PORTFOLIO PROJECT LINKS

FILM OPENING FOR *MAN*SLAUGHTER: OPEN

CCR MEDIA PROJECT #1 - PRESENTATION W/ VOICEOVER: OPEN

CCR MEDIA PROJECT #2 - ENHANCED PODCAST: OPEN

Final Reflection on Portfolio Project

I'll admit; I hated the CCR portion of this project. Well, hate's a strong word but... I genuinely couldn't bring myself to do it out of my free will, ESPECIALLY when I started my spring break a day early and I had all that time to play games, read my books, watch my show I needed to catch up on, etc. I eventually got it done but honestly, it felt like a chore the entire time. I will say, though, I did love making the film opening. I think because it was a genre I enjoyed and a plot I actually admired so much, I had so much fun writing the script and coming up with names and plot twists and scenes and all that came with making this film opening. Remind me to ask if I legally can write a story/book based on this same plot with the same characters and all the other details or if Cambridge owns it now? I don't know but I like to write and I'd love to write out the rest of the story based on the opening itself. 

Anyway, I loved working with Vicky and Bella and I'm actually pretty happy I got closer with them! They're good people and we've always known each other but not enough to work on a project together but I worked up the courage and asked and look at us now. I loved the way our opening turned out and I actually am pretty satisfied with the way my media projects for the CCR came out as well. This project was definitely something but I already know I'm going to be wishing to be doing this instead of the essays for the other half of the exam. God, I dread those essays.

The portfolio project definitely gave us a lot of freedom which was honestly a good and bad thing for me but all I know is that... I would not recommend this to anyone.

Also, STREAM MAYHEM (this is the album that got me through the CCR portion of this project):

ALBUM OF THE YEAR (2025)

Post-Production of CCRs

The post-production process of the CCRs was way more easier than actually making them. For the presentation, it said I needed to export it as a movie and honestly, I had no clue how to do that so I screen-recorded each slide of the Canva and let the voice-over play out for the entire thing. I then cropped it so you couldn't see my tab bar, menu bar, etc. and only the slideshow so it appeared as if it was an actual "movie" and then I converted it to an MP4 online.

The podcast, though, was a little trickier than the presentation. I had to first put all the voice memos into iMovie which I have only used once and that was for the One Word Film we did earlier in the year. I also put in the ad and I put it between the questions I answered as a little intermission. I then had to trim the audios as in the beginning or end, there'd be too much silence and then at one point, I was listening through the audio and I realized you could hear my family in the background of one of them. I had to re-record that one and since I was impatient and just wanting to get it over with, I think I had to do more retakes of those lines than I had to do during production of the podcast. Anyway, I finally got the podcast put together and I added up the times for both the presentation and podcast combined!

TOTAL TIME: 10 MINS 43 SECS

Phew! Thank God it didn't go over 11 minutes. Anyway, I think it's safe to call my work here done!

Now it's time to embrace my cats since it's their birthday today and I've been working on this since I woke up.

Production of CCRs

For my two media projects, I chose to do a presentation with a voice-over and an enhanced podcast. I purposely avoided doing anything involving filming because for my film opening, I worked with Vicky who had access to high quality filming equipment and since I was doing my CCR alone, I wouldn't have had access to that equipment therefore the difference between the film opening and CCR would've been visible and make my CCR appear "bad" right off the bat.

For my presentation, I made it in Canva since I know doing voice-overs was easy due to the Film Pitch Project we did earlier in the year. I first made the slides and made sure to not put many words on the slides themselves but just key words as I can elaborate more on them in the voice-over and make sure the "audience" listens to what I say instead of being distracted by a busy slide covered with words. I then went through each slide and typed up in Notes what I'd say in every slide. Here's my script for the whole presentation:

SLIDE 1 - Hello. This is one of my media projects for the Creative Critical Reflection portion of my AICE Media Studies AS Level Portfolio Project. My name is Juan Villarreal and I’ll be showing you a presentation with voice-overs.

