Why we made changes

 So I am going to use this blog to describe why we made our changes and how this will help us throughout the course of our project.

So the first change we made to out project was basically adjusting the entire plot to something more creative. Initially, we had decided on doing a car scene where the two friends would get followed, but this idea could be hard to shoot in the car, since our angles and room is very limited. This idea also is the classic kidnapping plot that doesn't really create any interest to our target audience. For these reason, we changed our plot to be outside and have the two girls get scared when a person dressed in all black jumps out at them. This was a better idea because we had more room to shoot and it wasn't a kidnapping scene. Our genre is horror/comedy so we added a comedic factor of having the girls be drunk and beat up the person that scared them. We thought we had a solid idea until we had a group critique where I was given very good suggestions on how to make my project better. The problem was mainly how we were going to make the audience laugh and we knew we wanted physical comedy because that would be easier to convey, but we didn't have a solid plan on executing it. I was given the idea of having only the girls see the person, while bystanders couldn't, so it would be funny to see the girls beating up a pole or something. I liked this idea because it added some creativity, but I thought I could take it a step further and have the girls see and feel him when they hit them (because its a horror movie so there will be fighting) and no one else would be able to the person. This idea really stood out to me because it created a whole new look to our project and now looking back I think this is by far the best idea we have had and honestly things could change, and they might, but this idea really stuck out to me and I know moving forward this is what we will be going off of. Now we just need to film the shots and we will be sure to use our storyboard that has the shots listed in order and what camera movements we will includes as well as the angles.

Planning

 So currently we have finished our storyboard and the full plan to shoot our project, so the next step, you guessed it, is to film it! So this weekend we both are busy with family and we are thinking of shooting either next week or the week after that. School right now has kept us both very busy and we are trying to find a good time for both of us but its third quarter, which means a lot of homework. So either next week or the week after that will work out instead because we know that we have to shoot soon in order to have enough time to edit.

We also need to get actors to be in our film. I have taken film in middle school and I have been in creative photography since freshman year of high school so I will be filming our video! Also I'm not that good of a convincing actor. We know that Paola will play one of the two friends and we will have to ask one of our other friends to be either Julia or Olivia. Our mysterious character will have to be tall so we also need to think about a actor to play them. I will make sure to consul with my partner to ensure we pick the right actors to play the character in order to make our project look convincing.

Here is a video I found that shows good techniques to creative effective shots.

Mathieu Stern. “This 10 Easy Steps Will Make Your Video More CINEMATIC.” YouTube, 12 July 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKAACWcbzu8&t=78s.

More changes!

So here's a quick update on the few changes made to our project. Me and my partner talked on Tuesday and used the suggestions we got from our group critiques and changed up our plot a little. The biggest change we made was to make the mysterious character in all black only be seen by Julia and Olivia. To do this we are going to edit the mystery person to be transparent when other bystanders look at them. We added this one shot of a bystander walking by the girls fighting the so called mysterious character and the bystander just sees the girls hitting a pole, but the girls will actually be seeing and feeling the mystery character. This creates the thought, is this character just in their mind and the audience has to figure out how the friends can feel them when they attacks back (suspense...).

We had to adjust our storyboard to include 2 more shots then what we previously had, which was 20 shots. I added one shot to my original storyboard that I showed in a pervious post and my partner created the other 11 shots that had the adjustments to our plot.

Here is our completed storyboard with our new changes:

Our next step is to plan out when we are going to shoot and we have to assign actors to characters. We will discuss these in upcoming posts!

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.