Group Meeting #2

     Today we did our second group meeting! We discussed everything about our films production and such, and I got a lot of great feedback from the group that will definitely help my project improve!

    The first person to present her film was Brynn. She had trouble coming up with a film name so we had given her some suggestions. What we settled on for her was "20 Questions" since the film is a Romcom about a girl getting a mysterious message from a boy in her math class asking to play 20 questions. The film is shot in her house and she mostly focused on using lighting to convey meaning in the opening. She said the film is meant to represent girlhood and femininity. She is also filming her CCRs today which is ahead of the rest of our group! 

    The next person to present was me, and since this is my blog you already know about my project, so I'll keep this brief. I filled everyone in on my ideas and showed them parts of my film, and told them the MANY new conflicts I've encountered within the past week (ALL of my editing got deleted and I needed to restart.) I also told them about how I decided to compose my own opening music! I really had wanted to find a hip-hop song that would go with it, but since all of the songs that fit well were by very large artists, I decided to take the opposite approach and compose a dissonant and ominous piece that would last for the first 30-ish seconds of my opening.

    Sergio went after me, and he had a LOT done! He also composed his opening music and he is almost done filming, since he had some location and timing conflicts. His film is a sports drama about a Med student with a terminal illness so he started to obsess over powerlifting to stay alive. He said he took a lot of inspiration from The Batman (2022) movie, which is ironic to me since I took a lot of inspiration from The Joker (2019).  His CCR idea was a super creative idea too! He said he was going to do a self-interview type of video where he would literally edit him interviewing himself. He had struggled to come up with a name, and we sadly couldn't help him come up with one he liked.

    Next was Oona, and I REALLY liked her opening. We really had no critiques to give her at all. She is also doing a sports drama, this one is about a girl who is injured and is training for a gymnastics competition. She filmed in an actual gymnastics studio, too! All of her filming and editing was done and the only bit of critique we gave her was that we didn't think the font for her title really fit, which she agreed with.

    Finally, Maria went. Maria is doing a mystery/drama about a girl who is a model citizen and went missing, and detectives find out she is involved in some drug scandal. The title is "Interwoven" and a lot of her conflicts took place during the actual filming. From what she told us, I believe she is done filming and almost done editing, and she is having trouble finding CCR ideas while remaining creative. Her previous idea was to recreate Hot Ones, but she realized she should either add a twist to it to make it personalized or change the idea so she wouldn't be copying someone else's work.

CCR TIME!!! (Question 1)

     Finally, It's time to focus on the CCR! This is getting real, It's the final stretch of this project! First things first, I need to come up with an idea for the video of this and another question. Right now, I think a good way to set up the questions in a fun way that would also showcase my personality would be a Billy On The Street style video. Basically, the way that would work is I run around interviewing random people (obviously, this would be staged and the would all know about the video) and I ask the questions that I'm meant to answer. Usually on the show, when someone gets the answer wrong he tells them the actual answer in a funny manner. I think this would be a super fun and entertaining way to do one of my CCR videos. I could even include my actors as special guests since that's often done in Billy On The Street. 

    Now for answering the first question, how does my product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

    First let's discuss genre conventions. My film had utilized a multitude of genre conventions considering Psychological Dramas. First of all, all of the films I have seen in this genre also take the approach of specific color schemes to make the main character specifically stand out. A good example of this (Like I had mentioned before) would be The Joker. I had also taken a lot of inspiration from the opening credits of films like these (ex. Whiplash). Though, I had challenged some conventions, too. The main thing I had challenged was the main character being the protagonist. In my film, the main character is actually the antagonist of the film, even though that isn't specifically brought up in the opening. I had also made the psychological issue of the main character something a lot more abstract (I mean, I don't think films usually have a clown that only one person can see putting tape over people mouths...) But in all seriousness, I think I stuck to the genre pretty well, even though I took a bunch of my own creative liberties with it too.

