that everything fitted in perfectly. By working with the cast and the crew, crucial decisions had to be made, everything worked somewhat effectively. I had to work with my cinematographer, to understand how his mind worked, and to trust him what he thought would be better for the scene. I let everyone have their own input.
I edited my film by first getting the clips together, and applying the different angles to make it better. I also did a shot reverse shot when the actor was looking at the window. There was a few scene where it was so dark, I had to use the colour panel on Premiere Pro, to brighten the scene. It did however make it a bit grainy, but I had to make the scene visible in any way I could. After getting all clips together, and the audio from what we recorded with the mic and boon pole. I got this horror music from google, free to download and no copyright, to add to the whole film, as there wasn't that much audio recorded, due to the absence of a sound crew, so I used it to fill the silence. I then used a black video to make the credits.