The terrible thing I did

Halloween video project

Hi again!

I was talking about my halloween special video in my last blog post and now it's been published. I was little scared that people will be angry that I do something that is not family-friendly content. I tried to make it very clear that this is a horror short movie so children and sensitive people be aware!

People actually liked it a lot! I got so many good comments and many came to talk about it directly.  Message of the video was clear to most viewers. I am glad that Mirabella's story got viewers interest.

Watch the video and tell in the comments how did you  interpret it?

Making process

The idea and inspiration

Even though this is horror themed video, it has deeper meaning; school bullying. Video tells story of my alterego Mirabellas "birth". I don't want to open it too much, because certain things are meant to remain unclear. I'm inspired by role playing and story-telling in movies to bring out my own stories.

My biggest inspiration however has been my favorite YouTube content creator Markiplier. From the very beginning of my channel, I also wanted to create hidden mysteries for my YouTube channel. I have a few eastereggs already done and hidden to my videos. Now I wait and look how long it takes that they will be found. Some are easier to find and some more difficult. It's really interesting to put together the clues you find into a bigger story!

For the first time, Mirabella was clearly featured in my video: HÄTÄKOKOUS 50k spessu
One of my favorite comments is that someone understood Mirabella's replies of "burning old school books" from the previous video now better after seeing Mirabella's born story.

Locations

I had many different versions of how I would have been filmed this. I modified them to fit the locations I got. I needed a classroom, a playground or a school yard and a scary school corridor or basement.

Most of the events take place in primary school, but I didn't see it as a good idea to go to primary school to shoot a horror movie and scare the kids. So my mom helped me book a classroom from my old high school for free! ( She is awesome ) The headmaster remembered me and was excited, but directed me to the vice headmaster, whom I had not spoken to before. However, she had read the story about my YouTube channel on the school website and remembered me from that. We went to shoot in the classroom with my boyfriend after the school day ended. We had two hours, which was just the time we needed.

We didn't bother to go to elementary schools playgrounds because I knew some kids would still watch my video despite the warnings and then dare not play there anymore. So my mother and I went by car to the lonely playground behind my childhood home. I never thought I'd go back there to make a horror movie. However, I liked that the place contained my true childhood memories. The memories there reminded me of the forest next to the playground, which was just like it was back then. I wanted to add it to my video because when I was a kid I was afraid of the woods in the dark, and for some reason they were always next to the playgrounds. Also the forest is so beautiful, there are lots of tree roots!

I heard about "scary cellar" from my mother's former art school buddy. She painted paintings in an old factory that had quiet work spaces for artists. She gave us the key to the loan, which we could get anywhere at the former factory. Of course I wanted a basement with old trays! It got a school-like feel! Perfect!

Problems

When we were shooting at the playground it started to rain quite a bit and it was really cold. My mom kept an umbrella above the camera so it wouldn't get wet. It was also dark quite quickly, so I'm not completely satisfied with the quality of the end result of that scene.

My eyes do not like contact lenses at all! I suffered many hours with white lenses in my head while we were shooting in the basement. My eyes were still sore the next day! It's so scary to use them!

My mother is easily scared. She didn't enjoy being in the basement at all and even the small noises made her scared. Fortunately, she got used to it quickly when I was jokin around a lot. I'm not scared of that kind of things.

My weapons

I used my Canon G7 mark II video camera for this video. I'm actually filming all my videos with this right now! I really recommend! Small, handy, high quality video and photography. This camera has been very popular with YouTube creators and I don't know many who don't have this camera.

I used a Gimbal stabilizer to get a smooth finish when I needed to move with the camera. When I was shooting scenes where the camera was not moved I used the old tripod I got, I don't even remember where.

All the magic happens in the editing stage. I'm using Cyberlink Powerdirector 17 editing program. I've tried now Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe Premiere, but still really like this program a lot more.

My music I got from Epidemic Sound website and also some from Kevin MacLeod's royalty free music.

- Miranda