Filming Outline & Location Updates

Filming Outline & Location Updates - 

Hey guys!

Last class when my group and I met we changed a little part of our storyline that we established in previous posts. The reason for why we changed the storyline was so it could be more feasible when we were filming. As we furthered our research and viewed more film openings for our genre, we realized we had to be wise about the time we had to complete the filming process. After we created our google calendar, we really saw and had it put into perspective how little time we had, so we modified our storyline slightly. Also, we have established a name for our main character, Mia! If you see in previous posts we were undecided and referred to her as “main character”. 

Here is our brainstorming paper for locations we wanted to use in our production:

Since we live in a small suburban town, this part of the brainstorming process was a bit easier. We already had some locations in mind and had actually been to them previously so we knew how it would work out to film. Since our film is supposed to be max two minutes, it was important that we roughly allocated times to each section of the film opening.

We discovered places like:

• Weston Town Center 
• Clubhouse at Weston Hills 
• Clubhouse at Isles at Weston
• Cypress Bay High Auditorium
• Houses (any of our three would equally work)
• Janey’s Dance Competition on Feb 28-30.

We would use Cypress Bay for the classroom setting we need at the first thirty seconds. Then, we decided on using the school auditorium to take advantage of the stage lights and open stage to get multiple shots. Here, Mia will perform/rehearse, then leave the auditorium (which we needed to plan out specifically because here the music would start playing that we are producing). This was all important to plan out for time and pacing.  

Here will be around one minute long: After, we will show Mia going home and incorporate clips of her daily life such as walking alone in the hallways or doing dance movements on the sidewalk walking home alone. Then we will show Mia opening the mailbox only to find it full of colleges reaching out to her. Her expressions here are important, as we will show her dumping the letters and flyers. We will show her walking in to greet her mom but find out she is not the caring type of mom from her not answering. Here we are planning on playing with the music, having it fade out as Mia takes out her headphones and as she puts them back in the music fades in. At the end of this minute, the last 30 seconds will be her changing into dance clothes, stretching, and prepping. The end of this 30 second section will be an action match to her dancing on the empty stage in Cypress Bay High School.

Schedule

Schedule - 

Hey guys!

Last class when my group and I met we wanted to organize our filming and entire production process. We decided to go digital and share a google calendar among us three, this way we could all edit and add things in specifically for our portfolio project. Since the three of us are busy outside of school, this calendar would ensure we could keep everyone immediately updated if something came up during a scheduled filming/editing time.

Here it is: 

As you can see, we have labeled all the days that we are meeting together in class labeled as “A day”. On these days, we then allocated the times in which we would film, edit, and then have final touches on our work. While planning out our filming and editing days, we had to be careful because spring break was in the middle of that time and we had to be vigilant of all of that. 

We allocated five school days to filming, and will hopefully only need around one or two days outside of school to film. As well as filming in school we are also planning on filming in areas around our suburban town. As we find out specific locations, such as the auditorium in our school, we will schedule a time slot and enter it into our schedule online. By having everything digitized it is much easier to plan out filming times so we can effectively be productive as well as make the production we envisioned. As our particular genre and type of film will be more time consuming than other genres, we wanted to plan everything out and have it all organized for the three of us to cooperate and know what is expected of each group member.

Mood Board

Mood Board

Hey guys!

To further our brainstorming process, my group and I decided on creating mood boards for what our general idea of the film would be. This mood board that I created in Canva is of the general outline I wrote about in the last blog post. The red font and flames/background is meant to symbolize passion, which our main character feels as she dances. Her main form of expressing anything she is going through is by dancing. 

I included pictures of people dancing by themselves, as this is commonly how our main character would dance. (I am calling her main character because we have not yet decided on a name for her). The city pictures with Broadway symbolize the places her persistence took her. Also, there is a rainbow in the hand of one of the pictures to reinforce the idea of LGBTQ+ that we would like to include in her persona. 

We also took to Pinterest to further our brainstorming process and create another mood board. Personally, I am a more visual learner and by seeing all of our ideas expressed through pictures makes it more engaging and inspiring. As you can see in the video of the mood board below, we focused on including pictures of dancing passionately and being engaged and fully loving the art of dance. Included in our board we also attached a picture of a small town, where our main character would be from, and juxtaposed next to it is her dream, New York City. Having these two contrasting locations on the mood board was important as it reassured us to focus on the two extremes and try to show that in our film opening.

