Our story, but for real!

Im back again! This time i wanted to bring in the real story of Essena O’Neill that relates to our film opening plot. In case you haven’t read my previous posts, my film opening for my aice media studies class is going to be based around a online model and her toxic relationship with social media. This isn’t a crazy out of this world idea, here is it happening for real (Article) the model that speaks out against how people can become obsessed and absorbed in social media said “Without realizing, I’ve spent the majority of my teenage life succumbing to social media addiction, social approval, social status, and my physical appearance,” O’Neill wrote in an October 27th Instagram post. “Social media, especially how I used it, isn’t real. It’s a system based on social approval, likes, validation in views, success in followers. It’s perfectly orchestrated self-absorbed judgment.” This is perfect for how we want to present our story and we can continue to look at this her story as a reference.

Back to the beginning

Big updates on the opening! My group has collectively decided that we will stray away from our current film opening dealing with a schizophrenic character. We have come to this decision after getting outsider opinions and realizing the difficulty to properly convey the message while having correct representation. We are not at that level yet to stray that far out of our comfort zone but hopefully by the end of the year we are confident enough to take on more ambitious projects! Our revised idea is dealing with the perception of what you present yourself to be to the public and who you actually are. We are going to do this by telling the story of an Instagram model coming to terms with this and realizing the toxic relationship they have with social media.

In our new film opening idea we really want to introduce the character and the characters relationship with social media. Our current idea is that the character is struggling with seeming happy all the time on social media and in her posts. This is much easier to convey than a character dealing with schizophrenia and our new idea is much more relatable with a wider audience. This weekend my group is meeting up to discuss in more detail and I should have some first drafts of our storyboards up soon. We are thankfully still within our scheduled planning period so no corners will have to be cut for us.

Music Permissions

Hello! In this look into our project I want to focus on music! Music for our film is going to be really important in juxtaposing a sense of calm over the intense tone of the video. If we decided to not put in music there would be a lot of super quiet parts that feel.... well awkward to watch. Implementing music masks that awkwardness and will allow the viewer to to continue watching comfortably. Out of what we have found, the best music by far is FTA by Whitney. The problem with this is it is copyrighted music and we will require artist permission to use it in our video. However, with Whitney being a relatively new indie band (Formed in 2015) we are hoping they would be open to giving us permission to use the song in our film opening. Their use of the piano and guitar in the song is perfectly interlaced to create a feeling of homeliness. Have a listen for yourself below.

Plot Update!

With this week coming to a close, I met up with Oliver during lunch today and narrowed down the main plot idea and how we are going to present it. We want our film to be about a characters acceptance and overcoming of their schizophrenia through their art. Schizophrenic art can be really interesting as a lot of the time it has a uncomfortable feeling to it.

Schizophrenic Art

The idea of using art as a coping mechanism isn't an out of this world idea either. One girl, Kate Fenner draws her hallucinations and what her voices tell her to cope with her condition and bring awareness to it. In our film we want to focus a lot on the art as a form of catharsis. Oliver's drawing style would be easily adapted to fit this.

Oliver's Art Portfolio

Our group plans to have the storyboard draft done by the end of this week and then jump right in to wrapping up planning and begin our production. Updates coming soon!

Planning Updates!

Hey again! So between my last blog post and now we have began scheduling our overall proeuction outline. Our story planning is going to have to wait until we all meet up again as in person talks are much better for that type of thing. We wanted to set up a set schedule of what we will be doing on what days until our opening is due on April 5th. Having a set schedule would relieve a lot of stress so we don't have to rush certain parts of the project and can give each section(filming, editing, storyboarding, etc) the best amount of time possible. However, our group comes across a roadblock(hopefully this isn't foreshadowing things to come). Oliver and I both work about 4 days a week at different jobs. Our schedules conflict a lot and we only get our schedules a week in advance so planning a month ahead is difficult. I'm not looking forward to having this talk with my manager so soon after taking a ton of time off for my last project.

I really want to focus on proper planning for this video. In our last big project in AICE Media Studies AS I worked with Oliver and Katherine again on making a music campaign for a new band that we created(Summary of the project here). My biggest takeaway from that project was the importance of planning, for the music campaign our planning was pretty lackluster. This brought about a lot of stress and rush nearing the due date of the project and I do not wish to ever have to go through that again. We are collectively going to keep looking at dates to figure out our schedule and I will write an update on that when I have one.

