Week 6 post 2

    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.

Week 6 post 1

     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. 

     

    

Week 5 Post 4

    Now that we have a clear idea of where we want to film, my group and I can look for specific places where our shots could look the most professional. In the park that we are thinking of filming in, there is a lot of space for many different types of shots that could show great camera technique. The park has a great aesthetic that we could use to our advantage in order to make the shots look as good as possible. There is also great lighting and different types of environments.  

    The image following this paragraph is a trail that can look very scary if it is paired up with the right music and shots. There are a lot of different trials like this one which allows us to give our film a thriller aspect. The trail is also very beautiful and can be used to take talking scenes that represent the genre of our story. Just like this trial, there are many more settings where we can show our film technique. 

    Another great example of the different settings we can use is the one below this paragraph. This place can be the setting where everything starts and our characters have discussions. Then they can be lead to the spooky trails. The uniqueness of this environment can lead to great inspiration for new ideas. Over the course of filming, I'm sure that new inspirations will allow us to make our film even better. 

Week 5 Post 3

    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. 

Week 5 post 2

    My group and I met up and started discussing our ideas once again. We went over what type of film openings we want to make and noticed that there were some key factors we were disagreeing with. The first factor was the setting. As stated before we wanted to make the film as a teenage beach party. Upon rediscussion of this topic, we came to the conclusion that the beach wouldn't really work out. Due to one of my teammate's restrictions the beach wouldn't work. We also noticed that it would make our work more efficient if our setting was somewhere else such as a park. Thankfully, not too far from us, there is a perfect park with a lot of space and different settings inside the park. This park is a lot closer to where we are than the beach so instead of wasting time driving to the beach we could use that time to work on our film. The park also allows us to get more extras for our films which is a huge bonus if we want to keep the party aspect of our film.

    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. 

Week 5 Post 1

    This week we started off by discussing music in our film opening. We discussed starting our film with no music and a long shot of our character getting a call. The only thing you can hear is television or some video games in the background. When the character gets to the beach we want to have a soundtrack that is similar to what kids our age would put. We can do this by finding uncopyrighted music that would fit our film or ask for permission to use the music in our film opening. We would want a beach/party background music soundtrack that lets the audience understand what is going on in the film. We are planning to use background music in different ways. One way we could use background music is by showing the character is comfortable with the situation and then our character can get into a fight with his mind. The music can be blurry and turn to a high pitch sound which creates a scary, sinister feel to the film. When the character snaps out of his mental fight we can continue on with the same music showing the contrast between problems.

    Another way we can implement music is by making it ironic. We have discussed this in the past but it is something that we want to make sure we get right. My team doesn't want to get our audience confused, thinking that we edited the wrong soundtrack on so we want to make sure the irony is felt through the film. We can do this by putting our character in an uncomfortable situation where he is asked to put on a song. This is one of our character's worst nightmares since he isn't the best in social situations he isn't sure what song he puts. Our character debates between songs and end up putting one that is the complete opposite to what the people want to hear. This creates a funny situation due to the rest of the character's reactions to the song. This situation can make the character's problem even worse when he decides to get desperate and try to fit in, which leads to multiple bad decisions. 

    The music we want to use has to be chosen very carefully. It has to fit in very well with our problem and lead to the next seance. I feel like with the right song choices we can make this happen. This can show skill through the process of finding songs we can choose that complement our film very well. Overall, music will be a big aspect of our film and will lead to great scenes. 

Week 4 post 4

    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.