Being Part of A Team

     Hello! Today we're discussing my experience working in a group. Honestly, it has been stressful but good for learning. As I've stated previous for my project I'm a group of 4, 2 girls (me and Jonnele) and 2 boys (Nyles and Jonathan). Personally, working with others hasn't always been the best for me, mainly because I tend to be perfectionist and want things done to my standards. Obviously, in a group everything won't be what I want it to and I have to work with other people. So as I work with my group, I make sure to encourage communication of ideas, thoughts, and feelings. This has worked pretty well as we are able to all hear each other out and find a way to include our thoughts. 

    In the beginning, I think it took us all a while to get serious and really thinking about/working on our project, but eventually me and Jonnele began to come up with ideas and found a plot. After this, slowly my group was coming around in terms of planning how we're going to execute the opener, but it was taking longer then I wanted. There was a period where communication was low and it just felt like we weren't there, so I expressed how I felt and then we all began to work hard on our project. And once we got to filming it was going pretty well, but my group had a slight problem. Though we all originally agreeing on the plot, we started to form how we saw the movie being filmed in different ways. Where I saw close-ups, someone else saw a overhead shot. So to deal with this found references to what we saw for the opener in our head, decided which one contributed better, and filmed both (just incase in editing one looked better in our context). For instance, Jonathan and I were discussing the storyboard and he expressed that he couldn't visualize the montage the way I explained it. So I found a clip from a Barbie Movie which utilized a montage of Barbie getting ready and showed it to him. After that, he saw my vision and while filming worked to make it happen.

Barbie: A Fairy Secret (2011)

"I just love love!"

 Hey guys, today we are going to be talking about rom-coms! For this blog we are going to be discussing the different conventions of rom-coms. A rom-com is a movie of the romantic comedy genre, which usually has upbeat mood and explores the theme of love. There's many different types of rom-com plots such as friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, getting out of a heartbreak, etc.

Now let's talk about the key conventions of rom-coms.

1. Centered around a female character: It is extremely rare (most likely impossible) to find a rom-com that isn't centered around a female character. Rom-coms follow the story from the female's perspective for majority of the time starting the story off by introducing the watcher to her first, using voiceover/imagination scenes solely from her point of view, painting most scenes as feminine, etc. Though the male character does get some scenes from their view, these are usually to add context or layers to the male character and derive a specific opinion from the audience on the character. 

2. Juxtaposition of personalities/social status: One of the key elements of a rom-com is that our main couple has obvious differences. From one person having a lower social status and the other being popular, to one closed off to love and the other inviting of it, and even age gaps which separate (assumed) maturity levels. This is used to make the audience want them together, as there differences make them perfect for each other as well as add to the comedic element of the movie as their dynamic becomes funny to watch. One great example of this is the movie, "The Idea of You". In the movie the female character, Louisa, is extremely optimistic and hyper, while the male character, William, is closed off and cold due to his injury. Throughout the movie we watch Louisa slowly break the wall William has up, while William encourages her to do more in life as she is young and able. 

Me Before You (2011)

3. Close-ups: Close-ups are a vital shot to rom-coms. Due to how close and personal that shot is, it does a perfect job of portraying emotion and immersing the viewer. Close-ups are often used in intimate scenes where the characters are expressing a deep emotion. This could be an expression of love, sadness, heartbreak, etc. Close-ups give us both a characters reaction and response. And further more, close-ups without dialogue create a sense of connection as characters speak to each other solely using their eyes and expressions. 

The Holiday (2006)

4. Socially awkward scenes: One of the biggest contributions to the comedic aspect of a rom-com is having awkward scenes. Whether this be a character tripping and falling, or doing something embarrassing, these scenes help remove any tension in the movie and add a relatable part for the viewers to watch and connect to. Everyone's done something embarrassing before, and rom-coms utilize that to remind the viewer that the characters are people too.

Thank for reading today's blog! I hope after this you watch a rom-com and notice all these conventions and how they contribute to the mood created in the story.

"It's too bright"

 Hey! To day we'll be talking about the different lighting we're using within our project. Our opener is intended to be very positive and uplifting with positive lighting. We used daylight throughout the whole opener, filming earlier within the day to capture the best lighting. This has actually been one of our biggest issues filming as we are constantly running out of daylight. We chose natural lighting to contribute to the upbeat-positive mood that are opener has as this serves as the teenage-dream element within our opener. In order to catch our viewer by surprise to the future events, we filmed the full opener in broad daylight.

We didn't much key light, but there are a few scenes where we utilized the natural light of my room and the light of the vanity mirror to create a key light. We also utilized a camera light to add additional lighting for when the sun is covered by clouds, etc. Honestly, there isn't much we can do about the lighting issue, but film shots with poor lighting and time our filming better.