Film Opening Plot Ideas

In class today my group made a rough outline of our plot for our film opening project. Our current idea is about an artist with schizophrenia. One other idea we discussed was a darker drama about a boy being blackmailed online. However, with the idea being so common and us wanting to take a more lighthearted approach, that idea was scrapped. We were talking about how we did not wanted to have accurate as possible representation and did not want to make people with schizophrenia seem like monsters as a lot of the internet does. We ended up finding a TED talk from someone with schizophrenia that helped us out.

Watching the video helped reinforce that our representation mattered heavily. We are going to continue doing our research on the disorder to narrow down how we can advance the plot. My group member Oliver is going to be talking with his AICE Psychology teacher to find out more info and get reputable sources of information. That is all I have to talk about for now but by my next posting I should hopefully have more information on our production.

Drama Film Openings

Hello! While doing research I on my genre I went out and watched some drama film openings to see how other films of the genre did it. Here are a two of the openings that I watched and my thoughts on them.

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather's opening was brilliant! While watching the opening a few different moments stood out to me. The first shot's lighting showed the mans face in a skeleton like manner. This could be showing that he feels like he is "dead" and all out of options. I really enjoyed this film opening as it perfectly demonstrated the genre of drama by introducing characters in a modern setting dealing with their human emotions and struggles. The opening also gives a good amount of introduction about the characters. The Godfather is shown playing with his cat which shows his inner kindness. He is also shown in a position of power by the mise-en-scene of where he is sitting. 

Moonlight (2016)

In this opening the character and his environment are both introduced. The smooth cinematography shows the characters comfort with the world around him. A lot of the environment is also shown by the man begging for drugs and the small homes with the old cars in the driveways. The environment is shown as a low income neighborhood. The man running along the street as the supporting character says "go get em" also gives a greater idea of where they live. The camera circles a lot giving an idea of the relationships of all the characters. The supporting character is also seen as a drug dealer, furthering the low income neighborhood environment.

Drama Genre Research

For my end of the year project, my group has decided to make a film opening in the drama genre. To begin our planning I have done some research on the genre and here is what I have found.

Films in the drama genre typically focus around the emotional development of realistic characters. Themes in the genre genre revolve around real life issues and problems. Drama films strive to tell a story of human struggle, whether it be against others or against themselves. Some of dramas popular sub genres are period piece, tragedy, romance, and political.

Production Techniques

A lot of the production techniques that are used to deliver an effective message in this genre are based around cinematography and acting. The actors need to be able to deliver their lines believably and seem immersed in the world around them. Use of space is going to be very important during filming for this genre as it can tell the viewers a lot about characters' relationships with things around them. Closeups can also be used to give the viewer a deeper look into the character.

Moonlight (2016)

12 Years A Slave (2013)

Ford V Ferrari (2019)

Finished Campaign!

Hello! Just last week I finished a music marketing campaign that I worked on alongside my 2 group members, Oliver and Katherine. We picked the song "Night Running" by Cage The Elephant. For our project we created a new artist called "Super Cyber-Punk Space Cowboy Band" and an identity around them as a new Alternative/Indie group.

While researching our genre we came to the conclusion that our audience would wall under the 16-25 years old range and target people that would consider themselves hippies or that don't follow the norm based on other bands with the same genre. We followed the trend of using twitter heavily for marketing. During our research we found that 80% of Twitter users are millennial which gives presence for our target audience Cage The Elephant, another Alternate/Indie artist has 9,345 tweets and tweets around 3 times a day. We also found that bands in this genre do not focus as much on the individual and instead focus on the aesthetics and ideas of the group as a whole.

We decided to develop the brand of our artist by following in the footsteps of Cage The Elephant and having a large social media presence. We wanted to market ourselves as a relatable and trendy group that our target audience could feel at home with. We are using twitter as our main social media where we constantly post teasers, Q&A sessions, and interact with fans. Our Instagram will be used as a place where fans could see more of our aesthetics. They are able to see this through promotional pictures and behind the scenes of whats happening currently.  

We also created a website that will be used as our hub for all information. Fans can find our newest videos,songs, more information about us, and even buy merch. Our website includes links to all of our social media so fans can find more of our content as the press of a button. Our band is selling low cost stickers, patches and vinyl of our branding as that type of low cost merch is popular among our target audience.

Throughout the making of the music video I learned how important time management and planning shots are. For the marketing campaign I learned just how important social media is in gaining a wider reach and gaining fans. By using what we learned from our mistakes I'm excited to see how our portfolio project that we are starting soon goes!