WEEK 4- The First Group Meeting

    Hello blog. Today after a fire drill that reminded us that fires don't ever occur at our school (knock on wood), we as a class got into our first round of groups. While being in these groups, we essentially had to...

• Show our group members our blog posts so far
• Express any concerns that could be resolved/ acknowledged
• Give each other general/ specific feedback or advice on the parts of the project we are currently on

    For this week (Week 4), I am supposed to be getting ready to soon record by completing some of the most important pieces of the puzzle, including the shot list, storyboard, research on filming locations, and developing our filming/ editing schedule. We discussed some of these elements, mainly filming locations.

    With all of this in mind, we began!

What I shared

    I went first. I began by directing the group members: Helio, Manuela, Drew, Sophia, and Florencia, to my blog through our teacher's website which includes all of our current blogs (website linked here). I started talking about genre, and Isabel and I's journey to finding our ultimate genre: Dystopian Fiction with some elements with psychological thriller which would be prioritized later in the movie as the character begins to reconnect with his past. After that, I naturally segued into explaining the plot. I didn't get too specific with character names, etc... as I don't think that was too necessary, but I did include the most important points: structure/ inner-workings of our society (differences between ours and the movie's), general outline of main character (Doran's) story, and characters important to the plot (the mom/ founder of social experimenting company...). After doing my best to summarize all of our ideas for the story into the most simplistic and digestible way, I began to talk specifically about the opening. I showed them the opening for the film Black Widow, which I already mentioned in an earlier blog post that we felt really inspired by. I showed it to them so that they could get a sense of the editing style that we want to implement: quick cuts, inserts that ignite mystery and are really communicative/ intentional (ex: I discussed how a shot from the BW opening seems "random" and disconnected to the story, but is really informative.)

(screenshot from opening of Black Widow that gives insight into the human trafficking system- controlling...)

    Additionally, I told them the structure of our opening, which I haven't talked about too much on here but do want to dedicate another blog post/ part of a post to discuss. Overall, I wanted them to get the aspired tone of the opening so that they could make suggestions to compliment that.

Group Feedback

    After asking the group whether I should take up the two minutes of the opening by doing something like the BW opening and only establishing mystery initially (with some unclarified context/ set tone) or taking up a minute-and-twenty seconds for the part that Isabel and I call "the files" part (shows files of documentation of the social experimenting/ progress clips filmed by Doran's mom) and the rest of the time for a "5 months ago" transition and begin the story. The group sided with the second option (split time). Manuela's reasoning came from the BW opening, and how even with its diversified clips and engaging visuals, she said it felt repetitive by minute 2. This made me realize that considering audience is important, and that if we already have a set plan for our plot, why not take the second route.

    Next, they began to ask me questions about location. This is something that we are still trying to specify, but the group advised us to use a real office setting for the "second part" (last 40 seconds) of the opening, as I mentioned that Doran works at an office. We discussed music as well, with Helio commenting on BW's climaxing music aiding in setting the tone, and how he thinks we should do the same, which I think we will end up doing. Florencia (also doing a dystopia- dystopian thriller specifically) told me to watch the 2023 thriller Leave the World Behind, which she told me displayed characteristics that could be applicable to my project. I will be watching this film to see if there's any aspects of editing/ production we can implement aspects of into our own production.

                                                        Trailer of Leave the World Behind

    Regarding what Isabel's group told her, the main takeaway for application into our project is probably what the mom is saying in the file recordings. I didn't know which specific way to take it, but someone advised us to hint at the society's circumstances by perhaps having the mom repeat the same question to every child, or even order as in "Please repeat the motto", referring to the possible well-known motto that all children must repeat. 

    

Final Reflection

    I think that my biggest takeaway from the group meeting was acknowledging that I'm on the right track (similar timeline as peers in terms of project schedule). Another big thing that this meeting allowed me to do was having inspiration from something someone said and begin to come up with a new specific idea, such as making the title slide the "middle scene"(accompanied by the 5 months ago slide), transitioning through a cool opening door shot from the files/ scene 1 into the office scene 2. There could be contrast in music/ sound in this transition as well. They let me realize that I need to start planning to film, such as guarantee the siblings of my friends to play these characters and finding concrete settings to depend on, as well as beginning to research on lighting and sound which I want to feel more confident about.

     

Societal Structure

     Hello blog. This post is going to be more of a pondering space for my wandering mind! In less sarcastic tone, I have questions that form while I dive deeper into the plot of our story, which directly relates to the opening and what we will include in the first two minutes of our film. While thinking about the concept of social experiments and explanations for aspects of our story/ chosen characteristics, I came up with a list of questions that I wrote down on my notes app (previously mentioned in my “Social Experiment- Intro” blog post). In addition to those questions, over the past few days ere are a few that lead to other connected questions:

• Why is the mother (tentative name: Beth) doing the social experiments (apart from the obvious questions of what are they testing), and what makes her actions morally okay? 

