Back to social media!

 Alright! So today I got about 3 social media posts done. Since I made myself a template it was super easy to get them done and when I get more headshots from my actors I can just speed through these types of posts, but for now I have three of them! Right now, I have Me, Mariana, and Brandon. I am going try to post every day from now on, which seems a bit unrealistic, but I think there might be a way to schedule Instagram posts, so I can get a lot done at once, and then I can upload daily without needing to worry about the posts until I make new ones.

So obviously I started the posting with me and Mariana's posts, since we are the crew and I feel as though it makes more sense for an audience to see the cast first, and then the crew (like a film's post-credits). For the aura colors of the cast, we are making them relate to the character's personality traits and stories. I am a bit worried about how cohesive the posting looks, but because of the color scheme progression it will probably work, since the post after mine will be for Cameron Martinez, and then Sarah, and finally Dr. Black's post will go after that. 

I know it seems weird that I don't have Cameron and Sarah's done while I have Dr. Black's done, but I just don't have the headshots for those two actors yet, and getting those posts done will be super quick. So now I need to think about the next posts, we are planning on filming on Friday, so I hope I can get character posters made and behind the scenes images. That will definitely make up a lot of the posting until we decide how to advertise "future events"

That's it for now! We'll see how the future posting unfold!

Set ideas!!

 Alright, so now that we’re planning our actual filming process, I need to think more about set! For one of the scenes (the party) we are planning on using my house. I have multiple areas where I think the party scene could take place, but I think the living room will be best for this scene.

Right now, my living room is decorated pretty cozy, and for the party scene we are definitely going to need to cover that up. The problem is that the bookshelf definitely can’t move anywhere. By filming at night, the sunlight won’t be an issue and then maybe that darkness can help cover up the bookshelf, since with the sunlight it’s already very in the dark. 

That being said, a lot of props will have to be used to help bring the party look to life. Pizza boxes, solo cups, bottles of soda, etc. will be perfect for making this look like an average highschool party. Next, I need to worry about lighting. From last year’s projects, I already have a ton of different items I can use to help with the lighting. I need one that can change colors quickly, instead of one solid color, so it looks like a high energy party, even though we’re inviting 14 highschools over to be extras after SAT day. I think having a light that pulses through different colors would look perfect for making it look like a highschool party, but sometimes instead they have the lights off. I want to play around with that look too, but I’m not sure how to make that translate properly on camera. I’ll update as I figure things out!

Posting....Posting....and more posting!

 Today I am going to be making some of our Instagram posts! The first ones I want to make are a sort of 'meet the team' type of post, where I can introduce me, Mariana, and the actors! Something we are going to need for this post is headshots, so obviously that is the first step! I reached out to the actors for headshots, and since not everyone had them, I am going to hold off on these types of posts for a bit. The thing about this is, it's hard to make a page look good if it's constantly one graphic after another.

My solution to this will be to begin with my own. This is the template I will be using for my own personal description, and I will switch the formatting around a bit to give at least some contrast when it comes to the others (The image of the person came with the template I found, so it's gonna stay for now until I find a good headshot and send it to my laptop). Me and Mariana are figuring out whether we want the description to be a direct quote from the person or more like a bio on each person.

The pros of doing a direct quote would be making the posts feel more personal and connected with our audiences, but it wouldn't do as good of a job of giving an actual explanation of each person's role in the film as a bio would.

I think that we should do personal quotes, since the bios seem more resume-like, and they obviously don't need to showcase that since we are all already involved in the film. Using a quote helps add some personality to the film, and we can use the quotes to maybe add some hype to the film itself, since we are giving the audience direct feedback from the cast and crew. I need to ask Mariana what her opinion is, though. I'll update as we get to more posting! 

Filming day one!

 Hello! Today we filmed our first few scenes with the Dr. Black (Therapist) and Cameron Martinez. We decided we want to revise the flashback scenes, so we are still in the process of writing those. For now, let's talk about what we did today!

Filming these scenes was a bit of a struggle, because we had to first figure out our location, as I was mentioning last post. We weren't able to go to an actual therapist's office, and neither of our parents work in a place that would work as this type of office visually, so we had to use one of our homes. Organizing this to look good enough for the scene was hard, but luckily, we got it done!

