Dominant Reading

This is the dominant reading for our project. This was made by Shannon.

	List	Our intended  Dominant Reading	How we will achieve this with technical elements
Individuals	Greg, Kenneth, Max	Kenneth = a paranoid  teenager  Greg = Kenneth's good friend, mindful of his surroundings  Max = careless, ignorant teenager	Kenneth  Mise en scene: The actor constantly looks at his surroundings and whatever's around him.  Camera: There is a close up of his concerned expression. There are also medium shots of his concerned body language. The camera pans from Kenneth to what he is looking at.  Editing: Multiple cuts of different camera angles. There is also an eyeline match of kenneth looking to his surroundings  Sound: Diegetic sounds of rustling leaves and footsteps of the stalker.  Greg  Mise en scene: The actor performance contained looking for his friend (kenneth) when he disappeared  Camera: There is a tracking shot of him trying to follow Kenneth's tracks. Medium shots of his body language turning around to find Kenneth.  Editing: Multiple cuts of different camera angles. There is also a reaction shot  of his worried face and Kenneth's “blood”.  Sound: Diegetic sounds of the actor’s dialogue contained words that worried about Kenneth after he disappeared.  Max Mise en scene: The actress carries headphones and has her emotionless expression when the camera focuses on her.  Camera: There are close up shots of her expressions that show that she doesn’t really care.
Social group	Teenagers	Teenagers should not be left alone without adult supervision.	There are multiple camera angles / close up shots of the paranoia of the teenagers. There is a tracking shot scene where Kenneth gets killed. The body language of both Greg and Kenneth are shaky and scared.
Places	Forest	Forests are a bad place to hangout.	There will be low key lighting that’s used to present the place. Many bushes and leaves will be used that hides hidden cameras that makes the scene unsafe for the characters and the audience.  Discordant non diegetic sounds will be used.
Events	Murder	Murder is bad / traumatic.	There is a medium shot of Greg worried for kenneth. There is blood in some scenes and the color red on blood is a semantic code for death, anger, etc.
Overall Message	Teenagers shouldn’t be left alone in the forest because tragedies may happen as a result of murder.

Classwork: Editing Practice

This blog post contains the work I did in my lesson on how to successfully edit. My teacher filmed the footage but I edited it together. My teacher also provided the template for the blog post. 

Why is continuity editing important?

Continuity editing includes making sure that items like props or costumes stay consistent from scene to scene. But the more important work lies in editing shots together in a way that leaves viewers thoroughly grounded in both time and space.

Different types of continuity edit 

• Straight cut (cut)
• Eyeline match 
• Shot /reverse shot
• Cutaway / Insert
• Match cut

Footage

Here is the footage that my teacher shot which utilises a variety of camera angles and movements. The scene is very simple, it involves a student standing up and leaving the classroom. A single shot here might be quite boring for the audience, by editing and combining the shots together we can make the scene feel more dynamic.

Raw footages:

My editing process

I used After Effects 2025 to make this edit. While I'm aware that Premiere Pro is much better at compiling and cutting videos, I'm more experienced with using AE, hence why I chose to do the project using it.

Here is my final scene. Editing multiple clips together made the scene better because it keeps things interesting for the audience, even if the scene doesn't have much happening in it.

Reflection

This practice gave me a hands-on experience on editing videos, which is crucial since I'm going to be the editor in our team. It also seems that I need to learn Premiere Pro soon, since After Effects is more optimized for effects than cuts.

Shooting Practice: Horror Scene Recreation

We made a mini project that helped us learn how to recreate a scene from a movie of the theme we picked: horror. We did this as a group.

We chose a scene from Jennifer's Body (2009).

Below is our storyboard:

Below is the finished movie scene recreation mini-project, edited by Max and me (Kenneth):

 

Camera

Problem: The camera was sometimes shaky in the middle of recording due to constant imperfections within the camera angle or movement which can make some scenes with no sense and context ( character wasn't in the camera angle thus, talking to nobody or the camera movement was too far from the characters to be seen clearly )

Solution: We could possibly use a stabilizer or a tripod for the recording part to prevent
shake or weird angles within the recording session.

Next time: Most likely practice for the camera stillness because, purchasing a stabilizer or a tripod can be too far out of our current budget and we might need another cameraman that has a stable arm just incase for the camera movement.

Editing

Problem: Lip-syncing to the original audio was a bit abnormal due to the characters while recording can be either nervous, embarrassed or not good at acting for the sound to be synced to the audio.
 

Solution: Retake many shots to see if we can perfect it the original audio or get actors that are good at acting like doing a Screen Test with various actors we picked out that could be good within the context of our video to prevent weird lip-syncing to the audio.

Next time: Remember to take as many shots as possible to have a higher possibility that the lip-syncing wouldn't be as abnormal or off-synced.  

The text in green was written by my teammate Bamz.

Mise en scene 

Problem: We couldn't control the lighting as we were filming outside the classroom. The lighting for a horror movie especially for this one requires mostly low key lighting and since it was sunny today we didn't have access to that. 

Solution: Our teammates Max and Kenneth decided to adjust the video's lighting using the video editing apps to get the same feel as the clip from the movie. 

Next time: We will find a place with artificial lighting so we can easily control the lighting without much help from the video editing app to give it a more natural look instead of artificially increasing something. However, if this is not possible we will use the solution mentioned previously. 

Problem: In the first scene an actress looked at the camera. It's a subtle detail but our goal is so it would match perfectly to the scene we are trying to recreate. 

Solution: Our team tried to edit the video. However they couldn't fully fix that scene so we didn't find the right solution at that time. 

Next time:  we will rehearse and practice many times before we actually film the scenes. If not we can do multiple takes at the time and carefully look at the footage before deciding on another take. However, if all these repercussions fail then we can figure out how to edit it out.

Sound

Problem: We didn't have any problems with the sound as we use audio from the original clip which is very clear. 

Next time: I think we will continue doing this and for our upcoming project we will pre record the audio for the dialogue so we can get a clear sound. I also learned it's best not to record audio while we are recording a scene 

The text in light pink was written by my teammate Shannon.

Self reflection:

This was my first ever attempt at creating a movie scene recreation. Lip syncing was a tough aspect of this project. However, through this practice I learned that we need more practice and better team synergy (as we forgot to do the behind the scenes). Overall, I think this project helped me and my group gain more hands-on experience.