Thank you for reading!

In the Lab

 Hi readers, today we’re gonna be discussing how my film is handling editing, the software we’re using, what style of editing, and more. For our group, Nyles is going to mainly editing our project as he has the most experience and skill in that department. 

Our editor, Nyles

For the software, he used . For our film there isn’t many special effects that are necessary but effects such as stabilization and color correction in order to give our movie a higher quality. One of the biggest with attempting to edit the opening was dealing with the focus and stability of the shot. As a solution, Nyles found ways to edit around/substitute shots so that the good focused shots are majority.

Our movie has a somewhat fast pace with the switching of shots but the story itself shouldn’t feel rushed or quick. We want to create a movie which you watch a feel like it’s going to become your new favorite comfort movie, which is hard to do if the pace is too fast. 

For our transitions, our opener contains a lot of jump cuts, but there are a few scenes which use fades. But for the majority of our film it’s the cuts which let the story flow and help switch scenery. We used many things like cut-in/away, crossing cutting, graphic matching, and more.

Thank you for reading!

A girl who can’t figure out a title

     Hey! Today we’re going to be looking at my group's title ideas and how we decided our title sequence. Based on our idea of utilizing teen rom-coms as an example and outline, we knew we had to start with a opening montage. So we decided to use close-ups of the main character getting dressed and the details she was putting into her makeup. We included shots of her putting on lip gloss, blush, and mascara. We also made sure our set was well prepped with make-up brushes across the desk she was sitting at and make-up set up in the corner.

    For our actual title, we tested a few names such as All-Star Killer, Maniacal, and The Deranged Dater, but nonetheless settled on All-star killer as it best matched the plot. Next, we had to decide how we wanted to do the title design. For colors we settled on red, black, and white. Red for the blood and the costuming, and black and white as they're staple horror colors. I designed a total of 6 designs each with unique elements which made them different. Some of them were more retro, some more horror, and one teenage-based.

Options 1-6

    We decided on the second one as the majority of my group thought that was the best out of all the choices and liked the knife detail within the dash. Making the titles generally wasn't difficult, but coming up with all the ideas on different ways to make it was hard. I didn't really have a reference so I just played around with different fonts and elements based off of movie titles I've previously seen.

That's it for today! Thanks for reading, see you next time.

BOOM!

 

Today were going to discuss the use of sound within our project as we start editing. Now, personally I haven't added sound as for editing my groups project, I will be providing input and re-adjusting some of our edits, but Nyles will be the main editor and we will all be there to assist. But since I had such a strong input on the plot of the opener, and more experience watching teenage movies, I will be helping with music. We chose to go for more positive and upbeat music, such as pop music.

For the majority of our opener we used diegetic and ambient sound. The non-digetic sounds which we used are just background music and intro music for our montage and to prevent awkward silences between dialogue. 

One specific type of sound we used in a few scenes is asynchronous. We used it once to show our main character, hearing, walking towards, and answering her phone. We did this by first showing her here the phone, turn, and stand up. And then we match-cuting into a different angle of her standing and then sitting down to answer the phone. We used this to change the scene location as we were filming her originally from her sitting at a desk, but wanted to have a change of scenery and move her to the bed. Another time we used asynchronous sound is when she gets stabbed. Instead of visually showing the stabbing, we want to show him lifting the knife up to stab her and then pan the camera up as you hear the stab and her scream.

Life on Set

     Hello readers! Today we will talking about our first day filming for the project. My group chose the date January 10th at 12pm to film. For the location we filmed at my house. After everyone arrived, before we started filming, we all looked over the script and decided what we were going to film first and which specific goals we had for the day. After that we began to set up to film our establishing shot of my house. We used a ladder to get a higher perspective. Filming this shot was pretty easy, our only issue was maintaining a still hand while filming it because some of the shots were coming out shaky. After that while Jonathan took some close-ups around the house, the rest of us worked on making sure our actor was ready and prepared, setting up proper lighting in my room, and making sure all props were in the proper location. 

Once he finished, we all went into my room to film. Our biggest problem at this part was figuring out the lighting and adjusting it to the camera and making the actors shots look normal. Me and Jonathan are both somewhat perfectionist and wanted each shot to look as natural as possible, but that was not what was happening. It is our actors first time in front of a camera so it's understandable why doing certain things were harder/looked awkward but after a few adjustments and demonstrations she understood and we continued shooting. In the end, we were able to complete our opening montage/scene 1. We most likely will have to reshoot a few shots due to minor issues, but for the most part we are good. Bye!

