Meetings

Meetings

Hey guys!

It is becoming more and more difficult to plan and organize our project as the days pass. The amount of people that are frantically trying to get things in order and see that they and their family are prepared is overwhelming. Aside from this Covid-19 chaos, on March 18th, my teacher set up an online meeting dubbed "Our Totally Normal Online Meeting". In this meeting it was the first time we got to ask questions directly to our teacher and have her give us advice on how we should change our storyline, what Cambridge has changed on their end and many more things. This meeting definitely confirmed what I had presumed, we have to change our entire plot and storyline.

Here is a snapshot of the meeting presentation my teacher put together for us :

In this meeting my teacher spoke about updates concerning our specific school, our county, and what the superiors at Cambridge had released at the time about the virus. Within this meeting, there was a section in which students could pose questions for our teacher to answer, and as I saw all of them coming in, I realized it was not just my group that was stressed and overwhelmed with everything. Other students had questions very similar to mine. It was reassuring to see many were likewise counting on our Spring Break Vacation (March 22-March 29) to film and meet with their other group members.

During the meeting as my teacher was giving us information, I decided on jotting down some notes, so I could later contact my own group and discuss what changes should be made to our project.
Here is a picture of some of the notes I took :

With our project deadline being extended until April 12th 2020, my group and I have a bit more time to redo our plot and create a new film opening. We are still patiently awaiting updates from both our school, Cypress Bay High, and Cambridge. For now this is what I know, however the facts change almost daily concerning Covid-19.

I am staying up to date with websites such as https://help.cambridgeinternational.org/hc/en-gb/articles/360006532458-Novel-coronavirus-Information-for-schools-about-the-COVID-19-coronavirus-outbreak and https://www.broward.org/CoronaVirus/Pages/default.aspx , monitoring the entire pandemic closely and staying in touch with my group members as well as other students in my AICE Media Class.

Potential Title/Credit Fonts

Potential Title and Credit Fonts

Hey guys!

So, as you guys saw from my last post, we are currently in self-isolation and in a very strange situation due to Covid-19. This is very unfortunate to our entire production process and hindered the filming and producing we were planning on doing during the upcoming days. I had other blog posts planned out, however I had to change them and alter my posts that I had previously laid out.

Since I am at home isolated from my group, I was brainstorming things I could still do on my part to contribute to our production process, and that is when I came up with the idea to research and find fonts that I like and go with the 'vibe' of our genre. Since we will be having opening credits showing the title and actors, I figured this would be a good thing to explore. 

Firstly, I started by hand sketching some various ways to write our title, "Little Town". Here are some rough drafts I did on a white board at home : 

Then, I went online to a website called https://www.dafont.com where I explored the wide variety of fonts they had available to use. How it works on this site is you choose the font of your liking and download it. Then, you open the font and in my case since I am using a MacBook Pro Laptop, I opened the font in the downloads folder and added the font to my font list. In the program Pages, I was able to open the font and use it to create different phrases.

When selecting a font, since there were so many options, I explored the Fancy tab and selected 'Retro' and also tried out 'High Tide'. I also was able to play around with colors for our potential film title.

I will continue to brainstorm other fonts and ways to display out film title and credits. As always I will keep you guys updated.

Covid-19

Covid-19: Change of Plans

Hey guys!

This blog post was completely unexpected and not planned for at all. As you saw in my previous posts my group and I were going steady with creating our storyboard and script for our film opening. As you can see on our Google Calendar, that I posted a few posts ago, the upcoming week was allocated for our filming time. We had decided on what date we were going to film in school and then also decided on what date we wanted to film the flash mob scene outside of school. Unexpectedly, our school got cancelled until further notice due to the outbreak of Covid-19. Due to this outbreak, we are all staying home and practicing social distancing as well as self-isolation. 

My group and I completely had to change around our schedule, with much of it still in the air. We do not know when the next time we will be able to meet again is. This is scary as our due date is approaching and we had a set organized schedule of when and what we wanted to produce. Now, we are very unsure of the whole situation and hope to get back to school as school as possible so we can film and edit and continue working on our film opening. 

