Digital Component: Social Media

 

    One component of the documentary package is the creation of a social media page, being a major marketing and connective tool to develop an audience for the docu-series. While Sofia and I plan on continuing to explore a larger variety of social media pages, below is the start of our social media research regarding documentaries, with one being a student sample and the other from an Emmy-nominated series we have researched in class. Before that, however, here are notes that I took in class that were given regarding specifics for the social media account, as there are certain focus points to remember:

Student Sample

    The first day that my teacher introduced a student sample to the class, I was able to see this student sample, one of an acquaintance of mine from last school year. She also did a documentary (First Place), and although our topics differ, with hers being about the competitive nature of high school students no matter what field/ niche group they belong to (ex: a poet, engineer, mathematician...), the specific style of her posts and the characterized subject portrayal in the Instagram postings caught my eye since that day in class, with more exploration of the Instagram page making me greatly appreciate creative choices such the development of a "video-game" like theme that acts as a metaphor, comparing real-life competition and online, more "exaggerated" competition. This representation of high-school competition as entrapping, cyclical, and addictive (I'm aware these adjectives sound quite dramatic...) through the choice of metaphor create space for more imagination with editing and animation, with the documentary incorporating elements of a video game such as "player #'s" to reference the main subjects of each episode or a loading bar.  

    Although this is only a past student sample, seeing the potential of what our social media could potentially become, with our account having the opportunity to embrace different parts of our brand and ultimately give our audience a clear and also enticing perspective of our documentary is exciting, reminded through Samy Duarte's key art and creative artistic choices.

Abstract: The Art of Design

    Earlier this school year when learning about different documentary types in class and was awakened to the world of documentaries, ranging from watching Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop to NYT Op-docs like A New Wave (blog post on my research is linked here), I watched two episodes of Netflix's Abstract: The Art of Design, learning about different forms of art that I don't usually get to as much, such as costume-design for movies, being Ruth Carter's episode (an Academy-award winning costume designer). With my own documentary also being episodic, centering each episode around a specific community of people, with specific subjects being focused on (for the most part), I thought back to this docu-series as it personalizes and builds up each episode in a flawlessly natural and entertaining way, perhaps taking inspiration towards our own documentary series.

    Regarding the social media page (abstractdesign), it is extremely cohesive and complementary to the series style, while also giving insight and a sense of consumer-creator connection. Here are specific observations from exploring the Instagram page of the docu-series, as that is the platform Sofia and I will be making our own account on:

• Makes purpose of docu-series clear (ex: "the way design surrounds us, inspires us, and informs our daily lives") 
  
• Captions reveal information about design process of main subjects of eps. (ex: "What's your go-to album to listen to while working?" - Connects to Oscar-award winning designer Ruth Carter episode: shows she plays a playlist to inspire actors...)
• Captions ask questions to audience/ intrigue^
• Captions often include quotes of subjects/ just do posts of interview questions with quote response!!! (ALOT)
• Captions reveal what eps are about by revealing what the "abstract team" (third-person) will do in specific episode.
• "Abstract Lessons"- Lesson learned through different episodes (ex: "Design is play")
• BTS Post (Family of subject)
• Key art/ intriguing visuals (ex: collage)
• Promo event info (ex: San Francisco Design Week's virtual Festival)
• #'s in caption (ex: #abstractseason2)
• Towards the beginning of their social media posting they didn't reveal any subjects, just quotes about creative process, imagination, art, etc... (Made striking visual)

the very beginning of the social media page

Conclusions

    Those are the main things we noticed, with each account (one being a hypothetical docu-series account and the other a real one) offering ideas as to different ways we could possibly go with our own docu-series Instagram account. After analyzing the Abstract Instagram account, it feels like Samy was also inspired by Abstract, making sense as the setup of her episodes, with each following a specific subject and their niche, aligning partially with the setup of Abstract. This shows that although you might be inspired by a reference, you should implicate the parts of it that you need for your vision, and that in the end it'll become new and original to you.

    The choices we are now inspired to implicate for our own social media postings including the usage of quotes, BTS posts, striking visuals, and the drive to build a consumer-creator relationship, especially considering Sofia and I are pretty involved in setting the tone for our piece throughout the series. Overall, I want the Instagram page to offer more/ a different side of the docu-series episodes, making it a hub to find out more and feel connected to the creators (Sofia and I) and purpose of the piece. Because the purpose of our docu-series stems around connection, I think that we need to focus on making our social media page a place for connection from audience to creator, while still maintaining some sense of "professional boundaries".

Research

Research

Changing Genre: Documentary it is!

