Maylynn Ton's Blog

Final Project Mood Board      In my mood board, I was trying to capture an eerie feeling that was realistic and unusual. For example, maybe something similar to The Black Phone (2021) and Creep (2014) since these movies were not supernatural or dealt with ghosts but had the horror element in the realistic fiction settings, like kidnappings and sketchy job hirings, basically dealing with psychopaths. We chose this feeling for our film opening because it creates paranoia since it deals with real-life topics that could easily happen with unsettling thriller rather than dramatic and explosive horror. I am an absolute horror fanatic, and it's hard to find actually scary movies, but the ones that were slightly psychological had an everlasting impact on me and my friends. I wanted to capture basic horror with stuff that can be found regularly, like the axe and missing person's posters. It is slightly basic, but creating slow-burn horror that builds up throughout the film with ee...

Final Project Idea      After much consideration and trouble, we have finally decided on a FINAL PROJECT IDEA!!! In my last blog, I said that we were heavily considering and almost decided on doing the funeral/mystery idea, but after thinking, we felt like we would have so much trouble figuring out a specific plot and opening. We were thinking of a plot twist of him maybe having people after him, which is why he is pretending he is dead. However, it did not work out at all, and we just came up with a bunch of useless ideas. Anyway, our final idea surrounds a missing person and their kidnapper, potentially in an animal mask with a genre of mystery and thriller, which is inspired by Creep (2014), directed by Patrick Brice, which is about a man who gets hired to film someone, but the person slowly gets weirder, and the movie turns disturbing. Me and Jason watched it without friends and it left a major impact on our thriller/horror genre outlook, especially with the POV filmi...

Title Sequence Research 1. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) Directed by Edgar Wright Art of the Title - Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010)      Scott Pilgrim vs. the World  is an explosive film, combining dramatic editing, rock, and action, becoming a cultural classic in this generation. The title sequence begins with an 8-bit Universal logo screen, which is a 3D rotating globe that is pixelated with a lower frame rate and introduces the story and the main characters. Thus, the audience might feel that they are entering a game through this opening with a sense of nostalgia from the poor quality. Then, the band begins playing spontaneously as it backs up into a long, trippy room from the band to the couch, leading the credit to evoke an admirable mood as they enter their movie world in a mind-blowing way. At first, the title sequence was going to be opened with studio credits, then the title of the band playing in the living room with credits at the end with a black...

Brainstorming 1. Crime Scene A crime scene opening was our first idea, but we changed it pretty fast after we brainstormed a funeral idea. Clearly, there were many cons to begin with because we wanted the genre to be a murder mystery where somebody died mysteriously in their home. There were way too many budget issues that came our way, like the fake blood and caution tape. We did not have an idea of how we were going to make it look realistic and professional since these types of scenes are extremely hard to replicate because they must evoke a certain mood. However, this type of scene is commonly used in murder mystery movies, so there are many references and videos to help us replicate it, and all of this stuff is available on the internet and in stores like Amazon or Walmart. Therefore, we scrapped this idea after talking about the immense difficulties. 2. Funeral A funeral opening is an idea we are most leaning towards with the genre of tragedy for our funeral scene where we are al...

Former Student Work

Group Member Blog Post      My group members for the media studies project are Jaden Dinh, Afifa Risha, and Jason Truong. I was originally planning to do it with Jaden and Jason since they were already my friends, and we decided to take the class together, but then Afifa switched after I convinced her to, so I wanted to do it with her. At first, I only wanted to do it with Afifa because if more people were added, then it would become more complicated to manage the work and get all group members to complete the work. After discussing with Afifa, we decided to add Jason and Jaden. They also wanted to work with us, making an agreement that they would be the actors and we would manage the editing and filming. Jaden and Jason are definitely on the more extroverted side, so they would 100% put their full confidence into the acting for sure, and as a past editor, it would be easy to handle the editing, and Afifa is super reliable and intelligent and gets all her work done in a t...

Story Boarding Spider-Man 3 (2007) Directed by Sam Raimi Link to Cool Peter Parker Scene (Spider-Man 3) Movie Clip      I've learned that storyboarding is crucial in constructing a movie and planning the scenes in terms of lighting, camera movement, editing, and storytelling. I realize the difficulty of this craft and the immense amount of time it takes to create a storyboard and a movie. You not only need to draw the scene but label and explain what is happening for it to be easily executed when production happens. It's like a map since it helps you guide throughout the filming process. Movie directors cannot wing their moves but need to strategically plan to create an understandable flow of shots. For example, the Cool Peter Parker scene from Spider-Man 3 (2007), which I chose to storyboard, consisted of a crosscut, which is when it goes back and forth between shots between Peter Parker and Dr. Conors on a phone call. This is hard to achieve without prior planning, wh...