Thanks for watching my journey, this is the final version of my music film opening!
YouTube link:
Thanks for watching my journey, this is the final version of my music film opening!
YouTube link:
Now That the process is almost over I can take a look back and truly reflect on what went down. During my creative critical reflection, I can look over many of the problems that rose and my stages of thinking, planning, and learning as I developed my film. I enjoy looking back at the process and see how far I have developed the idea with my group. It is exciting to look back at what I thought my problems would be and how I planned for them in the future. I also liked my aspirations and goals I made for the project, this helped tackle many problems that were to come.
The process from finding the right group members to the reviewing was very well executed, even with the problems that were thrown at us. Generating ideas came easy but it seemed that keeping them was the hard part as we had to adapt due to different circumstances. My group looked over many different techniques that could be implemented such as narrating, settings and clothing. We made good choices that lead us to the finished product. Even though the changes in ideas, we kept a similar setting to the one we offered at the beginning of our process. one thing that did change constantly was the debate on the sounds we wanted to add and the dialogue. We think that the dialogue was perfect because it worked with the total feel of the opening. Many aspects of our film changed but we were able to keep the same base throughout the journey.
This experience developed my ideas very well which helped the film opening look great. Teamwork was very important and keeping the same ideas for the film between the whole group was crucial. We were able to pull this off which helped greatly and the film looks great. Although the film is not done the CCR is and it will be linked down below. Final film opening coming soon!
Drive link for CCR:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zdXPshPJE9RYJbF3XXA2s2UQ3Y75TM6s/view?usp=drivesdk
Yout Tube LInk for CCR:
The editing process has been going great. We don't want to call it a finished product because we are reviewing it carefully. As we have done before we always review and make sure that everything is on point before we end the process. The researching of different genres was crucial in order to figure out many things in the editing. This helped us focus on what was best for the genre we wanted to focus on. The filming aspect and organization of our film were very useful in order to make the editing as clean as possible. We don't want any misconceptions in our film so we made sure to focus on the continuity of our film and editing.
After we were set on the drastic change in our film we kept the same script and stories. Throughout the process of preparation, we switched our ideas a lot but kept the same core of our film opening. sticking and adapting to challenges thrown at us was absolutely crucial. We were able to do this through great teamwork and organization. After several discussions, we believe we were able to make the right choices.]
Overall, we still have work to do before the project is over. This includes more reviews and discussions, but for these new discussions, we can use the past ones as a precedent to make the right calls in the future. Most of our changes towards the end were made because of the last-minute COVID-related accident that one of our group members had. Even with this, we were able to overcome adapt and manage. We are excited to finish our project and showcase our skills.
After filming the base shots of our opening we are moving into the next phase. After the beginning of the film, we moved onto the next scene. This scene is where we show most of our skill and ability that we have learned through the year. We wanted to show the difference between what our character thinks is happening and what is truly occurring. We did this by switching between our character suffering and crawling on the floor to our character walking. This confusion can be used to our advantage to keep the audience engaged in our film.
My group wants to extend the audience's engagement in our film so we decided it would be best if we made a sort of "cliff-hanging" clip. In order to do this, we used another actor to pick up the substance that the past actor dropped off. This gets the audience thinking "what happened to the substance". Taking the shots we had to make sure the quality was top notch. For this, we had to take multiple clips from different angles and combine them to make them look as good as possible. For the ending shots, we followed our character back to his car. This builds suspense because the audience may think that something bad might happen. This is where we end the opening scene.
We started the filming process. We chose to meet up around one pm in order to have the right lighting for our film. We passed by several different filming spots that had great potential. We had to make sure that the spots weren't noisy and we could film there with minimal to no interruptions. We found a beautiful trail that we have seen before. These trails looked like the perfect place to make our film opening. The place was very open but restricted which gave it the perfect sketchiness for our film. There were several ways we could have shown the scenery. We decided to show it with a shot of our character's feet walking and then an "over the shoulder" shot of the scenery.
Next, we had to introduce the second character. We tried to make our character look as sketchy as possible by having him under a tree in the middle of the trails. The encounter between both characters has to seem somewhat natural but confrontational. We wanted as minimal dialogue as possible so the scene seems very lowkey and sketchy. It took many shots to get this right so the enditing can look as clean as possible. We took many scenes until we got the right ones that we wanted. When we were satisfied with the shots they were taken we went onto the next scene.
Finally, it's the walk back to the car. With this walk right after our character took what was given to him we knew what scene we wanted to implement. We were going to use inspiration from a scene used in "The Wolf of Wall Street." The scene with the character crawling and using any means necessary to get to his car. We used this but implemented another aspect. Whenever the camera passed by a tree our character would switch from reality to what he thinks reality is. We wanted to focus on these scenes first and then we will edit and add new ones later on.
Now that we have worked on the screenplay my group and I want to focus on the storyboard for the shots we want to take. The storyboard is another way of making our shots come to life and helping the organization of the group as a whole. My group and I first talked about whether we want to hand draw and write our storyboard or we want to make it digital. Digital may make the drawings clear and have a nice format. On the other hand, the drawing may help us make our ideas more specific and it would be physically with us instead of a file on a computer.
