STRESSED BUT STILL SERVING LOOKS

Alright so we definitely have a problem in our hands and I think it is time to address it so we have to get real for a second. Since we began this project Pearse and I have been focused on setting everything up so when we start filming we are ready to kill it. However it has been 3 weeks and we have no footage, nada people, THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! However, I haven’t been slacking off, I have had to deal with many things constantly, junior year is hard and I am really really tired. I’m a tough guy but most of the time I want to go home curl up in a ball and cry. I am ~exhausted~.
BUT RAUL YOU ALREADY TOOK THE 2 SATS YOU WERE PREPARING FOR!
          Oh me you’re so cute yes that is done, for now, we signed up for the ACT February and we have to study remember it is not the same.
         Oh, shoot. Damn how do you have a social life, 4.0 GPA, stay fit, and have time for your girlfriend?
Well me, I haven’t seen my friends in a week. Last time I had 8 hours of sleep I thought girls had cooties. I got kicked out of my swimming team because I never go. Oh, and my girlfriend texted me we need to talk. BUT the gpa looks cute :)
ANDDDDDDDD you look cute ;)


       That's inappropriate, but thanks <3 But continuing with our initial problem. We have no footage and we need to address this problem NOW. Well, not right now cause I am tired and my mom is making food so maybe like another day, we just need a schedule. SO A SCHEDULE I SHALL MAKE. Here you go: 

• Film this week
• Next week too
• Week after too
• Take a break the week after you ~deserve~ it
• Edit if you want too lol

        Just kidding I will make a more specific schedule but just so you guys know I am serious about this project I will tell you when I’m not filming. This upcoming Saturday I am working all day and I will be unable to work, and Sundays I go to church with my mom early.
         Those are my only plans, sorry I am so boring and completely academic #harvardclassof2023 #willhateharvard #willbecomeharvarddroput #atleastiwenttoharvard #cambridgeuniversityisbetter. Pearse and I have made plans to start filming next week either Friday or Sunday in the afternoon. However, we are both extremely busy and swamped with countless things. Hopefully, we manage to get this A1 project on the road to show these amateurs how it’s done. Sorry, not sorry Steven Spielberg. Also, I would like to talk about why we decided on an outside hire to be the main actor. Male toxicity. We couldn’t decide which out of the two of us was cuter to be on screen. Actually, that is not 100% true, although we both know it kinda was. Pearse and I would have had to act at the same time on some scenes and we would have to rely on one of our moms to film, and my mom can’t even change her screensaver so we made the right call. This way we both can focus solely on the production of our opening, not on how we look. Tough decisions like these take long face-time calls and a lot of thought, but we made the right choice. Manos a la obra chicos!

COMPUTER CATCHES ON FIRE AT SCHOOL *STORYTIME*

              Earlier this week Pearse, my partner in crime, and I researched to find a song we wanted to put into our opening. Spoiler Alert: everything goes wrong. It was a sunny morning, the birds were chirping, just kidding I don’t really know if there were birds since my earbuds were so loud I couldn’t hear my own thoughts. Skip ahead to a few hours and I’m sitting next to my co-director and we are arguing loudly. What went wrong you might ask? Well, let me tell you. I have tended to try and think outside the box quite often and it seems to make simple tasks harder to solve. But, this time I decided to keep things simple and choose a song that related to the age group we are representing and set the mood of adventure. SO as you may have guessed I searched up various playlists on playlist titled “Who Runs the World”, girls!!!

OH, I FORGOT TO TELL YOU GUYS!

           Drum roll please, “drum roll” (x3). Our main actor is going to be a female! I will explain why on my next blog posting sorry I didn’t tell you guys sooner :(
            Ok, back to the main story. So I began to suggest various female empowering songs that our audience could relate to from big artists such as Ariana Grande. However, in order to use these songs in our opening we would acquire permission from the artists and the record companies and we just don't have the time to see if Ariana Grande will answer us (I still tweeted at her to see if she sees it and/or if she wants to grab a cup of coffee,, but that's plan D). Plan A consists of finding an old school that has not been copyrighted and would be available to our usage. By the future tone of the last sentence you may have figured out we still don’t have a song, and here’s why. Website with free non copyrighted music has a large variety of EDM music, which is close to useless for us. We searched various songs we have in our oldies’ playlist but all the songs we thought would work are copyrighted. Our efforts to find a song were humongous, we wanted a win, we needed a win.

