First Group Meeting!

 

        Last class we had the opportunity to share our progress with our classmates and get some feedback from them. In this meeting I shared what I have so far for the plot of my movie and some of the logistical aspects related to it, like how I plan to execute a funeral scene. I also shared some concerns that I have related to time and sound, as well as screenwriting. 

        So, regarding my plot, I told my group to go ahead and access my "brainstorming" blog post where they could read the overall idea of my plot and some of the movies I was looking at for inspiration. After that I gave them a more detailed explanation behind what drives my character (being over everyone expecting perfection from her) and talked about the order of my story boards. When I told them about my idea to do parallel editing between the gas station bathroom and funeral, they were concerned that maybe it would be confusing for viewers; however, they encouraged me to try it because they thought if I executed it well, it would work very nicely. I am glad to have gotten this point of view because I'm not a very experienced editor, so this tells me that for this part of the opening I should probably ask for some extra help to make sure it comes out very smoothly. I also got some interesting feedback from my friend Veronica, who brought to my attention that maybe bleaching my character's hair might not be the smartest choice because it wouldn't be realistic, since bleaching takes a while to do, and my character wouldn't have that type of time. She suggested I should dye my character's hair darker (ex. using purple shampoo and a purple wig to make it seem like she dyed her hair purple). Even though this is not a main element of my opening, it is interesting that she got that detail, so it might mean that other audiences would too; I want to make this opening as realistic as possible, so I will be considering this. 

     Another point that one of the people in my group made was that maybe I should end my opening on the close up of my main character's picture at the funeral instead of her going away in the car. I really like this idea because I think that it would really end the opening on a shocking note, which is ultimately my goal for establishing purpose. However, I also really love the car scene, so I think I'll record both and try them out when editing. They also suggested that instead of a funeral I could make my character glance at a newspaper article reporting her "death" as a way to make the audience see that she's faked her death and is on the run. However, I think I still like the effect the funeral would add to the overall tone of the opening. I'm definitely keeping their idea in mind though (in case the funeral becomes too hard). 

        Lastly, my group really liked my idea of including a voice over as the background sound. I told them about my worry of how long I should make it and they thought I should keep it going for the majority of the opening with scattered pauses in between and then stop it when my character plays music in the car at the very end.

        I really enjoyed listening to the other's ideas and plans; they are all so creative and I can't wait to see how their projects turn out (and to see if any of the feedback I gave was considered) I would like to shout out some of my group member's ideas that I liked the most and that inspired me: Veronica's story takes on a fresh approach of the coming-of-age genre, Daniela showed us some of her trials for lighting and they looked stunning, Francisco had a very original story in which is evident that he cares and knows about the topic, and Reese had a very exciting plot.

        Looking forward to more group meetings!!

        Here’s some notes I took during the meeting:

Fonts

 

        Since we've started to consider the plot and tone of our overall story through bran storming and story boarding we wanted to start thinking about fonts. According to the article "The Basics of Titles and Graphics" by Susan Schmierer, fonts of movie titles are important because they credit the people who made the movie and set the mood of the film for the audience. Schmierer suggests titles are essential to give viewers the experience you want them to have and that a lot of thought has to go into them in order to make them successful. 

        Thriller movies are usually characterized by having bold and bulky titles that transmit the feelings of suspense and seriousness that these films emit. For example, the font used for the movie Get Out (2017) is all upper cased and bold, calling the viewers attention, which carries the tone that this movie will be uneasy and maybe uncomfortable to watch. It sets the audience up for uncomfortable topics and bizarre scenarios that will be all up on their face, just like this title.

        On the other hand, there are movies like A Haunting in Venice (2023) which still has an all upper cased title but is not bold and the letters have a thinner, more sophisticated look. This movie's plot is a classic mystery and is much less abstract then Get Out, so it makes sense that the font for the title looks much more classic and elegant, also, considering the setting, characters, and costuming it makes sense, since it takes place in the past and in an Italian city which transmits romance, just as the font does. 

        The movie Seven (1995) has a title which looks more hand-written and free-hand. The letters are lower cased and it is less sophisticated than both of the last ones. The movie tells the story of a mad serial killer who is obsessed with the seven deadly sins, and the title prepares the audience for this uneasiness because it is not very conventional to have a title look like that. It almost gives the feeling that the serial killer wrote it himself because of the hurried and informal nature.