    The next part of this question is representation, and that is a big one for me and this film. I had specifically planned out for the two main characters to represent a new oppressive government and revolution. Though, it's a bit hard to make that clear within the opening. The whole concept of the film itself is representing how some countries take away freedom of speech for their citizens. The whole point of the silencing is how Charles, the 'new government', doesn't listen to things he doesn't want to hear. There is slightly more to it than that though. While that description is baseline, I could honestly argue instead of it showing Charles not listening, it shows Charles genuinely not allowing that person to express that idea anymore after they speak out against him.  This is why within the opening I show Jackson, the revolution, rip his tape off. Some people will put their lives, or in the case of the film friendships, on the line to actually be able to voice their opinion. While the film itself may have a less serious tone, it represents a much larger issue.

Time to edit!

     Finally it's time to edit! As I've most likely mentioned before, I'm still relatively new to editing, so this has been a challenge for me the past few days. Figuring out everything on my own was super difficult for me, but I'm glad I got it done. To edit this film, I used Adobe Premiere Pro.

    For the sake of my project, I had watched a ton of tutorials on YouTube for more techniques than just basic ones. My top concern was the final clip of the opening with all the overlapping audio and video. Luckily, I was able to figure it all out with the tutorials. 

    Since a lot of this film is back and forth between the actors, I definitely utilized shot-reverse shots a lot here. While doing this, I filmed in the exact spot one character was while I filmed the other one as they both would say their lines that come before and after each other. This made editing a lot easier for me, too, since I didn't have to cut out unnecessary silence in the beginnings and ends of clips. 

    While editing, I also realized I needed to put the credits in. For the credits, I will have some of them overlapping with the scene until it gets to a more important part. This had easily let me give credits to everyone involved, without interrupting the film and also keeping the opening nice and short. 

    The issue I realized while editing was my first scene lasted WAY too long, though. Unfortunately, this mean I will have to cut out unnecessary lines from the second scene or even the whole scene all together. I still need to film more people saying "Charles" in the red room, so It will depend on how long that final part will last, since the first and last scenes I wrote for the opening matter the most.

A million problems to solve

    Figuring out how to avoid EVERY SINGLE CONFLICT was so difficult for me. My number one issue was figuring out a filming date. My original filming date was the 24th of February. Clearly that ended up not working, because I had a rehearsal for a show I'm in.  So we kept pushing it back until we found a date that everyone in my group could do.

    My next issue was the set location. Knowing that I wanted an outside student center looking set, my filming would have most likely taken place in the dark. When we set our film date we realized how we needed to film afterschool when everyone was available, so it was already dark outside. To me, this was an issue, but everyone else pointed out studying at night is completely normal and all we had to do was set up lighting to make it look like they were in a public place rather than my patio.

    Finally, my biggest issue of all (for my sanity, at least) was one of my actors hair being red. I don't even mean a ginger type of red, I mean RED. No matter what that could not be seen in my film. I took hours coming up with a good solution to this while also juggling figuring out every other aspect of my film. After working it out with the actor, they finally suggested that they have a black wig that could cover up the red hair. After styling it, it finally looked realistic enough to be used in the film.

    Overall, there were so many obstacles I had to overcome in this process, but I made it work! I think next time I should clear a date with my cast way ahead of time to assure none of us had any conflicts so I wouldn't need to stress about the date or time. I think the red hair issue wasn't ACTUALLY that big of a deal, but it was stressful to think about on top of everything else, which is definitely why I stressed over it the most.

It's filming time!!

     Today was filming day! FINALLY all my actors were available to film! Luckily, school wasn't an issue today since all my actors were able to come at the same time after school and they were so easy to work with it was so quick! Jumping into filming from weeks and weeks of planning was honestly a bit stressful. Thankfully, my actors made it so much easier. They all gave me their input on some of the acting choices and really made the characters their own.

    My actors also made the whole process super quick since all of them do theatre outside of this film. They really knew how to understand the characters and also memorize their lines. Of course, we still had some slip ups here and there, but it made the whole filming process a lot more bearable. Not saying I hated it, but it took a lot of stress off me since they made it feel more like a hangout with my friends while still taking it seriously.

