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For our video project, my group started out by just tossing around different ideas of what we wanted to do; we knew we wanted to do something funny or some type of parody, and so somehow we came upon the idea of paranormal investigations. As it so happened, there was a paranormal investigator, Patrick Burns, from True TV/Court TV’s “Haunting Evidence” coming to that week’s Illinites in the Union and giving a speech followed by an actual paranormal investigation of the English Building. And so we thought it would be perfect to go and film the experience to see if we could use some of the footage. Well as it turned out it wasn’t as exciting as we had hoped and it turned out to be mainly just him talking about himself, his experiences with paranormal activity, and the science/profession of paranormal investigation (boring!). Even the paranormal investigation (advertised as a ghost hunt) was a bust, because he forgot much of his equipment and ended up just talking and answering questions. So then we came up with the idea of ourselves being the team of paranormal investigators, but sort of in a ‘mocumentary’ way, and we would investigate the semi-notorious haunting of the English Building by a girl who drowned in the basement pool back when it was a women’s dormitory. We watched some episodes of “Haunting Evidence” in order to get a feel for how the show transpires and found that the characters actually take it very seriously and have very dramatic moments during the show (perfect to parody!) We thought it would be really funny for us to pose as being really serious and invested in the investigation but to show others’ reactions to the ‘ghost’ as far less concerned. We accomplished this by using interviews of people in the English building (students, professors, secretaries, etc.). We established roles for ourselves based on the roles of the characters in “Haunting Evidence” with myself being the psychic, Yolanda being the paranormal investigator, Chris being the ‘medium’ (someone who can feel the channeling of spirits) and Caroline as our trusty camera woman.
As far as filming the footage, we didn’t have a set-plan except for filming certain ‘creepy-looking’ hallways, classrooms, etc. in the English building and parodying some of the footage we witnessed on “Haunting Evidence” and in Patrick’s presentation. We filmed the “team” going around the English Building basement hallways (which were very old and eerie), and upper floors (also very creepy when vacant). The scene where Chris feels a “hot spot” (and then we look down with the camera and he’s standing next to a heater) was inspired by an episode of “Haunting Evidence” when the medium sensed what he felt to be “cold spots” and “hot spots” – but it made it ten times funnier (and more mocking) to have that be from a heater rather than a spirit! Another parody scene is the one in which Yolanda is all by herself ‘waiting’ for her fellow-team members to come (when really we were in the background making noises and shadows) – this came from a clip Patrick showed us of him in the same situation, waiting for his fellow investigation crew on the haunted ship, The Queen Elizabeth, during which he filmed himself “Blair Witch” style (hand-held shaky camera seeing what he’s seeing and occasionally turning back on himself) while hearing paranormal noises (which sounded to us like nothing more than echoes). Nonetheless, he was freaking out, so we thought it would be fun to parody with our own version (shadows of us walking in front of a projector screen, hand-shadows, headphone-shadows, etc – just really random, really amateur, and really funny!). Some times, however, we weren’t making the “paranormal activity” up… like the scene in which the door to the supply closet opened by itself (which we made funny by inventing a bizarre instrument with a ridiculous name to measure the present surrounding paranormal activity), and also the part where Chris closes the doors and the window above him magically closes on its own! – this turned out to be something with the air pressure because they were able to recreate it, but it was still a really cool effect! Other than that we filmed random shots of different things (stairs, windows, a drinking fountain to represent the theme of water and drowning – a joke of course – etc.). We also filmed shots of the outside of the English building and the atrium where the pool used to be which we then spliced with old pictures we found online of the English Building when it was first built (then, the Women’s Building) and an old picture of a young woman from the 1900s who we characterized as “Abigail” the notorious girl who drowned in the basement pool and now haunts the English building. After that we filmed interviews of students, professors, and the secretary from the English building, asking them if they had heard of the ghost of the English Building, if they had seen any paranormal activity in the English Building, and if they were concerned about it. We expected most to either not have heard of it (which was good, because here we are all serious about it and no one has heard of it), or to not be concerned about it (also good)… we definitely got what we were looking for!
As far as the editing process, it was probably the hardest part (or at least the most time-consuming) just deciding what parts to include, what parts to cut/shorten, and what order to put everything in, plus add the voice-over and put that all together in the film program. Luckily two of my group members were very familiar with IMovie and the whole film editing process (something I myself have never done!). We made our outline from the footage we filmed, putting the background story first, then an “opening sequence” for our character roles, then footage from our exploration of the English Building, spliced in with interviews of people, followed by more exploration, more interviews, and Yolanda’s solo scare. We struggled with trying to find a good place for the Patrick Burns footage (we had originally thought of saying we needed aid from a professional and we got Patrick) and, much to our dismay (for we had invested so much time going to his lecture/tour and now it was for nothing), we decided not to include it (also for time reasons because we were at like over 7 min.). But other than that the editing went fairly smoothly and we got it uploaded and it turned out to be really really funny! We had a lot of fun making it and I hope it shows in the film (I think it does!) Enjoy J
