Updates!

 Going into week four of the project, it is time to start getting more serious with the planning and how I am going to film. Now that I have a more solid plan for my intro, I can use storyboard printouts online and start drawing my storyboard and planning how I am going to film my intro. Thanks to the previous projects that we have done in this class, such as the last one we did, I am familiar with how to create a successful storyboard that actually shows the way that I want my film to look and the shots that I want to use.

Even though I am working solo on this project, I am planning to get together with a few of my friends that are also in this class so we can all help each other film our introductions. This way, we can quickly and efficiently film everyone's introduction and have enough people to help us either film or star in the film. I think that we will film for a few days, since our projects' settings will be different and will have to film in different locations at different times depending on whose project it is. 

I am also in the process of thinking of titles for my film, and I will be creating a blog devoted to that later in the week, along with any updates that I have on the storyboard.

Changes to the Story!

 After some time thinking about what to do in order to make the film make sense now that I have decided to change it, I have an idea that I think will work well.

During the group meetings yesterday, my group advised me on changing the plot so that a random person does not just tell Iris that they are after her, since that could be kind of stalker-ish and not the way to go. So, instead, I changed the story a bit so that Iris, instead of living with her parents, she lives with her grandmother after her parents died in a plane crash five 9 years earlier. However, one day, Iris gets an email from someone such as someone high up in the military or government, telling her that her parents were not who she thought they were, and they lived secret lives. He also wrote that they were hiding things from the government and they government was waiting for the 10th anniversary of their deaths to investigate, which was in a week. He wrote that if Iris failed to comply with them, not only would they confiscate all of her parent's things in order to find what they were hiding, but they would also take her into custody, since her not agreeing to help would be like she was helping them get away for what they did. So, Iris and Selene try to find out what they were hiding, and find a note from her parents to her, telling her that they did what they did to help people and that they knew this would happen, and that in order to get away with it, they had to hide all of their things around the state. So, Iris and Selene go off and try to figure out the clues and find hidden letters to try to piece together what her parents did, what they were hiding from the government, and where before the government comes and ravages her house in a week in order to clear their name. 

I think that this is a much clearer and well written storyline and would be very interesting to see. I am very happy that we did the group meetings so I could make my film this much better!

Post-Group Meeting

 Today in class Mrs. Stoklosa put us into small groups so we could share our project so far with them and see what they think about it and give us advice on it. This was very helpful to me to see what they thought I did good and what I needed to change to make it better.

While they said that overall they enjoyed the plot and storyline of my film, they thought that the idea of a person anonymously sending a girl letters and emails that say that he is coming for her is kind of more horror and creepy, and to try to stay away from that. So instead, they suggested that I make it something such as a person in charge of a large company coming for them because they broke a rule or took something. I think that this is a good idea overall because it would make more sense as to why they were after them, but I have to now think about how to add a mystery element to it, since the mystery of who is after them is now gone. But other than that, they liked my idea and my idea for the intro. Stay tuned for more about it!

Character Backgrounds

 My film has very little characters, the main characters being the main character, her best friend, and the person that is mysteriously coming after them. Since the girls are on the run, they do not encounter many other characters. Here, I will be going through the characteristics and personalities of the two girls.

The girl first is Iris, who is 17 years old. She is an only child and is a junior in high school. While she knows many people at school, it is difficult for her to really open up to them, which is why Selene is one of her main and only friends. She grew up with loving parents who would take her on adventures all when she was young up until she runs away. Because of this, she is very familiar with the area and knows all of the best places to go to to hide. While she loves her parents, she knows the troubles and stress that they face everyday, so when she starts getting the anonymous letters, she decides to not tell them about them, so they don't have another thing to worry about. She also doesn't tell them when she runs away, for their safety and her own, which pains her because they were always the ones that she could really open up to and go to to help her with her problems. She can be very quiet and reserved when she wants to, but around people she trusts, she can be her true bubbly and funny self. Throughout the film and their journey, she learns how to become stronger and more confident in herself.

Star Sign: Aquarius (Star sign that is very introverted and enjoys to have only a close knit group of friends.)

