Some Potential Changes

 Today was a really fun day in class and I was able to get some very helpful advice from a few of my classmates. We were divided into groups today so we would be able to run our ideas by our classmates and get some suggestions to improve our projects. I ran my idea by my four other classmates and they thought the idea was good, however, when I told them my concerns regarding our comedic factor in my partner's and my film, I was given some ideas that I find to be very creative to help our film opening stand out. My original idea was to have the two friends beat up the mystery person while being drunk, but my concern was that this wouldn't necessarily be funny to the audience. My classmates suggested using an imaginary person that the friends would picture and beat up when in reality it is just a tree or pole they are punching, and to use audio to help narrate the scene. I will make sure to run this idea by my partner and also hear what advice she was given in her critique group. I think it might be best to change our comedy idea to something more creative like the imaginary person so we can satisfy our audience. I will update you all when I speak to my partner and we will make the adjustments to our storyboard if necessary.

Storyboard

 Me and my partner agreed that the best way to do our storyboard is to split up the work. Our shot list as shown in my previous post consist of 20 shots that will make up our film opening. There may be a few shots that we add or change but I will be sure to record our changes in my blog. I was assigned to do the first 10 shots in the plan and Paola will do the other 10, so it isn't a lot of work on either of us. 

I have done two previous storyboards but I still wanted to do some research on how to make a good storyboard to ensure I made it right. I used this website here and there are 4 easy steps to follow that will produce a good and effective storyboard. Here are the 4 steps and the link above goes into further detail about each step and why it is important:

1. Make a shot list

2. Sketch it out

3. Fill in details

4. Add words

After following these steps, the storyboard was very easy to produce. The only hard part was actually drawing everything because I draw like a fifth grader but at least I tried.

Here is my 10 shots that I drew. I focused more on the camera movements and angles because I knew my drawing skills wouldn't display the right action. I was looking into using a website to draw my storyboard to make the images look better, but I had trouble in past storyboard projects navigating the website, so I decided that it would just be best to draw out the images like the website listed and then I would use words to describe the movement.

My partner will finish up her part of the storyboard hopefully by tomorrow so we can then decide our shooting schedule to start the actual fun part of the project (I'm so excited but scared!) I will keep you all updated!

Sources:

“Attention Required! | Cloudflare.” MasterClass ARTICLES, www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-make-a-storyboard-for-a-film#how-to-make-a-storyboard-in-4-easy-steps. Accessed 26 Feb. 2021.

The first big bump in the road

Hey guys so yesterday I mentioned I would keep you all updated on the upcoming highs and lows of our project, not realizing we would experience a big turn so soon. During class today me and my partner met with our teacher to run by a few of our ideas and we were told that our story about the kidnapping is cliché and filming within a car will be very difficult. After looking back, both of these are very true, but it just sucks that we have to basically restart our entire plot again. Luckily, Mrs. Stoklosa gave us a few pointers on what our plot can include and we used these ideas mixed with our own to develop a new plot within just a few minutes. 

Our characters will still have the same traits, but the main thing that changed was just the plot and the location. The basic rundown of our plot is that two friends are drunk and take an uber back to their community to talk and walk home when they hear a bush start to move and get weary about the sound. The characters then are scared by a character in all black who starts to chase the drunk girls by their clubhouse located in the Isles of Weston. To add a comedy factor in our project we decided that the two friends would "beat up" this mysterious person(even though they don't know how to fight). The girls make a run for it thinking they stunned the person, but our project ends with that person snapping their leg back in place to leave the audience on a cliff hanger.

Here is a picture of our google doc with our complete idea planned out

We will start our storyboard tomorrow and our document basically lays everything out for us so this should be fairly easy to draw and show the different camera movements and angles. 

A little fix on plot

So I haven't been in contact with my partner about the specifics of our project but we were able to catch up yesterday and although we have very similar postings for our plot, there are some changes that we have to make to have the exact same plot with costumes and locations. 

Updates: I forgot to add our mystery character to my character post because their identity is never revealed, but they still are an important character to our film so I will talk about that character for a little. We got inspiration for this character from the movie Psycho which also featured a character dressed in all black to hide their identity. This character is completely anonymous, meaning it can be a man, woman, alien, or really anything because there way to identify them until their is a clear visual of their face. This makes it fun for our audience to watch and try to figure out who the character is throughout the movie by the visuals they are given. The identity may or may not be reviled you just have to see...

