Group Meeting

 Okay LOTSSSS of updates blog!

Recently, my class had a group meeting where people could get together, discuss their projects and progress, and then get feedback from peers. I did not realize just HOW much this would help me and Andreina, I finished that day with a whole page of notes and suggestions. 

So for basic observations, one thing I really saw though was that my ENTIRE group was at multiple different points. One girl in my group hadn't even decided her main storyline, main characters, and just got her main conflict down. We obviously all helped to chip in, but seeing that some of my classmates were either at the same point or even behind me was reassuring. However, another dude was EXTREMELY ahead of the rest. He had his main scenes, how he was going to film, where he was going to film, character names, and the entire plot beginning to end of the ENTIRE FILM. He knew exactly where to stop the opening too and was free to suggestions without taking it to heart. I kind of thought it was a little funny, seeing that the group was so free with their progress. 

My group also suggested that for multiple characters that are the same type of person (ex: 2 teenage girls), that color coding their outfits would be a great way to distinguish who is who. I also suggested that the colors could relate to something with their personality and who they are. This idea will probably be applied to me and Andreina's characters' clothes, so I did research and found examples of color-coded clothes on characters.

I also found a small list that could guide me with the characters outfits. 

However, I don't want to just limit the coloring to the characters clothes, I was also hoping that all the characters could have distinct jewelry they always wear. A small detail I REALLY want to include is that the character who dies wears a certain top/jewelry, and the character who lives is later seen with it or wearing it.

Another thing I noticed was the diversity of genre. I don't know why, but I somehow expected everyone to choose either coming-of-age or even just see a common theme throughout, but my group was scattered with their genres. One girl had chosen horror/thriller, one coming-of-age, another sci-fi, someone else dystopia, and mine being mystery. Even though the genre's were extremely different, I got to see everyone's blogs with all their genre research. They all had amazing details that they wanted to add in to really create their mood, as the girl who chose horror says she wanted to start the opening with fast cuts, setting the fast paced for thriller. 

Now, onto the notes that my group gave me. I had mentioned that because Andreina and I had basically just solidified our main plot line, our idea of how to start and even continue the opening was extremely fuzzy. One girl gave me a suggestion that I really loved. I had said that we had planned to HINT that a character would die, but not tell or show the audience directly. She had said that during the 1:30 mark would be the best time (in her opinion) to just abruptly drop the character from all scenes, creating curiosity, and to spend the time before that building the relationship and character of the 2 main characters. I genuinely loved that she gave me a time stamp to follow, and honestly, I could see how this opening could play out. 

Another had recommended that there could be a montage of the 2 main characters, always roughly in the same place on screen, then it would go black, show the title, and one of the girls would be standing alone in roughly the same place. This would create a parallel and really show to the audience that something tragic had happened. He also suggested that there could be a brighter was of color during that part, maybe even a vintage effect to really show it was just memories. I genuinely could also see this opening play out. Maybe during the first half, we can show the girl that gets bullied closing herself off more and more until eventually she's gone. The scene after the title would probably be her at a funeral? Maybe her bedside? Me and Andreina are still unsure but we know this group meeting helped A LOT. 

Another small detail someone had recommended is when after phone numbers become unused, the texts become green. I REALLY like this small detail and I'm 100% sure I will find somewhere to implement this. Someone had suggested that throughout the entire opening, there should be no dialogue. Even though this is a creative choice, I cannot see myself being able to do this. When would the dialogue begin in the movie? Would the opening just be silence and background noise? Even though silence and background noise could create the uncomfortable feeling I want, I', unable to see how to do this. Because of no dialogue, everything would have to just be implied, and that would maybe have too much going on in the first 2 minutes. 

Instead, I think I'll just keep the dialogue to a minimum. However, the lack of background noise will still be used and I was thinking of using lack of sound, or maybe the sound of rain, to create the gloomy mood we need. One girl in my group recommended that we make theme boards on Pinterest for our characters, which is an idea I love and WILL DEFINITELY be doing. I think the next thing I will be working on is finding roughly how the opening will go; one girl in my group created time stamps for her entire opening and that could benefit me GREATLY, so I will be doing it too. 

The parallel of characters side by side followed by the title, followed by 1 girl alone where she was previously standing is an AMAZING scene that I DEFINITELY will try to include.

So far, what I 100% want to include is a green text message scene, distinct styles for each character, the jewelry/clothing of the passed character the living character later has, the parallel of characters side by side, minimal dialogue, and maybeeee the montage. However, if I do the montage, I will 100% be including the saturation effect and the vintage effect.

Bye blog!