General Outline

General Outline - 

This is a general outline of one of the two plots my group and I decided upon. This is more of a rough draft and is not really final, but we thought that by having a general outline of how we want our plot to go, then we could improve and refine our storyline. This plot is the one about the small town girl who has big dreams to make it big in the dance performing field, but feels constricted and confined by the boundaries that are her small town in which she grew up. 

• Beginning: A small town girl is shown, depressed and sad about how she feels living in such a small town. She feels as if there are no opportunities here for her especially in her dancing career. As she walks through the streets of her small town, she listens to the song (we will produce this song), the song is playing through her head phones, then as she pulls them out of her ear the sound goes away. Then, moments later a car passes by playing the song, and here the song will fade in and fade out. We will include cool elements of sounds with the song playing in the beginning.

• Middle: As the girl continues through her life of feeling like she has so much more potential than she can express in this small town, she keeps her dreams steadfast. She has numerous visions of her performing on stage in competition and her making it big on broadway, but then she always comes back to her reality at home.

• End: The girl gets discovered by a big musical theater company that agrees to sign her onto their team and wants her to tour with them. She finally fulfills the dreams she always manifested and knew that she wanted. She makes it big, making her parents proud and herself even prouder. 

Brainstorming

Brainstorming Ideas - 

Last class when my group and I met we were deciding which direction we wanted our film opening to go and we came up with two different story ideas. We did a brainstorming sheet that we thought would be easier to see everything down on paper. 

Here it is: 

As you can see, on our brainstorming page we wrote down a general layout of what we wanted for our project. We knew who in our group would be the main character, so we immediately decided on what representation we wanted, as this was a big factor for our production. We decided on exploring a possible characteristic related to the LGBTQ+ community, in which we brainstormed a few ideas of how we would subtly include our main character as a part of the community. We decided on a pin that would be continuously in scenes with the flag of representation with the colors of the rainbow. An idea would be something like this, see the digital sketch I created:

As well as exploring the LGBTQ+ community in terms of representation, we also decided on exploring races that are underrepresented in the genre of musicals. 

As you can see, the White race is a majority of lead roles in general within the film world. We wanted to break this barrier by possibly making our lead actress a Hispanic girl, since Hispanic is about 5%, in contrast to the White race which is around 73%. 

Also, we discussed how we would have wanted to incorporate different shots into our production, regardless of which kind of route we went. Either we made our film about a small town girl trying to make it big and fulfill her dreams of a dancer or a teenage drama of a mystery in which a girl goes missing, we wanted drone shots to be an element we incorporate. Of course we would only include them where appropriate and also where is needed, however this was something my group and I envisioned for our film. 

I’ll keep you guys posted with updates and new ideas we come up with!

Romance Genre

Romance Genre:

As you can see from my last post, I mentioned how musical films tend to be correlated with romance as well, and for this reason is why my group and I chose to also explore the genre of romance in addition to musicals. 

Within the romance genre, the relationship between two people in love is usually the primary focus throughout the film. The films typically focus on passion and emotion, and evoke emotions in the viewer as they take them on the journey of the main characters’ love. Themes from young love, to love at first sight, to even hard times within love, are all popular themes within the romantic genre. The target audience is usually young females and young female adults. Women are usually more attracted to this genre because in the movies, typically it is told from the point of view of the woman protagonist. 

The reason as to why this genre is so popular among a wide range of age groups is because people can relate to the plot. Couples and single people alike can find similarities between their own life and what is portrayed on screen. Many times romance films are realistic, following the notion that the film should imitate our “normal” version of love. These films emulate life as closely as possible, without fabricating too much, in many cases. These types of genre films usually have long takes and deep focuses, to take the viewer on the story of the main characters’ love. Many times in these films there will be location shooting and uncontrolled mise-en-scene. With the natural lighting and minimal editing, there is a more realistic notion placed on the film, allowing viewers to further relate to it or see themselves portrayed in the characters in a way.

For many couples, what this genre offers is something they can relate to. However, in many cases as well, these films serve as the ideal model of what people wish their future love would be like one day. 