    

        My partner and I started to play with some fonts on Canva to see if we could come up with a title font that matched the tone of our opening. We tried bulky and bold, more curvy and sophisticated, thin, hand-written, and then a mix of bold and sophisticated. We decided to go with the second option that appears in the picture below. We think it encapsulates the ominous tone of our opening by including the sophistication of the writing because it transmits mystery, while the all-upper case, large and bold font transmits the fact that the film is a thriller which will keep the audience on its toes. 

        Now, I'm looking forward to working on our script, filming locations and schedule next week. We are most likely also going to be researching still. Until the next! 

Story boarding

 

        Today we've reached the point of storyboarding for our project- Exciting!! We had a brainstorming session a couple classes ago and we came up with the basic plot for our story, but now we are laying a clearer path.

        We are dividing our planning into the scenes we've thought of so far (we will probably alter some aspects of these as time progresses), like a scene in a gas station bathroom, a funeral, and a car. According to these scenes, we are mapping which shots might look the best and which of them would help us tell the story most successfully. We are thinking more specifically of the order of our shots in a way that make sense and is engaging, and the planning is just helping us think about the details that will go into making our opening a little more specifically.

        For instance, since we want to have a shot of our main character dyeing her hair we had to come up with the logistics of this sequence because we recognize we can't realistically just dye our actors' hair. In order to make the fake bleach we plan to mix conditioner with either flour or starch to create a creamy and powdery consistency to make it look as realistic as possible, and then well use a wig to show her new, bleached hair, showcasing a contrast to her old look. Also, since we are planning on staging a funeral, we had to think of realistic ways we could do this, because we can't really have a real casket. We decided on using an urn instead and researched how funerals with urns usually look like in order to plan what well need for it.

  

        Our storyboard begins with an establishing shot of a gas station and then moves on to the gas station bathroom where our character will begin changing her appearance. We made sure to list a couple of shots and angles we want to try for each shot so when we are recording we have a sort of guide and then we can decide which one looks best. We decided to alternate the scenes in the gas station bathroom with scenes of a funeral with parallel editing in order to give the impression that both events are happening at the same time. This way we'll create the sense that they are correlated to each other. After the big reveal (close up on a picture of the main character at funeral) that the funeral is actually for the character we've been seeing change their appearance, we pan to cut to a scene where we see her in a car with her changed look and leaving this place behind, and with it a heart necklace she discards of, a statement piece we plan to incorporate throughout the opening as a sort of symbolism.

        Story boarding has definitely been an essential tool for success in the process of planning this project because it not only provides a map for recording but it also made us consider aspects of the production process that are essential to create a quality project but that not always come to mind if you don't plan ahead. In the next few posts i think ill be looking at fonts for the title and credits as well as the process of creating a script.

        

Further Research on Drama/Thriller Openings

 

        It is the start of a new week and even though we feel pretty good about the story we've been brainstorming; we still feel like we need to make a little more research on other openings from the same genre in order to know how to develop our purpose successfully. We've mostly been talking about creating an opening which has creating mystery as its main purpose, so I'm currently looking at drama/thriller movies that have that same purpose developed through their openings.

        Knives Out's (2019) opening is one that clearly and simply develops mystery by showing that a character has died within the first two minutes of the movie. The viewer is immediately led to the questions: How? Who? and Why? They don't really know who this character is and haven't developed any kind of relationship to him, but they can clearly see he is deceased, covered in blood, and there is a knife on the floor, so their mind goes directly to murder and what that implicates. The opening also has minor aspects that develop the setting it takes place in, but that's not necessarily something I would be eager to incorporate on my own opening. What I want to take from this opening is delivering a shock to the audience. In this case it is the death of a character very early on, which isn't the order of events the audience expects, but in my case, it would be showing the audience that the character they are seeing on their screen changing her appearance is supposed to be dead and that there is a funeral going on for her at that same moment. This would create the same type of questions the Knives Out opening created.