My group discussed this in greater detail. The digital option would make it easier for us to work together because we can just send the file to each other. The physical hand-drawn version would require decent drawing techniques that allow us all to understand what is going on. Although we can meet up and work together on the storyboard it takes much more preparation and coordination. We are capable of this type of preparation but we think it would be most efficient if we work on it over a call on a document everyone could see. Due to this, we chose to do it digitally because it would be most efficient.
When we decided that digital storyboarding would be the best option the only thing left was to find the best app for storyboarding online. We looked over several apps but came to the final conclusion that "Canva" was the best option to use. Canva has a large variety of templates and allows us to put our own twist into our project which allows it to be unique. Working on the storyboard has been challenging but we wanted to make it as professional as possible. Overall, we are excited to use our storyboard to our advantage and truly show our skill and attention to detail in our film.
We have begun the writing of the screenplay and gone over several key points that we want to add. We want the screenplay to be able to show what our characters are like and how they react to situations. This is very important because it can showcase The screenplay that can show our technique through the reactions and events that occur in our opening. The script in our film will be able to show the detail and work that my group and I are putting towards this project. Through engagement strategies that seem natural and the comments that provide humor our script is important. The screenplay can set a foundation and provide a lot for a film opening. The details of where the film is or what's going on can lead the audience through the film.
We want to make sure we include different factors such as fade-ins, scene headings, character appearances, transitions, dialogs, extensions, intercuts, and more. Being able to really make a correct helps us become organized, therefore helping our film opening. We are still struggling to figure out what our best options are to complete the screenplay. There are a few details that we have to go over. These include the types of shots we want to use and some small details on the dialogue. We may have to adapt the movie depending on what is said in the screenplay so it is crucial to have a complete screenplay done before we start shooting our video.
Naturally, we might have to adapt our actual opening depending on how it goes during shot taking but we always want to make sure to keep a strong screenplay. We reviewed a couple of screenplay software that could help us make our screenplay professional. Some of the ones we went over were Dramatica Pro, Save The Cat!, final draft, and more. We ended up choosing one that we were comfortable with. We feel confident with our screenplay but still, have lots to work on.
After yesterday we noticed that there were ideas that are up for discussion. We did our best to update our story and make it as profound, clear, and thorough as possible. The story we had before was about a teen who gets called to go to a beach party where there are a lot of people which gives him social anxiety and makes him take an illegal substance, this substance would create humor and scary situations. There is a lot we have changed from that story and we changed them for good reasons. The story we have now is as follows, The boy gets a text from the "popular kids" at school asking him to hang out at a park, when the boy goes he is very unconfident. His social anxiety and the desire to fit in get the best of him and decide to use one of the illegal substances that the kids provide him. This leads to our character getting scared by things that the substance makes up in his head. This creates a villain which he tries to run away from or fight and which creates humorous scenes through the popular kid's point of view because of how dumb our character looks. Just like before, this story is not completely set in stone and there are some details that we want to work on. Naturally, we will be adjusting the film's details as we go in order to make sure that everything works together.
We came to the conclusion that this is the best story for several reasons. First, the updated version provides efficiency in our storytelling. Seeming that we have to introduce a whole film in 2 minutes this is the best approach that we can use to accomplish that. Next is safety, in our old film we were planning on doing a sort of fake party. Due to the current COVID-19 restrictions, we really can't do this because we don't want to have many people together without masks. My group and I also feel that we can express the character versus character story better if it is done in a smaller group of people.
This switch of story openings allows us to display our technique. With a beautiful enviroment that we can use to our advantage, editing, and camera work this film has great potential. We want to be able to showcase a high tier of film understanding. This switch will allow us to do just that. Overall this switch is a huge positive, but we still have to be able to adapt to any problems that is thrown at us.
My group and I also discussed the horror aspect of the film. We noticed that since we only have 2 minutes it will be challenging to implement a new character such as a cop that is on the lookout for kids using substances underaged. This is still something that we aren't too sure about and we will discuss further in-depth later on. Another topic that rose to the question was the voice-over aspect. We noticed that with the right camera shots and editing we might not have to use a voice-over in our film. The downside of not having this voice-over is that we might confuse the audience, which would make it hard for them to keep up with what is going on in our film. We decided to look this over with different scenes, this way we can be confident that we made the right decision.
Over the ideas we analyzed, one struck out the most: the idea to use the substance as an excape. Acknowledging, that this isn't the right answer to life's hard moments our character decides to do this. This is a great way to cause paranoia in our audience. This can also cause funny moments because we can show our character doing funny things. This is an idea that we really want to stick with, but now we really have to build the rest of the film opening around it. After today we noticed that many ideas are up for discussion and we have to make sure we make the right decisions.