     

    Hey blog! So, a lot has happened since my last blog post. Previously, we were planning on starting plot ideas for our short film and getting to this weeks agenda, being to explore our genres of interest such as coming-of-age, comedy, and drama, as listed in my blog post from last week. We had a range of floating ideas, spanning from creating an entire fictional and out-of-reach world full of especially characterized characters like a stereotypical French man or a creepy old woman, with that short film playing with mise-en-scene in a more abstract way (costumes, etc...), such as in a Wes Anderson film. Another idea we had was to create a more relatable story, a coming-of-age that does still follow a fictional plot but feels more grounded, such as like an inspirational type of feeling such as the one in Dead Poets Society, where we would play around with dialogue and comedic bits to create an impactful final theme (didn't fully have that one developed yet). While these ideas are still one's I would LOVE to pursue, our currently extremely hectic schedule, that includes directing a musical each (coincidentally the same show, Descendants, but working with different casts), being involved in three musicals (Pippin, Hadestown, and Sweeney Todd), preparing for states for theater (the week after our Pippin performance which is IN TWO WEEKS...), a chorus performance coming up, and school! All of that to say, we have as lot going on.

    This past week we have been in tech week for the show we are currently doing and performed over the weekend: Sweeney Todd! It's been very busy but I love doing the show. While overhearing the director talking to an actress from the show, my sister and I thought that it would be such a cool opportunity to embrace the experience of our future show Hadestown, that we are currently working on that we perform in June, and film a documentary on some aspect of it/ of the theater company that we have recently become involved with! It's something I thought about but didn't truly consider until my sister brought it up to me, and now I'm sold. SO, change of plans! We are now doing a documentary!

Okay so here's the deal: Genre

 

    From the beginning, Sof and I knew we wanted to do a short film. Even though we didn't know the list of options we had to choose from, we quickly decided on a short film as I think it gives us the full capacity to dive into an interesting story and play with editing and filming techniques. Our initial ideas revolved around emulating the same energy of specific productions we love, with the hard part being that we love so many different movies and series!!! Here is some information on a short film in general and on some genres we are interested in further diving into/ seriously considering for our own production:

Short Film Info

              From: 7 Things To Know About Making Short Films! (Friday 101, YouTube)

•     Duration: 40 mins or less with credits ( Preferred: 10-15 mins)
•     Develop important content slightly quickly/ don't drag out for too long (limited time)
•     Speak through visuals; dialogue doesn't have to be main form of communication to audience (SHOW DON'T TELL)
•     Experiment with production techniques
•     Keep central focus throughout piece (one character, scenario, etc...)

Coming of age

•     Characters: Growth/ development in some aspect (psychology, physiology/ physicality, sociology...)
•     Setting: Realistic and relatable/ recognizable to general audience
•     Production choices: Visuals to convey meaning (SHOW DON'T TELL)
•     Themes: identity, friendship, self-discovery...

Common example of plot: Identity transformation from teenager to adult (adolescence)

Personal ex: Call Me By Your Name

    

Comedy

More info for comedy in films: Film Genres and their Conventions

•     Characters: Specific characterizations/ more individualized
•     Specific beats/ narrative turns
•     Setting: Many locations (where a lot of movement/ interaction can occur; a lot of chances for different types of situations)
•     Represented tropes (sense of familiarity, characterized character dynamics)
•     Props that can drive scenarios
•     Themes: Irony, familiarity

Personal ex: (Dramady) A Real Pain

Drama

•     Character: Focus on one or few character's internal journey, emotional development
•     Dialogue reveals character motivations; Authentic
•     Clear central conflict (creates turning point/ drive in plot)
•     Thought provoking/ impactful ending
•     Common production Techniques: Frequent close-ups (get close to character internal state)

Common example of plot: Relationships/ love journey, grief, familial dynamics

Personal ex: Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting

LETS PLAN: The Schedule

 

    Hi again! To make sure that Sof (my sister) and I stay up-to-date on the project timeline, we have to make a schedule! Luckily, our gracious teacher already made one for us that goes from this week's blog posting schedule to week 9, aka the week it is due (APRIL 9). Along with the this schedule that includes what we need to focus on each week, tying into each week's blog postings, we decided to add weekly goals for ourselves that we are REALLY GOING TO TRY TO ABIDE BY. I capitalized that part of the sentence because we REALLY WANT TO AND NEED TOOOOO. They aren't too far off from the original schedule we have to abide by, but those personal goals are there to also work around our crazy theater schedules, considering we have our production of PIPPIN :)) from March 12-14 (we are both theater kids and have like 4 shows coming up right now, not exaggerating, so!). Isabel and I did a similar setup last year for our Portfolio Project where we personalized the schedule, and it ended up working well, so Sof and I decided to do the same thing for this year. I also printed it last year which worked well for me because I like to have things tangibly in case I want to edit it more freely manually, so I will print this schedule out for both of us so I can do the same thing this year.