SLIDE 2 - In this presentation, I’ll be going over my answers to Questions 1 and 2.

SLIDE 3 - Question 1: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

SLIDE 4 - Isolation, victim versus monster, and violence are some of the common conventions of horror that we used and challenged within our film. 

SLIDE 5 - Isolation can be both a physical and psychological feature in horror. Physical isolation is when characters are separated from the rest of society in an inactive location somewhere while psychological isolation is when the characters are going through something mentally that others cannot see or relate to. In terms of our film, the main characters, Elena and Jackson, are physically isolated as they spend the entirety of the film alone in a big empty house with no help whatsoever coming to save Jackson. Psychologically, Elena is isolated as she has this mentality that if a man doesn’t meet her standards, she is required to kill them showing that no one can relate to her psychologically. Jackson is also psychologically isolated as he secretly is a serial killer as well and therefore is clinically insane and cannot relate to others.

SLIDE 6 - Victim versus monster is the common concept in the horror genre that basically represents the protagonist in the movie being the victim trying to win against the antagonist which can be a human “monster” or an actual creature. This is one of the conventions that we challenged as our main character IS the “monster” and the other main character who is in a way her enemy is the victim being hunted down.

SLIDE 7 - Another convention that makes up the horror genre is violence. Violence can be anything from a slap to the face to the dismembering of a body! Of course, we didn’t have neither of the two shown in our film opening but we did show something in between. We had the dead body of a man bleeding out in one of the scenes with a bloody knife and a pair of bloody gloves that can be seen inside of a trashcan that is filled with a bunch of bloody towels.

SLIDE 8 - In the horror genre, gender stereotypes are commonly applied to characters. For example, women are almost always portrayed as the protagonist that’s constantly in distress and in need of protection from the antagonist, who is usually a man. We’re in a period of time where men don’t always have to be the heroes saving the women from the bad guys. We confronted this social issue head-on by having our female protagonist be the killer needing to be protected FROM and our male “antagonist” be the victim needing to be protected. We also represented the social group of young adults by having online dating being Elena’s way of connecting with her victims. It’s a common idea that young people constantly rely on everything to be digital nowadays, even their love lives, and so we represented that directly by having Elena find dates through Tinder only to end up killing them once meeting up.

SLIDE 9 - Question 2: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

SLIDE 10 - Since an important aspect of the film revolves around social media, or more specifically dating apps, we settled on a target audience of young adults which really is Generation Z. Our main character, Elena, and her victim, Jackson, are both in their early 20s and they are the common users of dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, etc. We figured a younger audience, such as Generation Z, can find themselves relating to these characters more than an older generation who don’t rely on online dating as much.

SLIDE 11 - Within our production, we included a few features that some young people may associate or at least relate themselves to. For example, the first few seconds of the film opening was Elena's hands placing a vinyl into a record player and starting to play it. I know of so many young people who collect physical media whether it's vinyls or CDs or cassettes. I also know several more popular artists with young audiences and they not only sell physical media but several variants of them to increase sales which leads to an increase in purchasing of physical media. Another example would be the showing of the Tinder app on Elena's phone as once again, most of online dating apps have young people as their primary consumers.

SLIDE 12 - We plan to make our film available to audiences through film festivals and Patreon. As we are just starting off, we obviously don't have the budget nor the fanbase to release our film in major theaters worldwide. By showing it at film festivals where people go to open themselves up to unpopular and newer films, we can easily attract huge audiences with an interesting film that will amaze audiences and make them ask for more. We also chose Patreon as we can promote it online everywhere and if people decide to watch, we can sell it for a small price (ex. $10) and not only gain profit but potentially gain new fans!