One important factor my group and I need to analyze is the type of comedy that we want to add to our film opening. Comedy can be broken into different types of subgenres. Since comedy can be very subjective my group has to make objective jokes so that the audience as a whole can understand it. Some subgenres are "black comedy"(making the audience feel uncomfortable and drawing laughter through controversial, "taboo", subjects). The next is "Burlesque" (sexual jokes), "Romantic comedy" (set on a love story), "Satire" (sophisticated humor), "slapstick" (physical pain), "Political Comedy", "screwball comedy" (ridiculous characters), "Farce" (Improbable plot), "Musical comedy", and "Parody" (making fun of an original film).
Although we have many to choose from we have to find genes that best adapt to our film ideas. Off the bat, we can take a few comedy options out due to their subjectiveness. The first we can take out is "Burlesque" this genre wouldn't fit well into our film and could seem more inappropriate and uncomfortable than funny. This can lead us to the "Black comedy" debate, although black comedy has similar subjective aspects to Burlesque, we can add uncomfortable situations due to the horror aspect of our film. We can manage to turn a scary situation into one that creates humor and engages the audience. next we can look at "Satire", this type of humor wouldn't work in our film because it could be confusing to some in the audince due to the level of understanding they may need. Next is "romantic comedy" there are some aspects of this type of comedy that we can use but we wouldn't truly follow its strict guidelines. Since our opening is about a teenager we can definitely create some awkward interactions in romantic situations. "Slapstick" would be a type of comedy we would definitely use. The horror aspect of the film can play into this very well. Due to the problem, our character faces we can put him in unfortunate situations that may cause physical pain. Screwball wouldn't entirely work because none of our characters are crazy but we could try to implement a character like that can create this humor. Political comedy, parody, and Musical comedy both wouldn't work because of their subjectiveness. On the other hand, Farce could work and would compliment audience engagement because they wouldn't know what to expect next. Overall we can continue to look at new forms of comedy and truly see what works and what we could implement.
My group and I dove deeper into the settings and environment aspect of our film. The film would be ideal to do it in a school because it is about teens and a big part of their lives in school. Unfortunately, due to safety and health precautions, we have to find a new environment to film the scenes. Since we don't have coronavirus in our film opening we have to make it seem like it doesn't exist therefore we need an environment in which we can film without any health risks. We looked at a couple of places and one that caught our eye was the beach. We can make the film opening as a highschool beach gathering. This will work well due to the structure that we have laid out for our film opening. We can use the environment to our advantage in order to represent the problem of character versus South better through the conscious mental battles that our main character goes through. Since we want to incorporate part of the ending into the beginning of our opening in order to promote audience engagement weekend show a different setting at the beginning and then transfer to the beach setting later in the film opening.
The layout would be as follows first we would be opening with the character having a breakdown in a random room at a high school after party. After that, we can represent the mentals health side through the narrator and we can transition over to the main character's house where he gets a call from a friend asking him if he's going to the beach party. With some hesitation, the main character gets ready and goes to the beach. When he gets to the beach several things happen first is the mental side of the film. This is where we see the character battling some mental problems that have to do with social anxiety and being shy. This is where we can use our editing and shot-taking techniques in order to portray a horror or scary side of our film. The audience can relate to this since it is something that may happen to teens and that it has happened worldwide. The second side we can look at is the external impact that this mental battle has the mental battle leads to unfortunate situations that could cause humor in our film. The humor can come from the dialogue or awkward situations that the characters placed in which would lead to a back and forth with his mental side. throughout the beach party, the kids are invited to an after-party which is what would lead us back to the beginning clip. This beach environment would be a great help in our film and would serve as a great way to portray our genre.
After looking deeper into the idea of character versus self we dove deeper into another idea that interested us. My group wants to start the film with one of the classic quotes "You are probably wondering how I got here" while showing a clip from further into the movie. This Strategy will promise the audience that the movie is going somewhere different and unique and it is making the audience look for an answer throughout the film. This idea also fits in very well with the character versus self problem because he is still battling with his thoughts and asking how he got there. We also want to use the situation to create humor and sort of a what?! moment. The "how did I get here moment" might be the teen battling himself with a very sinister vibe to the shots and techniques. We can try to show anxiety and heavy breathing and showing an internal freakout. This can be done through different editing techniques and camera shots.
We want to make sure that there is an important twist of uniqueness to our scene by providing a voice-over and narration from the same person that is acting as the main character. The narrating is something we have looked into. We feel like the narrating can give a different feel to our opening and can help us with some of the different comedic aspects of the film. The narrating could be very useful because it may get hard to understand both the internal and external aspects of the film. We can manage to guide our listeners better with a narration.
Another important aspect of narration is that it can fit very well with the scary aspect of our film. The voice we use can be edited to provide a certain feeling. Paired up with the right music, the narration can provide a scary look into the film opening. This voice-over idea is new but it is definitely something we are interested in trying to see if it could work out. Since that voice-over is a pretty new idea we still have some downsides that we need to clear up. The first would be finding the right Character that could act and do the narrations, the next problem is if we should keep the narrations just at the beginning or throughout the whole film opening and one last problem is if the narration would truly fit in well. These topics are something that I am looking to further discuss with my group in order to see how we can make the most professional film opening.
Thanks for watching my journey, this is the final version of my music film opening! YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5_hKAWVZ...