Why did we need a win?

              We had taken the SAT the day before and it was tough, really really tough.
          We never found a song. The websites we used to find out if some songs were useless and didn’t work. It was a tough process, and long. But let me tell you something. I am going to start making music now and not copyrighting it because I am not selfish, also I can’t sing so no one will want it. We are still in search of the perfect song or one that is not copyrighted whichever one comes first. So if you have any suggestions comment down below and I will take a look at it. Have a gorgeous day and keep cranking it Soulja Boy!

Here are the most played songs in movies:
https://www.billboard.com/photos/6450981/most-overplayed-songs-in-movies
Here are 19 songs every woman needs (Happy Late International Women Day!):
https://www.bustle.com/articles/93415-19-songs-every-badass-woman-needs-in-her-life
Here’s a website I signed up for free and includes many songs that you can use, sadly still no luck on my end:
https://www.epidemicsound.com/browse/?&moods=Moods.Happy&active=moods&activeFilter=energy
Here’s a picture of Pearse and me having fun:

PLOT WAS LOST *STILL NOT CLICKBAIT*

           My partner and I decided to create our own outlines of what we want our opening to look like and what elements we would like to implement. Therefore, I showed him what I had posted on my previous blog and he liked it much better than his idea so we decided to work around it. We did, however, talk about some of the few things that could be a problem or what he believed would work better for the opening, since in a group you always have to compromise. Here are some of the notes we wrote down when analyzing our plot:

Establishing shot of a house in the suburbs: (*In this shoot we agreed on having noises in the back of the family eating dinner to establish the setting and what is occurring all at once.) 

Medium shot of a family having dinner: (*We have decided to keep away from having either of us as the main role in order for both of us to focus more on the shots being taken instead of acting.) 

Silent dinner- mom, dad, son (*We actually plan on changing the main roles’ gender into a female: however, this could affect the role of the second character because we don’t want this to seem like a romantic movie featuring two teenagers. ) 

A friend is in the window and is signaling his kid having dinner to leave secretly- the kid does everything suddenly and clumsy 

Kid asks to be excused to sleep and rushes upstairs- feet makes a lot of sounds as he rushes 

Upstairs: (*We actually inspected a few houses to use for our filming and decided it would be easier to shoot in my partner’s house. He has a spacious house with a dinner table near 3 big windows that we could use to film. His sister’s room is also greatly decorated if we want to approach a female role.) 

Opens window- Asks friend what’s up 

Friend responds- “let’s sneak out” 

Close up low angle- he hesitates and then starts locking his door setting up a dummy to sneak out 

Dinner table: 

Parents continue to eat- Parents refuse to act on all the noise upstairs and seem tired of being grown up (representation of lazy parent stereotype) (*Around this part to most of the end we will be implementing parallel editing in order to show the two different worlds of the people being represented in our opening: parents and rebellious teens.) 

Upstairs: 

the kid starts to get ready to jump down- kid looks scared and is very nervous and he and his friend yell back and forth. (*Unfortunately this part will not occur because the house we plan on using is a one-story house. Instead, we plan to replace the suspense of jumping by using tight shots and suspenseful music to establish the mood. This scene will also have parallel editing of the mom walking near the room as soon as the character decides to leave the house, but the mom never enters the room. It is the possibility of all going wrong that creates tension in the scene.) 

SWITCH BACK AND FORTH WITH KIDS YELLING AND PARENTS STILL FOCUSING ON IGNORING EVERYTHING 

5th: kid finally jumps (COOL MUSIC YET TO BE FOUND STARTS PLAYING LOW)- still unsure about showing a kid jumping or not. 

Outside front lawn: 

Kids grab their bikes- they seem filled with adrenaline and continue to scream and run away. 