• Why did the social experiments begin?

• What time period are we thinking for the movie to be set in, and does that imply we are trying to say about that futuristic world/ our current society? 

•What is the backstory of our dystopian world? Is it a future version of our current world, or is completely disconnected?

Societal Structure

     With these questions, I was able to begin to establish some characteristics of our dystopian world that relates to our previous plot points of experimenting on children. While we previously thought that the world would be pretty similar to our current one, after genre research on dystopian fiction (literature and film), we decided to implement some characteristics. To start, the conflict of governmental control is one that we want to possibly connect to the secret experimentation group. In other words, the "independent" organization will be secretly funded by the government/ aligned with the government, as imposing threat coming from more than one source ( government, secret society) could be interesting. Additionally, the actual rules of the society, or the society's "normal" includes the following:

• Children are seen as vessels for adult progress, not as valuable for overall future development/ continuation.
• Children are exploited, with kids as young as 10 going out into the world to work and serve.
• There are some that don't agree with exploitation: protests.
• The system of bringing babies into the world consists of surveillance and control- illegal to independently have baby/ not put in system of work, etc...)
• There is a specific job dedicated to women: "babymakers". They have to get pregnant (artificial insemination) and continuously reproduce, so that a majority of children can serve the current adult population (still not quite sure how that would've come to be- this system couldn't have been in use for long as the exploited kids grow up to be adults, not stay children together and the current adults grow and eventually pass away.)
• Possible scientific progression that allows one to dictate gender of baby to birth could be found (has to do with experiments...)
• Quite literally ageism. 

    These possible societal marks invite social commentary and posed questions into mind for our movie, an aspect of dystopian fiction that is obviously/ effectively intriguing, and part of the nature of the genre, as dystopias provide social commentary and popularly try to indicate warnings about specific trends and possible future consequences. Possible commentary includes mockery of lack of action towards future stability/ security, specifically regarding to the global climate crisis and how we are hurting ourselves (environmentally), which will result in later catastrophe, such as in the abuse of future-adults for short-term power by the current-adults in our world. Also, the feeling that we want to ignite in the audience is one of foreign, and unthinkable chances (regarding type of world being depicted), to touch on the normalized/ unspoken injustices that happen in our own world that don't feel so foreign anymore, but rather part of a routine/ not surprising (which is terrible, but not false).

    Some questions that we would like to raise mainly revolve around acceptance/ conformity to world one grows into, vs. detecting flaws in "reliable" world and trying to undo them, checking out the gutters for mold. Questions include ones like... 

• Is it okay for owner/company head (Beth, mom of Doran) to be doing this to her own kids (if society creates distant relationship between children and adults in nature of system)?
• Is it okay to do something because its accepted by society? 
• Authority questions: Who dictates what's "right"/"wrong"? Does a persons "label"/ position grant them automatic justification/ trust?

    Regarding the opening, questions will be primarily about the type of world the audience is entering, as our editing we envision to use is one that creates an underlying tone of mystery, and begins the movie with no explicit context to directly guide the viewer, which is a part of our goal for audience-relationship for our opening (and overall film). I will once again do a blog post on this topic later!

 

Plot

    Hello blog. After researching genre characteristics of our now definitive genre(s), I wanted to prioritize (other than the approach/film opening research), the plot. In last weeks blog post "Social Experiment- Intro", I stated a possible plot idea that originated from an 8th grade script writing assignment. As I stated before, I'm thankful for my 13 year old's boredom as she was stuck indoors, clearly searching for escapism and entertainment as she began to conjure up a fictional storm of experimentation and action. Anyways, Isabel and I have come a long way this week developing elements of the plot, so I decided to dedicate this post to sharing the progress we've made, and also to show that there are still many blank spots waiting to be filled in!

 

In-class Development

    As discussed in the previous blog, the original plot consisted of the teenage male protagonist Tucan, who has multiple siblings with additionally rather unique names, who all speak different languages than one another. Beth, their mom, is the founder/ manager of a social experimentation company, in which she includes her kids in the company's doings. As Tucan gets older, he's "of age" to go into the world. What he doesn't know is that his mom isn't giving him free access to a once restricted world, but rather exposing him to people to test how his abnormalities react with them. The rest of the story would include his journey, with some help, into finding out his moms true intentions, etc... 