Location: Me and Paola have also both agreed on town center to shoot the location of our film. Town center is a big area for cars to drive around to use for our scene and its just coinvent for us to be honest. We are lucky it gets dark earlier now because our film opening will be filmed at night so we are able to film earlier and it still be dark to get the night time vibe. We will be planning the shooting of our project tomorrow in class to figure out who will be acting and who we will need to call up to have as our other actors. We made sure to keep the characters at a low number to keep everyone safe during this time.

Costume Design: The costume design for our character is going to be basic and simple because they are just average young adults. Julia will be dressed in grey/blue because these colors show peace and maturity, whereas Olivia will be dressed in white/blue to show innocence and purity. These colors for our character's costumes represent them as a person regarding their character traits. Our Mysterious character will be dressed in all black to represent their anonymous identity and their power over the two girls.

I'm a little stressed right now thinking about how we are going to shoot the project exactly but we are starting very soon on our storyboard so that will make me feel a bit better about having everything planned out. Well thank you for checking up on the most recent updates I will be sure to inform you on the rest of our ups and downs.

The Amazing Plot

 We have came up with a solid plot that me and my partner are both happy with. Surprisingly this came very fast to me because I knew I wanted to do the horror genre so I was thinking about ideas since the start of the project. Since we decided on the comedy and horror genre we knew we had to produce an idea that would represent both genres. I instantly thought of a kidnap scenario because that is one of my personal biggest fears, being a teenage girl. I know a lot of my friends and many others share similar views with me so creating a film based on a kidnapping would be sure to scare the audience because it builds up the fear they already possess.

One movie that used the fear of kidnapping to scare their audience is the movie Kidnapping Stella. This movie is a 2019 German thriller film directed and written by Thomas Sieben, and is a remake of the 2009 British thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed. The plot revolves around two men, Vic (Clemens Schick) and Tom (Max von der Groeben), who kidnap Stella (Jella Haase), and shows how she tries to escape the clutches of her two masked kidnappers. Stella is snatched off the street and held for ransom, a bound and gagged woman uses her limited powers to derail her two masked abductors' carefully laid plans.

I ran the idea by my partner and she agreed it was a great idea and that we could easily incorporate comedy in our film opening. My teacher Mrs. Stocklosa recommended we use physical humor rather then mental humor, which I descried in one of my previous post, because it is much easier to infer that moment was funny if someone get randomly hit in the head by a ball or something. 

Plot:

1. Drunk friends walk to the car, one falls or something (still unsure if they will be drunk or not)(the other laughs at them in a fake laugh)

2. Get in the car and realize there a car following them

3. Try to call police but there is no service, until a call from unknown (phone is symbolism for the being helpless)

4. They realize and stop in a parking lot after the headlights disappear

5. Look in back seat after they hear a noise

6. Nothing is there, the phone stops ringing

7. Close up of passenger and hand goes over face fast

This is the basic run down of our plot and the storyboard will describe everything with more detail. Here is a snip it of the google doc with our plot information and plan.

Sources:

1.Wikipedia contributors. “Kidnapping Stella.” Wikipedia, 16 Aug. 2020. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_Stella.

2.“Kidnapping Stella (2019).” IMDb, www.imdb.com/title/tt8613876/plotsummary. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021.

Meet Julia and Olivia

We knew picking a name for our characters is more complicated then we think so to make it easier on ourselves Paola used a random name generator which produced the names, Julia Foster and Olivia Barnes. Although these names have no real significant meaning, they fit very well together and we both agreed that the names would suit the personalities of our characters.

Julia Foster: Julia is the more dominate and independent character in our film and she is like a mom to her best friend, Olivia. Julia loves driving her friends wherever they need to go and she will be there for them no matter what. Julia is a very basic person and doesn't like to explore the world that often but rather stay at home and watch a movie with her dog Cali. She wears very neutral colors and likes to blend in with the crowd wherever she goes. 

