Week Four: Reflection of First Section of Filming/Figuring Out Name of Our Production

Welcome back, everyone! NEW WEEKK!! Today, you guys will get a good insight on how my filming process was this weekend as I filmed the first portion of our project. It's looking greaaaaatttttt. Ok no more bragging and let's get into it.

I know that I mentioned how 7-year old Claire was going to be like a regular little girl, yet have some odd factors like liking weird dolls and drawing weird things that are not very age-appropriate for her age. Although we did some of this, we went a little lighter and decided that we didn't want her young self to be too dark, so instead of including bloody, violent drawings and Monster High dolls, we included normal dolls but showed a glimpse of a drawing she was coloring on her desk of a Marvel movie villain. The reason behind this change is that we want the audience to realize that Claire was very innocent as a child, and as she grows older the change of character is because of her toxic environment. This will increase the pathos appeal in viewers as they feel bad that an innocent soul could sway away so drastically. However, we included a small detail to show where her character is heading. To give you guys a clearer picture, here is a quick glimpse into the clip portion where viewers can see a glimpse of the drawing on her desk:

As you can see, the drawing that she is about to color looks kind of scary, with big arms and a mask. This highlights how he is a villain, and viewers see how this is odd for a young girly girl like Claire. We also slightly changed what Claire was wearing. We had previously planned that she was going to wear black leggings and a purple shirt; however, we changed her outfit to a purple dress as this characterizes her more as a cute, innocent, girly girl. This helps to highlight her change of character as she grows older more drastically, ultimately adding to the overall purpose of our film of raising awareness about the importance of a good childhood with proper guidance in viewers.

Next, let's move on to the name of our production. We tackled this situation by diving into the main plot of our film, which is what happens in the rest of the movie and the final conclusion of the movie because our title should highlight the actual film's plot. The story ends with Claire dying (somehow), and the purpose of our film is to raise awareness on the importance of proper guidance as a child and the need to help those around us who need counseling/therapy because of their past experiences. However, Claire, since the beginning of the film in the film opening scene, is doing everything to run away from her past. This results in unresolved psychological issues because she is trying so hard to push it all away. Therefore, the title of our film isssss (drum roll please).... Don't Look Back. Yes I know you are smiling right now because this is SOOO good. I absolutely love this name for our title because it perfectly highlights the internal conflict that Claire holds, and how this is the problem and the reason for her downfall. This film will help educate others to not ignore their problems, and instead seek help to fix their problems so that they can reach closure and peace, leading to a healthy and good lifestyle.

OK well that was a lot, but all of this is making me even more and more excited to see our final product!!AHHHH!! I literally cannot wait, but until next time guys :))))))

Your fav,

Natalia Ballinas

Week Three: Shot List and Shot Scheduling

Today I am going to share our shot list for our first filming portion and our shot scheduling (filming for the first section is this weekend!!!).

First, let's start with our shot scheduling. Below is a table that we created that basically is our agenda for the next 3 weeks. We divided the filming portions into 3, one for each actress (3 main actresses- 7-year-old, 14-year-old, 18-year-old Claire). Each filming portion is done on the weekend, starting this weekend, and additional planning of sound, transitions, font type, etc. is done during the week. Additionally, a reflection of the filming portion is done the week after every filming portion is completed. This will help us to highlight our production process, as well as make it easier for our post-production process by knowing everything that we are going to put in our video and researching it as well.

Shot scheduling table:

Week #	Weekend Work:	Week Work:
Week 4	Film first portion of film (7-year old Claudia)	-research name/figure it out, reflection of filming  -research of narration, have idea clear, add clips to project -lighting planning for older subject, shot list for second portion, prop, costume design, etc. planning
Week 5	Film second portion of film (14-year old Claudia)	-font, logo etc. planning/research research of sound, have music known, reflection of filming, add clips to video -lighting planning for oldest subject, shot list for second portion, prop, costume design, etc. planning
Week 6	Film last portion of film (18-year old Claudia)	-location of credits on video, add clips to video -research of sound, have music known, reflection of filming -begin editing (sounds, transition, etc.)

