Bitter Sweet!

One of the most important elements in filmmaking is sound. Last year when we worked on our movie introduction we tried to request the use of very well known pop songs however none of which gave us permission. Not only did they not give us permission they also did not answer us when we tried contacting them. It was frustrating but a truly eye-opening experience that I have kept with me since. That is why I decided to start my search for songs early on in the progress. First I had to find the songs we would want to have as part of our movie. The songs would be mainly used in the flashback scenes where our main character is remembering her past times. Since this is a coming of age film and we are targeting teens to young adults the decade we believe this song should be released in the early 2010s. Why? Simply because many of the pop songs in that era were played constantly through our school dances, car rides, parties, and by ourselves. It would trigger emotions that we look to create in our film. We want viewers to feel what the girl leaving to college feels: bitter-sweet. The wonderful feeling she’s getting from all her childhood moments and the sadness from having to grow up and leave. Which is also how I’m feeling right now since I had to sign my apartment lease... yay!...

Major Changes

Issues with our plot:

Pearse and I just got off a phone call and I want to summarize really quickly what we talked about. To begin with we have decided to change the plot but keep the main idea of our short movie. Talking over the phone we realized that our current plot was gonna come out too cheesy and wouldn’t show any effort. This is because we were thinking of creating a montage of the times this group of friends would spend together. However, having such a large cast was also beginning to bring up a lot of problems with scheduling. We decided not to force anything and just adapt to the situation and this is what we came up with.

Our Changes:

Like I mentioned before the leaving for college theme is still in play. Now we are gonna be focusing more on one main character instead of a group of people. So the new story revolves around a female who’s picking for college and she’s getting her stuff ready to leave but as she does that she starts looking at the images around her rooms. She starts to look at her photo albums, Polaroids, all types of pictures that she has taken. As she does that those moments come to life and we actually show small clips of her life with her friends. It would be like a collection of flashbacks of her last moments before she leaves for college. The piece would finish with a flashback to her last moments with her friends where they all say goodbye to this chapter of their life.

Now we have to write a screenplay and begin working and continue developing our story!

Socratic Seminar Part 2

As I talked about in the blog post before we had a bit of a hard time explaining what our idea was at first. Slowly through the questions, we were being asked our idea was becoming a little more clear. I want to give a more detailed outline of what we look to include in our project. So as I mentioned before it’s focused on a teenage friend group. But more precisely our short film will be the friend group creating a movie about their last moments together. What do we mean by them creating a movie? Well, the movie is basically them capturing a lot of their moments (through handheld shots) like in the movie Mid90s. It would include a combination of both types of shots in order to have a balance. At the end of the short film, we plan on having the friend group just laying in someone’s house watching their last moments together as a wrap in this stage of their life. Our peers enjoyed this idea however they suggested we work on it a bit more because it can easily include many cheesy stereotypes. 

This is why we want to emphasize that we are not making a short film about a group of friends that decide to make a short film. We want to create a short film about a group of friends that are spending their last moments together and happen to film some of those moments. After we clearly explained this to our peers we were told that it would be beneficial to us to create an outline of what we want our film to look like. That’s what Pearse and I will be working on in the meantime.

Socratic Seminar Part 1

This past Thursday WiFi was down at our school so instead of being able to work on our portfolio project we decided it would be best to have a Socratic seminar to discuss our ideas. Our teacher encouraged us to speak whenever since most of us were hesitant at first. Pearse and I were one of the first to share their ideas however we weren’t able to explain it perfectly at first. That’s when I knew this was a good exercise since we should be able to give a clear understanding of our project idea without sound cheesy. 

The Big Reveal!

Our idea is to create a coming of age film we’re a group of friends who share their last moments before all leaving for college. This is inspired by our current stage in life. We have grown up together for years and in just a matter of months, we have to say goodbye. This is a normal stage in someone’s life however it doesn’t make it easier when the time actually comes. That’s why Pearse and I believe that making this film will work for us. Not only would our casting be the age group we need but the emotions being captured will be authentic. I am super excited about this idea and I really hope we can make this work. A lot more work needs to be done as of right now but I am glad our creativity is working.

Sunday Funday!

Pearse and I started to get more overwhelmed so we decided to research ways on how to keep stress down during big projects. Pearse found a website called visme.com and it actually helped us map out the next few weeks. It's actually a super cool outline of how we plan on spending our time:

1st Meeting (Kind of)

Meeting recap:

- The first thing we addressed is our equipment. Due to some budget cuts, we no longer have Premiere Pro to work with so we will most likely be using WeVideo to edit. However, we did discuss maybe paying for Premiere for one month after our footage is done but we don't know yet.

- Ideas: A while back I was on Youtube and stumbled on to some short films made by an account called Omeleto. We really enjoyed how simple the story was and how the producers managed to create a quick but fun movie.

- Schedule: Pearse and I have taken a lot of new responsibilities this year so time management is huge for us. Since we are both working and have various extracurricular activities we have agreed to work on the weekend. Both of us are relatively free on Saturdays and Sundays so those are the two main days we will be working on.

- Blogger: Our blog posts will include more detail about or progress. Since this project is more complicated than last years there will be more blog posts about the story we plan on transforming into our short film.

It was a successful meeting and we did spend various amounts of time watching short films on Youtube. There were many we didn't particularly like and we took time to discuss why. For example, we watched a 20-minute short film about two people talking at a wedding. The acting was very amateur and the dialogue wasn't engaging. But we did find one we really liked which I will include the link to down below. The difference between the two was the dialogue and in the second one, there was more action happening that made it a better film (in my opinion).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVBhvVK8RwM

Back to Back

I passed AS Level!

I am super excited to get back to work and begin shooting my short film. I am still working with my old partner, Pearse Koch, and we agreed that it would be so much fun to create a short film. Last few months we have continued to work on other projects and what I think will make a difference this year is that our time management has improved and our communication is better. We are extremely comfortable giving each other criticism in ways we can improve and I know that's why we want to continue working together.
Pearse and I have been talking about what we want to create and although we haven't decided anything we really want to explore the idea of a one-shot film. However, it wouldn't be filmed in one take but our editing and scene continuation would be what will help us create this illusion. We are very confident that we can create this illusion because given that this our second year in Media Studies we have had the chance to explore various film techniques.
I will update you guys soon later this week since Pearse and I have set up a meeting to start discussing our project a lot more.