Personality Type: INFP (INFPs "tend to be quiet, open-minded, and imaginative, and they apply a caring and creative approach to everything they do." They are also the rarest personality type.)

     Iris' best friend is Selene, who she has known since they were six years old. She is more sociable than Iris and definitely more outspoken. However, she has been loyal to Iris all their lives. Having a very loud and crowded house with all her 5 siblings, her being the middle, she spends most of her free time with Iris, whether they go out somewhere to hang out or just spend the day watching old movies, she enjoys the peace and quiet at Iris'. Because she has so many siblings, she is not as close to her parents as Iris is to hers, which is why it does not hurt her as much when she decides to run away with Iris. While Iris is usually the voice of reason in the duo, Selene is the do-er and the one to take action when Iris decides what they should do. She is very stubborn and confident, but also very caring and loyal to the ones she cares about.

Star Sign: Gemini (Star Sign that "is very sociable, communicative and ready for fun, with a tendency to suddenly get serious, thoughtful and restless.")

Personality Type: ENFJ (ENFJs tend to be "warm, forthright types love helping others, and they tend to have strong ideas and values.")

Sites used:

https://www.astrology-zodiac-signs.com/zodiac-signs/gemini/ 

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/love-sex/the-5-zodiac-signs-that-are-introverts-and-dont-mind-social-distancing/photostory/78335425.cms#:~:text=02%2F6Aquarius,private%20space%20is%20their%20sanctity. 

Brainstorming Part 2

In my last post, I had a very loose idea for a plot and a storyline to take my film and intro. Now, however, I have a slightly more detailed idea for a film intro and plot.

My idea is that the main protagonist has gotten odd messages everywhere, (such as in the mail, email, etc.)  by a mysterious person saying that they are going to find them and hunt them down. With the help of her best friend, they have to run away and keep hidden from the person coming after them. On the way, however, they continue to get these odd messages and threats, but each has a clue or little hidden message on it which helps the friends figure out who the person is. 

For my intro, I have an idea to make it open with a close up of a record player starting, with a song starting to play. As the scene progresses, the song will slowly become part of the background instead of from the record player, making it more part of the scene and what is happening around it. The next scenes will be close ups of things around the girl's room, such as the mysterious letters on her desk while you can see the girl moving around in the background. The next scene will be the backpack that the girl is packing with the girl's hands in it, and will pan up to show the girl's face, scared but determined, as she continues to pack her bag with things needed for her trip running for safety. There will also be a scene of her phone going off as her best friend texts her about her whereabouts and how much more time she needs to get ready until she is ready to leave. The intro will end with a shot of the record player as the song comes to an end, the record slowly stopping as you can see the girl grabbing her bag, walking out of the room and shutting off the lights, and the scene going black.

As the filming process goes, I think that this will be a fairly easy intro to film, since it will just be my room and my friend filming me while I am the girl that is packing her bag. Since I already have a record player, it will be easy to be able to play that for the scene. I can also use After Effects to give the scene a dark and ominous look to it, giving the viewers a sense of unease and suspense to the dark tone of the intro.

I am pretty proud of the idea that I have so far, and maybe soon I will have even more ideas to make it better! Stay tuned!

Plot Brainstorming

 Now that I have my genre figured out, its time to brainstorm ideas for my movie. By looking at other popular movies in the adventure/mystery genre, I can get inspiration to come up with my own story.

A thing that most adventure mystery films have in common is the fact that the main protagonist is on a journey to find or discover something. For instance, in National Treasure (2004), where Ben Gates (Nicholas Cage) goes on a search around the world for hidden treasure by finding and solving clues left from all throughout history. 

Another example is Enola Holmes, which is about Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), the little sister of Sherlock Holmes, (Henry Cavill) going on an adventure to try to find her mother who went missing on Enola's sixteenth birthday, and calls on her brothers to help her find her.

After looking at these examples of mystery adventure movies, I am thinking of making my film a film where the main character goes on a trip to find her best friend, who went missing but left clues for her to find on the way. Stay tuned for my next blog post for a more in-depth description of my plot idea!

