Final Project:

 

    Here's a link to all three components of the project :)

 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WcYACmsMHIB4iXOxJpFIdHwOUVj2r6VE?usp=drive_link

CCR

Here is the link to the final CCR:

(wrote it on there originally so kept it in a google doc, enjoy :)

Click here!

Reflection

    

    Wow. It's that time. I can't believe that after 8 weeks this has come to an end. This has genuinely been such a fulfilling project to do. Not only was I able to do a school film project with my sister, which is something we've always wanted to do, but we were able to formulate such a relevant and personal feeling/topic into this medium and genre (a documentary), as well as be able to creatively embrace the medium of docu-series further with social media and print. This last week has been an immense hassle, but looking back, I'm extremely proud of all of the work from last year to now. I feel like I would've been able to lean and oftentimes jump into a whole new side of my creativity, as every big idea was amounted to by singular, specific intentional choices that required a lot of energy and commitment, even if they seemed “small”. Those are the things that add up to making an influence towards an overall final product. 

    I am so happy that I took AICE Media Studies because not only did it allow me to express creative ideas that I otherwise wouldn’t have given myself the time or space to do, but I also learned so much about the media world and how it ties into society as a whole, which I am really intrigued by and love to explore (all conversations revolving societal impacts, etc…). I would’ve never expected for us to delve into topics that I’ve always been so passionate about, such as conformity and social norms, or regarding the entire creation process of a piece of art, specifically the intentionality of different production aspects. While I could go on and on about, I want to end off by saying thank you for such an impactful, crazy two years in this class. I have genuinely learned so much and will take everything I've learned with me into the media-saturated world we live in. I wish more people got a chance to create and learn about the things I did in this class, especially in the state of the world we live in and build now. 

    Without further ado, the next two blogs will be links to my Final Portfolio project for this class. This isn't goodbye, just see you later! (I'm gonna try to use blogger still) Thank you for everything Mrs. Stoklosa :)

  

Print Component: Creation Process

     This past week has been A LOT. We have finished filming everything, which I know we should’ve done a while ago but hey!! We went to Town Center to film our intro interviewed once we realized we needed more interviews, which I covered in the last blog. The next thing to cover is print. Earlier in the year we went over specifics needed for the print component, with the one we have to complete being a 2-page magazine article. Here is the past blog that I reference with notes that layout the specific structural/ characterized components needed. I also checked out my notes from last year on print, as we did a project towards the end of the year that required us to create the cover of a magazine. Here are the notes:

     As I have mentioned in this weeks social media blog post, Sofia and I decided that we were going to have our magazine article be directed towards getting to know us as people more, not only naturally reinforcing the theme of connection (trying to reach if you can’t tell!!) but also giving us a space to tell the background that led to why we wanted to create this documentary in the first place, with the reasons being true even though we are obviously creating a fake documentary series (even though I have considered trying to actually create the full thing for fun…) With social media giving us a space to get other important pieces of information/ themes of the doc across, we are utilizing this component to give an inside look at us as people/ creators and of the topics that we delve into regarding societal concepts we are targeting/ discuss with our interviews. 

     As I have mentioned, I am using a mini journal as a hub/ dump for any and all of my ideas, which I used to organize the specific conventionally features of a magazine to include. Here it is:

                                                    

                                         

                                                  

     The made up magazine company is called “Inside Look”, a community magazine that not only gives updates on main events happening around the general community but that also investigates and gets a closer “inside look” at events that are different than the usual, which is why our documentary would be featured. The creative process so far has been experimental, with the more basic part being going into Canva and looking for magazine templates that fit the style that we want. While looking at Canva, I found  good amount of options that we can use but none that struck me to use without editing them a bit.