When it comes to my enhanced podcast, this one honestly wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be. I first made an ad before coming up with a script for the actual podcast. For the ad, I used the text-to-speech in Google Translate and I just made up a random app that was promoting a free trial to use their app features for users to make their own podcast. Once I finished making the ad, I quickly came up with a suitable name for the podcast and I started working on my script. I already knew I wanted the podcast to have its entirety be spoken by a "guest speaker" which was me and I was answering commonly asked questions that fans have asked. I made sure to answer the question as naturally as I could and making it appear as if I came up with them on the spot instead of having it written down previously. I had to do several retakes because on many occasions, I'd be talking for so long and then right when I was reaching the end of my line, I stuttered and messed it all up. 

Research for Question #2 of CCR Post

Question 2: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

-How did you arrive at your target audience?

Well, since an important aspect of the film revolves around social media, or more specifically dating apps, we settled on a target audience of young adults which really is Generation Z. Our main character, Elena, and her victim, Jackson, are both in their early 20s and they are the common users of dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, etc. 

SOURCE

-Discuss how your production choices, content, etc. work to engage with your target audience

Within our production, we included a few features that some young people may associate or at least relate themselves to. For example, the first few seconds of the film opening was Elena's hands placing a vinyl into a record player and starting to play it. I know of so many young people who collect physical media whether it's vinyls or CDs or cassettes. I also know several more popular artists that have young audiences who not only sell physical media and several variants of them to increase sales which also means increasing the purchasing of physical media. Another example would be the showing of the Tinder app on Elena's phone as once again, most of online dating apps have young people as their primary consumers.

SOURCE

-Discuss how you plan to make your film available to audiences

We plan to make our film available to audiences through film festivals and Patreon. As we are just starting off, we obviously don't have the budget nor the fanbase to release our film in major theaters worldwide. By showing it at film festivals where people go to open themselves up to unpopular and newer films, we can easily attract huge audiences with an interesting film that will amaze audiences and make them ask for more. We also chose Patreon as we can promote it online everywhere and if people decide to watch, we can sell it for a small price (ex. $10) and not only gain profit but potentially gain new fans!

SOURCE #1 SOURCE #2

Research for Question #3 of CCR Post

Question 3: How did your production skills develop throughout this project? 

-Reflect on how your process evolved throughout the production

Personally, I've only ever made a film project in middle school for my 8th grade film class but even though we were given a tripod, that was the only "professional" film equipment I have ever used. One of my group members, Vicky, is in Cypress Bay TV Production meaning she had so many ideas and so much equipment that she introduced to me and changed my production skills significantly. For example, she had an actual professional high-quality and complex camera that I refused to touch because I was afraid I'd break it. She had bright and strong lights that she borrowed from her CBTV class that she set up and changed the colors of. She also used both my script and her own storyboard combined to ensure that the process went smoothly. I personally never looked back at the storyboard after making it for the projects I've done in this class but Vicky relied on them so much that it helped me realize how helpful they actually are. I went from thinking my phone camera was a very strong way to film, relying on memory and how I imagined scenes, shots, angles, etc. instead of actually drawing it to life to make reaching it for feasible, and way more other differences me and Vicky used to have when it came to filming.

-Discuss how you begin with research and planning – offer specific details about both of these processes 

We started planning by just sitting near each other in class and brainstorming ideas depending on the genres we had in mind. When we finally reached the idea of opening the film with a normal-looking woman setting up a normal-looking dinner but adding a twist, we instantly started planning the darkest and jaw-dropping twist. We established on that murderous element and we started taking notes on different scenes, shots, angles, etc. that we had in mind for the opening and once we were done with the notes, I typed up a script and Vicky drew up a storyboard. Once we decided on a filming date very last minute (the day of the filming day/Sunday, February 16th), Bella made a list of the props we needed and we all checked to see what we did and didn't have in our houses. Vicky had mostly everything which is what led us to choose her house as the filming location but we were missing a few things such as the rotisserie chicken and the fake blood. Bella found the fake blood she had from a previous Halloween year hidden somewhere in her closet and I went to Publix and bought the rotisserie chicken which we didn't even end up using til hours later when we got to that shot.

-Discuss your approach to production. What did you have to change or adapt as you worked on the project? 