I will continue to update the blog as I know further news. For now, our project is at a halt and there is nothing we can do about it on our end. Time will only tell. For now, here is some insight into Covid-19. 

https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/florida-schools-closing-for-2-weeks-to-limit-spread-of-coronavirus/67-6ca8bd62-f15e-4314-9d4c-082834e81d58

Script

Hey guys!

My group and I have curated a script for our film opening last class. Here it is:

We went onto Celtx (https://www.celtx.com) and had an account previously from our last screenplay that we had to write. In this script however, it was different from your usual script. This script was completely lacking in dialogue and instead had more direction and description. The only dialogue we were able to include was the ending of our short film where Mia greets her mom as she walks into the house. We tried to keep the script short and simple, as to not get over complicated with what we wanted. The purpose of having this script was to have an overview of the process that we would have while filming. 

I did some research on my own, prior to having the class in which we wrote the script to see if it was actually worth our time. I thought that instead of spending time writing a script that perhaps we should dedicate some time instead to planning other aspects of our production that appeared to be more important. 

As I did some research, I found out that in fact by writing a script, we are using it as a vital planning device. Even though our group did not have much dialogue in our script, I remember in our group meetings from a few classes ago, that some of the people were also making scripts, despite not having much dialogue and more action. This also encouraged me to have our group come up with a script. 

 
I went on these two websites : https://amifw.com/the-importance-of-script-writing/ and https://www.lawyersrock.com/what-is-screenplay/ and found some interesting reasons as to why having a script was important and valuable to our production process. Here is a screenshot of what I annotated and found useful towards the making of our script for “Little Town”. 

After doing my own research and reflecting upon the notes I took during my group meeting a few classes ago, I realized how important a script would be for our film despite the lack of dialogue.

Storyboard

Storyboard

Hey guys!

 Last class my group and I created our storyboard. Here it is (2 pages) :

By creating our storyboard it was seamless to get our ideas concrete and fully establish how we want certain shots to come out. For example our shot of Mia sitting at the desk while she drifts off to a daydream, we decided while drawing the scene, that we wanted to have a mid-shot instead of a long-shot. We decided on a mid-shot being better for this particular scene because we thought we would have to film after-school hours for us 3 to be able to film during the week prior to Spring Break. 

We decided on using Wednesday, which would be a B day at our school, and go at the start of the lunch that the three of us have together, A lunch. We planned on using Janeys’ third hour teacher, Mr. Petraitis’ room for filming, located in the 300s building. We are now focusing on a mid-shot because the classroom will be empty, and by just having the shot focused on Mia, this empty room will not be revealed in the film opening. We have to work around this obstacle and make it work. During this day, we have decided upon using this chance to film the first 5 squares in our storyboard, circled in pink here: 

My group and I treated our storyboard more of as a rough draft outline than anything specific, as we wanted a place to have our general ideas down on. Another reason as to why the storyboard was key for my group was because in our last project, which we created a music video dubbed “Trouble”, while we were filming the storyboard was there with us as an essential tool. The storyboard was just as important as the phones we were using to film. It guided us through our outlined shots and ensured that we would not forget anything minor.

By creating our storyboard, my group and I decided that the whole filming process would not be as hard as we presumed. We would need one day at school and then one day outside of school for the flash mob scene and that was it. I was overwhelmed before with thinking about all of the amount of time we would need to film and how our schedules, besides the fact that we mapped it all out on a google calendar, would be tricky still. 

I had done some research on my own before we created the storyboard in class and it helped sum up for me why storyboards are important to have. I used this link : https://elearningindustry.com/8-reasons-storyboarding-important-jumping-off-elearning-development

Here I took a snippet of a part of the website that I feel like helped me further realize how essential the storyboard was to our production process, especially due to the musical element of it.

Official Story

Official Story :

Official Storyline : 

Hi Guys!

We have finally decided upon our final storyline! I feel like I have updated and altered the storyline so many times, but since we have a difficult genre, we want to perfect the storyline so it all comes out professional. Last class we discussed two different storylines, and decided that one of the two would be our final plot and that we had to leave class that day knowing the plot. We also got input from our teacher and discussed it with her.