 Recap on our process yesterday:

So my Andreina and I's thought process is that we wanted to build from our original idea, with the whole welfare check thing. Before we even started, we knew that our plan was a little.... cliche, and we literally had NO idea how to execute it. So I thought back to what our teacher said, establishing a role for our main actor. I feel like having multiple main characters would've been a LOT easier to do and would go really well for a mystery plot. So immediately, we knew that we HAVE to have multiple main characters. We needed a crime to happen, so I went to Google "mystery genre conventions".

I saw this little paragraph, and when I read it, it made SO much sense and would be so easy to integrate into the opening.

A victim or character lacking authority launching their own investigation is something Andreina and I knew we could do, it provides LOTS of ways to build a character, their relationships, and mannerisms. 

Me and Andreina already knew that whatever crime that would be committed could NOT be exposed to the audience, as it would give away ALL appeal to keep watching. 

We know suicide is a crime where the effect is known to all but the reason may be known to none. Having the idea of multiple characters, a victim-launched investigation, and suicide for the crime, we decided the main characters would have to be EXTREMELY close. However, we knew that a victim launching their own investigation would have to mean the police were either slacking or just not caring about the crime in the area. I searched up areas that have the least police effort.

I had searched up the correlation between police funding and crime rates, to which I found this.

Now knowing that a well-funded law enforcement area leads to lower crime, that means the city has to be in a lower-class city, a bigger city. However, my city of Weston is not big enough to look like a major city, so we concluded that minimal shots of the setting would take place, and instead be implied with mise en scene. 

Me and Andreina now have our main crime, characters, and setting. We polishes our plot by going back and forth, landing on our final plot. We knew bullying could be mainly hidden, but of course some signs would show up/ A good contrast between the characters would add a good interest to the plot, so we may have a friendly, weird-ish character be bullied, and her best friend is a typical girl, making her a harder target for bullies. 

We had ruled out all chances of unnatural occurences like the characters switching bodies, mind-reading, or any superhuman qualities, as we wanted the plot to genuinely have some kind of realism to it, as if the characters and these circumstances could actually happen. 

After googling this, I knew that one of these reasons could be included in the backstory of the bullied victim. Seeing as though our story would take place in a poorer area, abusive home life, poor education, difficult homelife, and aggression could all be products of living like that. Obviously, Andreina and I chose to kind of integrate all those characteristics.

I jotted down the rough draft of the character's personalities here:

Obviously this list will probably change later on, as more detail will be explored in who they are. 

After the research and the finalization of a plot, setting, and characters, we obviously had to think on if we could actually execute this plan or not, like if it was ACTUALLY filmable. 

Me and Andreina are now a HUGE step closer to filming, and tomorrow, we WILL start storyboarding. Im thinking that we should storyboard the main scenes of the opening, then using notecards to write the important details. A summary of the scenes we storyboard will be written on the paper itself. So in the end, we will have a storyboard with our major scenes and a few sentences summarizing it, then notecards that provide extra specific details and notes on the characters, any actions that HAVE to be included, clothes, and some dialogue. 

For next week, our main goal will be storyboarding, so next NEXT week we can actually start filming. 

Bye blog, until next time! 

 Okay SOOOOOOO....

When me and Andreina got together we decided that watching movies mayyyyy take up too much time. We ended up just doing normal research, but together instead. I will probably spend my entire next blog talking about all the research we found and how it got us here. I genuinely want to spend this blog just writing about our accomplishment today and how EXCITED I am about it.

In other news, me and Andreina FINALLY got a plot for our opening. Basically, there will be 2 best friends, where one of them would get bullied (maybe something else in the future) and will keep it hidden from EVERYONE. The bullied friend will eventually be driven to suicide, but because of the fact no one else knows, the circumstances are just all around weird for her. Obviously she goes through grief, but when the police eventually close the case as a suicide with no arrests, she takes it into her own hands. 

I genuinely love this plot, as it gives a lot of opportunities to create character, which I think I'd have so much fun doing. We already have our actors in mind, our friend Alex and Gabby. We knew that they'd actually be perfect since they're so close and would have no trouble "acting as best friends" Andreina and I kind of knew that if we were to act, it could be a little difficult filming each other, so having actors gives us full potential to get any shots we want.

We decided to start storyboarding next week, and as soon as we finish we can start creating props, and then actually filming. The names for the characters and all other things like the production company name will come later on, as this plot is new and we just want to polish and discuss the little details that make the story make sense 

 HEYYY

So basically.... I've been meaning to do more research on my specific blog BUTTTTT my other classes have just been giving work and more work and more work. This week has been soooo eventful. I told Andreina about this, and she's been having the same exact problem. We literally cannot agree on a clear storyline either, which is pretty bad. So, we decided that instead of just googling some random openings, that we get together on the weekend to watch actual movies. I feel like watching movies would be more interactive, and I genuinely like mystery so this would probably feel like fun more than it is "research". HOPEFULLY by Sunday we can be a lot farther than where we are right now. 