Olivia Barnes: Olivia is the more immature friend who is basically scared of everything. She relies on Julia to be there for her at all times when she is scared to do something herself. She also never wanted to get a license because she is scared of driving so Julia is her personal uber. Olivia is more quirky and likes to wear bright color because it makes her happy and she can stand out from most people.

 

There's still more we have to think about regarding their ages because we aren't sure if the characters are going to be drunk in the film but their ages will range between 18-21 depending if we chose that to be in our plot or not. But we wanted to make sure our characters have very different personalities because you know what they say, opposites attract and their different personalities play a big part in the plot which I will describe in my next blog post.

Target Audience

 The target audience for our film is an important research part in order to create the most entertaining and captivating film. 

Research:

Horror: The average age for the target audience of a horror film is around 15- 25. The most common reason for this is that teens and young adults enjoy the thrill that comes from horror films. These thrills are more likely to excite a younger audience rather than an older one.

Comedy: Has more of a wide range target audience depending on the movie, but the age group of 15-24 seems to be the most popular audience for a comedy movie. As seen in the chart below.

Both of our genres have the same target audience so this makes it easy to incorporate certain aspects into our film introduction that will ensure to make our audience laugh and scared at the same time.

One of the biggest fears teens and young adults encounter today is the fear of being followed and kidnapped. Me and Paola think this will be a good way to produce fear in our audience because that fear is already there and we are going to add on to it. The idea we have for this is to show a few friends suddenly being following in their car after leaving a restaurant. For the comedy aspect the idea of physical comedy is the route we want to take because making someone laugh through jokes are hard since everyone has a different sense of humor, but everyone laughs when someone gets hit in the head unexpectedly or falls face first into the ground so we think its a much better idea to have our audience experience physical comedy rather then mental comedy.

Sources

1. “Who Is The Haunted House Demographic?” FearWorm Hauntvertising, 9 Mar. 2020, fearworm.com/who-is-the-haunted-house-demographic/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20usual%20age%20for%20the,rather%20than%20an%20older%20one.%E2%80%9D.

2. Stephen Follows. “Patterns among Successful Comedy Movies.” Stephen Follows, 22 Nov. 2019, stephenfollows.com/patterns-among-successful-comedy-movies/#:~:text=Comedies%20make%20great%20date%20movies,women%20and%20men%20is%20key.

Researching Comedy

Research is a must for a production to be successful

Me and my partner Paola have decided to chose the horror/comedy genre for the beginning of our film. We both have a love for these genres and want to incorporate it in our final project. I have already conducted research on the horror genre earlier in my blog so I will focus on the research for the comedy genre in this post.

Let me start by listing a few case studies

1. Jack and Jill (2011)

This film stars Adam Sandler who play the main role as Jack and Jill by incorporating drag to switch his gender from Jack to his twin Sister, Jill. The plot follows an ad executive, Jack Sadelstein, whose life takes a turn when his annoying twin sister comes to visit for Thanksgiving. This movie includes both physical and mental humor that keeps the audience engage throughout the movie. The downfall for this movie was that many found the character Jill's voice to be annoying because it is an imitation of a girl voice that was poorly executed.

2. Pitch Perfect (2012)

This film stars Anna Kendrick as Beca, a freshman at Barden University, is cajoled into joining The Bellas, her school's all-girls singing group. Injecting some much needed energy into their repertoire, The Bellas take on their male rivals in a campus competition. Pitch Perfect uses Rebel Wilson as their main comedic factor in the movie because she plays the "weird girl" and brings a lot of laughter to the audience with her enthusiasm. This is one of the most popular comedy movies.

I decided to choose Pitch Perfect and Jack and Jill because they are films I am quite familiar in and both have different success rates to show what many find funny vs annoying. I found a website here that list all the characteristics in a comedy film that I can refer back to whenever I need a reminder. There is always one main character that makes the audience laugh so I will make sure to add that to my plot.

Sources:

“Jack and Jill (2011 Film).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Feb. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_and_Jill_(2011_film)#:~:text=Jack%20and%20Jill%20is%20a,comes%20to%20visit%20for%20Thanksgiving.

“Pitch Perfect.” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt1981677/plotsummary.

The Fight for a Genre

 I know to be successful in this is project I have to come up with an idea that is unique but realistic with the resources I have at my access. The only problem is I have no idea what I want to do. I need to first start off with picking a genre and then I can focus on the details of the plot, setting, and characters. 

