Scouting Part 1:

 I'll keep it nice and short but I figured out who can be our actors for the trailers.

The theater kids at our school usually are big with helping people with their films and they recently helped in a short film I was helping with. Male, another friend of ours, was the director of this film and could help us get in touch with them need be. I have their Instagrams too so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. We'd probably need around 3-5 actors. 

MUSIC

 While we are still brainstorming, I do know one important component we must include in our trailer: 

music

Music

MUSIC

Everyone always thinks that visuals are what draw an audience into a story. Even though they do help, it's really the audio components that do this. Imagine watching the UP opening sequence without music. Yeah, you see what's happening, but you'd get bored and not emotionally attached without sound. Same if the same music played over and over again from start to finish. You wouldn't really feel the pain of the wife's death. 

Music makes you emotional and makes you feel something. A trailer example would be for the new TV show, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. As a lover of the books, I had high expectations that needed to be met. Seeing the 1st trailer, with the "Riptide" epic cover as the main score for the trailer, almost brought me to tears of how emotional I got. Same with my friends. 

Basically, the trick is picking the right music that fits perfectly to the story and will resonate with the audiences the best. 

Brainstorming

Tai (my partner) and I are pretty much out of ideas.

However, I was researching genres and I want to do either teenage angst/coming of age or like a thriller. (I'm a Libra X2)

They might seem like completely different ideas but they both pull at people's emotions when a conflict arises. The main conflict to be exact. The trick is to make it relatable to the audience. 

For coming of age/teenage angst I think it's best to go the comedic route. I'm good at dramatic pieces but I can kind of make it into like a parody where their dramatics are almost laughable. One example I found that mostly resembles what I envisioned is the trailer for Good Boys (2019) minus the cursing obvi :) :

I was thinking of making it so a group of high school kids are trying to pull off a heist more or less, and they get into some sticky situations. If tai wants, we could also deal some harsher topics in there and make it more of a coming of age with negative effects(if that made sense) Like The Perks of Being a Wallflower. 

For Thriller I was thinking more action thriller. Like sci-fi almost. It would be challenging to do, yes, but I think with the time allotted to us it could work out. It could be a cool experience. Make it kind of like a Marvel Superhero Trailer, obviously with a way lesser budget. 

Timeline :)

As you can see, I love making lists :)

Organization and time management is a really hard thing to do. So here is my "timeline guideline" to keep my team on track. (hopefully).

 Week One: 

• (That's this past week)
• Decide what I'm doing for my component
• Find a group. 

Week Two:

• Pick the idea for the film
• Research genre of what I'm doing
• Start storyboarding or getting ideas of what shots I'd like to incorporate
• Get ideas of how I want the audience to feel.
• Communicate with my partner
• Solidify idea

Week Three:

• Finish the preplanning stage
• Scout locations and get people willing to be in the project

Week Four:

• Start the production process
• Get needed equipment
• Start social media Page now that everything is solidified
• Film things and if they don't work out we'd still have time to reshoot

Week Five:

• Neither Tai nor I are going to be in the state because we are competing for a national competition. It's called STN and we compete against other high schools in television and film categories. 
• So basically, gather ideas of shots we could do and ask professionals for advice. 

Week Six:

• Finish up filming
• Keep adding to social media page
• Start making graphics

Week Seven:

• Start post-production
• Coloring
• Social media page keep adding
• Syncing audio 
• Create Poster 

Week Eight:

• Continue editing
• Finish poster
• Add finishing touched to the video 
• Start Critical Reflection 

Week Nine:

• Finish up anything that needs to be done. (by this stage we should be done with everything and hopefully have time t double check everything is in place.)

(Confetti cause we're done and we would have done the best we possibly could)

I'm a Libra.

Indecisiveness is in my nature.

I was between the movie trailer component and the short film one, so naturally I tried to see the pros and cons of each one and this is what I found:

Movie Trailer:

Cons:

• Really Long Planning Period.
• You have to create an entire storyline that you can't even show as to not show the plot of the movie. 
• You need to make TWO trailers.
• I can't submit it for anything later. (Like awards and festivals).

Pros:

• I love to make trailers. That's it. (Ever since I was little with the little iMovie trailers and then making trailers for certain TV and Media Studies projects). Like the one I did 2 weeks ago. 
• Watching trailers get me excited.
• I know the general structure of making one. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ehq4JDsQkvaKRrgzalz_bSmbSjNvSX5a/view?usp=sharing

Short Film:

Cons:

• I've never done a short film before.
• I'm not the strongest writer. Don't get me wrong I'm decent, but not the best.