As I said before, I changed my usual habits of filming based on what I had in mind and what I was feeling in that moment to relying on it physically. This means using scripts, storyboards, prop lists, lights, professional cameras, camera stands, etc. I was definitely open to it once we started getting ready for filming but I got more comfortable with it as the process went on. I loved using all of the different professional equipment by the end of it especially when Vicky knew how to use it and incorporate it into the film correctly, demonstrating how useful it could be.

-End with a reflection on where you started and where you ended.

I went from relying on my mind and phone camera for my previous film projects such as my music video in Film 1 in 8th grade and my One-Word Film for AICE Media Studies AS this year and now I opened myself to using professional filmmaking equipment for the most important project of this year. 

Research for Question #4 of CCR Post

Question 4: How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware, and online – in this project? 

-Begin by discussing any technologies that you used while producing the project 

We used a professional camera, lights, and tripods.

-Discuss hardware – cameras, lighting, microphones, phones, tripods, dollies, sliders, etc. 

The professional camera we used was a Canon T8 Camera with a Canon Zoom Lens and a Canon 50 ML Lens. The lights we used was a RGB Light Kit.

-Discuss software – planning tools, editing tools, animation tools, graphic design tools, filter creators, Blogger 

We used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the entire film opening, nothing else.

Did technologies help you solve problems? 

Yes! When it came to the flashback sequence, we needed something that'll enforce that sinister feeling and also make it obvious to the audience that the scene was not set in the present time the entire opening had been in. We ended up switching the lights to red to help solve this problem of ours.

Did you need to learn new technologies to achieve a specific aspect of production? 

Me, personally, no as Vicky knew how to use all her technologies to achieve all the aspects needed in our production.

Did you run into any obstacles with technologies?

We couldn't figure out how to turn on the light for a few minutes but we eventually got it to work. Our camera quality was also very choppy and the frames were glitchy and Vicky had to phone her TV Production friend to help her fix the settings on the camera. Both these obstacles did set us back but not that badly.

CCR Production Ideas

For one of the two media projects we have to do for the project, I definitely intend on doing a voice-over a presentation and "exporting it as a movie." I'm choosing to go down this path for two main reasons: going solo and comfort. By going solo, I mean that as much as I loved working with Vicky and Bella and being able to share the workload of this portfolio project with my friends, I also like to work on my own from time to time. With a presentation, I'm in charge of everything meaning I can choose the color schemes, the fonts, the information, the slides, etc. and I'm also able to not have to re-record my voice recordings 17,000 times to ensure I don't sound weird in case my group members decide to hear it. When I said comfort, I was referring to how I've been used to this type of media project due to the previous projects in this class. We had to do voice-overs our presentations for our Film Pitch Project and our midterm project too and so since I've done this twice before in the past, I'm comfortable enough to do it again especially now that I'm doing it alone.

For the second media project, I honestly have no clue what to do. I don't really know if I want to film something again but I also don't know if I'm creative enough to think of an incredibly creative way to approach the CCR questions that doesn't involve filming. I'll definitely figure it out within this week and in the meantime, I'll be working on my presentation and voice-overs. I still need to figure out which questions I'll be answering in which media project but you'll find out once you see my final project which is next week... yikes! 

Research Post: Fonts

We've finished filming! I am very glad to have gotten one of the biggest parts of this project out of the way! Now we have to work on the post-production aspects meaning editing, finding a song for our opening (which could've been both pre and post production), and making a title card for our opening, which could've also been done pre-production but I'm working on it today, nearly a month after we filmed! 

We already have our title, MANSLAUGHTER, but we've always wanted the "man" in the whole word to stick out as our main character is a serial killer targeting men. We were thinking of maybe having the word drip to make it appear as blood or have some sort of spooky element to it but it definitely will be visibly different from the word "slaughter." Regarding "slaughter," I'm thinking of having a "perfect" font for it considering Elena is a woman who wants perfection and will physically punish every man who doesn't give it to her.