Video of one of our outtakes

    To illustrate what the day of filming looked like, we started with getting everyone in costume and makeup if needed. My sister was able to do the Figment's makeup flawlessly and I was super impressed with the end results. We filmed Charles' scene with Jackson first, which really helped me get the hang of things. Then we took a quick break and moved outside for the next scene with the rest of the characters. This scene took the longest since it was easy to mess up with a larger group of people. Along with some of the actors mess-ups, I often would stop recording before we were finished with the sequence of lines, which made me realize I should probably wait until a large gap of silence to stop filming. 

    Then, we went back into my room to film the final scene in the opening, which is when my technical director had the idea to make all the lights in the room red. Immediately I fell in love with this idea, and changed all of the light's colors. This scene took SO. MANY. TRIES. When I say that, I mean it. It is totally not his fault, but the actor playing the Figment literally could not take off the piece of tape without gloves. We retried this over and over until we finally got it right, but after that, we finished filming!

    I think I really learned a lot from filming today, and I can't wait to apply it more in future projects.

Ready, SET, Go!

     Set is the last thing I need to worry about before I get to filming! Since this will all be filmed in my house, I need to figure out how to make it work in a way that will allow for the film to look like it takes place in a dorm rather than a house, unless it really doesn't work out (that's when I rewrite the script to make the two leads in a fraternity so that my house just works out as their frat house.) For now, I am relying on my house doing the job. 

    Me or my sisters bedroom are the only options, and I think mine will be way easier to redecorate. I already have a ton of posters and such in my room that will work, I just need to make more decorations that work, and also move my vanity out of the room for the film.

    For the decorations, I am printing out a few music artist posters such as Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, and Frank Ocean since that goes with the age and demographic I am making the main characters. I know for a fact (since I'm in it) that this generation is very connected to music, so I think including all of these posters will be good options to decorate my walls for this set. I realized while planning out the set in my head that it would make the most sense to move my desk to where my vanity currently is to give Charles and Jackson a workspace to make it more accurate to a college dorm. I obviously need some sort of an alarm for the film, but to keep it time period accurate I think a phone alarm would be the best option so writing that into the set is kind of pointless. Some items I know I need in the set too would be a laptop, pencils, pens, and really any usual school items to scatter along the desk. This would give Jackson a place to sit and study during the opening scene where he asks Charles if he will study at all too.

    For the part of the film where the friends are studying outside, I had decided to scrap the idea of it being a student-center style set and instead have it be outside with benches. Right by my house, there is a plaza with an area perfect for this. Since my Dad owns the bar next to this area, clearing it out will be super easy. My main concern about using this area to film would be the lighting and weather, since those are uncontrollable factors. If all else fails, I have a large patio at home with a table and couch that would work great for this scene, then  I could control all of the factors mentioned before. Although, this could look less realistic if done incorrectly which is why it's my backup option.
 

    

Creating props!

     This week, I need to have everything I need to film this project. I've been working with my friend Brandon who often helps with technical aspects of productions to help me create a prop list. My current largest issue prop wise right now is the need for textbooks. Obviously, I am NOT trying to spend over $100-200 per textbook when I need about 1-2 for each character, excluding the Figment. To solve this issue, me and Brandon will be using old large books (Most likely math books that we are given for free from school) that we have no need for anymore and creating new covers for them to match the actual film. Luckily, we never need to show the books being opened so I think this solution will work well.

    

    Using these as my textbook covers then having 2-3 of them would honestly be enough for the film. Although I don't know much about forensic programs, which is what I wrote the characters in for their classes, my sister will be majoring in that in college and they told be a bit about the curriculum. I think forensics is the perfect pick since they need to take a psychology class which I wanted to be somewhat included in the storyline, without them outright all being psychology majors. 

    Making these props will be super easy for me, since all I need to do is print these photos and cover the fronts of my old text/work books. I need to make sure I cover all sides of the 'textbook' with the same color to make the books look realistic, especially since these will be made from old ones. I didn't want that to be obvious for the audience so using pain or even copying the hex code of the background colors of these covers and printing just a whole page of that color to cover the sides would be a great solution to this issue.