    To help in the process I looked at old 2 page magazine articles from publications that I stylistically am a fan of (as well as that are well-known for being good companies), such as The New York Times and The Atlantic. Specifically with The Atlantic, as I like something about their visual style not only with the format of the magazine but the artwork as well, inspiring us to implement some of our own artwork (once again thank you Ceci!) into the magazine to better integrate the documentary into the topic of conversation. I also looked around my house to see if I could find any cool magazines to take inspiration from, but didn’t find too much. I did find, however, an Aviation magazine that I took inspiration from for how to write the page number alongside the name of the magazine (Inside Look). Here are some examples of old The Atlantic articles I took inspiration from in regards to heading style, font, and structure, as well as the one I found in my house:

                                     

                            

The Final Product

     The first page we created is more dedicated to establishing the thought process that lead to the creation of the doc as well as getting to know us with a more personal approach, while the second page introduces the documentary series better and introduces some themes/ topics that we target, such as technology. We also reference different episodes for the reader to feel more familiar with the series. The inclusion of visuals was a big thing for us, with the integration of specific visuals that complement what our fake interviewer is writing about in each page. Overall, the process of creating the magazine was actually really fun and made me better appreciate the process of magazine creation, as every choice is intentional from font size to structure/ visual layout. It allowed me to see the true dedication it takes and that the process not as quick as it seemed it was going to be. Here is the final product (I’m really proud of it!)

Street Interviews: FINALLY DONE

     This week is the last week before the final project is due and we still have a lot to do. Regarding the actual documentary portion, we have everything filmed except for one very critical part: the street interviews that lead into introducing Sofia and I. While we went last week to the location (our town center) to film and got two/ 3 really good interviews, it started raining so we ended up not getting as many as we needed, which is like 5 more. We were pretty devastated because we blocked off time to film and had our equipment ready (just a camera and a tripod but still), but we needed to find another day soon.

us the moment it started raining accepting our losses

Readjustment- New Filming Day

     But not to fret! We ended up finding another day that worked for us, with some of our friends coming along for a fun night out and ending up filming 3 interviews that we will definitely be implementing. We went later in the afternoon/ closer to the night and filmed my friends Male, Valen, and Debra, with each giving insightful and individualized responses to our questions. Speaking of questions, creating the questions for the interviews was an interesting process. We knew what we wanted the interviewees to end up saying/ what we to establish at the beginning of the documentary, being the disconnected nature of our current social world. Because we obviously can’t tell the interviewees what to say, we needed our questions to try to reach that topic of conversation without scaring the interviewees off too much with such a direct, deep topic. We ended up coming up with around 6 questions, mainly referencing 3. Here are my notes that helped get to the final questions used, with the bolder being the main ones we asked the interviewees:

 

Readjustment- New Date

    We ended up interviewing a range of people in the end, with four being our friends and then an almost equal amount being people of older ages. We also got two interviews with people from specifically out of the country places (Mexico and Brazil), giving interesting perspectives on how culture influences social tendencies, being that they both exclaimed how the cultural customs in the U.S. have tended to be drier socially for them then in their home countries. Overall, the interviews we got will provide for a good introduction to some of the loneliness and social disconnect in our society, with the process of editing giving us the space to choose specific things that the interviewees said to build towards the point we wanted to make.

some of our interviewees (Debra)

Creating Social Media Posts

    Social media is the gateway to social exposure in the modern day online world. For publications, the same goes. After having learned about the digital sphere of media this past year (and year before some), it has become even more clear to me as to why it's so important to understand and be very completely intentional about one's social media brand. Whether it's the colors used or the repeated #'s, everything adds up to form the viewer/ consumer's perception on the brand/ product, being the docuseries in this case. That's why, with all the information I've learned, being in my class (you can learn about in this blog post), or even in my own life as I make collages for my Instagram profile, I'm really excited for this part of the project: 

    To create an Instagram page specifically for Intertwined where we will get to show a different/ extended side of the docuseries, specifically as we figure out what we want to utilize the social media for other than basic exposure... (ex: do we want to showcase a more personal side of the directors, aka Sofia and I?) This is all going to occur as we create our social media account, which we have already done. Here is what we have done so far and what ideas we have for future posts (which we have to make ASAP to meet the 18 posts that we are trying to have as minimum in a spaced out time schedule):

Current posts

    As you probably know, we have chosen to integrate animation into our intro for each episode, naturally bleeding into the style, branding, and recognizability of the series, like when making any other distinctive creative choice. Because of this, we decided to include the animation into our social media. As the (hopefully) soon-to-be audience gains exposure to our specific style/ repeatedly shown "characters" (that represent our main subjects of the doc), they will begin to familiarize themselves with our brand. 

