Locations

Based on our screenplay we have decided to film in 5 different locations. This is a drastic jump from last year which we only filmed in one location. I think it will be fine since we will have 5 minutes to develop a narrative but we have to make sure the scenes that are flashbacks are somewhat quick but add to the narrative. So here are our 5 locations:

1. Stevie's Bedroom: This will be our main actor's room, which will be a female actress, so it will be either Pearse's sister's room or Irina's room (Irina is a top prospect for the main role). We want the room to look like a real teenage girl room, no dolls but also still messy and filled with teenage girl decorations.

2. Volleyball Court: For the volleyball scene we decided to use the courts at the Ymca Regional Park. Usually, they are filled but if we go early enough we can find an open court to film in. But it will be a bit of a challenge since the sun is going to be shining HARD.

Volleyball Courts at the Ymca

3. Dining Room: For this scene, we are still in between my house and Pearse's house. We have still not decided but we have to find a place with good lighting, which I believe could be either house. We will figure this out later.

4. House: The house we don't use for the scene above will be the house used for this scene. We just need to switch locations to make sure the audience knows it is a different scene.

5. Field: For this scene, we are looking at Everglades Holiday Park and Vista View Park as the main two locations to shoot. I also suggested Markham Park but the other two locations are more atheistically pleasing. Both of those parks will look awesome on camera and filming in the sunset will turn out really cool for our scene.

Vista View Park

Final Script

Here is our final script. We have been working hard on getting it done by researching various sources on how to do it. Click the link below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15oUiYEjHb9s7jX9McK7mvr9PWsMKFVv3/view

Permission Update

After a while of trying to find contacts to send emails to, I got so tired. I don’t know why it is so hard to find someone to contact and try to get permission. After a while of searching for someone to contact Sony, I found an email that could lead to a reply. Even if the person that receives it can’t help us by giving us permission they could probably redirect us to someone that can. That’s why I wasn’t too stressed about finding a specific email just simply finding one that can help us. Below is a screenshot it the email:


For the song “We Are Young” by Fun. I had no look finding anyone from Fueled By Ramen to contact. I will try to ask my teacher on tips on how to get permission because I am a mess. However, in a world with social media, I usually don’t give up so easily. Instead, I searched up every single person from the band on Instagram and sent them a direct message individually all saying the same thing. And just a few hours later I received an answer from one of the original band members himself (my friends can testify that I started screaming with joy). Not only did he answer back but he also gave his permission to use the song (under certain terms). Here are the screenshots:

Although he did warn us there might be chances that it could be taken down or flagged I still think this shows we are on the right track. I call this a win!

(I still haven't found a way to get in contact to ask permission for "Stereo Hearts" but I will keep trying)

2010 Throwbacks!

I began my search by searching up “throwbacks 2010s” and the memories were endless. From the old Justin Bieber songs that I refused to let anyone know I listened, to the old Drake songs that made me release my inner street side. All these songs just made me feel so happy and thankful for the life I have had. And that’s the feeling we are looking for. I felt it the most in some songs specifically starting with Khalid’s song “8teen”, “We Are Young” by Fun., and “Stereo Hearts” by Gym Class Heroes. I would like to analyze all these songs individually.

“8teen” - The pros about this song is that it talks about a stage our target audience is in, has been in, or is going to be in. The con with this song is that it doesn’t have the same emotional attachment as the other ones. It is very recent and wasn’t as big of a hit when released. However, it is still an amazing song and I would love to work with it.

“We are Young” - I can’t say anything bad about this song. It is such a classic to me and I love it more than anything. I know I seem biased but no song makes me as happy as this one. I remember this song clearly playing in my eighth-grade dance and I was having the time of my life with all my friends. I know every single lyric to this song.

“Stereo Hearts” - The pros to this song is that it holds a huge attachment to my generation. It is equally as big of a hit as “We Are Young” in my opinion. The cons are that it talks about love rather than growing up or this specific time that we look to represent in our film.

All of these songs would work perfectly in our movie and I hope I find a way to get permission to use them.

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.