Week 4 post 3

    My team and I went back to the drawing board and discussed some new ideas. Before finalizing anything we wanted to throw new ideas on the table, that way we are sure about what we want to do. We saw it would be pretty good to mix in, the illegal substance issues into our film. As a teenager, this is something you see around you more than you would expect. We feel that this is an important factor to bring to light which might help our film. The substance aspect works in our film for a couple of reasons.

    The first is that it simplifies the concept of our film. This makes it easier for our audience to understand the concept. Our idea right now would be character versus self but adding a substance aspect opens the door to having a character versus character problem. Since the party, our character is going to is know we can add a character that could be an undercover cop. This cop blends in with the kids at the party and is on the lookout for illegal substances. This could be the horror part of our film, we can make it as thrilling as possible by having the main character get mixed up in a substance. The character can view the substance as a way to get out of his problems and mental battles. This substance problem could show the audience how the actions the character is taking aren't good ones.

    This new idea could also help create comedy. By showcasing our character under the influence, embarrassing things could happen. Our characters could be doing things that have no correlation with each other that could create humor. We could add a twist which is that the undercover cop doesn't suspect that our character has done anything because our character is known for being a "goodie goodie". This could lead to even more humorous moments in the film opening.

    Although this idea could be a good twist and add more to the film it is still fresh. We would have to talk it over more and ask other people for their thoughts. My group wants to make sure that using this substance problem won't offend anyone or won't break any rules. The idea still needs more development but it does seem appealing. At the end of the day, we want to make a film the engages the audience and shows our skill and what my group is capable of and my team will choose the best option to accomplish this goal. 

Week 4 post 2

    One big aspect that my group and I are starting to go more in-depth about is our main character. We want our main character to be a teenage boy since it's something that we can relate to. Our main character also has some mental problems that he suffers some. The mental problems, as stated before, are a big part of the film's premise. Our group wants to continue building our character's image and how the people around our character interact with him. we can use this to our advantage in order to foreshadow our character's difficulties with social interactions. This engages the audience further and creates purpose in our film. My group wants to make sure that our character is as likable as possible. We want the audience to feel a connection with our character, and we can do this in several ways.

     First, we can make sure that our character is relatable to teens. We have talked to several students and teenagers in high school about social problems and how they react to them, these talks give us ideas and inspirations not only for our character but for situations that we can put our character through. Through more discussions with teens, we can make our film opening as accurate as possible which leads to better development of our genres. Making our film-accurate will lead to a relationship between the characters and the audience. This relationship is a way of hooking our audience and promising them a good film with just our film opening. 

    Apart from relatability, we can also make our character as likable as possible through the comedic aspect of our film. By providing humor due to the unfortunate situations our characters have been through the audience will build a soft spot for our character. My group and I can use this soft spot to our advantage by once again streangtheni9njg the relationship between our audience and characters. Overall my group and I still have a lot of ideas to create our character as likable as possible. The topic of characters seems like a topic that we will further discuss in the near future.

Week 4 post 1

    At the ending of last week, there were some group critiques that were given to my group. We decided it would be best to go over and review these critiques. The critiques went over several things some including the ideas that we have had and we have been wanting to implement into our film. First, we went over our genre. We explained our ideas for the comedy/ horror film opening. The feedback on the genre was positive. We also found out that some of the other groups were doing horror. The difference is that the other groups were not doing a comedic aspect, and they had their main problem as Character versus character. Our film will be character versus self which makes it more unique. We described a couple of ideas that we had such as the characters and inspiration from other films. 

    After my group finished explaining our ideas we listened to feedback. most of the feedback was positive but there were definitely some good tips that were given to us. One of the tips was for the setting of the opening. The setting of the opening would be a beach event that the high schoolers go to. The feedback from this opening was good but they told us to make sure we represent the reason for the highschoolers to be meeting up at a beach. We have to make sure to do this well, this way the audience doesn't get confused and mixed up on the events that are occurring in our film opening. 

    My group took this into deep consideration and talked it over. We agreed that a good way to represent the beach party plan would be at the beginning of the film. Our character would get a call from his friend inviting him to this plan. this is where the character first starts to panic. This panic is represented throughout the rest of the film. Thus call introduces important several aspects of our film and gives the audience something to look forward to. This beginning would show the skill we gave as a group and how it develops meaning through our film opening.

Week 3 post 4

    My group and I looked into the narrating aspect of our film. In order to portray the mental battle have talked about several ideas but haven't decided on the best one. After some feedback from classmates, we looked deeper into the narrating aspect of our film. our classmate's feedback helped us tremendously and gave us two great ideas for our film. The first idea we could look at is just the plain and simple narration from the point of the mental battle of view. This could help us in several ways. the first is that he could naturally introduce not only the main character but the villain. In this case, the villain is the anxiety and shyness that our character suffers from. The narration could also dive deeper into what our main characters thinking. This could help us create both humor and horror. The narration, good shot, and editing could help us create a sinister feel to the film, this feeling could quickly translate to humor due to the narrations flexibility. Narrating is a strong option that could help us express the genre to its fullest.

    The second way to show the villain could through a camera technique such ad a pan into the villain. By this, we mean that the villain would visually be in the opening. Giving the villain a phase in our film opening could help us for two main reasons. One recent that this could help us is that he gives the audience an easier way to keep track of the villain's thoughts. Giving the villain a face can help create horror and help the audience understand the film better. The second way this helps us is that it helps us show our editing and shot-creating technique. Our group has a goal of making this film opening a professional as possible. This could be a great way to prove our group's professionality.

    My group and I still have a lot to go over when it comes to the narration and villain side of our film. So far even though the second option is great, I believe that the first option could help benefit the film opening the most. In my opinion, if we use the first method he could help the audience understand the premise of our film from the beginning. I also feel that the transitions between horror and comedy could be a lot smoother with the first option. instead of having to keep cutting back and forth between shots, we can just have more in the least amount of time possible. With that being said, we could get enough information for our audience that would keep them interested in our film. We can also reach our goals of professionalism with our first choice because of the shots and dialogue we can create from the narration. 

Week 3 post 3

    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.

Week 3 post 2

    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.

Week 3 post 1

    My group and I started looking deeper into the ideas we had mentioned earlier in our discussions. We specifically talked more about Character versus self and how we want to start the film. We feel like character versus self would work best because we can match it up with the struggles of a highschooler. As a high schooler, there are a lot of mental battles that we have to deal with and this can be shown through our film. We can incorporate events and problems that have happened to us. These events could be shown in two views, first is our character's thoughts and how they might create anxiety or doubt in our character's mind. We can do this through voice-overs or through another character who represents our main character's thoughts. The character that represents our main character's thoughts can be played similar to the "Hormone Monsters" in the popular Netflix show "Big Mouth". In this show, we can see how different monsters affect the action that the character takes. For instance, there is a character called "Tito" the anxiety mosquito that is the cause for the characters' anxiety attacks. We can do something similar to this but instead of it being a mosquito we can make it a different character.

    With this representation of personal problems through character, we can create the horror aspect of the film. We let the audience panic at what the character might do. This panic leads to comedic relief when instead of something terrible happening, something funny happened. The character can go through embarrassing situations that lead to humor but the problems inside his mind lead to horror and fear. these two-sided experiences leave the audience engaged in the film. We believe this idea can lead to a great film opening. The techniques used such as camera work can create suspense, this suspense can be further exploited through editing. The scenery can also be used to our advantage by making the main character fear things that he makes up. The sounds that we can use can develop both suspense or comedic relief. By using upbeat sounds to create irony and then using sinister and dark-themed sounds which create suspense will help us show technique and prove how elaborated our film is.