Production Truly Begins

 Week 6

    Production has truly started. We have begun filming after setting up the scenes. The most prominent being the scene in our main characters room. As discussed before, we would use posters to display a "grungy" feeling. Here is a picture of said room.

 

A few prominent posters can be seen here. A few are songs and album covers from bands like "The Cure" and "My Chemical Romance". Each contain hints as to what our character is like. The songs include tales of depression and illness, as well as themes in freedom and creativity. These all mirror our characters interest.

    The next type of poster are the drawings. These show the creative nature of our character, Isabel. All the drawings display a sense of dread or somewhat melancholy. From skulls, to monsters, these posters all mirror the sorrow our character feels. The only poster that does not is the family picture in the bottom middle. 

  

  An important part of this opening scene is displaying the once innocent nature of Isabel lost due to the death of her older brother. It shows that despite the drugs she consumes, she still feels a connection to her a family. This sets up the final scene of the opening, where Isabel's mother walks in, showing how drug addiction affects everyone close to the addict.

    A few other props are the crosses seen at both sides of the room. This is more of a minor detail that our character comes from a Christian family. The values obviously rival what our character does to herself.

    

     All this mise-en-scene helps set up the background of our character in a way that shows and does not tell. It also mirrors how Isabel feels currently. Since our film is a drama, mise-en-scene must be relied upon heavily. I am very excited with how everything is going with the opening. Camila surprised me with the ideas for the posters above.

CCR Inspiration

 Week 5

    This post will be shorter than my previous post. The reason why is because I am in this odd spot between pre-production and actual production. Production officially begins tomorrow so I thought it would be a smart decision to speak about something outside of that and save it for next week. CCR creation is a topic I wrestled with this week. My teacher spoke to me about what I would be doing and I jumped to a podcast or otherwise commentary-focused CCR. I enjoy playing around with audio and since I would not need to show my face, using a script would be much easier and would allow the CCR to flow better.

    My teacher gave recommendations for podcasts that I could use (since I've never really listened to one...). I chose my topic as space since it is a subject that I am fascinated in and think would be interesting to be shown in podcast form.

    The first podcast is "Space" by Jad Abumrad on Radiolab. The podcast had an ambience that helped to tell a story. The sound effects coupled by narration by the podcaster really aided in engaging me in the podcast. This coupled with deep questions about space asked to space professionals like Neil deGrasse Tyson speaking about the history of space and space in general. This is an example of how I will do my podcast. It will focus on sound and help in making it engaging.

    The next podcast I looked into was "NASA's Curious Universe" by NASA. This podcast was undeniably more scientific space related. It included accounts by astronauts, scientists, and engineers at NASA. As someone who would love to wind up working for NASA, this excited. The podcast had me hooked, but the main reason why was because it focused on my interest. "Space" was more engaging in my opinion, in a way that anyone could enjoy it.

    In conclusion, I think I will use "Space" as an example for building my CCR podcast. While the NASA podcast was wonderful to listen to, Radiolab podcasts have a way of incorporating sound to make listeners feel something. (I guess this post was not as short as I expected)

    

Sources

Abumrad, Jad. “Space.” Radiolab, 6 Apr. 2020, https://radiolab.org/episodes/91520-space.

Sosby, Micheala. “NASA's Curious Universe.” NASA, NASA, 30 Mar. 2020, https://www.nasa.gov/curiousuniverse.

Schedule

 Week 5

    Camila and I have finally written up a schedule for the rest of the project. As I spoke about in my last blog, we are nearing of the project. Research and planning is finished and that is left to do is film, edit, and complete our CCR's. We thought that writing up a schedule with dates for when we will do these tasks is important going forward. There is a limited time to do all this work and organization is the key to success.

        We're gonna spend the majority of this following week filming as much as possible. We have our story planned out and have set up the locations for where we are filming. The day after, we will begin our editing. Since we only need to edit a small 2 minute clip, we can combine editing and CCR. While other groups may have a headstart, all the planning we've done thus far will make sure that this step (which is the most important) will be successful.

    A reflection on this post can be the importance of organization and planning before beginning a project. Before a few months ago, I would constantly jump into projects with the idea of getting them done and over with for a decent grade. This project, and other past Media Studies projects have helped realize the importance of deep thinking and planning before a project. Not only does this aid in being prepared to do the project, but it also makes one passionate do their project, which will make the end result even better. 

    All in all, I'm glad that I did as much planning as I did, since it gives me confidence that Camila and I will produce a great film opening.