Next up is our shot list for our first filming portion that we will be filming this weekend. This shot list goes hand in hand with the storyboard, but we wanted to create it into a list so that we can be more organized and be able to scratch off when we complete each shot. This will help us to not miss any shots, and make the whole process easier. Here is our shot list:

1. Long shot of Claire walking into house 

2. Over the shoulder shot of Claire grasping/opening the doorknob to enter the house

3. POV shot of parents fighting (first thing she sees as she enters house)

4. Mid shot of Claire walking into her room

5. Mid shot of Claire inside her room, slamming the door

6. Mid shot of Claire walking to sit on her bed

7. Close up of Claire’s hands as she fidgets with her fingers (anxiety), tilt to her face which shows her anxious, sad face

8. Mid shot pan from Claire’s face to calendar next to desk

That wraps up today! Next time we will be talking about our edits of our first filming portion, as well as strategies that we used to film the first section of our video! The fun awaits, PRODUCTION TIMEE HERE WE GOOOO!!!

As always, 

Natalia Ballinas

Week Three: Costume and Set Design Planning for First Filming Portion

Hey guys! Today I am going to describe the costume and set design details for our first filming portion of 7-year old Claire. Like I've said before, we are going to focus on one of three portions every week starting next week, so we want to plan our design for our first filming portion. BTW, I'm planning on giving you guys a clearer picture of our filming schedule in the next blog in a table/chart format so it will be even clearer and more organized. 

Let's get into it! First, let's start with the costume design for Claire and the parents (only characters that will be shown in this filming portion). Claire will be dressed in a purple shirt, black leggings, and gray/black colored shoes. We picked purple for her top because it is not too dark as we want young Claire to radiant a sense of innocence, yet portray that darkness is coming into her (not too dark but not too bright color). She will also have a pink cartoon backpack as she enters the house demonstrating that she has that childish characteristic (I feel like all female children have pink cartoon backpacks HAHA!), and it will also help viewers realize that she is coming home from school. This will also demonstrate how she is walking into her house from school alone, adding to the irresponsibility and absence of her parents. Her parents, who she will see arguing in the living room as she walks inside her house, will be dressed in plain, old clothing. Her father will have gray/black shirt with jeans and her mother will have a worn-out v neck shirt with jeans. This demonstrates that her parents do not have the motivation to dress up and look nice, as they are dressed pretty lazily on a workday (puts her parents in an unresponsible presentation look).

Now let's get into the lighting aspect. For this filming portion, we want to incorporate a bit more light than in the next 2 portions because it is when Claudia is less damaged as she is still an innocent little girl. However, there is still going to be less lighting than a regular house. For this portion of the film, we will simply close the blinds/curtains if we want less light. However, for the other 2 portions, we might create lighting on certain objects/details by following a DIY lighting setup. I saw this idea on YouTube and it basically involves getting a clamp light and then getting the bulbs (specific colors) that go inside it. It's a great idea and even though I won't be using it for this filming portion, I think that it would be great to use them in the other 2 filming portions. When Claudia walks inside the house and sees her parents arguing in the living room, the living room will have minimal light with most of the blinds closed. This will symbolize how her parents are toxic and not good. However, when Claudia enters her room, there will be some light (a little less than usual), representing how Claudia is still normal and innocent, but already is becoming what she will become in the future years.

Finally, let's talk about the props/set design. First, let's talk about the part when Claire walks into her house and sees her parents at a distance arguing in the living room. The only pieces of furniture visible will be the sofa and the table. Both of these things will look messy, with the sofa having pillows thrown in random places and looking kind of dirty. The table will have a lot of messy paper, food leftover, and crumbs. This will generate the idea that her parents' lives are messy and unorganized lives which are reflected in how the house is kept. This implies that they are irresponsible and not good parents. Next, let's talk about the props/set design when Claire walks into her room. The room's furniture will be covered with dolls, the floors with toys and dolls thrown all over the place, and her desk will have crayons and messy drawings. The bed will have colorful pillows and covers, all below a lot of stuffed animals. This helps to connect how young Claire is an innocent little girl, and like all little girls, likes colorful things and dolls. Although she has liked to play with a lot of toys, they are all kind of worn-out and old, implying how her parents don't spend money on things that she likes/are uninterested in her interests. The walls will be quite plain, with only a few frames hanging crooked. This will help to portray how things that Claire does not control (she cannot hang/does not think about hanging frames/decorating walls), is not well kept, helping portray the absence of her parents in her life. 

