Hello! Welcome to my CCR! First of all, you're probably wondering why it's not a video this time, well it's not actually part of my project to make it a video but an essay this time, but that doesn't mean I'll make this essay boring, who do you think I am? Anyway without further or do... Here's my CCR!
My Critical Reflection
Hello my name is Paola Sirignano and I'm here to talk about my fabulous new short film, "The Doll Game", which is of the Horror genre and about these 2 best friends named Grace and Rosie. The film begins with Grace and Rosie having a Facetime call discussing how they haven't seen each other in a while and have plans on having a sleepover at Grace's house, at around mid conversation, Rosie mentions to Grace about a new game that surfaced on social media a few days prior which was called, "The Doll Game", and tells Grace they should totally do it at their sleepover, but Grace doesn't want to at first since she's the type of person to not want to mess with the paranormal. After their call is over, Grace starts having an inner battle with herself to either go with her gut and not do anything, or fall into her friend's peer pressuring tactics. In the end, she accepts and they do the ritual at around 3:00 am, since that’s what’s regularly known as the ghostly hour to put it fancy, then they chant the words, but nothing happens, or so they think.
I wanted to make this film a horror genre mainly because since I usually don’t watch horror movies, it kind of helps me break out of my shell to try genres that I typically wouldn’t watch but still make it creative. I even watched horror films to make this project so that’s dedication on my prt. What also catches my attention is how horror loves to play with lighting and their music to make a situation either scary or suspenseful, which is why, especially in my night scenes, I mainly used one source of light, which was the candles, kind of reminds me of an actual saenz and bring in the Ouija board or something like that, movies like Veronica seem to do that a lot, as well as my research that I did on the “One Man Hide and Seek” game, which was my main inspiration for this film. When doing the scene where the 2 characters are hiding in a bathtub mainly symbolizes that they’re in this sort of bubble of naiveness of being a teenager and doing stupid things, which is also why the shot seems so tight. Also this part where I kinda wanted the silhouette of the doll to show, which is kind of the moment where the characters are like, “Oh shoot we’re so screwed”, kind of going into the mindset of teens when they regret their actions as soon as they see consequences.
That is part of the reason why I wanted my target audience to be mainly between 13-20 with no gender preference, although usually a typical target audience for horror are mostly men between 15-24 years old. My main goal with my story and my brand has a lot to do with what some kids deal with nowadays, which include peer pressure and not wanting to be seen as cowards in front of friends, as well as learning that some things they do wrong do bring consequences, especially at an age where they’re figuring out what type of person they want to be when they’re adults, and it’s ok to make mistakes, since my main goal is for them to learn from those mistakes, whether you’re a man or a woman, it happens to so many in so many shapes and forms. Some elements that help with my branding are mainly on the characters, since Grace is mainly the one that wants to do the right thing, but has Rosie, who kind of pressures and guilt trips her into doing things she might not be as comfortable with.
In order to connect more with my target audience, I wanted to use a platform which is heavily used, which is Instagram. Instagram is such a popular platform where so many kids in my target audience have a platform. I wanted my feed to be attracting, which is why I kind of started at random, with just putting the title of my film at the very beginning and built it up by adding some behind the scenes footage where even in the most serious of scenarios, it’s ok to have a good laugh sometimes, and it’s honestly just as fun to film bloopers than filming the actual thing, and the young audience love seeing bloopers, since that’s what I’ve seen where it builds an excitement to see how it went from a blooper, to the actual final cut. Honestly, I had such a good time filming this film, not only because I’m doing it with my best friend, even though there were definitely times of stress and giving up.
It was definitely an experience to create all this on my own from my film, the script, the color schemes, lighting, sound music, editing, social media, page, and a postcard? I don’t know how I’m still alive to this day, but hey I pulled through, I was able to have more creative control and to be fair it was way better than the opening I did last year, we won’t talk about that. It definitely also taught me better technique on how to handle making horror, since watching films related definitely helped, kind of scarred my soul, but it helped.
Lastly, I want to take a moment to thank some people, Rafi, for being an awesome co-star, even though you laughed so many times when the scenes were meant to be serious, also for being my cinematographer for a while, as well as my awesome makeup artist who made me look like a dead person. Also Jamie and Joey Ruth for being great moral support and were meant to be on the film, but sadly got scrapped. I’d thank more people but that would take forever so thank you to the ones that helped me through this journey and hope to continue creating in the near future.