The following is an idea of what we want. Again, we want "slaughter" to be a straight and perfect font but the "man" to be spooky in some way. I made the word red and while I do want to incorporate a dripping blood effect to the word, I decided to try out any other spooky elements that I could think of it and I landed on this knife. I'm probably not going to use it and resort to the dripping blood idea I've been thinking of but a lot of the "drippy" fonts are honestly... unappealing to look at in my opinion. This means I'm gonna have to make the drips myself and that's probably not going to be easy and it'll definitely take time but hopefully I get it complete within the week!

Research for Question #1 of CCR Post

Question 1: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

While we chose our film opening to be a thriller, it came out to be a horror which isn't that surprising considering the two genres are like cousins. 

Genre conventions are common elements, themes, and/or styles that make up a genre and for horror, there are several that can be listed both content-wise and production-wise. 

Starting off with content, this genre usually includes isolation, victim versus monster, and violence. Isolation can be both physical and psychological as characters can be separated from society in an empty and quiet location but they can also be going through something mentally that others cannot see or relate to. Since protagonists and antagonists in the horror genre are more extreme than in other genres, victim versus monster is an accurate description as the main character is usually victim to whoever or whatever is chasing them down. or in this case, our main character is the antagonist and chasing down her victim. Another tough style that makes up this genre is violence which refers to the fighting, attacking, blood, gore, and other kinds of brutality as they are typically displayed in horror, varying in graphicness.

Genre conventions related to production tend to consist of lighting, camera techniques, and sounds. The lighting used in this genre tends to be lower/darker since little to no visibility creates a sense of vulnerability and bad omen to both the characters and the audience in the genre. Moving onto the shots and movements used, every film incorporates close-up shots, sometimes extreme close-up shots, and quick tilts and pans to make a production appear more chaotic and even produce fear. Additionally, the sounds used are very versatile as it can be very quiet and creepy to make a film ominous or extremely loud and terrifying to create jump scares and get reactions out of the characters and audience.

SOURCE FOR GENRE CONVENTIONS: https://media-studies.com/horror-genre/

In our film opening, we chose to challenge the main character being a victim to "whoever or whatever" is chasing them down. In our film, we decided to swap the roles and have our main character, Elena, be the antagonistic killer who chases down another "main" character. Besides that, we did follow the rest of the conventions including the "physical" and "psychological" separation from society. It's definitely physical as the two main characters are alone in a house with no help nearby. It's also psychological as Elena is genuinely insane considering she kills men who don't fall under her standards when it comes to dating. We also did include violence shown through blood and a "dead body" (me) on the floor!

When it comes to representation, we showed it through gender and age. For women, they're stereotyped as more picky and overreactive and so when our main character, Elena, kills men because they're not "perfect" for her, it definitely lines up with common stereotypes against women. We also had Elena wear a dress which is another common conception of females as they're expected to wear dresses mostly during formal occasions but also just in general. Moving onto age, the film has two young main characters, Elena and Jackson, that are in their 20s. How'd they meet? Oh, you know, just the normal place young lovers meet each other for the first time: Tinder. This shows how young people are stereotyped to be obsessed with technology and rely on everything to be digital, even their dating lives which can lead to marriages that'll affect their entire lives which can also indirectly mean putting their future generation of children in the hands of Tinder!

Post-Production Process: Editing (#2)

 

The following video is a video that all three of us, me, Vicky, and Bella, are using to help assist us with the coloring aspect of our editing/film opening. When we first came up with the idea for our film opening, we decided that when we had our flashback sequence to a more sinister moment, we wanted to have the coloring/lighting significantly different to not only make it known that it's a scene in the past but also to develop animosity. Even though we used red lighting during the shoot of the scenes to create that more sinister look, we can still adjust the coloring of not only the flashback scenes but the entirety of the opening in general. Vicky found this video for us to all watch and follow to help us with our editing process as me and Bella especially don't have much experience when it comes to this aspect of our project/film opening.