Switches to parents watching their kid through the window leave as they pour more wine 

Mom- asks “Should we do something?” Dad replies with “He still sleeps with his teddy bear, mom nods like ‘Yeah he’s right he needs this’. (*This scene is getting deleted since our 2-minute time frame will not probably allow it. With parallel editing it is going to take up too much time limiting what we can show. We decided this part wasn’t essential to the main story line.) 

Shot of house in the back as kids bike away- music gets louder. 

Symmetrical shot of the street: 

kids are biking- in the middle of the street and music gets louder and as the turn left camera stays on the same shot and tittle pops up. (*Title of the movie has yet to be discussed but I will be presenting my friend with some ideas I have come up with. For example, Younger, it was the same name we used for our band and we enjoyed the simpleness and audience attraction of the name. It calls for the past, looking back on old memories. Another idea was Ages 13-19, which are the teenage years in which kids begin to develop more the characteristic of being rebellious. I know it's not an ideal title but it also implies the age group we are looking to represent.) 

         These are the revisions we decided were important to our plot and opening scene. Thank you for taking the time and overlooking the decisions we believe could help our final project. We enjoyed critiquing each others’ work in a positive and productive aspect

ROOM CAUGHT ON FIRE *NOT CLICK BAIT*

          After some discussion comparing our ideas we stumbled across some obstacles that need to be addressed before we can further continue with what we want and don’t want to include. For example, when we looked at past opening scenes in class we realized that they incorporated more music and nondiegetic sound in order to help the scene run smoother. But, it is also because a film can look very unprofessional when it comes to the symmetrical sound being used with no sound equipment. Movies use high quality equipment to make every aspect of it perfect and professional. However due to our lack of resources we don't have a boom mic to use in order to help us.


*boom mic

          Nonetheless we still want to incorporate some dialog into our opening scene so we found a product online called ‘shotgun mic’ that is comparable to our Sony camera and could work in our case (if what you pay for is what you get this isn’t going to sound like my imagination hopes it does). I have however seen this type of product being used before but it was more towards vloggers that are very close to the camera and don’t have a problem with long shots. So we may need to rely on more close up and medium shots in our opening scene is we want to have quality sound.


*Shotgun mic

          We have set up a schedule to start filming very soon in order to start understanding what will or won’t work. We need to incorporate many different elements into our shots until we start to get a feel of the type of atmosphere we want our opening to show. For example my room is very bland and does not represent the average teenage room. We would need to get more posters, accessories, anything that represents the ‘average’ teenage boy room in our movie. Every prop must have a purpose and we need to start to make a list early on of what must be included so our scene has a smooth sequence and understanding.



*This is my room it may look cool but that is only the lights

         Overall I think it is very good that we are detecting these obstacles early on in the process and not crying after we shoot all our scenes and we realize we can’t hear anything. I am so excited to make this and show my magic with you guys.

MOVIE SCRIPT LEAKED!!!! *NOT CLICKBAIT*

Waaaaasupppppppppp!!!

My partner and I have been talking back and forth on what we want to do for our opening but we have decided to first write out an outline of what we believe should be the sequence of our opening scene so here's mine (I tried making it like a movie script so hopefully you guys like it):

Establishing shot of a house in the suburbs:   

Medium shot of a family having dinner:

• Silent dinner- mom, dad, son
• Friend is in the window and is signaling his kid having dinner to leave secretly- kid does everything suddenly and clumsy
• Kid asks to be excused to sleep and rushes upstairs- feet makes a lot of sounds as he rushes

Upstairs:

• Opens window- Asks friend what’s up
• Friend responds- “let’s sneak out”
• Close up low angle- he hesitates and then starts locking his door setting up a dummy to sneak out

Dinner table:

• Parents continue to eat- Parents refuse to act on all the noise upstairs and seem tired of being grown up (representation of lazy parent stereotype)

Upstairs:

• kid starts to get ready to jump down- kid looks scared and is very nervous and him and his friend yell back and forth.

SWITCH BACK AND FORTH WITH KIDS YELLING AND PARENTS STILL FOCUSING ON IGNORING EVERYTHING

• 5th: kid finally jumps (COOL MUSIC YET TO BE FOUND STARTS PLAYING LOW)- (still unsure about showing a kid jumping or not we don't want any injuries).