    With that as our foundation, we talked in class about what could be included in our actual opening, lighting a match in me to truly find our story, as I would much prefer to know the whole story to drive the opening and make intentional production choices that support that story. We thought of new plot elements in between making choices for editing, taking inspiration from the openings we watched in class last weeks, which I talked about in last week's blog called "Choosing our genre". We decided on specific elements from the openings, ranging from audience relationship to editing styles. I will get more into our intentions specifically regarding the audience and what we plan to do to fulfill that specific relationship in another blog post.

     

     We realized while bouncing off of each other in class and after individual brainstorming that this should be our storyline...

Storyline

    The main character/protagonist of our film “The Lost File” (Isabel came up with name; this is all tentative to possible future changes)’s name is Doran. The name is of Irish origin, which means stranger, warrior, and wanderer. He is a part of his moms secret company, which he escapes at the age of 12 out of curiosity for the external world. He is chased by agents in the company, and ends up suffering a concussion out of a fall in a secluded area while running away. He is found by his then adopted parents, and ends up having amnesia, forgetting about his “past life” of a childhood. The film would be called "The Lost File" because when he ran away, the company began to consider him/ call him "the lost file", which later on his journey to uncover his past/ figure out the truth, he is met with the challenge of deciphering what those files are. Although he believes they are the files he's sent in the opening, the phrase refers to the experimentation company's way of calling Doran, not a discussion about real files. This also demonstrates how children are seen as objects, and storage of useful information for the adults of the society (will discuss more in the next blog.) We have a lot of other ideas, but the opening would relate back to his childhood, and show the audience the video files that are recorded and stored of him and his siblings being presented in the experimentation studies.

     Below is are pictures of in class and at home notes that relate to our plot, character, and overall ideas.

Genre Research: Dystopian Fiction

 

    The genre of dystopian fiction is one that is not only common in films/TV, with some of the most popular including the film-series Divergent, a story following a young adult Tris Prior in a futuristic world where society is divided into 5 factions, in which she is considered different (can't fit into one faction- a Divergent), the film The Matrix starring Keanu Reeves, and even TV shows like Black Mirror that explore how the ranges of humanity/ human nature intersect with the extremities of modern-day life. Apart from the necessary production elements necessary to create a futuristic/ specific world such as set design, makeup, lighting, etc... I want to dive into the history of dystopian fiction, as well as different related concepts.

When did Dystopian Fiction Start?

    To investigate about dystopian fiction's beginnings, we have to understand when the idea of a dystopia, and opposing term 'utopia' came up. According to electricliterature.com (click here for specific article) the concept of a utopia initiated the contrasting concept of dystopia, with the first mention of an imagined place/ state of things that appear to be perfect (UTOPIA) in 1516 by Sir Thomas More, with people concluding that this fantastical land of perfection is nothing we know, meaning it doesn't/ will never exist. This leads to the eventual use of the word 'dystopia' in 1868 by John Stuart Mill, taking over 50 years for the word to begin to be more actively responded to in public conscious, meaning an imagined place where everything is bad/ overly controlled/ degraded/ totalitarian (UTOPIA).

    Relating to it's integration into a genre, and fictional stories, literature about an ideal world that we wish to live in were the major relation to utopias, until the Russian book "We" came out during the 1920's (1921). This book paved the way for other classic dystopian literature such as "Brave New World" and "1984", as it introduced traditional tropes such as unresolved endings and an intense, totalitarian government that largely conflicts with its' people. After, this the first major dystopian film Metropolis (1927) came out, enforcing tropes like class division (workers rebelling against higher classes) and new technological dangers. 

Characteristics

    Dystopian Fiction is a subgenre of science Fiction, which is a genre of speculative fiction. This genre typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts like advanced science and technology, with dystopias exploring the social/ political aspects of society. Dystopian fiction provides social commentary on the political environment, and issues warnings to society about possible consequences of current societal trends. This genre also oftentimes leaves the audience with multiple unanswered questions, one of my favorite parts of the genre. The themes/ worlds demonstrated don't hold back/ open up to any version of our world, which I love to explore. This genre is characterized by...

•  Loss of Individuality
• Oppression
• Government Control- Propaganda/ Censorship
• Technology
• Fear of citizens
• Environmental Disaster

    The target audience specific to this genre is very broad, and inclusive to males and females, as they both can relate to the society they are in and the one created in the fictional stories. The most popular age group is teenagers, but again it isn't exclusive.

Quick Reflection

    I will use this research to properly develop a plot that includes/ reflects these characteristics, as well as investigate the OG dystopian films/ books to get a better idea of introductory tropes. We have also decided that we want to implement some genre characteristics of psychological drama/thriller, which I have already researched into in one of my past blog posts linked here. I will make sure to distinguish thriller from drama depending on which we choose.