Ideas for Filming and Editing

 One thing that I need to figure out for my project is how I am going to film and film my intro. The filming has to be well done and using specific shots and angles to help portray different tones and emotions in certain scenes, and editing is a key part of good storytelling and how to help move the story along smoothly. 

Filming the film intro is not going to be easy due to COVID and not being able to film in different settings and with different people. So, in order to be able to film a good intro, I am going to have my best friend help me film my intro, whether I have her be in it acting or filming me. And because she is also in the class, I am going to help her with her project as well, so we can kill two birds with one stone. I am going to just use my phone to film it, since that is the easiest and cheapest way to film for the budget that we have. As for the setting and where we are going to film, depending on our plot and what the setting of the film is, we can film at either one of our houses or at a park near one of our houses. By doing this, we can both film our projects well while also being as safe as possible.

For the editing, I have Adobe After Effects which I use regularly and I am pretty well versed in, and I am certain that using it I can edit my intro. Using techniques such as different type of cuts and different organization of the shots, I can make a great intro that has the style and story that I want.

Target Audience

 Now that I know what genre I am going to make my film and intro, I need to think of things such as the intended audience, characters I am going to use and the plot of the film. I also need to think of things such as how I am going to film the intro, the setting and what angles and shots I am going to use in order to make it the style I want. 

For starters, I need to figure out the target audience for my film. Target audience is a very large and important part of creating a film because this is how I will be marketing my film. This is also dependent on my genre, since different genres can attract different age groups and target audiences. For example, fantasy and cartoons attracts more young kids and children than adults or elders. Similarly, films such as documentaries attract older people more than it would young adults and teens. Another example is how while films such as romcoms attract a more female audience, while movies such as sci-fi and action movies tend to attract a more male based audience.

Usually, in the adventure genre, the target audience is people between the age of 13-30. It used to be targeted mostly for men, but in the past few years, more action and adventure films have been coming out with female leads, which opened up the target audience for women as well as men. The age range for the mystery genre is usually more mature, since most mystery films are more serious and have more thrilling tones. Therefore, my genre being adventure mystery, I think that the target audience should be teenagers and young adults, because I think that they will be the ones that are going to enjoy it the most. I think that this is also a good target audience because they can use social media and different platforms to help distribute it and make it more popular.

Step One- The Genre!

For the first step of making my film intro, I have to figure out which genre I am going to create it in. I spoke about this a little bit in my previous blog post, but in this one I will go deeper into each genre I am considering and my final decision, and why I chose what I chose.

For starters, I looked at different movies in the genres I am considering that have come out in the past 5 years, to see which one had the most success. After looking at a few different genres, such as comedy, drama, and dystopian, I decided that the best idea was to look at adventure and/or mystery films to soo what their success has been like, since I love both genres and I think I could come up with a great idea for a film opening using those. 

First, I looked at the mystery genre, and the movie Knives Out, which came out in 2019 and stars many big actors such as Chris Evans, Christopher Plummer, Ana de Armas, and Jaime Lee Curtis, and Daniel Craig. The film starts when the famous mystery writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead in his office the mornifng after his 85th birthday, and the whole family is a suspect as to who killed him. The film made a worldwide total of $311.4 million in the box office and was nominated for multiple Oscars, including best picture, making it a massive success.

Another genre that I was considering was adventure, which usually consists of quests and journeys to lead to discoveries, treasures, or other findings. An example of this is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man Tell No Tales, which was released in 2017. This was the continuation of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and what Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) has done since the battle of Calypso's maelstrom in the last film. This film made 794.9 million USD, and had more marketing and distribution techniques since it was a Disney film and could make merchandise and toys that they sold in the Disney parks and online stores. 

Considering the success of these movies in these genres, I believe that an adventure/mystery film is the best decision since adventure films are very popular and  I think more people would want to watch an adventure film. However, I am going to add a little bit of mystery to it as well, since I love the genre and could really help with the plot and make it even more interesting.

 

Media Studies Project- The Beginning

This is the start of a long, grueling project that we are starting in my media studies class. Even though it will be very tough and time consuming, I am very excited to see the finished product and how rewarding it will feel at the end. So, I am going to work my very hardest to make it the best I can and get every detail perfect.

