Characters and Setting

    After a long phone call with my partner we decided about how many people we will need to play in our movie, as well as where we want it to take place. Usually in crazy party scenes there are tons of people, but of course with the current situation, we will have to make adjustments. Our extras will be our group of friends which we always hang out with, which consists of 13 people. The film opening will take place in my house. 

    It will be a sunny morning and all the extras will be scattered around the house, with crazy props to add the dramatic element. The house will be a complete mess with cups scattered everywhere, spills, people sleeping in the pool (on floaties), paintings and sculptures on the floor, etc. 

The point of this post was to state our characters and setting since we already know exactly who will be featured and where it will be taking place. Here are some pictures which obviously take it to the next level, but it is along the lines of what will be going on in our film. 

Character Analysis

    Ana and I have decided to do our storyboard next week when we have a clear visual of our setting and scenes. As of right now, we are watching tons of teen comedies, analyzing the openings, things in common throughout the different films, and how the characters act. All aspects in teen comedies tend to be extremely dramatized, their reactions, popularity, parties, bullying, etc. 

    As Ana and I are the main characters in our film opening we have to learn from watching these characters and learn how to really act in a teen comedy. The characters are extremely dramatic, and use strong facial expressions to make the situation clear. For example, when I wake up in the morning and start looking through the pictures, I must react very strongly and make it clear that I am in extreme shock and am anxious about my parents coming home. 

Here are some scenes from teen comedies that show the dramatic elements I am referring to:

As you can see, these movies tend to add the high school elements I mentioned before, and take them to the next level for entertainment purposes. Watching these movies is helping Ana and I get inspired and ideas for our film and the dramatic elements we will be including. 

Shooting Schedule

    As our film requires us to take tons of crazy pictures (which the two characters are going to look through the next morning in shock), it is easy as I am working with my best friend. There will be many occasions for us to gather these pictures and use them in our film. 

    This project is due April 6th, therefore, since we already finished our planning portion, we are ready to start gathering our characters, filming, collecting props, and choosing a location. Ana and I plan on beginning to film in March 1st. Due to our busy and completely different schedules, Tuesdays and Thursdays are the days that work best for us. We obviously haven't started filming yet so things may change but as of now that is our plan. 

    We will record for an hour each work day until every section is perfect and to our liking. Our goal is to wrap up filming by March 11th, and begin editing then. During spring break we will have to take a break as we will be out of town, which will cause us to work more before and after spring break. 

    We are both really looking forward to taking our creativity to the next level and shooting for the stars. Ana and I are constantly texting each other random ideas and things we would like to add into our film/feel would add sparks missing. 

Storyline #1

     Back to our creative and indecisive ways... we have thought of a couple storylines. However, we don't know which one we will end up going with, by the end of this week we will make our final choice. This being said, here I present to you our first idea. 

    A girl wakes up in her bed, with her best friend,  Ana, and they confusingly start looking through pictures of last night. In one of the pictures, a random, unknown kid is shown in her dads car. The owner of the house, Isabela, starts freaking out and quickly storms out of her room. However, she gets distracted by the tons of people still in her house and the huge mess her house has become. Isabela and Ana are freaking out since Isabela's parents are coming home in a couple hours. They rush to the garage to find the garage door open, and the car gone. 

    We will make sure to make our editing on point, add music that complements the party vibe, lights, color, and the dramatic high school party effect. My partner and I look forward to how far our creativity will go if we end up choosing this idea. 

Our idea reminds me a bit of Project X, however, with our own twist, and of course less dramatic. 

Genre of Choice

    Ana and I finally picked our genre! As I mentioned in a previous post, this is the first step and what must be decided first. That being said, our chosen genre is... teen comedies! Being 2 teenagers ourselves, we wanted our film opening to appeal to people our age, as we tend to know what is popular and what our friends enjoy watching. Although we don't have our storyline set yet, it is a relief picking a genre after so many options and doubts we discussed. 

Here are some teen comedy film openings of movies me and my partner have loved:

Although I wasn't able to find the opening scene for The Edge of Seventeen, here is its trailer as it is one of my favorite teen comedies. 

Ways To Create A Great Film Opening

    Just like the first impression you have of someone, a film opening makes you decide if you want to finish the film or not. 

Here are 2 examples of completely different film openings, yet sharing the same characteristic of a GREAT film opening which has been recognized by many. 

Jaws (1975) :

The Lion King :

The opening to a film is staggeringly essential to get right. If it's too lethargic and exhausting the watcher won't stay to try and watch the hero save the day and in the event that it doesn't give sufficient data about its tone, topics, or the overall story, the audience will be really confused by Act II. A draw is crucial. Now that the viewer is comfortable and ready to watch the film, and they're prepared to be wowed, at any rate intrigued...or at any least given motivation not to get up and do something else. 

    How will we make our opening different than the millions of movies out there already?

    Given that they don't have the foggiest idea to what's in store, the element of surprise is crucial, so we can generally attempt to show them something they've never seen. There are such countless approaches to do this in the initial couple of moments of your film, we must introduce the main character, give data about them, establish their objectives/fears/blemishes/and so forth, as well as build up the subjects of the general story. 

    Obviously, you don't need to stuff the entirety of that into your film's opening, however comprehend that your crowd is expecting, and absolutely needs, some data to find out about what they are in for. 

Research Research Research

 Mystery...

    Don't we all love a good mysterious movie that keeps us on our toes the whole time? What's better than a movie that keeps you hooked until the very end? This would be a great route to consider taking as our main goal of this film opening is to keep our audience wanting more. The curiosity, interest and engagement of the audience to the film is crucial to a good movie. Has it not happened to you where you turn off a movie within the first 2 minutes because the beginning simply was not catching? It could've possibly been an amazing movie, however the beginning determines whether you want to dedicate the time to watch it or not. 