Andreina said that she liked when openings are animated and I genuinely think it would such a nice touch to add. Both of us are trying to come up with a design but since the logo doesn't really have to correlate with the film, this should be SO much easier. However, I think that animating and designing a logo will come later on, since we are still deciding on our general plot right now. Something I can't wait to do though is use lighting or coloring throughout the opening. Also adding details in the background would be so fun. Making props in general seems like such an interactive touch to our project, PLUS it would feel more like art than part of an ACTUAL EXAM.

Andreina suggested that we should start off our intro with people talking, and I see the vision but I think it would fit better if the talking is like loud in a public space, then gets muffled, and the main character gets asked like "Hey, are you listening to me?". I don't know..... her vision and my vision are completely different, which is EXACTLY why we are going to get together and do our own "research". 

Ill DEFINITELY be spending my next blog posts talking about all the new things we want to add to the post and ideas I have for the future.... with my excitement for making props I may be thinking a little too ahead without thinking of the steps in between, but oh well! Giving it thought is better than not thinking about it at all.

 Hey blog! So,

me and my partner, Andreina, have decided on the most important parts of our video. Our character will have a off-putting aura to them, causing some suspicions from people who are close to her. Our video will also not directly announce any major events that happen/happened, but will hint them, giving the mysterious effect we want. We definitely will add symbolism and "foreshadowing" to what has actually happened. Our actual plot is still very foggy, but me and Andreina are getting closer and closer to figuring it out everyday. 

Solidifying a good plot is our first big step, making the little details will come later in the storyboard. Our plan so far is that a really good daughter/son is in a courtroom pleading guilty for a crime. However, the actual action they are charged for gets cutoff and a backstory begins. This is unrealistic to us though, because we do not have any access to any courtrooms. I've suggested that the scene takes place in a mental hospital, where mise en scene and lighting can come to play, and that it would be more realistic to film in Andreina's room since almost every piece of furniture in there is white. Looking into this level of detail really helps us to carefully plan what we are doing and how it affects us. Thankfully, we have put the previously mentioned form, from my last blog post, into play and realized that for a mystery, there may have to be some sort of detective. For now, maybe the interviewer at the mental hospital can be the main character, who knows?

For the future, Andreina and I will definitely be approaching our later steps with more detail than anticipated. Our plot will obviously change, dramatically or even a little, because we feel as though some things are missing in the story, or maybe it'll be really come to life when we add all the small details while storyboarding. 

Progress

 Okay, I have been researching the needs in a mystery genre and came upon this document which could really be handy when it comes to needing a checklist. I’ve also been trying to watch a few openings such as this, this, and this, and tried to guess their genre as well as find out why the specific elements contribute to the genre conventions.

Researching these openings as well as seeing the document helped me solidify what makes up a mystery genre.

For the story itself, I now know to not mention a problem head on, but instead to hunt towards it. This will obviously add towards a mystery. Me and my partner, Andreina, are still unclear about the plot itself. However, we just began researching and I’ll probably spend the next few days getting inspiration from other openings.

Until next time, bye blog!

 Brainstorming Ideas For Our Opening

Me and my partner, Andreina, originally wanted to make a film opening with Frank ocean's music in the background, and we would work backwards from how the song made us feel to put it on film. This unfortunately did not work , and we have decided on making a coming-of-age film opening where the main character has to come to terms with growing up. We both wanted a realistic sort of approach. This choice would be easiest for us since we are both mildly interested in this genre. However, we have no idea what to do, how to do it, or even considered anything filming. Me and Andreina both realized that this idea would be mildly difficult with no plan or idea. We've been researching film openings such as this one, this one, and this one. Me and my partner decided a suspense/mystery genre would be best. We have an idea with an interrogation like scene, as we both have ideas of a storyline, mise-en-scene elements, outfits, makeup, and dialogue. This idea overall was an extremely rough draft. 

After receiving feedback, our teacher recommended to change the interrogation in an interrogation room to a almost-interview at the main characters house. Our idea was overall extremely cliche and me and Andreina are working on tweaking this plot to make it less predictable.

We have decided that the plot will start with a welfare check on the main character's mental health, ending with the main character going into some kind of psychosis. This will provide a lot of opportunity to insert technique within the opening. The main character will have a mental illness where a loved one, like her mom, had called welfare workers to come help with her because she thinks she's at danger of harming.