We honestly just begun from the beginning and stopped at the point where we wanted to revise the script, just because we feel super behind and want to get as much done as possible. We also took a bunch of promo photos and behind the scenes photos so we could post more on Instagram. Luckily, since our actors do theatre, it was easy to get good takes where they were genuine, so we got to play with the characters a bit and let them take their own liberties. 

This film is going to rely mostly on editing, so it's not going to look that great until we are done with editing entirely. Honestly for where we are in the project schedule, I don't feel great about our progress, and we need to play a ton of catch up for me to actually feel confident.

Me and Mariana are going to Florida State Thespians Festival the 18th-21st, so a lot of the work we do this week will be for the other two components rather than the actual film portion, because we won't be able to film any more while we are out in Tampa. 

I really hope the two of us get more done during the rest of the week, but for now, that's everything and we need to relax and enjoy our spring break and Thespians competition. 

Posting on Insta!

So today we made our first post on Instagram! I'm super excited because this means our film idea is finally coming together. I'm gonna put all of the ideas below and then why I chose the one we posted.

So out of all of these options, I chose the third image. I found that the purple was way too distinct for the film since we dont really know what direction we are going in with color schemes and such, so for now it's good to keep it neutral. I wanted the post to still be sort of 'timeless' so I didn't want to make a coming soon post yet, because depending on how our next posts go, we may want to pin this post as a welcome image.

I like that we went with a clean look, though, because it can go more with the therapist office look of the film. I want to have our distinct posts for different target audiences to have a similar overall look, but we can go with the party look or the therapist office look. I will definitely make some more defined posts in the future as we develop our brand identity further, so I will definitely update on that!

We've got a name!!

 I'm back with great news! After a LOT of back and forth, we finally came up with a name. We decided on the title 'Session One' I know, it's simple and it could mean a million different things, but that's honestly kind of perfect for a film title! We don't want a super specific one that gives away the basic plot, because that would be what a description is for, but we also don't want one that is so vague that it has nothing to do with the plot.

This is why Session One is perfect, it's Cameron's first session in therapy since losing Sarah. Also, the name helps establish that this film is focusing on the story of Cameron specifically. Now the hard part will be finding out how to make our set look like a therapist's office. After some research I found that these offices seem to be very cozy and comforting. This can easily be done in a house if it can achieve this look, but I will also probably be reaching out to some local therapy offices and seeing if they have an empty room we can film in for a day or two.

Anyways, now that we have the name, a billion Instagram posts are going to start coming out at once. Obviously, we need to update the account, though. That's definitely what the next post will be about.

[Interior of a therapist’s office]. (n.d.). Growing Our Practice. https://growingourpractice.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Optimized-IMG_0228.jpg

Update: I got the cookie

 Hello!! So, me and Mariana had a super productive day at Panera (and as I said before I got the cookie), but basically, we wrote our script! Well actually, we did a bit more than that, but that is definitely the most important part of what we did today!

Panera truly is a magical place because I feel like the two of us locked in so hard for the scripts and more in-depth descriptions of the characters, which was definitely needed to send to the cast (and I also was so incredibly hungry, so this was the perfect lunch)

The first thing we did was establish our final decisions on the character's names, because for some reason we got stuck on those for forever. The brother is Cameron Martinez, the sister is Sarah Martinez, and the therapist is Dr. Black. I know that the names aren't something we should have been too hung up on, but it was important to us that they were realistic and didn't sound super random, which was very hard to get to for some reason.

Then we started with script writing, we still don't know what we want to call the film, but we knew exactly what the plot should be, so we just started writing and edited each other's parts of the script until we were happy.

The hardest part of script writing was finding a way to establish when the flashbacks would take place, and how to give enough context of the scene before the flashbacks begin, because obviously it wouldn't make sense to just drop into someone's therapy session and hear an entire sob story. After we kicked off the script, we kept joking about how we entered the flow state, because we just could not stop writing.

We definitely need to get more work done, but for today I feel like we did a good amount! I'm super excited to see where this project goes.