Social Experiment- Intro

    Hello. After a long discussion of researching different dystopian openings and some general scenes of dystopian-like pieces, we are closer than ever to establishing our genre to be a dystopia. After the day in class with Isabel and I discussed in the previous blog, I was flooded with ideas and rather conceptual questions that I'm not yet ready to answer but hope to in the process of coming up with a plot/ choosing our approach for the opening, which will begin next week. Being the dedicated notetaker I am, I wrote them down on my notes app, not being able to wait till I had access to pen and paper as I was afraid the ideas would slip from my mind files. This blog post is dedicated to some of those thoughts, and additional discussions with Isabel as we began to get excited about our collaborative project...

Possible Plot Idea

    As we began to think of how we would come up with an inventive and new "dystopian-like" plot, I remembered that in eighth grade, for a Film 1 script writing project, I created a fictional film called "The Social Experiment". While I didn't write nearly the whole script and only a few first scenes, I remember the plot (not fully developed as by eighth-grade self only had the main parts in mind for my assignment): A mother of several children is the manager of a secret company that aims to answer questions through social experiments. The mother also includes her children in this, with Tucan ( I know a weird name) being the lead. The children are all isolated from society and each other, exposed to different resources and limited to outside contact and modern-day technologies. As the time comes, Tucan is finally allowed to go out into the world, but what he doesn't know is that his mom is planting a chip in his backpack to see and track society's responses to his abnormalities (being raised abnormally on purpose). While that's only a very short synopsis, that's the general introductory idea. We will consider portions of this to possibly adapt into our actual film and in effect opening. Below are pictures of the script I made in 8th grade:

                                      

    

    Additionally, bringing this back also reminded me of the scriptwriting platform Celtx.com, which I now know we can use to write the script for this opening.

Social Experiment

    With the idea of a social experiment being introduced, it made me think about real-life social experiments. The Stanford prison experiment, for example, was a 2-week experiment conducted in August of 1971 by Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, displaying/ examining the effects of situational variables on people's (the participants) reactions and behaviors. While I don't yet know too much about this, I plan to watch the movie made about it (called: The Stanford Prison Experiment) and do research to understand just one case study of experiments that have been done so that I can sensitively make decisions about our own possible social experiment. This led me to remember a book I read called The Wave. This book is based on a real incident that happened in Palo Alto California, in 1969, where a high school history teacher- Ron Jones- did an experiment (The Third Wave) to explain how the German population could have accepted the actions of the Nazi Regime during the rise of the Third Reich/ WW2 (1939-1945). Even though I have already read the book I want to research this experiment as well because the more general knowledge I gain about these experiments the more I will have to create a valid social experiment for our plot.

Conclusion

    The inspiration from my younger self for a possible plot idea/ foundation helped Isabel and I start to develop a picture for our whole film, and film opening specifically. For this coming week, I will be researching more about social experiments and looking for possible inspirations from other film openings/ dystopian films to give us a plethora of "colors" to choose from when creating our own ideas. Overall, proud of my 8th-grade self for helping me out!

Choosing our genre

    Now that we have a schedule complete for the goals of each week to fulfill our project in a timely and spaced-out manner, we wanted to tackle WEEK TWO's main objective: Choosing a genre. 

Brainstorming

    Before discussing collective ideas with Isabel, I began to brainstorm on my own. I thought of different films and pieces that really intrigued me, with common genres being two: psychological dramas and dystopias. In a previous blog, I wrote about the genre characteristics and further research about the subgenre of the big umbrella that is a "drama", psychological dramas. You can access that blog posting here. The idea of translating people's thoughts and intense emotions (a big takeaway when I watch dramas in general) into the medium of film and making sensitively articulate choices that truly reflect a character's/ multiple characters' state, with that being the central focus really pulls me in. As that is a major objective of our 2-minute opening (pulling the audience in), I began to truly consider that genre. 

    Secondly, the genre that is dystopia has always attracted me as well. The societal questions that can be raised from one specific plot and the execution of that plot are so effective and impactful (obviously depending on the piece of work at hand). While I haven't yet truly dived into the historical context of the world of dystopian film, I have dwelled in dystopian literature, reading books in my Language Arts classes like Fahrenheit 451, with deep and annotated analysis teaching me about the real-life application/ effect of fictional stories on society. In the book, one of Ray Bradbury's (the author) messages relates to the real-life act of book burning, and how books are our saviors with knowledge that shouldn't be censored/ kept at the hands of the authority. With that being one example, dystopias have always given me a feeling of questioning that I am very open to about our society and not-so-distant futures.

    In-Class Research

    During class, Isabel and I finally got a chance to sit down and share our ideas. We began to run through specific genres and listed them as "yes" or "no" based on a few judgments: what approach do film openings of the discussed genre usually take and would we be able to fully execute the discussed genre's opening in a successful/ fulfilling way with our available resources/ rather limited experience?