Well, that's a wrap for today! Can't wait for next time where I'll be presenting my shot list and shot/filming scheduling!!!

Yours truly,

Natalia Ballinas

Link to Youtube Video (lighting reference):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=57&v=1xvIn0H1RKc&feature=emb_title

Week Three- Character Development (Descriptions, Mood Boards, and more!)

Hey everyone! Today I am going to give a thorough description of the 3 main characters in our film opening video. Remember, our video will include three main characters, and these are the three different ages of our one main character, Claire, as she grows older. 

First off, in producing descriptions for Claire's stages of life, my partner and I discussed how we wanted each stage in her life to become darker, as she grows miserable and angry about her situation in her toxic household. This will represent how her living conditions highly affected her character, as she starts off as a little innocent girl and finishes as a dark, dull, angry young adult. For each character, we decided to make a mood board that would properly describe each character and helps characterize differences that we want to see in each one as time goes on. Next blog I will discuss costume design, props, etc., so getting good details about each character will highly help make that process a lot easier and more efficient. 

Let's start off with 7-year old Claire, the first main character that viewers are introduced to. Young Claire is an innocent child, who likes coloring, playing with dolls, and everything that a normal 8-year old would like. Introducing her like this will help viewers see how she began as a normal child. However, we do see some factors that are partly caused by her arguing, anger, and sickening household. For example, she likes Monster High, dolls who are monsters and dark, rather than the classic Barbie dolls. She faces anxiety at a young age and is becoming used to always hearing her parents arguing or mean to each other. She is often alone, with nobody to play with but because this is all she ever knows, she doesn't mind it too much. Her room is rather empty, with pale walls and a few old, crooked frames that symbolize the absence of proper parents/caretakers. Here is our mood board for young Claire in order to give a better picture of her:

Let's move on to older, 14-year-old Claire. Claire is now showing a lot of signs of depression and sadness, as she is old enough to understand that her household is one that you would not want to be part of. Her sadness represents how she is miserable, lonely, and truly wishes that her parents would be better. She dresses in dark, dull clothing, which represents her mood, and often hangs around her bedroom all day with her headphones on, trying to ignore reality. She is a good student, despite that others might think otherwise because she never talks at school. However, she likes to draw depressed human beings, bloody fight scenes, and other negative topics. At this age, we can see how young teenage Claire is becoming darker and more messed up, but still has time to change if she were to have a change of household/parents. Here is the mood board for 14-year old Claire:

Finally, the last stage of Claire is her 18-year old, freshly new adult stage. Claire is now very, very dark, and has turned her depression and sadness into anger, fury, and rage about her life. She realizes how her parents have shaped her life into one that she does not want to live in, and turns these feelings into anger that triggers violence. She stopped trying at school and dropped out after high school. She found friends that are like her, as she thinks that they are her allies because they can understand her. She is ready to move out of her house as quick as possible, not having a plan of knowing where she will go but only focused on leaving. She wears all black, and in recent years has often done drugs and drank alcohol in her free time with her friends. Her parents are often drunk and are now even more invisible than they were before. She concludes that this is a good thing because they at least do not fight much anymore, as they are always laying around. Here is the mood board for 18-year old Claire:

I am super happy that we set aside time to produce these mood boards and character descriptions because I know that it is going to help us a whole lot in producing a character that shows growth and changes over time. This will help lead the film opening into the film plot of adult, messed up Claire leaving her house into the real world, incapable of knowing what is bound to happen to her.

Next blog I will be describing our costume design, props/set design, lighting, etc. of the first part we will be filming next week (young 7-year old Claire). Yay, let's do this!

As always, 

Natalia Ballinas

Week Three: Storyboard Time!!