#isupportyou

 Hola, today we’ll be talking about my groups film’s supporting character! In this film the supporting character is the main character’s boyfriend and the antagonist as he ends up killing her in the end. For his character, he’s supposed to be a stereotypical jock/popular kid. He’s cocky, alethic, and worried about 2 things: Football and maintaining his status. But he also has a underlying issue. He’s the town’s new psycho killer obsessed with killing teenage girls. This is the beginning of his spree so by the time he’s introduced into the movie the killings are only rumors being spread that no one is strongly concerned about.

We used the color red within his costume to hint towards the dangerous aspect of his character. His props include a knife and his car which he uses to “pick up” his girlfriend. He honestly isn’t a character which is deeply dove into during the opener as we are attempting to grasp the watcher into his motives and actions.

Thank you for reading today’s blog, can’t wait to see you in the next one on Just A Girl!

goals.

 Hey. For today’s blog I decided to dive into elements which my group pulled inspiration from in our movie. There is numerous elements in media which we can quote for inspiration to our movie but today I wanted to talk about the main ones we looked at.

1. Scream (1996)

This movie was definitely one of our biggest influences in creating the plot for this movie. Though I knew I had wanted to do a teenage dream type of movie, incorporating the thriller genre into it was something that had to be done correctly. One movie we felt did so was Scream. Scream follows Sidney Prescott, a psycho killer’s main target, as she attempts to escape becoming a victim to the town’s new masked serial killer. It’s later revealed that the killer was her boyfriend and her close friend. Her boyfriend wants to kill her because his mom left because his dad had an affair with Sidney’s dad. This movie does a great job utilizing teen-movie elements such as having a main group of friends stand as the main cast, using a party scene, and having a “perfect” couple. 

2. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

Now, this movie doesn’t play a strong role in our plot, but it definitely plays a role in character creation. When coming up with Jonathan’s character, I took inspiration from Peter Kavinsky. In To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lara Jean’s attempts to avoid confrontation after letters she wrote for each boy she’s ever liked are sent out by her sister. She does so by creating a fake relationship with the school jock, Peter Kavinsky. They form a relationship based off of what expectations and image they want to maintain. In the movie, Peter plays “the perfect boyfriend”, always picking up Lara to go on dates/to school, showing signs of affection to her comfort level, and even getting to know her family.

Other then these 2 movies, we took bits and pieces from other teen movies, like bring it on and mean girls, to create the characters style and attitudes. We also used slashers, like the babysitters club and halloween to figure out how we wanted to portray her murder. Thanks for reading, ttyl!

Starlight StarBright

 Hi my favorite readers! Today we will be talking about the way color is used in my project. In my film numerous colors are used  and shown, all contributing the themes in our opening. Some of our main colors we want to use are white and red with hints of green and blue.

We used the color white heavily in the main character’s color palette. The purpose of this was to portray her as innocent, delicate, and perfect. The color white provides a blank state with no negative intentions. This was perfect for our main character as we wanted to portray her a as upbeat character innocent in regards to what is going to happen in the future. Our main character is also somewhat of a perfectionist playing into her wearing white heavily in her costume. 

We used the color red to signify to evil intent of her boyfriend. His costume utilizes a red jacket “masking” his true self. The color red is known to signify danger as he ends up killing the main character in the opening. The color red also plays into his role as a jock as it’s seen as a “manly and dominant” color is society.

The color green is used in the main character’s room to signify her feelings of peace within her space, and the color blue is used in her costuming to add a sense of calmness to her character. Also, one thing we intentionally did in the opening was using light/soft colors to emphasize the feeling of normality and joyfulness so that the characters murder would be unfitting/unexpected. 

This is my world.

 Hi girls, guys, and theys, welcome to Just A Girl. Today I’ll be talking about my openers main character analysis. Our main character is Jasmine a high school girl going on a date with the most popular guy in school. For her character we wanted to make her a sterotypical girly girl according to pop culture. She’s sometime who seems always happy and bubbly, while also plays into things like gossip and drama. We worked to portray her as girly through the use of makeup as a prop, feminine costume, upbeat music each time she is on screen. 

As a person she’s probably described to be an airhead with main focuses on things like parties, maintaining popularity, cheering, and keeping the status quo. This underlying makes her someone who works to please others in order to save face. Her portrayal as clueless and having poor priorities contributes to her being stabbed in the end. Within the opener, she is warned about the people in her school being killed but chooses to ignore it to maintain her positive aura. 

That’s it for today’s blog, I will see you guys next time:)

Film Prep

 Hiii! For today’s vlog we will discussing how my group prepared to film for our project. After the storyboard was done the first thing we did was come up with a date and say what elements we knew we could help in the most. For me, I knew that I would be good creative directing as I had a strong vision for the story, but could also take others verbal descriptions and ideas and find a way to portray it. I knew I could help with directing, but not by holding the camera, but looking at the shot and figuring out what needed to be fixed or removed. Jonathan got the role of directing/cameraman as he has a camera with good quality and a strong interest in film production/videography. He also is an actor in the opener as we needed a character to play the boy and his partner is playing the main character. Nyles also helped in directing as he has interest and knowledge on camera placement and angles, and we needed someone to record during Jonathan’s shots. Jonnele’s task was to help me in creative directing as well as scene production (lighting, props, etc.). 