        Isabel and I have done almost all group projects for this school year together (in this class), with some being found in my blogs. I know we work well together and have similar interests when it comes to distinctive creative ideas/ feelings we want to exude. We began to list genres such as action, dystopia, drama, and even comedy. After discussing for some minutes, we began to look at specific openings for certain movies with these genres, primarily focusing on action and dystopia.

Specific Film Openings

    The main goal of watching different film openings was to see how not only did the opening relate to the whole movie (as we watched film openings of films we have seen)- did it alludes to future moments of the plot, how the approach represents chosen aspect (tone, character, setting) and relation of that to audience perception impact for rest of movie... BUT also to observe the different avenues we can take for our own opening.

   The first opening we watched was of the movie Divergent, which originates from the novel (part of a famous trilogy). The genre of the movie is also science fiction, one example of possible connections we can make to other genres, also relying on aspects of action to complement the heightened stakes. This opening, which you can access here, starts off by displaying the production company and director titles, followed by the title of the film. During this calm and intriguing first few seconds, the pan of a vast field is exposed, listing credit titles accompanied by instrumental music, both repetitive in notes and alluring. The vast view of the outside of a city is then shot-by-shot led into the actual city (of Chicago), already communicating the film's large scale and establishing location (and further context later in the opening). In my notes, while watching the opening, I thought that it felt sophisticated and professional, mainly because of the rather still and non-rushing intro. The zooming out/in displays the setting and their societal circumstances, giving further context. The possible approach that I got from that opening was to give time for the audience to adjust to the world being created in our film, as the opening's pace made me feel eased into their world, also shown through the movie The Maze Runner's opening.

    Another opening we watched was of The Truman Show, a 1998 comedy/ sci-fi film that also is included in genres of psychological drama and dystopia. Being one of my favorite movies, it was interesting to go back and see the opening and reconnect it to the plot of the overall movie. This opening, which you can access right overrrrrrrrrr here, has no strong action shots, displaying almost all medium/ close-up shots of important characters of the movie, such as Christof (the outsider), Marlon, Meryl Burbank, and of course Truman himself. The approach to this opening is that of character development, as Christof breaks the fourth wall to let the audience in on an instantly personal and targeted feel. As the music builds, the "credits" roll in (limited), which I found really interesting. This movie is of course a particular case, but the credits act (such as "Hannah Gill as meryl") as the cast of the Truman Show that the actual movie is about, not the cast of the movie "The Truman Show"(if that made any sense). 

    The last opening we looked at was of the 2021 Marvel movie, Black Widow. This is the one that I was most inspired by/ most impacted by, as I haven't watched the movie and felt immediately impacted. After Isabel explained some context of the strongly action-filled movie, the opening's darker tone, giving context through visuals, makes sense concerning the main character Natasha's personal life experiences. The opening is intense, with stings and the credits playing back to back. The editing style and overall content shown begin the audience with questions yet understandings, as people are circled in red to indicate possible targets/ enemies. In general, this opening is one that I think we will be taking a lot of inspiration from, with the editing and specific approach intriguing audiences heavily. I also understood the intention of making the audience feel like they're in on a "secret", as the main character's background isn't explicitly stated yet intensely introduced right before even meeting the present-day character, already creating a connection to her and leaving room to relate back to the opening of her past ever comes up. You can access the opening here.

Other Watches  

    Other pieces we watched a part of were Don't Worry Darling, a 2022 thriller/ mystery film that harnesses dystopian tropes/ some underlying tones relevant to dystopias, and the Disney Plus show WandaVision, which also misleads the audience and has dystopian themes. In one scene of DWD, the main character Alice Chambers played by Florence Pugh traces the board of a model of the "town" (which we later find out to be... SPOILER ALERT... fabricated!) she "lives" in, with her finger tracing all the way to the edge of town, a sandy isolated area. While she does this innocently, she is alluding to her final actions of the trial of escape. I found this impactful looking back at it and might want to incorporate some element of detailed closeup (as her tracing finger was shown with a tight closeup) that will allude to/ communicate something of importance to the viewer. In regards to WandaVision, we watched the ending of Ep1, "Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience". It is very intriguing, completely throwing the audience off course of what they thought was the "whole picture" that the first episode displayed. It shocked me when I watched it, making me quite literally upset that my many questions couldn't be answered with another episode for a full week. The show's ability to intrigue an audience I think stems not only from the circumstances of the show but also the lack of contextual establishment for the audience stemming from character-character interaction.

