Scheduling

Honestly, I feel like my team and I are falling a little behind on this project. One of our team members, Zain, was recently at a competition, and the classes before that I had a fever and was not in class. Because of this, I want to make a detailed schedule for us to start following in order to ensure we have time to produce what we have in mind. 

Tomorrow in class, the goal is to come to a final idea, including the plot, who we want our actress to be, etc. At home, I am then going to begin to create the social media accounts for our film, announcing small teasers and getting the page started. 

Research genre convention (color)

    Since we finally came to the conclusion that we want our short film to center around a teenage female, I decided to also research the conventions that went into the two films I researched for social media in my last blog post, Edge of seventeen and Lady bird. Two themes I noticed within both films is that they explore themes of mental health and self exploration, which I think are two big factors of growing up as a teenage girl that we can relate to. 

    In the film Lady Bird, color is used in order to express the teenage angst the main character experiences. The film begins by showing her bright red hair against her mother's white sheets, which shows her rebelling nature. Color is used continuously throughout the film to stand the main character out from the rest of the cast, even in subtle ways like the blue socks she wears at her religious school. 

Similarly, in the movie "Edge of seventeen", the main character, Nadine, often wears bright colors such as blue or yellow in order to stand her out from the others and show her quirky, rebelling nature. The emphasis of these colors stands the girls out from the rest of the characters in the movie, which is something I think we can incorporate into the main character of our movie. 

Social media research

 After meeting with our teacher to discuss our ideas, we have finally narrowed it down to two main topics: unspoken rules and self growth. We also concluded that we want our protagonist to be a teenage female girl, since it is something we can all relate to the most. Although these are both pretty broad, some of the more specific plots we discussed are:

• A girl who shows up to school one morning, but before walking in, decides to turn around and have a day where she does everything different.
• Unspoken rules in society, and deciding to spend a day breaking all of them. Ex: Blasting music in public, petting someone else's baby, etc. This would follow a more comedic plot.

Since we haven't come up with a firm plot, it is hard to develop a social media brand just yet, but I decided to do some research in order to be prepared for when we start to make it this coming week. When I think of movies that follow the story of a teenage girl and self growth, but also hold some comedic elements in them, some of my favorites are Lady Bird and Edge of Seventeen. 

When looking at the Instagram for Lady Bird, something that surprised me is that most of the pictures were not necessarily from the clips of the movie, but rather a lot of promotional posts, such as a tweet of Greta's upcoming movie or Saoirse Ronan on a vogue cover. 

A candid picture of the director of the movie, Greta Gerwig

The overall layout of the Instagram

I also took notice of the fact that the posts followed a specific, neutral theme with the colors, and paid a lot of tribute to the actors within the film and the producers. 

Research pt.2

 After watching these few comedic short films in class, I decided to do some research about the art of creating comedic effect in films. 

What Makes a Movie Funny? — How to Write, Direct, and Edit Comedy

The part of the video that was most relevant to me was the one about creating visual comedy, since I was assigned to be cinematographer for our short film. According to the video, visual comedy uses staging, production design, editing, and more to enhance humor. In terms of staging, precise placement of characters and props, as well as movement between the actors is vital for creating comedic effect. Editing can also be crucial for comedic effect, for example with fast cuts or close ups. All this aside, it's obvious that probably the most important aspect is coming up with a good script, because there is only so much that can be portrayed through a variety of shots. In the short film I spoke about previously, the boy's inner thoughts often had some sort of sarcasm behind them, or were clearly meant to be funny despite the message he was delivering. 

Research pt.1

 My group and I have been gambling between either a comedy short film or drama, and we haven't quite come to a decision. However, we have come up with a few ideas for both. 

At first, I was more drawn to the idea of doing a drama genre short film, because it seemed the most familiar and comfortable genre to do. However, my group member Martina introduced the idea of doing a comedy short film. Although I had my reservations at first, I watched a few comedy short films on Vimeo  with her in class, and my perspective was completely shifted. 

The particular short film that stuck out to me was a comedic love story called "No me ama" (she doesn't love me). 

Martina and I were both in awe of the cinematography, the comedic timing, and the simple yet effective story telling. The film was very clever because it told a story of insecurities about the boy feeling like the girl he is in a relationship with doesn't love him, simply because she won't say the words "te amo". Although she shows her love in other ways, like spending everyday with him, traveling with him, buying him gifts and cooking for him, his monologue throughout the entire film shows how insecure he is about the fact that she has never said the specific words. I thought it was clever to only show the guy's inner monologue, and never show any monologue between the two of them until the very end, where she finally says the words I love you. 

I like the simple message that this film brought across, which is how we can overthink and create a false reality in our heads, and I especially love the comedic timing with which they delivered this simple message with. I particularly liked how there were no extremely deep or introspective themes in the film, just very lighthearted and relatable that show the smaller joys in life. 

Some particular things from this film that I want to incorporate into our short film: 

- Something unique that offers a new perspective, such as the entire film being only the boy's inner monologue. I thought that this added so much uniqueness to the film. 

- Using different angles and shots to provide comedic effect, rather than just monologue.

- Finding a simple theme, and creating a story around it.  

Schedule

 In order for us to stay organized and achieve all of our goals on time, it is important we have a specific schedule of what we want to accomplish each week until the short film is due. Luckily, Zain put together a schedule for us to roughly follow. 

Last class, we already began to brainstorm ideas for a plot. So far, we came up with the general idea of making a short film related to spirituality and discovering the power of rebuilding your life and mindset. Although this sounds very vague, we began to brainstorm different stories we could use to portray this. I'm excited to come up with a more finalized plot on Tuesday and begin to construct it, like the schedule says. 

Starting planning for our short film

 Hello everyone! Today, my group and I are officially starting the long process of piecing together our short film. Although we don't have an exact idea of what we want the plot or story of our short film to be, we do have in mind a drama piece. I'm excited to announce I am working with my partner from last year, Zain Vidal, because we made a pact with each other to work on the project for A level together. We also already assigned separate tasks to each group member when it comes to filming, so that we all stay organized and contribute our strengths to the final product. 

Zain- Cinematography

Martina- Writing, directing, editing

Nadia- Mise-en-scene and sound

However, we are obviously all going to contribute and work on these aspects together. These roles are just assigned as an overall job for each of us to mainly assist with.