        Similarly, the opening scene for Girl, interrupted (1999) starts off at a point of the story at which the audience has no idea how they got there. There is the main character, Susanna, holding an unmoving Lisa Rowe and there are other characters present who seem to be affected by what's happening as they are upset and crying. The audience doesn't know what has happened to Lisa, where they are or how they even got to this point, so starting a movie off like this creates many questions, and therefor mystery. At the same time this is going on, Susanna is giving a voice over that provides no explanation to what's going on whatsoever, but it sets the audience up for what's coming next. I really like the idea of incorporating a voice over that won't necessarily give away what's happened to get to what's happening in the opening, but that will make sense at the end of the movie when the questions the audience have developed begin to be answered. 

        What I take away from this research is that I would like to make an opening in which the audience is watching the result of the story the rest of the movie will tell them, so to achieve that it is necessary to use what i learned from these productions in relation to creating mystery in their openings. 

Scheduling Matters

 

        I just want to start off by saying that I'm pretty happy with our progress so far; It seems like we are on schedule as of now. So that is what I wanted to share in this blog post, our schedule for the next few months regarding this project. Having a basic outline of when things are supposed to be done is very important for me when tackling big tasks like this one. It really helps me not only by letting me organize my time so that I'm not missing anything from this project as well as other classes, but it also keeps me on track so that I can get this task done well and on time. Knowing me, the magnitude of this project could really be intimidating to the point of making me dread working on it, but since we have a schedule that breaks the whole into small pieces, the task definitely feels more approachable. 

         So, starting off on this month, we are mostly going to focus on researching genre, incorporation of titles and credits, thinking about our story and the approach we will take to our opening. We will also create our script, come up with the shots well use for our opening and finally create a storyboard. Toward the end of this month we'll begin planning our filming locations and organize filming and editing schedules. 

Here is a snippet of my calendar for the month of February:

        Beginning March, we will focus on the mise-en-scene elements we will use and begin our filming. We will also keep researching  project components continuously throughout the process as needed. Around the 6th week of the project we hope to start editing our project as well as start developing responses for the Creative Critical Reflection questions. By week 7 we want to be close to done with our editing and getting feedback from our peers on it. Weeks 8 and 9, toward the end of March and beginning of April, will consist of  CCR projects and questions and then the overall project reflection and submission.

Here's how that will be looking like:

Brainstorming and Ideas for Plot

         

        Today in class we are really focusing on the specifics of the story that we are going to base the opening on. On my last blog posts I mentioned that we were interested in making a psychological thriller; however, the story we are coming up with has less of a psychological aspect and more of just thriller and drama aspects. We took some inspiration from the movie Gone Girl (2014) I mentioned on my last post and a specific scene in this movie that depicts the main character changing her appearance because she is escaping her life. Including these shots of her cutting and dyeing her hair, applying darker make up and changing her clothing create a sense of mystery and a question of "why?" that would develop our purpose very nicely if we took inspiration from it. 

 

        Essentially, we came up with the idea of making our opening about a girl who leaving her old life behind. She really is not content it and is doing something about it. It would begin by having her go to a gas station and purchasing items to change her look. We want to include a scene in the gas station bathroom in which the girl is using all of the products she purchased to change her look drastically, like the scene from Gone Girl. We think that beginning the opening with this action will hook viewers from the start and start to create questions as to who this person is and why she’s doing this. At the same this is going on, we wanted to utilize crosscutting to scenes of a funeral, at which it is revealed that the girl we see at the gas station is supposedly “dead.” That’s what we have so far for brain storming; we hope that this sequence helps us create mystery as well as suspense towards what the girl is going to do next.

        In view of changing our approach, i decided to do some more research on movies that are both dramas and thrillers instead of psychological thrillers. Drama is a genre that focuses on creating realistic representations of events that happen in real life, and are very character driven. Some popular movies in this genre include Whiplash (2014), Little Women (2019), and The Holdovers (2023). I believe that the story we are going for will focus a lot on the character and her development, so this is why i want to draw inspiration from these genres. However, more specific examples of drama/thriller movies are Pulp Fiction (1994), Promising Young Woman (2020), and Knives Out (2019). 