Reflection

    After viewing and discussing different openings of dystopian-like films/ films involving dystopian themes, I think that choosing between which "type of dystopia" is important for our piece and in turn opening. The choice between explicit societal problems that include grand action sequences or more implicit, almost creepily alluded-to issues until a final breakpoint (examples of opposing "tropes") is one that we have decided, after viewing parts of openings and endings of The Truman Show and WandaVision, that we possibly will leave questions in the air and not give everything away to the viewer, with our film not relying on action to stay interesting, but rather eerie topics like social experiments to intrigue an audience. We want to watch more dystopian films to get inspiration, with some including Children of Men and Oblivion.

Below is a picture of my notes from when we were watching the openings in class:

                                        

Let's get organized: Schedule

    Before my partner Isabel and I begin to research what possible genre we could make our film, and or film opening about, we wanted to make a schedule for ourselves to have a visual guide (given to us by Mrs. Stoklosa) of our timeline, and blog topics that will also guide in our development of fundamental aspects for our opening.

    Below is a link to our shared Word document where we have the timeline split into nine weeks of work, with each enlisting goals for the week and blog topics:

 https://browardcountyschools-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/r/personal/0612131266_my_browardschools_com/Documents/Blog%20and%20Project%20Schedule-%20Portfolio%20Project.docx?d=we7cfc37084ea4973a4341829e6a71144&csf=1&web=1&e=rkKlf9

THE TIME HAS COME...

    Hello. I know you're probably thinking what's with the intense and alerting blog title, and you probably already know what that title insinuates: THE TIME HAS COME... This is my transitioning blog post that leaves behind my past projects and treads the way for a wide open field full of opportunity for the one and only:

                                                                        

 Portfolio Project

    I want to start off my saying that I am really nervous and excited for this project. Of course there's the fact that this is 50% of my Cambridge grade (if I'm not mistaken), but there's also a sense of wanting to live up to my expectations and actualize my visions (the one's that I allow myself to conjure up when there's no pressure/ fear of failure). The past projects that you've gotten a few glimpses of have given me insight into many different things and parts of media, but this specific task allows me to put my knowledge and practice to work. Besides my own feelings towards this project, I have come to realize that my expression of feelings/ progress is actually a strength when it comes to my success in this part of the project, so feeling comfortable to break down the often-times limiting wall of "professionalism" while still maintaining structure is something I'm excited to execute in these next few weeks.

Introductory Research

    Before getting into the specifics for this project, on Feb 6th in class (only a couple of days ago) we went over all the different types, seven to be exact, of approaches for an opening of a film, which of course is extremely vital and applicable to this project. These seven include...

1. Establishing Tone Approach
2. Character Development Approach
3. Establish Background Approach
4. Establish Setting Approach
5. Establishing/ Type of Conflict Approach
6. Create Mystery Approach
7. Develop Technical Elements Approach

    Apart from these different type of approaches, we also discussed related and some more distant factors to a successful opening, including the illustration of the genre of the film, the inclusion of specific credits (director, editor, cinematographer...), the title of the film, as well as the importance of developing purpose and engaging the audience. 

    Here are some pictures of my notes from the class:

    Then, in Feb 8th in class we went over all of the pieces of this project, with the three key components being...

• The Film Opening
• The Blog
• The Creative Reflection 

   

    Along with some of the basics like time limit for the opening, necessary credentials, and the fact the story we produce has to be fictional, the discussion brought some specific questions/ realizations into mind. For example, the idea that the two to maximum 2:15 minutes you see will be a supposive "cutout" clip from the film, meaning it doesn't and shouldn't end in a resolution (ex: fade to black) but rather naturally as if the film was continuing. This made me realize that this is the first impression of the rest of the film, meaning I want to fully understand the whole plot/ movie enough to make meaningful and intentional choices about what to include in the first two minutes of that movie (aka the approach is important for what type of movie I am trying to make/ points and theme I am trying to get across). Additionally, seeing some different examples of film openings in class like "Stranger Than Fiction" and analyzing meaning from included mise-en-scene elements showed me the true variety in choices, and how I can choose to include/ not include specific aspects like music for example according to what I am trying to introduce/ develop. Overall, I was enlightened to the idea that all the choices I make will be a direct reflection of themes and characters in my film.

    Below is an image of my notes framing the overview of this project:

    While thinking of all of this, several thoughts arise. For example, this class in general has allowed me to make the possibly subconscious to be brought directly in front of me, reminding me/ allowing me to realize how two minutes of film for ex. has so much attention to detail and intention, as well as goals and pursuits. It also allows me to start to think of what I want my film opening to look like/ possible approaches I want to take. In class, we were shown film openings that take some of previously listed approaches (ex: from movies like "Children of Men" or "The Fighter"), each with such distinctive and complementary openings for their specific film, reminding me of a first impression and how that dictates so much. 

