Project Components

Instagram Link: 

https://www.instagram.com/alettertomymomfilm/?next=%2F

@alettertomymomfilm 

Movie Trailers:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EL-xHoFxr3Dtcf5bI_txEhaUAFuXJHPa/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rSB6S96NmWGvCIxpi8RYFDndW9kZJBgD/view?usp=sharing

Posters/Thumbnails:

If it doesn't work, here's a folder with everything:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19Ts91vDdX_sfHSmw9rW6oElKj0QcYMkS?usp=sharing

Here's our final products! Thank you for being a part of this journey, I hope you guys enjoyed!

 Luisa, signing off. 

Critical Reflection

     The hypothetical film A Letter to My Mom, is a film meant to bring awareness to mental issues, depression, and survivor's guilt that happen way too often than people realize. It's supposed to show a realistic approach to these societal problems. The trailers made with this project were meant to convey the emotions and situations these suffering people have. For example, the writing of the letter, the staying in bed, the lack of smiling in the aftermath shots, all contribute to this message. Did you also notice that the shots from later on in the "movie" are also darker than the first few, symbolizing how our protagonist, Liz, sees the world now versus then? The fact we used a 15/16-year-old actress also shows how serious depression is even in kids that aren't even old enough to vote or even drink yet. That is how young a lot of people suffering are. My partner, Tai, and I put our all to try to represent the people suffering that feel as if they have no way out, in the most realistic way possible. We didn't try to sugarcoat anything. We chose to incorporate the ending most people choose to add on to this. Hopefully when people see this, they will see the impact their actions have on others as well as themselves when they go down this road. Maybe they could even see the happiness of what might have been. 

     To add on to the little details we added, the font we used for most of the social media is supposed to mimic a typewriter letter font. Usually, the notes these people leave behind are handwritten. However, I felt like making it one of those journalistic fonts would have made it seem silly in a way, kind of like a middle school, coming of age comedy.  The topic at hand is a very serious and important one, and I felt like the typewriter font just portrayed those elements as well as keeping the essence of a note. It also symbolizes production and pre-production. In the old Hollywood age, people wrote screen writes on typewriters and even now, scripts are in that font. This font contrasts the actual title font to not only make the title and posters pop out from the social media, but also to show the difference from the marketing to the actual movie. Staying on the subject of social media, the color I chose for most of the branding was also thought out. I chose blue to represent not only tears, but also subconsciously tell people how smart she is. This further characterizes the character as well as gives people a feel of what this movie could potentially make them feel. The posters and thumbnails also show simplistic pictures of the relationship between Liz and her best friend. With there being not much else going on in the poster, their relationship is visible and clearly understandable. I feel like the overall branding of the movie when it came to advertising was clear and concise when you think of all the elements that came to play in the making of the social media and posters. Even the trailers fit in with the other components and further create the brand by giving the social media a satisfying "end." The only thing I wish I'd done was collaborate with other "movies" on social media which has proven to gain followers with other projects. 

     The products we made engage with our audiences in a number of ways. The trailers were made with our target audience in mind. In this day and age, Generation Z spend a lot of time on their phone, especially on Tik Tok and Instagram. Spending too much time on these apps leads to short attention spans, and if something isn't connecting to them or not moving fast enough, they will scroll right there and then. Both trailers were meant to be fast paced while also touching the emotion that would connect with anyone who could sympathize with Liz's situation. With the social media, the consistent colors when you look at the Instagram page as a whole, are meant to be pleasing to the average human eye. Subconsciously, these types of pages are the ones who make people stay and make people follow the page. The captions and content on the social media are meant to connect with the language of my generation. The use of emojis and of short captions aren't meant for the audiences of older generations who prefer paragraphs with correct grammar. This goes back to attention spans being and people not being engaged if something isn't "nice and shiny" or short. I also made sure people knew what was going on at all times. I specifically made a post where it answered questions potential followers might have about what the film is and where it may be found. 

     For this specific project I did a lot of research including watching other trailers and stalking the social medias of films such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), Lady Bird (2017), and Eight Grade (2018). All these films have similar premises and some of them were limited releases as well. We followed a lot of the inspiration of each when it came to shot compositions, trailer looks, and trailer structure. I did see however, that all the movies ended on a good note, but that isn't always the case in real life. I think that we challenged convention norms for the teenage angst dramas in the sense that sometimes, in a person's mind, not everything is okay, and we displayed that. It isn't a side character that does the deed, it's the main character. We also challenged conventions by not only having a limited release but also a streaming release. We did this for the best interest of our film, but for a lot of these films it is one or the other, usually never both. 

     Throughout the journey of this project, I learned so much and I have made many mistakes. I ended up learning how to fix these mistakes and how to adapt to several situations. I learned how to do the best for my film and how to interact with my target audience. This project means a lot to me, and I hope it means the same for other people. 

Reshoots!

 So today we had to film some shots we were missing and/or shots that didn't come out great the first time.

I basically followed Lynda, Liz, around school getting shots of everything and her having interactions with others. I even got her with her mom! It is kind of sad this was the last day of filming, but hey it means the final product is almost here. 