Pros:

• I finally get to do a short film!
• The major I chose in colleges was Film and I've never worked on a film, so this would give me experience before I actually study it.
• I could submit it for film festivals and all that jazz. 
• Get out of my comfort zone. 

In the end I made up my mind for movie trailer. The heart wins! 

I'm Back X2

Hey guys!

Over the past two years, I've posted my music video project, my AS-Level portfolio project, and my documentary. Now it's time for...

Drumroll please...

My A-Level Portfolio Project! 

I'm actually really REALLY excited to start this process. I aim to focus more on time management this time around and to be more creative, not limited to my doubts of what I'm capable of. I don't know which of the four options I am choosing from yet, or whether or not I'm working with a group, but I will figure this out by the end of the week. 

Again thanks for choosing to be a part of this journey! 

Critical Reflection :)

   My documentary project is titled "Cracked Under Pressure” and was directed by Mariana Sanin and I. Our topic, and main idea, was about the negative effects of the American School system on modern day teens. We had two main subjects, Alejandra and Peyton, and their relatives: one’s sister and one’s father. The first subject, Alejandra, moved here from another country and had to adapt to this new system, and Peyton has to do schoolwork on top of busy extracurricular activities. They both struggle at balancing school with other hardships, and they explain their experiences in the documentary.

      As previously stated, we wanted to represent the negative effects of schooling in the U.S. has on students. Mariana and I know that this is an issue we just had to cover. These effects, like stressing out to the point of burn-out and mental health issues, is something that felt close to home in a school of nearly 5,000 diverse students. We have seen people struggle and we wanted to bring awareness as well as explain what is so negative about the way U.S. schools deal with academic pressure. We felt that getting two perspectives on this certain situation pulls in the representation theory as well. You have this girl who is an immigrant, who has been exposed to schooling unlike the one most of us here are used to. She represents Hispanic immigrants, or any immigrants for that matter, whose parents moved here to the U.S. to give their children a better life. She represents the children who feel at a disadvantage because of the language barrier. Peyton, on the other hand, represents all the student athletes out there who barely time have to do homework. They need to rely on and be good at time management, if not they fail. Both girls are extremely different, but the pressures of doing well in school on top of everything is a priority. As it is in American society. It’s become a problem so big that a lot of mental health issues originate from being in school across the nation. Yes, there are some benefits, but in this documentary, we are displaying just the negative effects. By doing this, we as directors also represent bias and companies controlling the media because we controlled and made the documentary as exactly what we wanted people to know. We were not only able to get different representation of different people, but also of a representation of bias and social ideas on schooling.

     The documentary engages with audiences by capturing that human aspect. Our target audience would be middle class teenagers that would have access to this documentary and would be able to relate to things being said in it. Specifically in the 13-18 age group. Instead of using direct interviews, we used indirect ones with lengthy answers that way you could feel the subjects are talking from the depths of their hearts directly to you, an audience member.  Projects usually do better when they feel genuine, because who wants to watch something where they are being lied to right? So why not do the same for our documentary when it concerns our target audience. I also think that the b-roll we used and the use of two subjects instead of one engaged the audience further. It made the piece less monotone and kept people on their toes. It made sure not only one person’s opinion and experiences were shown, but to show the validity of what they are saying. If it applies to two completely different people without ever having met each other, it must be true to some extent. It’s like science after all.

     Of course, we couldn’t start doing a documentary without knowing what one entails and should look like. In class we watched different types of documentaries such as Exit Through the Gift Shop, American Promise, and Abstract. Each one taught me something different about the elements a documentary should have, how narrative works, hoe bias works and how exactly to get an emotional response out of someone. I wanted to take it a step further from just class time and research techniques on my own. I researched what makes the documentaries so personal, apart from what they say, and almost everything led to b-roll. Specifically hand-held shots, so that is what we did. Almost all the b-roll I took of Alejandra doing everyday tasks isn’t steady, it’s all handheld. It is also one among the many common conventions we used. We also used archive footage for b-roll, because even though we could film some on our own, the subjects also talked about things in the past and we wanted the audience to be able to see what they are talking about. For example, Peyton talked about her past experiences and we used pcitires found on her Instagram to show people what she was referring to and to not make the audience disconnect with the story so quickly. Basically, to keep them engaged.

     The genre of this documentary, as researched, would be considered one of six. In this case it would be an expository. This documentary was heavily researched into finding data for the statistics in the beginning and end and finding people that would help us represent what we wanted. It was also made to educate people that teens are struggling in school and the extent academic pressure really goes in these types of schools.