    Two possible approaches that I could see myself taking begin with the establishing tone approach, as I truly value the impact and importance of feeling/ attention to developing an ambience to engage an audience (even with the possibility of a tone change). When I watch a movie, if the beginning has a strong decisive tone I am usually allured to continue watching, as the richness of emotion is sure to draw me in. With this type of approach, I would love to play around with different elements of production to enhance the specific chosen tone, like color psychology and lighting, (lighting specifically) something that I haven't used enhance my storytelling too much yet. Next, the last approach that I will be listing as a possible choice is the character development approach. Again, I'm drawn to immediate emotive display, and while that can be done with any approach I think it would be interesting to try to develop a character in the span of two minutes (of course not fully but enough to lure in the audience). 

    While I see myself able to take different approaches, I think that each one of them is connected to a specific film-type for me/ genre, so I am excited to explore more examples of film openings to see how really any of these approaches can be put to the test to open for many different kinds of films. I'm also excited to see, with these varying openings, which ones I feel most drawn to/ which I will end up going for. Will it be a direct hit like "Children of Men" or will it be quiet yet telling like "Raging Bull"? I guess we will find out together.

Music Marketing 2- Full Overview

    Yesterday was the due date for our quarter 3 project, the "Music Marketing Project". In this project, our objective was to use a provided song of our assigned genre of music, in my team and I's case pop, and create a marketing campaign for a new music artist or group we had to create. We were asked to build a brand/image from the "bottom-up" and create a marketing campaign presentation to introduce our specialized artist to a local group of investors (aka our peers and teacher). Along with this general outline, we were guided to break down and complete the necessary components of the project, including phases of background research, brainstorming/planning, production, post-production, and the last step: accumulating everything into the campaign presentation. 

Background Research

    In order to come up with successful marketing and distribution strategies, as well as begin to get inspiration towards specific brand types for our unidentified artist, we had to research. Without this key initial step, I can confidently say that I wouldn't have felt as secure in some of the decisions we made towards our artist, as viewing of "action and consequence"/"cause and effect" with artist decisions gave me insight into how even the most subtle choices (artistic, promotional...) creates the public image of an artist, music or not. Additionally, researching music labels/ media organizations as well as utilization of social media platforms for marketing gave me insight into the overall business side of music, something that as a consumer I don't usually actively take into account. All in all, researching specific artists in the pop genre showed me how just one genre of music (with a notable amount of subgenres) can be all-inclusive/ defined by so many unique artists with different narratives and approaches to their careers.

    Relating to the process of creating our research chart, we compiled detailed notes exemplifying the marketing and distribution techniques of 4 different artists, as well as important details on 2 major music labels. We chose to include Republic Records, with signed artists Taylor Swift and The Weeknd, as well as Interscope Records, representing our chosen artists Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo. We chose these specific artists because not only are they each very successful, but also we wanted to study artists who had very different public images. My group and I's goal was to investigate what individualized choices led to their success, but also specifically how noticeably different relationships to their audiences still gave them each massive popularity. Overall, we were curious how different choices had an effect on each of their outcomes. 

    We split the work up so that we would have to work on two columns of our research chart so that we could efficiently and deeply research each of our assigned topics. I wanted to research The Weeknd, mainly because of his mysterious and identifiable presence in the music industry, and how he stands out from many pop artists in terms of social media presence. I also researched Republic Records' history and presence in the music industry. After researching and comparing with what my group found on their specific artists, I came to the conclusion that social media usage (a key piece to marketing and audience interaction) has a spectrum. All decisions on posts or even lack of posts make up an artist's overall brand, with all choices configuring the audience's perception of an artist. Below is a link to our research chart:

Music Research Chart.docx 

Brainstorming/Planning

    After our research, we began to think primarily about our music video. The song we chose out of four options was the song "Royals" by Lorde. We chose this song because the sound is relatively singular, with direct lyrics that reveal an artist's bravery, honesty, and experience. We thought that it would largely play a part in finding our artist's image, as this being her first single would immediately display her as vulnerable and individual. The lyrics allude to status and lifestyle, with some including "I've never seen a diamond in the flesh" and "That we're fine with this, we didn't come from money". It can be said that Lorde didn't have a rich upbringing, with the repeated chorus phrase proudly proclaiming "And we'll never be royals", claiming that she craves a "different kind of buzz". We wanted to keep the same meaning but make it applicable to as much of the target audience as possible, which in our case for pop is 16-21-year-old girls. So, we decided to showcase that the lyrics were more about introducing our artist as nonconforming and ready to steer her own path through visuals and symbolism. While I now recognize that we maybe should've begun from our artist to the video (in terms of brainstorming), I think that pondering on relating the lyrics to a specific message gave us insight into who our artist was, as the message is especially personal to her. 

