The Clown: Working Around The Problems of the Rough Cut

When we were tasked with working with what we had with the rough cut for our final product, we were presented with one major issue. This issue was that in the final shot of the film, where Ethan's throat is slit, there is no blood visible. this presented an obvious continuity error, so we brainstormed how we would fix it.

We had originally planned to use makeup when we shot the final cut at Corey's house, but those plans had fallen through due to the COVID pandemic. Now, our only option was to fix the mistake within the post-production process.
We first turned to VFX. Neither of us were experienced in the area, so we resorted to online tutorials. We found a video by a channel called Film Riot, which detailed how to place a bloody wound on someone using VFX.

The video explained how to use Adobe After Effects and one of its plug-ins, titled Mocha, to achieve our desired effect. Just as we did with Premiere Pro, we redeemed our free trial for the program and began our work. Then we ran into a problem.

We very quickly discovered that After Effects is extremely intensive on computer hardware. Neither Ethan or I had incredibly advanced computer units, so the application would crash as soon as we loaded our footage into the software.

Fixing the continuity error with VFX began to seem like an impossibility. Ethan and I began to brainstorm, and finally came up with the solution of using a title card. We had originally planned for the scene to cut to black and then reveal the title of the film. Now, to work around Ethan's lack of blood, we decided that the title card would overlay the screen as soon as Ethan removed his hands from his throat, effectively covering up the issue.

Notice how the C covers up Ethan's throat.

This wasn't the most glamorous method of dealing with our issue, but considering our circumstances of having to work from home with our own assets, I was generally happy with how the fix turned out. It adds to horror me. The fact that we aren't gratuitous with our violence, and instead conceal it, adds to the mystique and horror of the film, almost as if it is waiting to play it's best card instead of blowing it at the beginning. 

The Clown: Typography

For the in-film typography, we were very much inspired by the typography of our own production company, and the cult classic Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
As mentioned in our blog post on our production company, the Hackhouse Productions font had a low-budget, handmade quality to it, which made it feel a little unsettling. The choice was inspired by the 1981 horror-drama An American Werewolf in London.

Hackhouse Productions logo

The title card of An American Werewolf in London (1981)

We wanted to maintain a similar aesthetic for the film, but also wanted to take inspiration from other clown-related material at the time. To accomplish this, we looked to the 1988 horror film Killer Klowns from Outer Space. The font as similarly inconsistent, but had more jagged angles than our original Hackhouse Productions font.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space poster

Instead of cutting out the letters in paper, we used the pen tool in Photoshop to recreate the messy, handmade angles of both fonts. This was our final result.

After we were done, we exported the asset as a PNG into the editing project so we could put it against a background.

The Clown: Music

For the musical score in the movie, we knew from the start that we wanted heavy, 80's style synth music. For reference, we look to John Carpenter's films Halloween and The Thing, both of which have synth based soundtracks.

We didn't worry about music selection until we were done with the final edit, since most movies aren't scored until they are done with the final edit. Once we had the final version of the movie, we went to YouTube to find our music. We made sure to find royalty free music so that we wouldn't have to worry about copyright issues.
We ended up finding the track below. It's one note synth lead perfectly fit the tense aesthetic we were going for, and the music slowly built onto itself, much like how the scene is supposed to.

After we put the music into the editing software and had it in a position we wanted it in, something still felt missing from the shot where Ethan's throat is slit. We decided we wanted to incorporate a strike into the sound mix to emphasize the shock of the clown's emergence from the closet. We skimmed YouTube for a bit and found this sound.

The Clown CCR

The Clown: Final Cut