    We want to use the animated versions of us to introduce ourselves on the social media because we thought it's a good way introduce our relationship to the doc, being involved yet also observers. We also wanted to officially introduce ourselves on the social media, with a dedicated "Meet the directors" post as we are important to the specific perspective being highlighted regarding the current social world we are observing, even though we are trying to remain as unbiased as possible. That balance is something we have been trying to work on in filming interviews but will be a more specific choice while editing, which I will be making a blog post on very soon. Besides introducing ourselves, we are taking inspiration from social media accounts like "Abstract" the Netflix docu-series (mentioned in the linked blog post), specifically with their integration of quotes from their subjects. We have already done one of those types of posts with the psychotherapist we interviewed. Here are the posts so far:

    As you can tell, we are using each post to accumulate an overall picture, something that excites me about being able to do this part of the project. I personally love to make things look aesthetically pleasing, and if that can build up to create a consistent style that's definitely the goal!

Captions Are Important.

    I don't think I have ever fully understood the importance of Instagram captions until now. With social media being a place for media consumers to learn more about the docuseries' main subjects (interviewees/"stars"!), major bigger-picture themes, and specifics about different episodes, we figured that the best place to dump all of that information in an organized, categorized, and strategic way would be the posts and their CAPTIONS. After our first three posts which are almost like puzzle pieces to form an introductory image that hints at our docs style/ future posts style, the upcoming posts require informative captions to help give context/ foundational information that not only serves the post but also comments on the bigger picture idea behind the post. 

    

    For example, our fourth post introduces Dr. Gloria N. Valdivieso, a psychotherapist that we interviewed, with her quote "...our species (we) learned how to survive in groups. So, how to interact with other people is very important for human beings". The overall post introduces the topic of community, as we included the definition of the word to give concrete meaning to a oftentimes vague-feeling word. For the caption, I chose to elaborate a bit on the idea revolving Dr. Gloria's quote, introducing the idea of how connection can lead to community, being a major theme of the docuseries. We also want to write questions to engage/ possibly hear from the consumers, with our main intention being to pose thought-provoking questions that make people reflect on connection/ community in their own lives. Overall, the caption writing process has been not as quick a I thought, but I'm happy to have found a place to directly state what we want to regarding themes, etc... very explicitly.

Ideas

    I'm really excited to continue to develop the Instagram, as Sofia and I have goals of making the page varied, creative, yet still maintain a "professional" feel that could possibly resemble a true documentary Instagram page. Other ideas we have for future posts include more "Meet the ___" to introduce the subjects of the entirety of Season 1 of the series so people can start to have a personal connection with the groups, being a major theme of the entire docuseries. We want to continue to develop artistic looking posts, especially to help establish the tone for each group. We have been using Canva to make our Instagram posts, along with pictures form our personal collections and Cecilia's drawings. 

    Because we have so many ideas, I've been keeping a mini notebook to help document and organize all of my ideas. It's a random journal that I have in case I want to journal about anything but I ended up mainly using it for this project so far. Being the type of person that needs to write down all of my ideas before they escape my mind, this has been a huge help, as I've used it to draw out visual ideas for the intro to send to Cecilia, to organize how Instagram posts might look as the number of posts effects the final layout of all of the accumulated posts, and more ideas about editing structure. With that being said, I have a good amount of ideas for posts on there, with each trying to achieve a purpose. Here are some of those purposes:

• Emphasize importance of connection (big theme of docuseries)
• Highlight connection in everyday life (theme/ point that connection doesn't have to be grand)
• Make viewers feel close/ familiar to directors, as we will be integrated into doc (have something to emotionally cling onto)

    Some post ideas I have that I'm going to bring up to Sof for our upcoming ones include:

• Posts quoting different interviewees, specifically the Psychotherapist we interviewed (Dr. Gloria)
• Director inside look into WHY created (hint in different posts/ captions)
• More animated posts of interviewees (reemphasize style)
• Interactive questions on story with community/ posts targeting community (reemphasize theme)
• MORE OUT THERE: pieces of art that remind us of the importance of connection

pictures of ideas for the intro (sent to Cecilia) in new journal

    While I'm still trying to figure out what to include in the social media, I am also trying to figure out what the confirmed topic should be for the print, as before we established it would be more of a director inside-look that would bring the readers closer to us as people. I think we are going to keep that idea and not get AS personal in the social media to maintain boundaries/ professionalism. anyways, see you in a bit probably to talk about editing because we have to get one that...