Welcome back everyone! Today we planned and completed the storyboard! Now I know that you guys already got a good look into our plot, but this gives you a better visual look. Here is our storyboard (has some flaws/skips some parts) but is a good look into what our video will look like:

While doing this storyboard, we used most of our old ideas, but we also incorporated new ideas after collaboration and analysis of feedback given by our teacher, Ms. Stocklosa. My partner and collaborated while creating this storyboard and came up with new ideas that helped to show the character differences that arise as our film opening progresses. For example, we decided to end each age stage by having a pan towards the calendar and a pan back towards the growing young girl.  This will give us focus on both the passage of time and the characteristics that change in the background. This will show how our character grows angrier and darker as time passes.  Additionally, we are starting the video with a narration of what is going on, but after the change of ages from the child to the teenager, the narration changes to the sounds of music that our character is listening to (sad, melancholy). The same occurs as she changes into an adult, with louder, angrier music being played in our character's room. This shows how our character changes as time passes from being an innocent, anxious girl to becoming a sad, depressed girl to becoming an angry, rebellious, dark girl.  Our teacher suggested that our video had too much going on, partly because the end would have our character with drugs, weapons, etc. on her lap. So, we decided to end our video with our character leaving her house (like we had planned), but we just show that she gets in a car with her friends who are similar to her (dark, angry, etc.). However, we do not show what will happen after but it is hinted as damaged young adults are certainly up to no good after having no guidance for the entirety of their lives.

Additionally, today we also planned what our blogs will be this week, and a look into the next three weeks as well. Here is our plan for this week:

Our next 3 weeks (weeks 4-6) are centered around 3 parts of our video. Each week involves one main actor (3 main actors of our film as our main character grows). Additionally, each week we will edit each part that we created. This will leave us with a good amount of time to have everything filmed and edited by week 6. Then, we can focus on adding the finishing touches. 

Today was great, stay tuned for next time as we will be creating mood boards and developing our 3 main characters. This will help us get a better look into the props, costume design, and other factors that we want to include in our video!

Until next time, 

Natalia Ballinas

Week Two: Technical Elements Research

Hi guys, welcome back! To finish off this research-centered week, today I am going to talk about the technical elements that I have observed and researched in examples of tragedy drama film' opening scenes. This research helped me to become more knowledgeable about how successful films in the past with a similar genre and conflict of ours, created their film opening. 

First, let's talk about sound. In the opening scene of "The Great Gatsby," which is a movie centered around the internal conflicts of the main character as he searches for wealth and impossible dreams after moving to a new city, the film starts off with a narration of a bit of the character's background and then goes into the present. Similarly, in the opening scene of "American Beauty," which has a similar plot where the main character (a father) causes distress to his family as he searches for excitement and pleasure, the opening scene also includes a narration that is giving an insight to the situation in the story.  After looking at these two examples, we concluded that it would be excellent to include a narration within our opening scene. Of course, like the two examples, this narration will not be part of the entire opening video, and will only be in the part where our main character is shown as she is growing up, and will stop when our main character is in the present, leaving her household. We think that this will add great, important, detail on the things that are going on as the scene is opening up, and will give an inside look into the main character's thoughts. This will also portray the internal conflict that is the basis of our movie.

Now that we covered sound, let's jump into the specific camerawork, shots, angles, etc. that I observed. In the opening scene of "The Great Gatsby," the first person that is introduced is, of course, the main character (Toby Maguire). However, the way that this character is introduced is similar to how one of the main characters in "American Beauty" is introduced as well. Because both of these films are centered around internal conflicts between characters, in both films, these characters are introduced by using a close-up technique that focuses on the character's thoughts and facial expressions. This helps to reveal the internal conflict that is going to be present throughout the movie. After looking at this, we have decided to do something similar. In our opening scene, we are going to focus to include close-up shots that highlight the main character's anxiety and thoughts in her toxic household which will help reveal the man vs man conflict that will be present throughout the movie. In "American Beauty's" opening scene, the camera focuses on highlighting the main character's (father's) actions on a regular work morning. During this time, the narration in the background highlights his thoughts as he goes about his morning. It also introduces the other primary characters in the movie (his family). Similarly, in our opening scene, the camera will focus on filming the movements of our main character as she grows up through a repetitive cycle of screaming parents. Like I've said before, during this time, the narration will take place that will help introduce the audience to the character and the other primary characters (her parents).

By looking at these two examples of film openings that have a similar plotline and genre to our film, we are more confident and have a clearer picture of the things we want to highlight and the technical elements that we will include in our film opening. 

Stay tuned for next time because we will be planning our storyboard! This is where the real fun begins YAYY!!

As always,

Natalia Ballinas

Research Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMqwSTe5rvo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YTk2EzaaEA

Week Two: Genre Elements and Target Audience

Welcome back!! Today we are going to talk about the characteristics of our genre (tragedy drama) and the target audience we are aiming for. This will help us to understand what specifically we want to include in our film opening, and who we are targeting, helping us have a better video all around.

Let's start by talking about genre characteristics. Our overall genre is drama, but this drama is so broad and has so many different examples that we are focusing on one of the sub-genres of drama, tragedy drama. According to the article titled, "Drama" by Noelle Buffram, published by The Script Lab, the tragedy genre involves a character whose downfall is due to the self-destructive behavior that they generated through past experiences. Similarly, our plot involves a young girl whose downfall is due to her past experiences where she encounters a lot of anxiety and loneliness with no support. The article also mentions some key elements of drama films, listed below:

• "relies on emotional and relational development of realistic characters"
• "dramatic themes are taken from real-life issues"
• "aim to tell an honest story of human struggles"

Similarly, our plot has all three of these elements:

• As the main female character grows older, we can see how her anxiety, depression, and loneliness increase as time goes on and this causes her to become a violent person
• The issue of having a toxic household where parents are constantly arguing and drunk is a real-life issue that many victims struggle with for the rest of their lives
• The story is very personal as it shows how a young girl becomes a bad person due to her improper guidance

Now that we know that we hit all the elements for our genre, we feel confident about our plot. Let's talk about our target audience! 

We are aiming for a mature audience as there are a lot of themes in our film that have to do with real-life factors and are not appropriate for a younger audience. We are also aiming for a target audience that is not too old because we want to evoke awareness/change in current or future parents, and because this film is partly centered around family and friend drama, we feel an older audience would not be a good audience to focus on. Therefore, we are aiming for a target audience of ages 18-45. A very popular tragedy drama right now is the ABC TV show titled "This Is Us." Although this TV show has many stories within the plot, one of the main stories focuses on the toxic household that two of the main male characters were raised in, and how this highly affected their lives. The article titled, "TV Ratings: NBC's "This is Us" and Fox's "The Residents" Lead Tuesday Night" written by Monica Zorrilla and published by Variety, portrays that this TV show's main target audience is the 18-49 demographic. And I also know this to be true because my parents and all of my friend's parents tend to watch this show, HAHA!

Now that we know a lot about our genre and target audience, we can move on to researching production techniques, as well as beginning to plan our storyboard!!

The fun awaits, see you next time!!

Natalia Ballinas

Research Links:

https://variety.com/2021/tv/ratings/tv-ratings-nbcs-this-is-us-and-foxs-the-resident-lead-tuesday-night-1234884831/#:~:text=A%20new%2C%20sixth%20episode%20of,a%20not%2Dso%20uplifting%20time.

https://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/952-drama/

Week Two: Plot and Representation

Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog! Today's blog is a lot of fun because you are going to be getting an awesome look into our film opening plot! If you read my last blog, you saw how I explained a little bit of our idea. However, after getting feedback from outside sources, we (my partner and I) now have a clear picture of our film opening and we could not be more excited!!!

So we talked to our teacher (Ms.Stoklosa) about our plot idea and genre. I know I said in the last blog that it was going to be a scary/mysterious genre, but after looking into it our genre is going to be tragedy drama but it still has that suspenseful appeal that scary/mysterious genres evoke. OK, enough talking let's talk about the IDEAA!!

Our plot is going to begin with a female character (about 8-10 years old), going inside her house after coming from school (we know this because she has a backpack on her). As she enters her house, she sees a quick view of her parents arguing and zooms into her room and slams the door (parents arguing sounds are muffled). Then, the camera highlights the fidgeting of her hands (anxiety, man vs self-conflict). The female character grows older (about 14-15 years old), and she becomes darker as characterized by the difference in bedroom props, the lighting, and other factors. The character enters yet another older stage (about 18-19 years old) when she can finally move out of her house. Similar to before, the character's style is even darker, as characterized by her clothing, props, lighting, etc. This quick glimpse of her childhood will take up about 1 minute and show a little bit of the character's past to understand her now. The second minute of the video will include the character circling a date in her calendar (symbolizes that the date has come), and will show the character packing up her things to leave (packs up clothing, valuable items). Then, it will show her exiting her house without saying goodbye to anyone (shows a quick glimpse of her POV shot looking at her mom or dad drunk in the kitchen), then turning away towards the door. The character will leave her house and get into an old rusty car that has two of her similar friends (dark, damaged). The video ends with the character looking back towards her house, then looking away as to say goodbye forever, and a shot of the weapons, drugs, and other bad things on the character's lap and in the car. 

OK, that was a lot, BUT I'm sure you are all just as excited as I am for the production of thissss!!!

Let's talk about our revision process because if you read my last blog, you sure know that our plot is quite different. 

So after talking to our teacher, she made us realize that having only a glimpse of the character as she grows older for the full 2 minutes will be too much like a montage. She recommended having one minute of that part, and one minute of what will happen next, helping shift the video into the actual film plot. Additionally, she made us realize that getting that large cast will be quite hard, so we decided to change it to a primary female character as that is more available to us. This is actually a very good thing as it will also highlight female representation in what typically has a primary male character. This will open the target audience towards a wider range, and appeal to modern representation trends.

What are the modern representation trends you might ask?? According to the article titled, "Female Representation in Filmmaking Inches Upward," written by Rande Price and published by Digital Context Next, women in the top 250 films increased from 21% to 23%. Although it is a small percentage, women are making progress slowly, and audiences want to see more films that play a primary woman role as the main character, not appealing to traditional gender roles. This is increasing as women's rights worldwide are being advocated in our current times, such as campaigns like Equal Play Equal Pay and women marches. Having this representation will reach modern trends of representation, helping appeal to what viewers want to see in the present time.

Well, that's it for now folks, stay tuned to learn more about our genre choice, genre characteristics, and specific target audience!

Research links:

https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2021/01/11/female-representation-in-filmmaking-inches-upwards/

Week Two- Researching Important Elements of Film Openings and Diving Into Our Genre Ideas!

First off, I want to begin by making it clear that I decided to work with only one other person. I know that I had said previously that I was going to work with 3 other people, but after talking to past students that completed this project, I decided to only work with one person per their recommendations. 

Now let's dive into the research and ideas! After watching several examples in class and learning more about film openings through the article titled, "How To Create Powerful Openings Shots-It's Easier Than You Think" by Kelsea Davis, published by StudioBinder, I learned more about how you can use specific angles and cuts to portray what the conflict is (man vs self, man vs nature, etc.). For example, in the opening shot of Silver Linings Playbook, the shot that opens up the video is zooming in towards the character's head as his back is turned away from the screen, helping elaborate how the conflict within the story is inside the character's head (man vs self). After analyzing this, we have decided that we are going to approach our film opening video by starting it off with a cut that helps to symbolize the conflict in the story. Let's talk about our genre idea and then we can come back to this point. 

The IDEA: For our video, we are thinking of picking a scary/mysterious genre. Back in last semester, my partner and I loved creating a foley project that was based on this genre. We found great enjoyment and success in this, so we think that we can find similar fun in creating this project through that genre. Our idea for our video is that the conflict is going to be man vs self, and it is going to be based on a man who is a criminal due to his childhood experiences. In this way, we want our film to create awareness of the importance of having a healthy childhood, and the need for proper therapy if you do not in order to increase mental health and decrease violence. Adding on to our research and the example of the Silver Lining, we are thinking of starting off the film's opening video with a shot of the main character's fidgeting of fingers as his parents are arguing in another room (sound in the distance). The shot is focused on his fingers to elaborate on how the conflict within the story is the character's built-up anxiety. The character is going to start as a young child, and then there are going to be inserted clips of him in the same situation as he grows older and the years pass. However, as the years pass his anxiety slowly starts shifting from ticks and into violence. This helps to portray how his situation in his household was consistent throughout his childhood and portrays the changes in his behavior, further describing the internal conflict in the film. The film's opening video will end as the main character grows into an adult and leaves his household (to become a criminal). 

I watched an example posted on our canvas module titled, "Barely Legal," and I liked how the creator included several shots in her video about certain things in the room that helped build the character's style. For example, here are some screenshots of the creative shots she included:

Similarly, because my video is going to be man vs self (same as Barely Legal), I think that including shots similar to these that highlight the changes of decorations in the main character's bedroom as the years go on and the main character grows more miserable, will highlight perfectly the changes of the character as he grows older and turns his anxiety into anger and violence. For example, when the film starts it will be a rather empty, dry, little boy bedroom, but slowly will turn darker with certain appeals like he hangs posters that are bloody and dark, etc. 

Well, that's it for today, now we are going to dive into getting our actors, get an even clearer picture of what our plot looks like, and continue to research!!! Woohoo, let's do this thing!!

Research Links:

Article: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-create-powerful-opening-shots-its-easier-than-you-think/

Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TXVqFT7mN0kIwx56rJsxE3gPP0CyEtL2/view

Week One Blog Post- Transitioning to Portfolio Project!

Hi there! I am Natalia Ballinas and I invite you to start my journey with me where I will be documenting and describing my process as I create an opening fictional film video (2 minutes long). I am very excited about this project and cannot wait to see how nice my video ends up!

First off, I want to announce that I am going to be working with a group on this project. My group involves 3 other people (4 total), and the reason for this is because I find myself working better when I am collaborating with others. I thought about this choice very deeply, as this is a long project and involves a lot of importance, so this detail would be very important in the success of my project. However, I analyzed and reflected on all the past projects that I have done in this class and similar film classes, and I concluded that I like to obtain ideas from other people that entail a new point of view and perspective, different from mine. This is especially important when creating film videos, as having different ideas and perspectives creates a product that can target a large audience and is credible from all points of views.

Research Research RESEARCH! Before beginning the planning of the storyboard for the video, or any other details, I will begin by researching different types of opening films to then pick a genre for the video. The concept of the video will be very simple, yet have details that create an emotional, touching appeal. I am planning to research Studio Binder's article, "25 Best Opening Scenes in Movies and What Makes Them Great." This will give me a lot of examples of opening film videos, as well as our class's examples from the past. After analyzing some of these examples, we will choose a genre to pick from and begin research from that specific genre.

I will research the target audience, topics that the specific genre focuses on, important details that allows for the message to be transcribed to the audience, and important factors that contribute to the appeal the video wants to give off (ex. color schemes, lighting, costume design, number of cuts, etc.).  After getting this information and taking notes of it, we will begin to plan the storyboard for the film and create deadlines for when we want specific tasks to be due. We plan to have all the research and an idea of our video by the end of the first week. Additionally, by the end of the first week we will have all the deadlines in a shared google doc to keep us properly on track.

Writing this is already making me excited to officially start the project, Yay!

Best Regards,

Natalia Ballinas

Links to research articles:

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/best-opening-scenes-in-movies/

Music Marketing Blog Post 2

 Like all projects, we began our music marketing project by researching the country genre. We mainly researched information that filled out the research chart, but in doing so we became interested in other factors like which social media platform generates which target audience, as we saw that this could help us in developing our project. I am very happy that we took time to research because I think it helped a lot when developing the marketing plan for our artist. After researching, we knew which types of marketing techniques often work to obtain the desired target audience for our genre. For example, we saw that country artists usually have personal events or extra, private groups that help to create a personal relationship with their audience. After seeing that most of the country artists we researched had this in common, we decided to do something similar for our project and set up a pop up event and email subscription. We also chose our artists that we were going to study wisely because we wanted to research country artists that were kind of modern, since our artist is a young country singer. For example, we researched Ashland Craft and Dan+Shay, two country groups/artists that pertain to a slightly younger audience than the typical country target audience. After researching and becoming familiar with our genre, we began to plan our project. 