Some of my favorite mystery movies have been... 

    Although some of these did not have amazing openings, the storylines were great and very popular amongst audiences. There are ways to make a film opening extraordinary and that is what we strive to do. We are reaching to make something we are extremely proud of and that will leave instructors and anyone who views it on their toes, wanting to see more, and in shock with how good it was. We will have to research movies with the best openings and gather observations amongst them. 

Genre Research

 Teen Comedy

As we start sorting through different genres and seeing which ones would fit best for us, we decided to begin by researching teen comedies. In this category, there are iconic movies such as:

Mean Girls

 Clueless

Freaky Friday

The DUFF 

We are considering this genre due to the reason that it is both of our favorite movies to watch. However we're not really sure how possible this is for us, as most movies in the genre take place in a school, and we're not able to record in ours. 

https://lessonbucket.com/media/year-9/making-teen-comedy/  I found this website that guides one, and offers tips and tricks on creating a teen comedy. This would be very useful if we did decide to go this route. Just like in any other genre, the first step is choosing your characters and the plot/storyline. In this case, the setting would be best in a school, or somewhere where a large concentration of teenagers would be, like a party, or football game. 

Although we have lots more researching to do, and options to investigate, I would love to figure out a way to stick to this route, as I feel it best fits both of our styles and we could have tons of fun filling the roles of the teenagers we always desired to be. 

Warming Up

    The more my partner and I brainstorm, the scarier it gets for us. So many good ideas and loose thinking without any direction. We know it is crucial to set our major idea before getting too carried away with minor details. We have not started researching yet, as we want to decide what we want our final product to look like before diving into a pool of more ideas. Ana and I have established that in order to surpass these struggles we must first:

1) Pick a Genre

What genre is most accessible for us to create? Horror? Drama? Comedy? Action? and there are hundreds of other options. Will we want a spooky, gloomy, film opening, or a teenager school life kind of vibe? Once we determine what path we want to take, we can narrow down our every direction driven brains. 

2) Target Audience

Who do we want our film to be most directed towards? This will make the process much easier by helping us choose who we want as our characters, the costumes, and the content we should include to keep our viewers entertained. 

3) Characters and Setting

Once we decide who will be featured in our film opening we are ready to begin recording our footage and making our ideas come to life. The setting will obviously depend on the genre of our film and we will find the characters needed to fill our desired roles. 

Once this is all established, not only will we be so extremely relieved and excited, but we can officially begin our recording process. I am really looking forward to seeing what we are capable of and exploring new fields. 

Starting Off...

 MEDIA PORTFOLIO PROJECT

    Beginning this project, my partner, Ana Willson, and I are overwhelmed with good ideas. However, we don't want our project to be good, but great! What genre do we want to work with, who can we ask to be featured in our film opening, what program would be best to edit, what camera would capture the best quality. So many factors to consider and run through, yet it is beyond fun working with our creativity and skills to make something we enjoy, and are truly proud of. 

    We are incorporating all the techniques and information we have learned this year in our AICE Media class into this project. So many things I was completely unaware of while watching movies, or any production for that matter are now automatic analyzations. This is the project where we have to portray everything we've learned about sound, editing, shots/angles, mise-en-scene, etc. 

    As we still don't know what our scene will look like, or even what genre we will be choosing, this is just an introductory post. Tomorrow Ana and I will be meeting up and discussing what we will be doing exactly, until we find the perfect scene. 

    We are both very excited and looking forward to this journey where we get to apply our skills and completely customize a film opening to our liking and really learning our strengths and weaknesses within the field. It is an opportunity to express our styles, experiment with our ideas, explore our creativity, test our abilities, and truly learn how to work in the production world. 

Music Marketing #2

    Primarily, we collectively chose the song we wanted to work with, "My Name is Human." Once we knew our genre and song, Ana and I began working on the research portion and inputting that into our chart. We researched as deeply as we could to make sure we knew what we were talking about and get to know our topic better. 

    Step 2 was working on the storyboard, so as a group we discussed how we wanted our music video to look, the colors we wanted incorporate, the ideal location to fit the genre, and most importantly who we wanted to pick as our rockstar, Issac Grey. Sophia focused on drawing the storyboard as she has the best creative and artistic abilities. 

    Ethan recorded and edited the music video, he made sure to heavily edit the shots adding lots of colors such as purples and dark blues to add to that rockstar vibe. We used props such as an electric guitar and made sure the outfit fit in with the genre. The editing matched the beat of the song and fit in extremely well with the song.

    When it comes to the merchandise, we created things that would fit well with our current situation, fitting for the target audience, and match the artists vibe. For example, we made masks as we know they would be popular during this pandemic and hoodies are extremely popular amongst teens. 

 

    We created social media profiles on Instagram and Twitter as they are what teens normally use. We plan on posting important dates for releases, concerts, merchandise drops, etc. Our website focuses on any information his fans might need to know and it is much easier to access than on social media accounts where there is a lot of other daily content.

    Ana, Sophia, and I all collectively worked on our presentation and made sure to include all the necessary information. I feel our presentation was missing a wow factor, but we efficiently presented all our information. 

    I learned marketing strategies that are crucial when branding anything whether it be a product, new artist, or already existing artist. It is important to research ways to reach out to the target audience and depending on what it is, it may be through social media, TV advertisements, or billboards. This project will help me when working on my Cambridge Portfolio because it was a big responsibility and it helped me with managing my time, working in a group, and efficiently communicating to get to our desired outcome.