Production Reflection

 Week 5

        This post will reflect the key moments in my group project. Compiling important moments in the project aids in CCR, as I can come back to this post when explaining how my group's production process went and what worked in the process.

Pre-production

    The first weeks consisted of heavy research. Initially, it consisted of genre research, such as dramatic elements and common drama character archetypes. This helped in turning our pre-existing story into a drama by incorporating drama elements into our story as well as making our characters fit in a dramatic story. I think doing research before jumping into anything was a good idea. 

    It allowed us to have knowledge on the subject before we made big choices for the project. Using inspiration from movies that have a similar story and characters to make ours is an example of how researching beforehand can aid in helping develop the project.

    Planning & Storyboarding

    The next weeks were where Camila and I became more creative with the project. This started off with us writing up a rough storyboard in order to write our story thoughts down, while also displaying how the research we had done would be used within the opening.     

    Since our film is a drama, we also found out more about how we would use mise-en-scene in our film. This included showing our characters personality in the clothes they wear, the room they live in, (physically) and color and lighting (symbolically).

    These following weeks will be Camila and I using all this research and planning for our filming. An important thing to do is incorporate the elements that we've done research on within our filming, or else it would have all been for nothing. I'm very excited to finally begin filming our story that we have built up over the course of a month or so.

Production: Mise-en-scene

 Week 4

       This week, Camila and I worked on the Mise-en-scene part of our video. As discussed before, the room for our character has already been established. The dark tones and gloomy posters on the walls highlight the dark situation our character is in. Another important drama element that will be added is low lighting. These coloring and light elements really help to add a layer of emotional storytelling that is the core to making our movie opening interesting.

   

        

        Another important element that will be incorporated in our character is her make-up. First, she will look visibly tired, to emphasize how sickly and exhausting an addiction can be. The next element of make-up will be on her arm. As suggested, by people in my group meeting, adding makeup to the arm to show use of heroin is a great way to show the use of heroin as opposed to actually showing a needle being injected in our character. Below is example Camila made of what would be used in the final product.

 

    Another reason this makeup will be used is to accurately portray the life of an addict. Camila and I want to make this film opening as realistic as possible and prevent any "preachy" or "cliched" ideas. By incorporating realistic and stylistic elements, these goals can be reached.

Sources

Lighthouse Recovery Institute. “Everything to Know about Track Marks.” Lighthouse Recovery Institute, 3 June 2020, https://lighthouserecoveryinstitute.com/blog/track-marks-go-away/.

First Meeting In Class

 Week 4

        Mrs. Stoklosa spoke to Camila and I about our project story idea. We spoke mainly about the storyboard that is up on our blog. She notified us about how portraying drug addiction in a film opening  (specifically the way we had planned it) would be difficult. Firstly, we are not allowed to show the drug actually being used. Our original storyboard showed our character injecting herself with a needle to show her addiction to heroin. This is too extreme for the project, so Mrs. Stoklosa recommended that we insinuate that she is using the heroin. We can still incorporate elements of our old storyboard though. I think using the belt around the arm, and facial expression is a great way to imply the use of heroin. 

    The second issue that Mrs. Stoklosa had that I personally also had, was making sure the opening isn't "corny". A boring, run-of-the-mill, attempt to be sentimental will ultimately ruin the entire opening's message about drug addiction. We need to be able to incorporate drama elements alongside the opening without making it seem like we're prioritizing making a good project as opposed to portraying our message well. A few ways to this are by making the film realistic in the right parts, and dramatic in the other parts.

     I think the juxtaposition of the drama genre and serious drug addiction story is difficult to portray. Using unrealistic elements like lighting and color alongside a realistic story seems impossible on face value, but that's what makes it worth doing. The ability to create a product that is hard, is what makes it worth it in the end. If done right, I truly believe that Camila and I can create a project that's unique and worthy of a good grade.

        Here is the storyboard which will likely be changed in the future to fit in to the new ideas that have been presented to us.

Film Opening Locations

        Week 4

    This post will be more of a transitional one. The past three weeks have been heavily focused on research for the project and these last four weeks will be filming and editing. The story is looking solid and fits all the requirements for the drama genre. Film location is important to the story for the film opening. 

    It sets up who the character is, why they do the things they do, essentially it shows you instead of telling you what will go on in the opening. Camila has decided to shoot in her room as she will be the actor for the opening. We will make the room look messy and there will be suggestive posters on the wall. The style chosen by Camila is grunge.

    Due to the character's background, it makes sense to choose this dark style.