    Apart from the music video, we also brainstormed on marketing and distribution techniques. We all contributed ideas that showed success to our research artists, but also tried to think of more spontaneous efforts to attain an audience/ general exposure or interest. One idea that Florencia, a group member, brought up was paying $150/day (1 day) for our artist's face on a NYC billboard in Times Square. This is regular for more known artists, so having her face on a big screen in one of the busiest cities in the world would be a great promotion for her new single. More specific and quick note-taking of some of our ideas can be found in my last blog post "Music Marketing 1-Research & Brainstorming", where I write more about specifics on content.

    After we brainstormed ideas, we began to plan. Our planning process could've been more timely, with the leniency of time ultimately saving us from a more rushed final product of a presentation. We decided to film in two days and get the presentation done over several days, with no strict schedule planted by ourselves, which I now see wasn't a smart choice. For future projects, I now know that even if I feel comfortable with the amount of time given for a big task, I will set due dates and force myself to complete them.

Production

    Our filming days consisted of one very late night and the following day. We decided that for part of our marketing, it would be a good idea to have a photoshoot for our artist Adeline X, which Isabel (a group member) would be playing, who is a young 18-year-old girl with grunge fashion taste and NYC girl aesthetic. While she may feel familiar, we wanted her to feel relatable to her target audience while still seeming intriguing. Our photo shoot would consist of outfits from the music video, as we would post the pictures before the video's release to build excitement and allude to parts of the video. We would incorporate colors specific to Adeline's current era (new single, new "phase") that have symbolic meaning to the music. For example, when she wears a black 90's esc dress, she is representing her "royal", unattainable self (artistic self, personal self...) that people want her to be. The further into the video the audience gets, the more Adeline starts to wear reds and whites, signifying her true, nonconforming self. All of these intentional choices were aspects of production. 

    The same night of the photo shoot, Isabel and I filmed the "royal" parts of the video (where she's wearing black). The following morning, the team and I went to a nearby park to film the parts of the video when she revealed the version of herself she is, where she wears a red dress out in nature. We shot out of order, with the final location being Isabel's ballet studio and its parking garage. The filming part of the project was fun, driving off the specific, original ideas we had on our storyboard but keeping the general plot the same. 

                             

Pre-Production

    Because we wanted the video to feel professional, we filmed everything on cameras: one Nikon for behind-the-scenes footage and shorter clips, and one Canon camera for the majority of the music video.  This affected the editing process, as I had to transport all the clips onto my phone through a rather time-consuming process. I edited on iMovie and Capcut, utilizing both apps to sync the music to the video clips and also edit the clips together. Before editing the actual music video, we had an idea to make a promotional video that gives a sneak peek of the music video, intriguing viewers while also giving them the date of the video's release. 

    Editing the actual video wasn't too difficult, as we already knew what order we wanted certain clips in. The hardest part was probably getting the beats as accurate as possible when cutting from clip to clip. The video took a couple days to edit, but I'm happy with how it turned out. We didn't change the lighting or adjust any of the clips, except for adding a filter on one of the "royal" clips to give it an Old Hollywood look. Here is the link to the posted video on Adeline's YouTube channel:

                                https://youtu.be/VSQZnAqVVwg?si=-YMxVelURc_FEjH8 

Presentation

    Lastly, the final thing to do was to put our presentation together. As I was editing the video, the rest of the group was focused on putting together the presentation. We found a template that matched the vibe of our artist, with blacks and whites and added reds, with a font that looks almost scrapbook-y, yet trendy. We wanted our presentation to be aesthetic, with added background pictures from the photoshoot to individualize our showcase of Adeline X. While making our presentation, we also came up with more marketing techniques, like the formation of a model website acting as a hub for all announcements of our artist updates, and more final touches to our distribution plan (which includes digital and physical distribution of the single). Below is a link to the presentation:

               https://www.canva.com/design/DAF66nqyG7Y/cb5QIlVQXcSbTBuhVGfv2w/edit?utm_content=DAF66nqyG7Y&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton 

Final Thoughts

    This project taught me a lot about the music industry. It gave me insight into image and branding choices (intended perception) as well as how everything connects - social media, artistry choices, etc... It showed me how artists have to keep up to date with trends just to obtain and maintain an audience, and how being true to yourself as an artist can naturally align with the target audience. The importance of the audience towards artist success, or any media success, truly shows the power of the consumer and explains why all the strategies for attracting them are in place. For future projects, this taught me to plan and give myself deadlines that I will have to meet to fully fulfill my expectations and goals towards future big projects.