        Specifically, i liked the opening scene for Promising Young Woman (2019) because, like we want to do with our own opening, i leaves the viewer wondering who the character is and what happened to them by showing her walking down a street in the early morning looking disheveled and bloody, but calmly eating breakfast. This is unusual behavior, just like changing your appearance drastically in a gas station bathroom, so i believe we could really draw some good inspiration from this opening. I also really enjoyed the font of the credits and title, as well as the music, so i will definitely be looking into that in further research. 

Thinking of Genre

 

        Today me and my partner finally settled on the genre that we want our film opening to be based on. After some consideration, we decided on doing a thriller, specifically a psychological thriller, mixed with some aspects of drama. This choice correlates with our interest in the film opening purpose of developing mystery as I mentioned last blog post. 

        My research on this genre has showed me that it is characterized by having a moody, ominous, and unsettling tone to it, as well as having many twists and turns to the story itself, causing it to be a highly elaborate plot. A lot of thrillers are also characterized by elements of suspense that make the audience predict outcomes and anticipate the reveal of some truth. There's also the presence of clues and red herrings, which are pieces of information that lead the protagonist in the direction of the resolution of the mystery. The use of clues can make the audience feel immersed in the story and even come to their own conclusions as to what the clues mean; i think that this could be a fun technique to implement in our opening by incorporating shots of objects that have to do with an aspect of the plot of our story, but whose meaning we don't disclose, making the audience wonder what they mean. 

        The sub-genre of thriller, psychological thrillers, also focuses on anticipation and suspense but it concentrates more on the complicated emotional state of one of the characters, most likely the main character or an antagonist. Some very popular psychological thrillers include: American Psycho (2000), Shutter Island (2010), Gone Girl (2014), and Black Swan (2010).

 

        I was especially interested in the opening scene for Gone Girl. Although the purpose of the opening wasn't only to develop mystery, but also a lot of the setting where the story will take place, it also had good techniques which left the audience with questions. For instance, the use of ominous music set the dark tone, the close ups created the sense of intimacy and the voice over by whom we assume is the main character asks "what have we done to each other?" and then cuts to credit scenes and shots establishing settings. I think i would like to use dialogue in this way on my own piece in order to create mystery, as well as the same style of music.

        Throughout the next week i plan to continue to do research our chosen genre, come up with the details of our story, and pan out the schedule of the project as a whole to make sure i stay organized and on-task.

Transition Post

     

    The time has finally come! We have officially begun the process of creating our Portfolio projects in class today. I'm extremely excited to start this because I think that it will truly shape me as a content creator and media consumer. Thankfully, I feel prepared to start this thanks to all of the things we have learned in class and the projects we have done prior to this one; I can now see how those projects were really meant to get us ready for this. I will be recording the process of creating this film opening for the next few months in my blog.

    So far, I'm very interested in two of the types of purpose we can develop. The first one would be to develop tone. I think that this approach gives a lot of room for creativity in the way that one can give the audience a taste of what the movie will be. I would love to use mise-en-scene elements such as costume design and lighting to develop the piece's tone, and I love the idea of thinking deeper into the meaning and representation of colors, styles, etc. I like that one has to really get in the mind of the audience to see how certain things will make them feel and that choices are made with a lot of meaning behind them.

    The other approach to develop purpose that I really like is creating mystery. Similar to developing tone, I think that implementing mise-en-scene elements to allude or imply future events in the plot is a great way to expand one's creativity and be original; not only that, but it is also very entertaining for audiences to go back to the film opening after watching a mystery, and seeing all the foreshadowing and attention to detail that was done but they hadn't noticed. I would also be interested in using sound techniques in order to create suspense and questions, but mostly I'm interested in creating that big question mark on the audience's head that keeps them watching the movie in hopes of finding answers within.

    Without a doubt there will be challenges when taking on this big task, but I'm looking forward to putting my abilities to the test and using the knowledge earned in class to work in a larger scale than what we've been used to. 

Music Marketing #2

 

    When we first started this project a few weeks ago, I did not know what I was expecting our project to look like by the end. We got to base our project on the rock genre and immediately got to researching  bands and record companies that are relevant to this genre. We focused on artists that have released music in the last 5 years and on the marketing and distribution practices they engage in in order to get inspiration for our own band. We discussed what our band would be named and we decided on “The Lemon Drops” and created an aesthetic around this name and the style of the song we were assigned. Since our song was Blues rock and the name had to go with a fruit, we decided to take inspiration from the 70s rock bands like Fleetwood Mac and create an earthy aesthetic for the band. Lastly we came up with the number of band members and the instruments they would play, as well as their names and personalities.

