Yu 1

James Yu
Professor Greg McClure
Writing 39B
2015.12.04
RIP Reflection Essay
For the RIP project, our group decided to do a short horror movie called No More.
Our topic was focused on the studying stress that most college students encounter, which was
an important issue to address nowadays due to the students performances in school. We
figured that conveying our message with a short film would be the most effective because of
the ability of the people to receive a piece of serious information was through unforgettable
visual images. We chose to present it with the horror genre film for the purpose of informing
our audience that handling the stress with a wrong way could ultimately result in a negative
influence to ones life. Our targeted audience is of course the UCI students as well as the
scholars who are interested in this topic. In our film we had our protagonist suffered not only
from the stress of overloaded schoolwork, but also from the stress of family and friendship in
order to touch on other potential stresses that could end up badly for people.
There are many moments in the film that grew out of our rhetorical situations and
decisions when we were working. While we were brainstorming our ideas, we thought about
having a monster that killed the protagonist in the end. However, after we determined to
focus on the topic of stress we set the monster as the stress itself. Unlike the idea of
threatened and impure monster mentioned in The Nature of Horror by Nol Carroll, we
decided to adopt the similar idea in the video No Way Out that we watched in class, which
shows the monster as invisible and was created by the protagonists unstable sentiments
(Carroll). We had made it more obvious to the audience by exaggerating the protagonists
reaction and enlarging her emotions negatively. One notable scene about this was when the

Yu 2
protagonist received a cheerful message from her friend telling her that she passed the test.
The protagonist should, if they were really friends, be happy for her friend, but instead she
went hysterical and refused to help her friend again due to her own failure. Doing this also
built the tension of the plot as the protagonist slowly went out of control. We, as the rhetor,
purposely designed her characteristic this way in order to make our message more powerful
and memorable by showing the negative emotions.
Since our film was of horror genre, there were also moments that grew out of the need
to meet the tropes we used. The specific trope that we used was the door knock. In horror
movies, the door knock indicates a driving force that something or someone will appear soon.
Similarly, we used this trope as the link towards the climax. After collapsing from all the
stresses, she heard the door knocking sounds and found a mysterious box when she opened
the door. The box undoubtedly served a special meaning; it symbolized her acceptance of
committing suicide by taking it into her room. Although simply having a box on the other
side of the door was not scary at all, it acted as a turning point according to the trope.
Furthermore, the constant heavy knocking sounds before she opened the door horrified the
audience as they might expect something threatening. Here we played around with the
expectation that something should appear did not actually appear, even though the sound
effect hinted our audience the upcoming climax. The door knocking sounds not only served
as a trope we used in the horror genre film, but also dedicated as evidence that helped the
audience sense the dangers of the protagonist towards the ending.
Another moment that our group intentionally included was also derived from our
context. Even though it was not demonstrated heavily and clearly, the relationship between
family members and between friends reflected the historical context of the 21st century
students life. Specifically, the audience observed the information that the protagonists father
could not afford her tuition for next quarter because of lost of job yet she still asked to take

Yu 3
out money from loans. In my parents generation they rarely received money from their home
for their tuition fees if they were studying overseas because not only were their family
discouraged them to be far away from home, but also it required huge amount of money.
However, this phenomenon was slowly decreasing that many parents nowadays provided the
children everything they needed before entering society. Since society is becoming so
competitive, many Asian parents are willing to pay much more for better education in other
countries. My group and I purposely included this since we understood that this were more
likely to happen in our generation, especially in our targeted audience in UCI. Many students
in UCI are from different states and different countries, and not many of them could actually
afford their own spend in college. Therefore, we used this piece of information and dedicated
it to strengthen the tension of our story by having our protagonist lose support from her
family.
In this film I have made several significant contributions to help complete it. My first
role was the cameraman; because I was the only one who could hold the camera without a lot
of shaking, I became the chosen one. Besides that, I looked for the best shooting spot in order
to achieve perfection. I first listened to our directors instruction and rehearsed before start
filming, and then I would try different shooting angles to gain a better understanding of the
specific scene while she was talking to the actress. In addition, I would be giving advices on
the effectiveness of the footages if the results were not expected from the perspective of a
cameraman as well as the first viewer on the screen. Like in our film when the protagonist
was crying and staring at the failed test on the ground, I told my group that aiming the camera
from the back of the protagonist dedicated a special effect, which would make her more
approaching to the audience by seeing the same thing from the same view angle. After
filming the same scene with another angle according to the directors instruction and
comparing it to the angle I suggested, we all came to an agreement to take my advice.

Yu 4
Although it was not true that I always provided a better suggestion, we discussed the outcome
of the footages and chose the one that fit the best.
Another personal contribution was being the movie editor. I was basically in charge of
all the work after filming process; my job was to connect all the footages and cut the
unnecessary part, to insert the transitions between the footages in order to make it flow
smoothly, and to add different sound effects to enhance the audiences reception of the film.
The software that I used was called iMovie, I could download our footages from the camera
as well as different sound effects from the video sharing website YouTube, and do the editing
work on the iMovie. The process was tough because of my lack of experience and the limited
time. I insisted doing short film as our RIP project because I figured that the process was
more interesting, and we would more likely enjoy it rather than treating it as a boring
assignment. But since we started out with no editing experience, I spent quite some time to
figure out how to use the software. Not only that, out filming process took a lot of time due to
our different perspectives, leaving me only about a day to work on editing. After I edited the
film my group and I gathered and went over the result, and then we made changes to improve
it. One specific moment was the focus when the protagonist closed the door. Towards the end
of the film, the protagonist was letting the negative feelings in her room, symbolizing by the
stickers appearing on her door. However, it was not apparent enough for the audience to read,
so we decided to zoom in this specific moment with a creepy sound effect in order to increase
the significance.
Throughout the time with my group members, we made some serious work and
overcame many difficulties we encountered in the process of filming. It was my
pleasure to work with my group members because once we had our objective
clear we collaborated really well and helped each other as much as
possible. Although we often threw out random ideas and expected them to be
used in the film, we quickly settled our disagreement and continued working

Yu 5
on our assigned job. For instance, while we were filming according to the
directors instruction, we would immediately watch the footage together
and figure out what should be kept and what should be improved. By doing so
we would all be satisfied with our product, but the consequence of having
most of us feeling satisfied became one of our biggest challenges at the
same time. Because the footages had to meet the minimum requirement of our
standard, the time spent became much more than expected. We often spent a
lot of time discussing how the scene should be shot and what angle was the
most effective, and by the time we started filming it was already half an
hour past. In the end, we pursued our perfection and tried to make all of
us satisfied, but at the same time we brought one of our major problems as
the consequence.

Yu 6

Work Cited
Carroll, Nol. "The Nature of Horror." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46.1
(1987): 51-59. JSTOR. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.
Morgan, Kristoffer Aaron. "No Way Out." No Way Out. N.p., 31 Oct. 2012. Web
"Scary Sound Effects." YouTube. YouTube, 13 Nov. 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2015.