This is two drafts we created in class and wanted to choose from (we picked the one labeled ‘Daydream’ :

We weighed the pros and cons of both plotlines and then came up with the idea of including the flash mob as a primary aspect to our film. Here is a general breakdown of the plot.

Mia will be at her desk in class tapping her pencil on the desk and looking slightly uneasy and anxious. She will stare at the clock and slowly drift off into a daydream. The professor's voice will still be heard, and she will be speaking about college forms that are due soon for her class, the Seniors. Mia is daydreaming about performing on a stage and then wakes up as the school bell rings. She snaps back to reality. As she gets up to leave she has her earbuds in and this is when the music will begin. She is walking home in the street/sidewalk and here she is seen dancing and singing along to the song. The beat picks up as Mia is dancing and her neighbors join her, forming the flash mob. People driving cars, walking their dogs, and doing other normal actions will join in on the dance. After this scene ends, Mia is back to reality and then reaches her house, where she checks the mail only to find it full of college letters. She is about to enter her house as she takes off her pride pins, as she did not want her mother to see her wearing them. She greets her mom and then Mia walks to her room. 

Genre Challenges

Genre Challenges : 

Hey Guys!

As you guys know, my group and I decided on doing a film within the musical genre. This was especially different from any other group, and especially after having our group meetings I saw that no one else was doing anything as creative as we were. Most of the films were either comedy or drama. As we already stand out enough from choosing a different genre than the main choice, we are also composing our own music for the film. We fully wanted this film to be creative and express the side of us that we would be unable to through a more common genre.

As most musical films have flash mobs such as La La Land for example, we realized this would be difficult for our small group. Not only would we need fifteen to twenty people, we would also need them to be dancers in some form in case we create a choreography to go along to the flash mob scene. We wanted to include a flash mob in the part of the film opening where Mia is walking down the street. Janey, the girl who will be playing Mia immediately contacted her dance friends and so far about twenty of them have confirmed. Coordinating this flash mob will not be easy, especially since my group is deciding to use multiple cameras to get the best shots and the most shots, so editing is easier on us. We will try to be in the flash mob to get closer shots and overall make the scene as professional looking as we possibly can. 

Here is what a typical flash mob looks like: 

Another challenge we face is the soundtrack that we will be playing in our film. Our group decided on producing our own song and using that in the film, however this was presenting some issues as the song had to be perfectly matched to when Mia was singing it, especially during hectic times such as the flash mob. We decided on having the song be one person singing, and chose to only have to worry about matching Mias lips to the lyrics. This is much easier than matching the lyrics to other flash mob performers’ lips. Also, for us to get multiple singers to sing on the song would be too difficult and we did not have enough time for it. We envisioned a type of scene as this from High School Musical 2, however we realized it would be impractical and too hard to match all the lips to all the words. Here is a link to what we first envisioned, but had to alter to make reasonable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV50hD2thAc

Target Audience

Target Audience:

Hey guys!

As we further our research leading up to the next fews days in which we will start filming, we decided researching our target audience would be a good idea. Our genre is the musical genre within film and does not correlate with the typical cross of musical and romance film. Instead, we focus on the aspirations of a young teen that is trying to make it big time, but struggles with feeling like an outcast as well as living in a confined small town.

We found that our target audience would consist of young teen girls, perhaps a part of the LGBTQ+ community, or even teens to young adults that were faced with similar conditions growing up. The large amount of representation within our film would attract a wider audience. This film is for the aspiring young people that had such big dreams, but could not fulfill them due to where they lived. This film is also for the young adults that feel as though growing up they did not fit in and had more to offer. As you can see here, females tend to enjoy the musical genre of film by about 16%.

Also, the interests of our target audience should lean towards artistically talented people that are aspiring to be the best performer they can be, whether it is in the singing field, dancing field, or any kind of performing field. Their passions should be about dance and performing, as our film is widely based on that. There are typical musical genre films that our film would attract similar audiences.