This new plan will allow me and Andreina to practice all sorts of techniques and skills to make a mysterious effect. Overall, I'm excited for the future of this project and what I'll learn along the way.

 Transition Post

Hey blog! From now on, all my posts will be in relation to my Cambridge portfolio project. This includes the overall process of filming, brainstorming, storyboarding, developing, and all other factors that are included. There will be around 3 posts a week, spanning over about 8 weeks. Because this project was just assigned, my mind is basically blank with no ideas. Brainstorming has to be the first step.

One of my first approaches may be a coming-of-age genre, filled with character vs. self conflicts or some character vs. society. So far there is no other idea for how the film opening itself would look like. This plot would probably take place in a low-class area with low-class main characters. I am hoping for a sense of realism in this project but the most important ideas are still brewing.

Another one of my ideas could possibly be an idea where a character has family issues. Obviously this approach would include a character vs. character conflict but could have some character vs. self and would use lighting and coloring heavily to maybe hint some sort of separation between the main character and the rest of the family.

These are just some very shallow ideas that may be used, or I may even do an entirely different story. I guess we'll have to see!

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

The music marketing project was a more of a difficult one in my personal experience. The freedom of being able to express whatever you please at your own pacing is a new kind of approach to a project. Because of the amount that my group had to cover, we had to plan our entire process. However, because of the little due dates and the entire project being due in over a week, we were often distracted and off-task. This is a choice that we regret as when the due date came closer, the stress of a huge project being due set in. The team's first step was to plan out what to do first, and that was to design our brand and what our artist would look like. Brainstorming was a long a process because there are various ways to go in terms of style, hair, and personas, but we eventually ended on a loving persona and soft style as we felt it would fit our genre, pop, the best. We had come up with potential distribution and marketing trends, including making a TikTok trend with the #MAISTIME. (Our artist's name is Melvin Mais, pronounced "my").

When discussing our video, the song we were given was replayed multiple times as we all tried to pitch in our ideas for what we felt the vibes of the songs are for the storyboard. This process was also slightly difficult as all of us had different ways and ideas to capture the music's melody, shots, angles, movements, and colors. After days, our group had come up with a solid plan, using friends as actors, and establishing all our filming days and locations. The filming process in itself was much less difficult than we had imagined it to be, as our storyboard was a well-founded plan and we all knew exactly how to execute it. Minor tweaks were done during the shooting just to ensure the smoothness of the music video, too. The video shooting process also allowed all of us to pitch in our different ideas of how the shots would end up and the entire team was able to learn more about the importance of angles, composition, and movement. The shooting process was in the span of around a week since some of the teams schedule did not match up and other actors were busy.

Before the video was finished, the team also considered starting the presentation just so all the work would not be left until the last minute. We made sure that the presentation had the appropriate colors as well as a style we wanted our artist to be associated with. We had plenty of fun coming up with brand deals, what to include in the slides, visual elements, picture layouts, and merch designs in the slides. We were able to split up the work and work smoothly through about 3/5 of the presentation. The video was on plan to be finished with more than enough time to edit, and embedding the music video was one of the last steps involved in finishing the presentation, right after setting the social media accounts into the slides. 

However, with around 2 shots left and around 4 slides of our presentation left with multiple days to monitor and edit our project, something unexpected happened.

One of our team members as well as one of our actors had a tragic event happen to someone close to them. This left the rest of our team to have to improvise and cut the music video short. Even though multiple days would have been enough to finalize our project, assuming all would be going well, we were unprepared and stressed that we would not find a resolution in time to submit. The team was forced to improvise, cutting the video short and replacing one of the actors for 1 shot, and entirely removing another shot. Because of the sudden changes, our presentation was left unfinished until we could find a solution about the time and missing members. Our group had discussed what each of us could do, all with different schedules. Since some had a wide open timetable while others were busy until late night, or even dealing with something personal, we all realized we had to finish this project quickly with the due date virtually running at us. With each passing day, we slowly but surely completed the music video. It had not looked exactly how we planned originally, but nonetheless we all loved how it looked given the circumstances. This allowed us to continue on and finish our presentation and finish the project in time. 

Overall, this project was moderately heavy on my team. It has helped me realize, more than anything, that time, alongside quality, is one of the most important aspects when approaching a large, or even small project. If our team had started earlier and did not spend the first few days getting carried away, we would've been much deeper into completion with our project by the time something unexpected could happen, causes days less worth of stress for everyone. An aspect I will be using for my Cambridge portfolio is having a firm and steady plan. A plan allowed us to film our shots and know exactly what to do with no delays in the days that my team was working and all was well. I now know that next time, plans have a possibility of failing or something unrelated may interfere with progress, which is why I will leave more space for improvement.