For our location we decided the film at my house as I live in a suburban house (contributes to the “stereotypical popular girl” image) and my room provided us with enough space to film our scenes and details to include in the montage. For our actors we used Jonathan and Jasmine (a friend of ours), and also me and Jonnele have a minor role. For costuming, we utilized clothing we all already had as they wore very simple clothing. For our first date, we chose January 10th from 12pm-2pm. Filming itself should be relatively simple, except for the fact that we all see things differently. Though we have the same vision, there’s minor things that we see differently which could impact our filming. 

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope to see you in the next blog.

initial storyboard🏄‍♂️

 Hi guys, for today’s vlog we are going to be looking at and talking about my teams storyboard. For the storyboard, I drew and annotated it, based off of my other group members ideas and perspectives on what would be the best way to portray the story. 

For the first page we deal with setting #1, the inside of the house. I started by displaying the different elements of our title sequence montage and the type of shots they would be. I also included where the text should go within each shot. The story board then moves on the second scene, where the main character is on the phone with her friends. This depiction relies heavily on the annotations as it’s pretty difficult to understand without explanation. I made sure to include the way the shots should switch in editing as the conversation continues, the placement of the camera, and also how the characters facial reactions should look within the scene. This page then ends with our “transition” into scene 3 where her boyfriend comes and picks her up for their date.

For the second page we start to see a little more of setting #1 as our main character leaves the house. We finally get introduced to setting #2 (the outside of her house) as she unites with her boyfriend (his first time on screen). For this page, instead of explaining the camera angles in writing, I worked towards showing it through the perspective I drew each shot from, as well as signaling where the camera should be positioned. These scenes are when they are closer/talking so in writing I tried to just emphasize the purpose of each shot and how it contributes to the suspense. 

Thank you for reading, see you next time!

Let’s play dress up!

 Hello blog readers! Today we’ll be discussing how my group plans to deal with costuming for our project. Lets start with the main character, Jasmine.

For Jasmine, I knew I wanted her to have a very soft but casual style that presents her as feminine. I planned to achieve this using a lighter color palette, heavily including white or pink. After speaking with Jasmine and looking at some inspiration on pinterest, we were able to come up with a cute girly outfit with a white tube top, ripped light-washed dad style jeans, white sandals, and a white bow. We styled her hair in a low half up half down style, and for makeup we had her wear mascara and lipgloss. 

For Jonathan, we wanted to go for a jock style while still maintaining a similar color palette to Jasmine’s. The obvious sterotypical choice was to make him wear a varsity jacket as well. In the end we picked a white shirt (to match Jasmine), black jeans, a red and white varisty jacket, and red dunks for him to wear. We decided to leave his hair in his normal style as his character depends more on personality and how others view him to characterize his character.

 

Thank you for reading, and look forward to the next post!

#mood(board)

     Hey guys, today I'm going to be showing your guys my moodboard for our group project. If you remember, we are doing a 2000s teens style movie with a twist, where our main character gets dressed for a date with her jock boyfriend, just for him to kill her. Let's get into the moodboard!

    So one thing you notice at first glance is the lighting differences between the top of the board and the bottom. The bottom is the side which features her boyfriend and the setting where he kills her, so I made it darker to highlight his murderest/evil intent. The top is based on the main character and the setting in which she gets dress, and is very light and pink to represent her as very feminine, soft, and positively intended. To get further into characters, I used a few picture to describe their style, with her wearing pink and spending much time getting ready (putting effort into her looks) to present her as somewhat superfical and also extremely girly. For her character we want her to be a sterotypical movie high school girl who's on the cheer team, only wears pink, cares about gossip and her looks, etc. For his style I weighed in heavy of leatherman jackets and darker colors, to cover him (and his secrets) and have his contrast the bubbliness of the girl. For settings, we have the girl's room as she gets dressed to go on a date, portraying her make-up everywhere, candles, perfume, hair products, and even her gossiping with her friends before she leaves. Then, we have the outside of a suburban house and him picking her up in a car. There's also many pictures of couples through the mood board hinting at their appearance of being a perfect happy couple.

For some more minor details, I included a silhouette of a mask coming off in the corner depicting the boyfriend, hinting towards his deceptive nature, a picture from the movie Scream where the main character experiences something similar to our plot. 

Thank you for reading today's blog! See you next time.