There are many different sub-genres based off of the umbrella romance genre:

• Rom-Com
• Romance Drama
• Fantasy Romance
• Historic Romance
• Gothic Romance

Rom-Com is the most popular sub-genre because it portrays a comedic situation that developed because of a romance situation. Typically this genre has at most two protagonists, which ultimately are driven to find love, but the obstacles that arise during this time, are what adds to the humor and makes the film a comedy and romance all in one. Target audience is typically young women and people that are in relationships that can relate to the plot. Also, the cliche in the movie genre is typically on the stereotypes of love. A lot of times the film is seen from the point of view of the woman. This film genre usually ends with a happy ending and the couple works through the obstacle they were initially faced with. 

Color symbolism: 

Red is used throughout the mise-en-scene of the film. Red represents energy and passionate love, since it is used in this context. Typically the woman will wear a red dress or roses will be shown in parts of the film to reinforce one of the key elements of the film as love. 

Sound:

Often times, voice overs are used in the non-diegetic sound aspect of the film. This along with songs and background music that sets the tone of the scene is used in romance films a lot. Also, instrumental music is used to set the mood in some parts of the film as well. 

Some examples of romance films are:

Casablanca (1942):

This film was about a man, Rick Blaine, who owned a nightclub in Casablanca and met his old love Ilsa, who he comes to find out has a husband named Victor. Victor is being chased by Germans and Ilsa has faith in Rick to help them to get him out of the country as soon as possible. Both of these men love Ilsa, but will let her go if it means she is better off.

   

Clueless:

This movie is an example of a rom-com that is about a girl named Cher who is the most lavish girl at her high school and is a matchmaker for a lot of her friends. As she realizes she has feelings for her ex-stepbrother, she soon falls for him. This movie is a mix of both comedy and romance. 

 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanticComedy

Musical Genre

Musical Genre:

Within the musical genre, popular elements are typically singing and/or dancing. The main characters of the film typically perform dances and/songs throughout the scenes, as this is an important element of the entire genre. A typical film convention that is usually broken within the musical genre is the act of looking directly at the camera. During performances and dances, it is not abnormal for the main characters to occasionally look at the camera for a quick glance.  As characters sing and dance, when they make eye contact it usually evokes a more personal connection to the viewer.

Artificiality, which is the “quality of being made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally”, is quite common in musical genre films. As has been understood, the conventions of artificiality are actually embraced within musical films. Dramatic lighting and wind machines are some of the artificial props, part of the controlled mise-en-scene, that grabs the viewers attention. 

Movement and sound, which are two of the basic elements of the film medium are embraced through the musical genre in many ways. Characters in the film use the artistic outlet of music and dance to let out their feelings. This is a main way to express emotion for the characters in these films. The dancing and singing is also not limited to being a secret, or not as known within the film world, but rather the characters perform and sing in public, in gas stations, in traffic jams, in supermarkets and many more everyday places that typically a dance/sing performance would not break out in. Many times the way the main character in the musical film expresses their stresses or hardships is through the artistic elements of singing and dancing. Often times we see character development this way as well. 

Often times, these musical genre films are intertwined with romance plots as well. This is a common theme seen in many musical films. Musical films started becoming a thing after sound in motion pictures was invented. With the launch of synchronized sound that could be used in film, the genre emerged with so many new opportunities than other genre films could do. 

Musical genre examples : 

West Side Story:

This film is a fight between two different ethnic groups, the Jets which are the American group of people and the Sharks, which was people from Puerto Rico. The issue between the two groups is the Sharks have moved in on the territory of the Jets and the two groups fight and attempt to settle their differences through music and dance. The groups compete in alleyways, basketball courts, and dance showdowns to see which group is superior.

Grease:

This film is romance musical comedy that is about two students that meet during the summer and end up going to the same high school, fall in love. Throughout the film, elements of dancing and singing are used to develop the plot. This film is highly indicative of dancing as a group, as seen in the school dance held in the gym. The couple advances in their relationship as they grow closer to each other through dancing. 

http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-Road-Movies/Musicals.html

https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/filmgenres/musicals

 