    Anyways, enough of me rambling, here is the link to the schedule! (We are still adding personalized goals so it's not 100% done, but it's pretty much done).

The Beginning of the End

 HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO it's me!! 

My Like Third Reintroduction

     I am so excited to be back for my final Portfolio Project. I am truly SO excited to start this new project, and will be fully enthralled in the creation process of whatever I end up making. This was the project that I have been looking forward to begin since the start of the year, considering last year's was such a fulfilling and informative process.  It also gave me the chance to work with one of my best friends and practice the art (because it can very much so be an art) of collaborating and building off of each someone's ideas, and ultimately, after a WHORLDWIND, creating something we are both still extremely proud of. Every now and then I'll look back on the film intro be really proud of what we made, and excited to get the chance to create something with the same level of dedication and interest. If you want to read more about my AICE Media AS project overall experience, here is the link to my reflective end-of-year blog post. 

     For this year's Portfolio Project, I will be collaborating with my TWIN SISTER and creating a SHORT FILM!!!! I am SO EXCITED to get to do this, as we've created videos before for fun and helped each other out on our own projects, but have never gone out of our way to make something more "professional" that will be taken more seriously together. Considering we've been wanting to do something like this together for a very long time, we knew instantly we were going to work together and began thinking of ideas/ investigating film inspo references over the summer. I resorted to my Notes App and wrote down random ideas, themes, or even quotes that we would maybe end up implementing, but landed on some ideas regarding inspirations from other pieces to guide the energy of the piece we wanna make, from music to specific types of characters. 

   Project Guidelines

     In addition to the notes I made during my sister and I's meetings about ideas for the project (that we can have whenever we want because we are sisters!), I took Portfolio Project notes from an in-class presentation that cover the 4 different options that we can choose from for our Portfolio projects: Music promotion, film promotion, documentary, and short film. On top of that, the presentation went over this year's version of last year's Creative Critical Reflection, which for A level is an individually written 1000 word essay that answers 4 specific questions. Below are focused notes on this part of the project from earlier in the year, as my Midterm assignment answers the same 4 questions but in relation to a documentary project I completed. Here is the link to the essay, being my last blog post before this one.

    For the short film option, here are the specifics that we have to abide by:

• 5-7 minutes

• Animated or unanimated

• Audio has to be copyright free, if not note in blog if got rights to use it (ex: music, sound effects- mainly foley if can...)

• Print Component: Postcard Design of Ad that would given out at film festival 

• Digital Component: Social media page 

• Due date: April 9

    Below are pictures of notes I'll be referring back to for specific instructions on the project, which I'll definitely add on to in the next weeks as we learn about more for the digital and print aspects of the project:

                                                                  Portfolio Project notes

Reflection Notes

Priorities for our Thought Process

    Although nothing is set in stone at all right now, we are pretty set on combining comedy with another genre, although we are playing around on whether we want the comedic aspect to be less heavy and more weaved through/ a less emphasized part of the piece but with noticeable intention. While there's still ALOT to brainstorm and experiment with, here are a list of important thoughts/ questions that I wrote down from our conversations that I want to list as a reminder/ indicator of key priorities:

• Relatively shorter amount of time (5-7 mins): do something really cool with it (abnormal/ experiment with form of storytelling)
• Metaphorical/ impactful (like surfing op doc: short but impactful through production and story; stylistic, ex: Queer)
• What type of story do you wanna tell???
• Consistent theme, all tie back!
• Embrace all elements! Don't let dialogue be only form of communication to audience, speak through production choices.

    This is where my heads at right now, with probably my main goal being to experiment and try cool/ more abstract things in the way we tell the story we choose to tell. I want to have a strong personal connection with not just what we end up choosing for plot, characters, and the SCRIPT (very excited about writing), but also very meticulous choices regarding the way we choose to film and edit. THIS TIME WE ARE TAKING ALL OF SPRING BREAK TO EDIT because last time I had to rush and it was so stressful. With the time we will give ourselves to edit, we both really want to prioritize getting more involved with Adobe Features such as Color grading, focusing on our time management so that we can experiment without paranoia of due dates. 

    With all of that being said, I am really happy to be starting, and without further ado, LETS START THE SHORT FILM CREATIONNNN :)