Outside front lawn:

• Kids grab their bikes- they seem filled with adrenaline and continue to scream and run away.
• switches- to parents watching their kid through the window leave as they pour more wine .
• mom- asks “Should we do something?” Dad replies with “He still sleeps with his teddy bear, mom nods like ‘Yeah he’s right he needs this’.
• Shot of house in the back as kids bike away- music gets louder.

Symmetrical shot of the street:

• kids are biking- in the middle of the street and music gets louder and as the turn left camera stays on the same shot and tittle pops up

TITTLE STILL TO BE ANNOUNCED!!!!

Well this is an outline of what I would like the opening scene to Look like. But of course there are some obstacles with this script I will address in my next blog posting.

KANYE READ MY BLOG!!!! *NOT CLICKBAIT*

          After our group discussion and evaluating the opinions I received, I decided to find an intro to a movie to watch that had some of the same aspects I wanted to implement into my opening scene. I went on Google and decided to search ‘teen drama movies’ in order to see what type of movies would come up. Furthermore, I wasn’t surprised to find numerous amounts of movies about teen love. I watched a total of 3 opening scenes starting with:

• Paper Towns- Begins with an establishing shot of a town with a voice over introducing the two main characters. It then switches to a young kid discovering a new girl is moving close to him (the voice over is still going) and the scene ends as the kid drops the ball he was holding in awe of this new girl and a song begins to play in at the same time. A stroke of genius.
• The Fault in Our Stars- After watching this opening scene I remembered it was another one of John Green's famous works. I will not lie I actually cried the first time I watched this movie. The opening scene begins with a close up shot of a woman (voice over as well) as she lays in the grass and remembers beautiful times she had with what seemed to be a special boy that used to give her kisses, signaling something bad happened to them. In other words the girl was reminiscing the good old times.
• The Edge of Seventeen- I decided to watch a third one in order to have more credibility if I decided to judge teen dramas later on in my blog. However, this one did not start out disappointing. It began with intense music as a girl power walked to a teachers office were she announced she was going to kill herself, and he laughs in her face. The shots were good, acting was good, no voice over, intriguing content, it has potential. I decided to let it roll a bit longer to find out the next scene had all the same elements as the first opening scene: young kids, voice over, etc. Once again I'll stick to the sophisticated movies I watch (just kidding last weekend I watched Hotel Transylvania 3 and it wasn’t even that bad it was pretty entertaining).

           “Maybe all the teen drama movies in the world start out the same way?” I thought to myself. Well self I have something important to share with you, there must be a reason why they do this. Answer: to be continued like & subscribe if you like my content and would like to see more checkout my previous blogs. I will be posting more each week as requested so comment down below what you guys want to read!

Gang Session

      WHAT IS UP BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE?

      Earlier this week we had our first interaction with other groups were we could share our ideas in order to gain some thoughts on our projects. At first I was very skeptical on how this meeting could work to our benefit so early into our project. But regardless I went in ready to take in any form of criticism or opinion that could work in my benefit. As I have mentioned before my partner and I want to create a film opening for a movie, specifically focusing on the drama category. After some discussion we decided upon a film opening were the main cast is mostly teenagers since it works to our advantage. Although this may seem very obvious we felt like trying to create an opening for any other genre or movie type would look less professional and could lower the art of the film opening.

       After I shared my broad idea with my peers I was able to receive some useful opinions on what they thought I could expand on and what they liked. For example, one of my peers pointed out that the music I implement to my opening has to represent the mood of the movie and the character development of the main character. Since it is a teenage movie it has a high focus on character development and how they grow or change throughout the film. They made sure to make me realize that I need to have a clear set up of what needs to be in the opening in order for it to make sense. We discussed a lot on how I should approach my blog and what to post about but for now they suggested I did more research and started to sketch out a storyboard. 

       Overall this activity did work to my advantage, however it will be more useful later on. What helped me the most about it was seeing the enthusiasm and dedication going to these projects. It shows that the environment around me is proactive and that what they shared with me was done in order to help me.