Anyways, I got Lynda doing all kinds of things like getting an A+, getting an F, her happy, her sad, etc. I tried to get dynamic shots to show the audience what a dynamic and complex character she is and the intensity and confusion of her feelings. I also got an establishing shot cause gosh we definitely needed one of those. I don't know why but a trailer isn't a trailer without that classic establishing shot. 

(Also FYI, I got the old footage sent to me again so we're good, no need to worry!)

Um...

 So long story short, my footage is missing.

I'm going to have to get Tai to send me the footage again or see if I saved it on another flash drive, because my hard drive decided to malfunction. I don't even know what happened. Like some videos were straight up black frames and some had the red missing footage sign. I guess I'm starting from scratch again... yay...

It's ok though. I've had to edit whole news packages in less than two hours basically every Saturday this school year and I've always turned it in on time. This time I have three days left to finish this trailer, which is not much considering what the other teams had, but I can make it work. I don't have any homework tomorrow night so I can just spend all afternoon editing the trailer. I was also planning on doing a teaser, which might have to be put on the backburner, but I'm still going to try and shoot for. Through problems we problem solve! (hopefully). 

So How Do We Watch?

 Some last-minute changes in the works people!

So, I know I said this film was going to be released as a limited release in theatres. Tai and I were going back and forth whether we wanted to change it to a streaming release on Netflix. After much discussion, we decided to keep it a limited release (that way our hypothetical movie could be nominated for a small Oscar category if good enough) and after a 3-week run, move it to Netflix so people can enjoy and rewatch if they want to. I think with this not being like a huge blockbuster movie the change is significant. If I were an actual director, it would give me the satisfaction of theatrical release but also keeping revenue coming. 

I know that if I've never heard of a movie, I probably won't watch it in theaters because you don't know what you are getting into for such an expensive price. (Like tell me why watching a movie at AMC is $14 dollars a ticket?!?) Putting it on Netflix after allows for people bored on a random Tuesday night to scroll and find it. With it being a movie that is accessible at home, the people themselves could promote it if they like it. For example, people promote a bunch of different mediums on Tik Tok. With Netflix they can easily rewatch to know what they wanna say, they can promote it as "free" if you have Netflix, etc. Speaking of which, having the movie on streaming gives for the illusion that it was free. If you don't like it at the end of the day, if you spent money on it you're going to fell more contempt that you wasted money on it. Basically, what I'm trying to say, is that it would be beneficial on both ends, viewers and crew. 

Last Group meeting :(

 And the time has come for our last meeting of the year. Yikes that's scary. 

A lot of great feedback was given, and I thought I'd share the last thoughts of my peers that will influence our project. So basically, as you guys know we switched the plot of the story around to include Liz's best friend more and honestly visually get rid of the mom character all together. We were going to assume she was a big influence in her life, because it's her mom. But the group didn't really like this idea. They think that since the title is "A Letter to My Mom" to include the mom character a bit more just to establish the depth of their relationship. Basically, to show just how much more meaningful the note is. I was thinking of having me play the mother, but honestly, it's just easier to have Lynda's mom play the role, especially now that she doesn't have to pretend to get in a crash, which I know she'd be unwilling to do. Maybe a shot of them hugging or talking here and there. 

I also had questions on where we should be on the social media aspect. Let's just say, I am more behind than I thought, but stories count as posts apparently, so get ready to see a lot of that. I'm going to have to post multiple things a day, and since we don't have professional interviews, and little time left till the deadline, we're going to have to treat it more as a short film social media rather than a full-length movie. I know this isn't usually done, but it gives the little homey feeling that limited releases usually have. It shows it's not a blockbuster and it's indie in a sense. 

Lastly as you know (Well I knew but I don't think I ever mentioned it on here) that Tai and I split our work up to make it as efficient as possible. We each work on one trailer, I'm in charge of the social media and Tai creates the posters. We each still help each other out with our stuff, and we talk out our plans, but if we don't have assigned roles, we'd most likely not get anything done assuming the other person had already taken care of it. 

But yeah, the countdown has started. T -8 days.

Posts!

 Ok yes. I know I've been lacking with social media posts; however, I can explain.

Before filming, we didn't have much content to go off of. All I could post was literally the title and... nope that's it.  Now that we had at least one day of filming and we have our cast selected, I can post so much more. I haven't posted in the last week because I was in Chicago, and I honestly didn't have time to do much. However, I have already posted the meet the cast posts and I will be posting a BTS post and Insta story later today. It is important to show the process of our short film because considering that we aren't actually making a film, it all stops once the trailers and poster are out. That's because well, the next step would be the film. 

 

Once I post the BTS stuff, I plan on posting things that the audience can interact with, like facts about the characters and little teaser pictures with the caption "coming soon" and the little eye emojis. I want the essence to be dramatic yet, not too dramatic that people know what is going on until the trailers. I also added a bio that states what the account is and the release dates. I've seen many movie accounts do this, so I just wanted to make it as professional as possible.