One film in particular being La La Land, which was a musical based on two young aspirational adults that come together on the basic premise of following their dreams and doing what they love. This film also incorporates romance as the two face hardships to keep their relationship strong, however focusing on the musical aspect of the movie, the audience that is there for that aspect, would similarly be drawn to our film.

Our main age range should be about teens to young adults. However, since our genre of film is a musical and within that we use the element of Broadway as what Mia aspires to reach, we also attract those that enjoy Broadway. The common audience of Broadway is around 40 years of age. As stated in playbill.com, “The average age of Broadway theatregoers was down from 41.7 the previous season to 40.6. Though this is still, on average, above the general U.S. population, the number continues to inch closer to the median age.”

SOURCES:

“Film Genres: Musicals.” Research Guides, researchguides.dartmouth.edu/filmgenres/musicals.

McPhee, Ryan. “Broadway League's New Demographics Data Shows Continued Decrease in Average Age of Theatregoers.” Playbill, PLAYBILL INC., 18 Oct. 2018, www.playbill.com/article/broadway-leagues-new-demographics-data-shows-continued-decrease-in-average-age-of-theatregoers.

“Musicals.” Film Reference, www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-Road-Movies/Musicals.html.

Group Meeting

Group Meeting -

Hey Guys! 

At the beginning of last week we had the opportunity to sit down with other students in a group and discuss our ideas of our film opening. My group consisted of six people and total, each with a different storyline, film genre, and plot. This was one of the most interesting discussions I had thus far about my film opening. It was different to be able to bounce ideas off of other students and get feedback. Also something I realized was as I had to basically give my entire storyline I kind of realized along the way as I was presenting my ideas what was ultimately realistic and what was not. Since that last group meeting our plot line has changed quite a bit and I wish I could get more feedback on our new ideas, however this is what I presented to my group.

I first directed them to my blog and had them go to my post labeled “General Outline”. Here I had them skim what I wrote as I relayed the plot of the story to them. As I finished giving my basic premise of the film, the group was enticed and seemed to enjoy the plot line. Also, they had helpful ideas, not just mundane suggestions. As I showed the group my mood board and my costume design layout, they immediately suggested that I check out thrift shops such as Goodwill, and one girl in particular recommended a specific location to me, I’ll include a picture here:

Another good recommendation I got from the group meeting was to try and secure a time slot to use our school auditorium (where the stage is) early on, because one person said the drama classes were practicing and rehearsing for an upcoming show. I immediately added this to my groups Google Calendar letting them know as well how urgent securing a time slot to film there was. 

I also got the idea of using the Gay pride pin to reinforce Mia, our main character, is gay. One person had the idea that I get a pack of multiple pins from somewhere such as Amazon, and have them in most shots, just to provide a continuity identity for Mia. After class was over I did some research and found these that I will present to my group to consider us purchasing. Here are the pins I found: 

Overall, the group meeting gave me great ideas for our film opening and I was happy to share them with my own group and also received good feedback from them as well.

Costume Design

Costume Design:

Hey guys!

As I have previously mentioned, we have finally created a name for our main character, Mia. As we have her name and her persona established, my group and I thought it would be a good idea to create potential outfits/wardrobe for Mia. This will give us inspiration for when we start to film and will also help us with our planning process more. Since we did not have all of the clothes right now, we did research on what a girl that is part of the LGBTQ+ community would typically wear and we got some ideas from pictures online. Since our group and project is small, we wanted to be sure that we were checking websites that sold items within our budget range.

We envisioned the shirt being something with rainbow colors on it paired with mom jeans and high top sneakers. To fully curate this outfit and make it clear how we wanted Mia to appear, I went on “ShopLook” which is an app that you can use to create outfits from scratch. I created the outfit I envisioned her to wear with everything down to earrings and accessories. Another reason why this app was perfect for this was after you create a look, you can find other outfits people created that were similar to yours. This gave me more inspiration as it showed me other ways to wear rainbow themes clothing or what accessories would go well, since Mia’s style is unlike any of ours within the group. Here is a picture of my final product : 

Then I went through similar outfits to the one I created and used that for more inspiration. Here is a quick video of me scrolling through the different outfits:

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.