Music Blog Post

Beautiful Entropy 🌹

Logo

For our music marketing project, we chose the genre alternative rock, in which we delved deeply into the choices similar bands made from everything concerning marketing to the actual composition of our music video. Our band’s name is Beautiful Entropy, and our name holds a lot of significance. Entropy is known as the chaos and disorder that exists within our universe, and humans combat this energy by expressing themselves through a creative outlet. In our brand, we wanted it to be something people associate with beauty everyday, so we selected a rose. Then, we realized we had to symbolize some sort of entropy, so we developed a theme of the rose melting. This logo that we used throughout all of our platforms was used to symbolize the true meaning of “beautiful entropy”. We used maroon and black as our main colors because certain shades of red symbolize energy, which would be a parallel to the energy within our entropy, and black because it was a common color used throughout alternative rock bands we researched such as Cage the Elephant. Our band consisted of two members, who wore black leather jackets and bandanas that were red, to continue with the continuity of the colors as well as emulate the other rock band pictures we found through our research. Most pictures were simple with lighting tricks used to emphasize the grungy aspect of our band.  Here are some pictures from our gallery:

Within our genre of alternative rock, we wanted to do research on marketing techniques and trends that were used. One of the bands we researched, Cage the Elephant, took largely to online platforms to market their music and band. They used Instagram the most in particular, to live stream and connect with fans, post teasers, reply to comments, post about upcoming tour dates, and most of all just keep their fan base up to date with everything they were doing. With over 500k followers on Instagram, Cage the Elephant is widely popular through that specific social media platform. Also, on their Youtube channel, they have videos of past performances and music videos that the band has done, to attract an audience of creative and artistic people. We also realized how important their website was, and we look a lot of inspiration from it for our own website. We took many tips from their website such as having a straightforward and concise homepage, to having pictures of the band clearly displayed, as well as an area to purchase merchandise and see tour dates. From this, we used inspiration for our website to keep it as clean as possible and as easy to use so fans could find exactly what they are looking for. 

Another band we researched was Half Alive, which also had common trends that Cage the Elephant displayed, but also included a wide variety of streaming platforms for their fans to attain their new music. We realized through this that the more online streaming platforms we could get our band on, the better, since almost all streaming platforms had various target audience ages. Another thing we noticed from Half Alive was on their music video “still feel”, it attracted attention due to its “choreography and cinematography, done by lead singer Josh Taylor. This gave us inspiration to incorporate an artistic element into our music video, which we did through dancing. 

To market our small new band, we created merch, posted newsletters around the city, and used our website and social media to our advantage. These are two examples of newsletters we posted on our social medias as well as around the city:

Our merch was available for purchase through our website. We created similar products to what Cage the Elephant had, because our funds were limited, we wanted to produce what would definitely sell. We created pins, beanies, phone cases, and pins and offered them at affordable prices, since we are such a small band. We developed a newsletter that had our upcoming performances from around May to November that we were able to secure at small cafes around Fort Lauderdale and Miami. On our newsletter that we posted around the city as well as on our social media platforms and website, we included the locations of our bands’ performances. Our website: https://raisaali11.wixsite.com/beautifulentropy was a major platform we used to market our brand. It was a spot that fans could go to and get access to everything our band had to offer. We have links to our social medias, platforms to directly stream our single “Trouble”, our contact information, a gallery of pictures, and so much more. Finally, our social media was Facebook, Tik Tok, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram. On snapchat we used a public profile to constantly be able to update our fans by posting videos and pictures of what the band was doing. On Facebook we were able to reach an older target audience and promote our content there as well. On Twitter we often posted teasers on our upcoming music and would release new performances on there as well. Through Tik Tok, we posted a challenge that our fans could recreate and use to promote our song. Although Tik Tok is not popular among alternative rock bands, it surpassed Instagram with over 1.5 billion downloads, so we decided that the smallest amount of publicity would do us really well. On Instagram we focused the most and spent the most time on. Here, we went live often, which was an easy way to stay interacted with our fans and talk to them. Also, we were posting daily, always posting teasers and behind the scenes of music videos and song recording sessions. The more personal we kept our Instagram, the more we attracted loyal fans. 

Merch

Through the production of this music video, I learned to take chances and produce a risky story for our fans. The story could be easily relatable to, which made the production that much more worth it. I learned about time management being essential and being creative with where we shot content. By creating this entire marketing campaign, I realized that I had to understand our demographic a lot more and know what would attract them. It was important to our band to keep our content simple yet effective, and we achieved this through research on other alternative rock bands as well as by properly understanding our demographic.
Here is a like to "Trouble" by Beautiful Entropy:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbulampBCcY