Friday, February 18, 2022

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/

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Film Opening Video

Get Ready.  It's time. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dcF2RGBX0Gozu1MrusZh8dxGkpvUMCcp/view?usp=sharing