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.

Planning for the film!

 Alright! So, this week has been super hectic for both me and Mariana, so to be very blunt not a lot of actual work got done. We both just closed Mamma Mia at school, which was a blast, and then yesterday I had to attend and review a Cappies show, so I had very little downtime to actually plan and talk with Mariana about what we want to do.

does this not look scrumptious...?

Mariana reached out to me and asked if we could go to Panera to lock in on writing the script and planning other important aspects of the film, which is exactly what I think we need (and I really need a kitchen sink cookie 😋). 

So basically, I think that we have a good rough outline of what we want the film to be about. What I will be doing now is figuring out what I need to get before we start the filming process itself. Here is a list of what we know so far:

• Party supplies
• Lights (Fun ones, fs colorful)
• Cups (Red Solo)
• Other props that can generally be seen in parties.
• Clothing
• Sister: Light colors, pastels, colorful, should dress more reserved and put together
• Brother (MC): Darker colors, black, messy, the type of clothing that is "I pick up what I first see"
• Therapist: Professional clothing (obviously), neutrals, button up, khaki pants maybe

So, at Panera I want us to get a list of links for all of these items, finalize our entire script, and then finalize all filming dates with our cast and crew members. I know this is a pretty short post, but this week was hectic so I'm hoping we can get a lot done next week! 

Kitchen Sink Cookie – Panera Bread. (2021). [JPEG image]. https://www.panerabread.com/content/dam/panerabread/menu-omni/integrated-web/grid/rect/kitchen-sink-cookie.jpg.transform/grid-image/image.20210510.jpeg

First group meeting!

Hi Cambridge! We had our first group meeting in class, and it finally feels like this project is real to me. Getting to talk to my classmates about my project really helped me think of new things to incorporate into the film, and also what to avoid so everything will be cohesive.

I did write down all of my critiques and notes from the other group member's projects, but I think I want to save your minds from trying to figure out what I'm even trying to communicate. Overall, I mostly helped people figure out how to portray certain concepts, like time passing, or how to represent serious events that can't be portrayed on a school project.

My group went around one by one and we explained our projects, and as a person explained we would ask questions and give critiques. This made me a bit nervous since I had thought that me and Mariana hadn't developed our plot enough to properly explain it to the group, but they actually seemed to really like it! One of the suggestions one of the group members made was to include vastly different color schemes and lighting to show the drastic change between the therapist office and the flashbacks to the past. I'm glad they brought this up, since it is very important to include when it comes to distinguishing when each thing is happening in the plot.

The next thing they told me was to decide the different color schemes and vibes of the characters. Here are the notes I wrote down for that specifically: 

• Very diff color palette for Sister, Brother, and Therapist

• Sister in light colors, neutrals, pastels vibes? Very put together

• Brother not put together at all, more throws on whatever he first sees in the closet vibe. Dark colors, graphic tee and black jeans moment

• Therapist all neutrals very white

Then they tried to help me come up with more specific aspects of the characters. We want to clearly make the brother and sister's personalities super different, and they helped me come up with some ideas to define them a bit more.

Overall, I think this meeting went very well and I'm excited to continue this project! I lowkey think that they didn't want to critique me too much because we were all kind of in the same spot, though, because after the meeting I shared what critiques I got with Mariana, and she told me that she got a lot more than me, so I hope that the two of us can figure out how to work around the ones she got.