    After establishing the basics, we got to planning our marketing strategies for the band’s new song “So Caught Up.” We came up with the band’s social media handles, as well as the band members, and in which social media platforms they would be active on. We bounced ideas off of eachother and decided that the band would be most active on Instagram and Tik Tok in order to appeal to their younger audience who has an interest in bands that try to embody the vibe of vintage rock and also Facebook and Twitter to reach nostalgic, older audiences. We decided that sticking to trends in social media like posting “ Day in the life” videos on Tik Tok and picture carousel posts on Instagram would successfully reach a young audience and provide a sense of familiarity to the fans. We also thought that including information about where the band is performing, when their music is coming out, and general information about them would be important to post on social media and it would also facilitate fans to get to other ways of marketing and distribution by promoting interviews, song pre-sales on Spotify and Apple Music, links to the website, etc. 

    On the topic of social media presence, we also decided that each band member would have a social media presence of their own and they would interact with fans through their own accounts to increase relatability. Moving to merchandise and physical advertising, we decided to sell guitar pick, merch, and vinyls on the band’s website in order to increase revenue and also to create a sense of community within fandom. The vinyls would also include posters of the band which would serve as promotion on its own. We also researched which festivals and events the band could participate in to gain exposure. 

    Regarding the production of our video, we decided to create a promotional music video for our song because we thought it would work well as a first video in order to introduce the artists to the world. We created a story board where we mapped out which shots/angles, camera movements and composition our shots would have, as well as how we could edit these. We came up with ideas for our video and decided that we would need two different sets for it, as well as different costume changes. We decided that some of the scenes would be of the band playing their instruments and singing their song in a dark room with moody lighting and then other scenes would be of the band in a natural environment doing a promotional photo shoot of the band. The first scene would establish their creative vision and the second would establish the member’s dynamic and personality. We all decided which days we were able to record our videos and take out pictures for magazine articles and posters.

After we recorded the content we decided on how it would be edited.

    Looking back on our work, I feel proud of time management skills and teamwork. I think that this project will help us all on our Cambridge portfolio project by giving us a taste of what managing our own time is like, as well as dividing tasks up in order to effectively complete the project as a whole. Experimenting with shots/angles, camera movements, sound, and editing will help us when we get to recording our portfolio and give us an idea of what looks good and what doesn’t. I believe this project increases our confidence in creating our own storylines as well. 

Music Marketing #1

    

        Upon being assigned our genre (rock), me and my group got to work on choosing a song to base our project on. We chose a song by The Teskey Brothers, So Caught Up, which mixes rock with a bit of blues, and we thought it had potential to make a great music video. We started to think about the members of the band we would create and their respective personality traits; coming up with names, instruments they played, and their relationships to one another. Before coming up with too much about the band, we made sure to do research on rock bands that were relevant to the genre and had released music in the last 5 years. This resulted in us having sufficient knowledge to come up with relevant marketing techniques that other bands have tried and proved to be efficient. Then, we continued to discuss the "aesthetic" of the band; we decided that they would emulate an earthy color palette since they take inspiration from the 70s and the blues of the song wouldn't match a grungy vibe; our presentations as well as any posters and merchandise follow this color scheme. 

        Around this point we also chose the name of the band: The Lemon Drops; the name matching the earthy energy we were going with. Once all of that was established, we divided the tasks required for the presentation among each other. I focused on their social media presence, Violette was in charge of designing merchandise and posters, Daniela took care of researching events, festivals, and artists with which they could collaborate for exposure, and Veronica took care of the website among other things. This allowed us to put our full focus on one thing at a time in order to increase efficiency. For social media, I was inspired by the research we did on a band called Inhaler. They are an Irish rock band, and its members are in their 20's which matched the members in our band. Their audience would be similar, so i made sure to pay attention to what they posted on their socials. For instagram, we decided that our band members would have an online presence from before the start of their music careers, so they would already have followers and even fans that would be interested in their music when it was released. I decided to stay up to the common trends going on Tik Tok and Instagram reels and included those in our social media campaigns. One of the trends in specific was “a day in the life” videos which connect fans to the lives of band members.