The video goes over all the basics of coloring and elaborates on terms I didn't know before. It went over correction, hue curves, color wheels, vignette, masks, etc. With this information, we can make our film opening appear for cinematic and also adjust the lighting for the several scenes we thought came out too dark or too bright. This also can apply to our flashback scene with red lighting as it can certainly be adjusted as well regarding coloring/lighting.

Post-Production Process: Editing (#1)

 For our editing, we have started off by simply organizing the clips and seeing our length. We had to skim through and find the clips that were bad takes and our actual final takes. At first, we had over 20 minutes of footage in total and honestly, I'd rather have too much than too little. We might have to take out some scenes or shorten them extremely even though out of those 20 minutes, the actual clips we're using are around 5 minutes in total. 

Since we used Vicky's camera and therefore couldn't be sent the footage, when we finally saw it, we were so glad to have not only amazing quality but no issues with the framing/speed. When we had first started filming, the recording was a bit glitchy and we had to wait 10 minutes while Vicky's CBTV friend assisted her through a call. We're so glad our only duties left regarding the film opening is editing and not having to reshoot anything!

Production Post: Behind The Scenes

The filming era of the portfolio project is complete! Now we have to move onto editing and focusing on our Creative Critical Reflections. I've always found behind the scenes to movies I watched so fascinating because obviously, on the screen, everything looks like the actual location and cinematic but once seeing the reality of it, it's a small set and different raw lighting and effects. I hope someone feels the same fascination I do after seeing our film and then the reality of it.

  

. 

Production Post: Dinner Montage

We knew what props we'd need for the montage of Elena setting up the dinner table and we also knew the order as we had the script but when it came to the angles, we had different ideas on it. We eventually decided to shoot both of our ideas so when it came to editing, we'd have more options. It took up time having to position items in the same spot for future shots and at times, we'd need to use something to prop the camera atop of for close-up shots. For example, we used these random textbooks Vicky found inside her house and she placed it on the corner of the dinner table for the camera to be propped on because we needed a stable close-up of Elena setting up the plates and cutlery.

At one point, I had this idea for one of the montage scenes when she was setting up the table mats to have her walk across the table/wall and have credits be revealed as she walks by. The camera would've needed to be further back than we planned so that's one example of when our difference in ideas surfaced. Once again, we decided to go with my idea for the shot/angle and also Vicky and Bella's. Filming the dinner montage scenes was definitely one of the most challenging and time consuming parts of this shoot but we survived it! (Barely).

Production Post: Fake Blood

Me, Vicky, and Bella figured the fake blood would've been a pretty easy part of our film opening to handle since we already had it in a bottle. The fake blood became one of our biggest obstacles very soon since we quickly realized that not only would it stain the floor, but it would also stain my clothes. We tested little droplets on the knife to ensure it wouldn't stain the knife either and while it was a relief that it didn't stain the knife, we still had to think about how we would put "blood" on my body and the floor next to me without using the actual realistic looking blood that we brought specifically for this part.

We put the fake blood on the gloves and the knife since it didn't stain the knife and we didn't care if it stained the gloves as obviously, nobody would be reusing gloves. We also used the blood to pour over paper towels in the trash can to make it appear as the leftovers of one of Elena's many bloody and messy crime scenes. We then had to think about what to use as a substitute for the fake blood and we were originally thinking of cranberry juice but we then had the idea of using red lighting in the shot to make it appear more sinister meaning all we would need is any dark liquid and it could easily appear as blood in the red lighting! So while I laid there on the floor, I heard Vicky going through her fridge and once she found her ingredients, it wasn't long until I felt the cold liquids on my arm and the sound of it splattering on the floor besides me. The aroma that arose from those liquids afterwards was horrid and I was laughing on the floor but trying so hard to close my mouth so I didn't inhale any of the toxins that were surrounding me. Once we got the shot, we cleaned up everything but even after my arm was washed in Vicky's kitchen sink, my dad gagged and asked me "What is that smell!?" once I got in his car when he came to pick me up...