Genre: I need to compile research to get a definitive answer on which genre I would like to choose for my project. I will mainly be researching horror, comedy, and drama but I will look into a variety of them to be sure I picked the best one for me. The information I get through research will help me pick a definite genre.

Plot: I want to run my ideas by my friends and my partner to see any recommendations they have, which can help improve the plot. I will document all my ideas and any recommendations I am given by others. With all this information I can come up with a well founded concept that will hopefully help the other parts I need to think about, like characters and setting.

Characters and Setting: My character and setting options are very limited because of quarantine so I have to make sure to keep that in mind and keep the characters very limited in the film opening. I want to think a lot about who my characters really are and that will help with picking roles by pairing someone with similar traits to the character.

After having a solid idea of all the concepts above I can move on to the next step which would be to draw up a storyboard of the film opening that I can use when filming.

And the Process Beings

 Hi my name is Amy!

Today I start my journey on my first ever long term project. How am I feeling you may ask...I am nervous but excited to see how I will process and work through all the information needed in the final project. I am a big lover of horror films so I am highly considering that as my genre, but I also think comedy would make for an interesting genre, so maybe I could combine the two. As much as I like these genres I have to make sure I pick the one out of the many that will allow me to produce the best possible work I can. So the research beings. There is a lot of thought processing that needs to be done for this project and I fell so ready to being learning about the specifics of each genre. I have never used a blog before this year and it never was something I was interested in using but I think it will be nice to document all the highs and lows of this project to see all the work progressively come together. As I transpire on this journey I invite you to come along with me to experience the failures and the successes that will hopefully result in an amazing outcome as well as gaining knowledge throughout the process.

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

 

For our music marketing project we started the process by conducting research on various artist who perform songs in the same genre as our made believe artist, which was R&B. We as a group decided to do The Weeknd and Childish Gambino and found our other artist, Snny and Drake who came from the same records. We drew a lot of inspiration from Childish Gambino and how he used his music videos and interviews to provide clues to his fans so they can discover hidden features like his completed songs. We wanted to incorporate this idea with our artist somehow and the first thing that came to mind was how Sia would cover her identity with a wig and fans wondered for years who was really under the wig. The idea for our artist to wear a mask would allow for us to incorporate the idea of having clues that fans can use to try and piece together out artist's real identity while using the concept of universality to also hide the gender of out artist. This concept of our brand really lead us through the project because we were able to pick a name for our artist based on our brand of being "The Unknown" as well as using the main feature of the mask on both our logo and our merch. 

To start out our planning we made a storyboard which had a concept that we didn't end up using in the end involving showing varies people like back up singers, but we couldn't find people who could be apart of the music video so we just used our main artist and a girl to hide the identity and depict gender rules. We all were able to meet at a location to film and most of our shots were taken at the house using props that were already present like a drum set. We had to think about how we were going to take the shots in current time because our storyboard wasn't helpful without other people being able to show up. The idea of producing a narrative and artistic music video was the best idea so we shot with the idea of our artist telling a story of loving this mysterious person who then leaves after things don't work out. The filming took around 4 or 5 hours but we were able to work efficiently together. 

Max did the editing of the video in post production and matched up the clips to the appropriate part of the song and the rest of us worked on the presentation by having everything added to our PowerPoint. I was in charge of creating some images using photoshop like the blue coke can and creating the social media accounts for our artist. Bianca created the website and added our information to the PowerPoint. Camila helped with ideas and placement of images to our PowerPoint. We made sure to include ideas of collaborating with other companies like Coca-Cola to produce synergy and expand our artist to new highs. We worked great as a group and pushed each other to do our best. Our ideas were rocky at the start but when we had a concept we stuck to it and all pitched in suggestions that would better our project so we could submit a finished project that told a story with meaning.

This project has thought me a lot about thinking of an idea and really bringing it to life through editing and filming. We couldn't think of an idea at first and we kept back tracking which wasted a lot of time but once we got an idea we liked we stuck to it and we were able to create a music video that told our story. When developing my Cambridge portfolio I will think about an idea and stick to it to save time because my first idea is always what I end up going back to. I also want there to be a unique concept that lets my project stand out from the rest.