For my project, I have to create a maximum 2 minute opening to a fictional film that I create. This means I have to think of things such as the genre, plot, title, characters, settings, and anything else I can to make this a successful project. I also have to figure out ways to film my intro in ways that are suitable and can still work even during the pandemic.

To start, I thought about what ideas I can for my project, such as the genre. I went through the many different genres in my head to try and decide which path I wanted to take for my film. I decided that genres such as horror, action, sci-fi and drama would either be too difficult to film with the given time and low budget, or would not be interesting enough to make a great opening. So, I decided that I wanted my project to go either an adventure or mystery route, since I am interested in both of those genres, whether watching them or coming up with stories in my head. As for characters and setting, I am still thinking of ideas and will update this blog when I come up with something.

I will also be trying to use as many techniques that we have learned in AICE Media Studies as possible in my intro to try to make it the best possible, such as different camera angles and shots, editing and production techniques, and even good representation that we usually do not see in the media today. I believe that using what I have learned so far in this class to create my film opening, I can create a great piece that I can be proud to hand in.

I am super excited for the next steps in this project, and I hope you will join me on this journey!

Music Marketing Project Final Post- Reflection

    After looking back at our project after presenting our artist Gidimake and seeing the other projects that other groups made, I can say that I am proud of the work that we created in the time we did it. Not only did we do well with our actual presentation, but I feel like we did very good work with the marketing and distribution portion of our project and making it suitable for the genre, as well as making the music video and having it well-edited and also suitable for the heavy metal genre.

    When we started out project, none of us had any idea about anything that had to do with the heavy metal genre. So, we had to do extensive research on different artists in the genre and they distribute and market their songs and albums when they release them. Between looking at more popular bands such as Metallica and less known artists such as Everlast, using the chart given to us, we got a better understanding of what we needed to do in order to market our music successfully. For example, bands such as Metallica are holding virtual concerts online for people to watch in the comfort of their own homes during the pandemic, so that fans can enjoy their favorite bands perform for them while staying safe from the virus. That gave us the idea to also hold virtual concerts, and then worldwide tours once the pandemic is over and it is safe to go to events again. We also did things such as plan to have a large social media platform, which included Instagram and Twitter so fans can follow us and stay in touch with us and be the first to hear about new updates. Not only that, but I created a website for Gidimake which included a link to our music video on YouTube, a way to purchase tickets to our online concerts, and a merch store which had a t-shirt with our logo and name on it that I also created for people to purchase to show their loyalty to our artist.

    During the part of the project where we had to create a music video for our song, all of us in our group brainstormed a broad idea for our music video, trying to figure out ideas to make a story based music video based on the lyrics in the song. From that brainstorming, I created an idea of what I thought the music video should be and drew up a detailed storyboard based on the idea. The music video was going to be about a boy that ran away from home and is on the phone with his mother telling her how much better his life is now that he is away from her and his father and family, when in reality his life is falling apart, showing a messy house and that he had no food to eat. After I finished the storyboard, I sent it to Diego, who took it and filmed and edited the whole music video and put it in the presentation.

    While Diego filmed and edited the music video, the rest of us worked on the actual presentation, taking the things we learned from our research and the techniques that we would use and put it in the presentation. If there was one thing that I would change in our project, I would change our slide presentation, make it look more appealing and make it fit the genre more. After seeing how other groups added many pictures and formatted it nicely so that it was appealing to look at and fit their genre, For example, the pop genre group made theirs very colorful and vibrant, and the rock genre group was very dark colors and more hardcore theme. Our project, while had good information, had no theme to our design of our slides. If I  were to do the project again that is what I would change that.

    During the making of this project, I learned more about making case studies and how to research and organize them and use them correctly. I also learned how to use what we learned about the different angles and shots and editing to create the storyboard and the music video, which came out very well because of what I learned. I think that because of the project, I have a better understanding of how to get a piece of media and using research and case studies, expand on my ideas to create a very well- made piece, like we did in this project.