We divided our planning into two groups, the music video planning and the presentation planning. Before brainstorming and planning out these two sections, we made a google doc that included a deadline chart. This explained when we wanted to finish with what, and greatly helped in organization. For the music video planning, we first brainstormed what we wanted the topic to be. After deciding the topic (and taking into account the country music trends for music videos) we planned out the storyboard by listening to the song and picturing what could go in what place for the whole video to properly make sense. This took quite a bit of time as we wanted to incorporate a lot of techniques that we think would help promote our artist’s style and branding. For example, we wanted to include cuts that transitioned back to the artist singing the song, while a story was taking place at the same time. We thought this would be good because it would promote this new artists’ style through mise-en-scene (costume design, setting, props, etc.). After planning out the music video, we began to brainstorm ideas for our project and plan out who was going to do what. At first, we began the presentation on PowerPoint, but quickly transitioned to Canva as we discovered that Canva had a wider variety of templates that could properly portray our artists’ style through the color scheme. After picking out the templates and figuring out the platform we were going to use, we divided each presentation part into 3 (our 3 group members). Each member had an equal amount of work to do, although some members had a greater load of presentation work than music video work. All in all, we divided the work pretty evenly. Even though each member had its own role/job, we all would check in at times to see if what we were doing made sense and pertained to the country genre trends. Therefore, even though we each had our own jobs, we would set apart some time to collaborate and talk about the project as a whole. 

For the production aspect of our project, we mainly focused on pertaining to the country genre trends that we had researched. Therefore, we focused on creating personal relationships with fans, having social media platforms that pertained to the target audience (ex. Instagram- younger, facebook- older), making our artist’s products accessible, and finally putting it all together to create a well done presentation. Looking back, I think we should have focused more heavily on providing examples of the posts that we were going to include in these social media platforms, as we had examples of all the platforms we were going to distribute our artist but did not have specific examples about the content on these platforms. However, moving along, we also decided to include TikTok, using research that we had discovered in class. Each slide had a small amount of text and some images that would add important detail to our presentation. We also created a website through Wix, as we saw that many country artists had their own website to be easily accessible and add to their credibility. We highly focused on creating an aesthetically pleasing presentation that would match our artists’ style. As per the music video production, after creating our storyboard, we found it very easy to film our video because we knew what was going to be in it. Some filming was done at school and some filming was done at home. After putting all of these clips together, we focused on using our editing techniques to create slow cuts that would match the tempo of our song and the style of our artist. For example, most clips were quite long, with no quick cuts and instead a smooth transition into the next cut. We encountered some trouble when filming because we accidentally made some of the clips vertical instead of horizontal, so we had to re-film some of our clips. However, we figured it out in the end. 

After we finished creating our presentation and music video, we focused on practicing our presenting and reviewing what we had created. Before the due date to turn in the project, we each reviewed each other's parts to make sure that it all made sense and included everything we wanted to have in our presentation/music video. In our original deadline plan, we had included a day for solely practicing on presenting, so we did just that. On the last day we had to work on the project we practiced presenting. We went outside the classroom and each read our parts while someone kept a timer to check if we were not going too fast or too slow. We did this 2 or 3 times, and then we were confident in our presentation. Still, some of us reviewed at our houses before the presentation just to make sure that we had remembered everything correctly. 

Finally, it was time to present. We decided to go first because we wanted to get it over with and had already practiced enough so we felt ready. We rehearsed quickly before presenting began, and focused on presenting what we had practiced. Most slides had very little text so it took a little bit of memorization to remember everything we had to say. 

Our planning guideline: 

Examples of the types of marketing platforms we created for our artist:

Examples of our artists color scheme: