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.
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