        After completing most of the campaign’s presentation, we began to plan our music video. We decided we would make a combination between an artistic video and a promo one. We thought that the artsy video would work well with the vibe we’ve established for the band and the promo would help the artists in getting some more attention to themselves since it is their first single. We discussed the logistics of the video between us, bouncing off ideas and creating a storyboard to serve as a guide to what we were going to record the day of. We planned what each of the band members was going to be wearing in the video, and decided which props ( like instruments) we could include. After we planned who would be best at editing the clips we would record and which program we would use. Now we’ve planned a date to meet and record our video. 

Representation

 

    The novel I chose to make an analysis about representation on is Circe by Madeline Miller. This is the story of one of the daughters of Helios, God of the sun in Greek mythology. She was never accepted by her family, and this led her to go through transformative change and get a kind of power forbidden by Gods: witchcraft. This book not only retells the story of a very famous character in Greek mythology whose story is associated with heroes like Odysseus and other relevant mythological figures, but it represents the struggles of being a woman in a society as discriminative as ancient Greece and stays relevant to issues women face today. 

 The story begins by describing the horrible treatment Circe endures when she lived in her father's court. She was looked down upon because of her rough voice, uncommon among Gods, and was considered "ugly" by the rest of the court, this made her feel like her divinity was indeed inferior and that she wasn't worthy of love. The fact that she is made to seem like everyone else in her surroundings shines brighter, according to the descriptions the book gives about her brother's and sister's golden skin inherited from their father, and that her voice isn't even loud enough to be heard by anyone represents the struggle that woman have historically faced to be listened to. Years of discrimination and countless efforts to be heard aren't only an experience that Circe lived at her home, but it has been the universal experience of many women for centuries now. This isolation within her own home causes Circe to be desperate for any type of love, so she tries to please her father and gives everything for a fisherman she fell in love with, both ending in disappointment when her father exiles her and the fisherman betrays her. This could somehow represent how society's expectations that are impossible to meet force women to please the people who place these standards on them. For example, beauty standards that dictate woman have to be thin, hairless, etc.

    One of the most important aspects of the book's plot is the assault Circe suffered when she was exiled. Some fishermen came onto her island and in her naivety, she decided to help them and provide shelter for them. After her rape she reflects on her situation and expresses her feelings of emptiness and vulnerability and even recalls how she was treated in the palace. How she recalled seeing her uncle's stares on her and even the way she was sometimes inappropriately touched by them. This aspect of the story paints woman's vulnerability in real life and the aggression woman have faced since the start of time. She is represented  as a victim and her struggles are recognized instead of blaming the assault on her, like society sometimes does with other victims. 

    From this experience, Circe started to feel a deep resentment for men in general, combining her father's treatment, the fisherman's betrayal, and the assault, she felt she could never trust a man again. After this incident, Circe began using her magic to seek vengeance. From then on every time a group of sailors came upon her island thinking they could take advantage of her, she would then transform them into pigs with her powers. The choice of making them pigs wasn't a random one, it is actually pretty common for men to be associated with the imagery of pigs in society. Men, specially, who have been associated with any kind of misogyny or aggression toward woman, so Circe turning men into pigs in this models represents them as this filthy, inmoral creature. 

    When it comes to representation, even the  angle chosen by Madeline Miller to tell this story is representative of how women are usually portrayed by media. In the famous book "The Odyssey", the heroic story of Odysseus and his journey home are told from an extremely male-focused lens. The only women who really have any part in his story are either antagonized or are made to be the usual submissive wife. But in Circe, the story focused entirely in the experience of women and how they are treated by this world, but specifically how they can be empowered by their individuality. By choosing this angle, Madeline Miller steered away from villainizing Circe as a cunning witch who is only present for a fraction of Odysseus story, but gives her a life of her own and in turn reflects how skewed the original story was toward the male point of view. The novel chooses to highlight these aspects and shows Odysseus as this side character who actually has many flaws, which was not really addressed by the heroic telling of his character in The Odyssey.