Anatomy of a Scene
Students in a Creative Art Works filmmaking program created a short dramatic film about cyber-bullying, witchcraft, and forgiveness. Working around the challenges of Zoom meetings, four students bonded as a team and produced a cohesive and affecting story.
A short film about cyber-bullying. And voodoo. Click HERE to watch Stuck, a four-minute short by students in a Creative Art Works CASA filmmaking program at MS 254 in The Bronx.
A ghostly cloud added in post represents the spirit of a school bully captured by a witch.
A cruel comment on social media goes viral, causing the victim to retaliate against her bully in dramatic fashion. This is an all-too common problem for young people in the cyber-age, but for four students in a Creative Art Works after-school filmmaking program at MS 254 in The Bronx, it is the high concept for a short horror film, called Stuck, which mashes up on-line harassment with witchcraft, voodoo dolls, and a twist on the typical Hollywood happy ending.
CAW offered a CASA filmmaking program to over thirty students in four sections at MS 254 in the Bronx. Students learned visual story-telling, film and lighting techniques, and video and sound editing. The program included many short film experiments, such as re-editing an existing movie trailer to change the genre — turning the Mighty Ducks into an action adventure story, for example. Students presented their work during Zoom culminating events that were open to friends, family and the entire school community. Stuck was the final project from one group of students in this program.
Storyboards help filmmakers envision the script as a series of shots.
Learning by Doing
There is no better way to learn filmmaking than to make one yourself. Filmmaking is a multi-disciplinary art, combining images, music, and sound to tell a unified story. The team behind Stuck participated in every step of the production, including scripting, story-boarding, editing, post-production special effects, scoring, and sound design.
In addition to adding royalty-free music, the team created their own spooky sound effects including mysterious whispers, maniacal laughter, and terrified gasps. All of these sounds are too quiet for a microphone to pick up, so they have to be synced up to the movie during sound editing in a process called “Foley.” (Ever wonder what a Foley Artist does? Now you know!)
Virtual Meetings, Real Teamwork
All of this teamwork happened without any of the artists ever meeting. Each student filmed themselves and emailed their clips to the team and CAW Teaching Artist Melissa Rodriguez so they could confer via ZOOM to critique the footage and decide if a reshoot was in order.
Cheap Tricks
A horror film is a good choice for first-time filmmakers, because you can create thrills and chills without a big budget. For example, the voodoo doll was improvised using an ordinary rag doll and a straight pin borrowed from a sewing kit. Shooting in black and white, often against a white wall, made it easier to edit together footage from four different photographers using different equipment, locations, and lighting – this would have been much more challenging had the mélange of footage been shot in color.
We hope you take a few minutes to watch Stuck, and please leave a comment if you enjoy it!
This Creative Art Works program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural After-School Adventures (CASA) Initiative in partnership with the City Council and Council Member Oswald Feliz.