Shooting Schedule

     When the time comes to start shooting, I decided that I would start shooting once we came back from spring break.

Schedule: 

* March 22nd through the 27th - film (I gave myself a good amount of days just in case something goes wrong?)

* March 28th through the 30th - edit

* March 31st through April 1st - revisions 

* April 3rd - submit.

    I decided to start filming a little bit later in the process because I want to make sure that I have developed a complete storyboard and shots list before I start to film. I also want to complete my research, mood boards for each character, and finalize every little detail so I can be 100% ready by the time I start filming and not feel unproductive while I am filming. 

    Since I also take TV Production, I have a lot of experience with editing and Adobe Premiere. This is why I also gave myself only a few days to edit because I know that I am a fast editor and will be able to get it done by the date that I set for myself. I made this schedule based on my work ethic and through experience while focusing on my metacognition. 

Research Continued

     For the genre of drama, emotions play a big part when telling a story. Additionally, I've always liked the idea of things feeling out of place and incorrect. Therefore, I wanted my film opening to have music playing in the background that was very opposite to what is happening in the opening scene. 

    As I mentioned in another blog post, I want my opening scene to have the protagonist sitting at a table with pills spilled right in front of him. He is having a mental breakdown as he is staring at the pills trying to decide if he should be taking them or not. My inspiration for this came from a scene in episode 6, season 2, of the show Euphoria: 

    

    In this scene, my protagonist is going to be shown during his weakest point and when his mental illnesses have taken over his actions. Meaning that I want this scene to be very intense and dramatic. However, I want the audience to feel a sense of discomfort and disorientation. 

    In order to achieve this feeling, I want light-hearted music to be playing in the background of this scene as my character is going through a difficult time. So, I did some research, and I chose to have "La Vie En Rose" to be the song playing. I made sure that the song was CopyRight Free and found a link to it on youtube. I checked the description of the video and it stated that the song was under Creative Commons Licensing. 

Coming Up With a Film Title/Fonts

     Today I focused on coming up with a title for my film. After reflecting on the plot of my production and the journey that my protagonist will be going through, I came up with the name "Playing With Fire."

    I chose this title because I believed it was very fitting with what my protagonist is going through. Whenever he chooses to fall under the influence of drugs, he makes a choice that puts his physical/mental health at risk and his relationships with the people around him. He is constantly "playing with fire", at some point his actions and the decisions that he makes could "burn" him and impact his whole life. 

    Once I finalized this title, I began to play around with some fonts to see which one I would want to use. I used the app, PicsArt to design different options that I could use.

Link: https://picsart.com/&utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=19697811485&adgroupid=147780560364&utm_term=picsart&gclid=Cj0KCQiAo-yfBhD_ARIsANr56g7mv9YDEAksUSQ4fugCEOw1LCkyOFoXgCNQfe7Dw6zZYGZJsn2uvQaAlZ2EALw_wcB

Design Ideas:

    
    These three designs are the vibe that I want for my title. I tried thinner fonts and also more bolded fonts to give myself some variety. I wanted the writing to be stacked up on top of each other and pushed to the left because I want the title to appear in the left-third while my subject is in the right-third. After coming up with all three, I chose the first design because it was what I had originally envisioned when coming up with the idea.

Class Group Meeting

     Today we had our first group meeting in class. We got into groups with our peers and discussed our process so far, gave each other feedback, and suggested techniques and ideas that would improve the final result of our projects. 

    After I explained the idea for my film opening, my group gave me positive feedback. They thought I was headed in the right direction and told me they were excited to see how I would piece everything together in the end. The group told me that I need to make sure that the acting is on point with this style of a piece and that the sound and Mise-en-scene elements will need to play a big part in telling my story. I completely agreed with them and thanked them for all their comments and suggestions that I should take in order to further improve my work. 

    Once we concluded our discussion, I noticed how important and helpful this activity was. Talking and conversing on our projects assisted in making sure we had everything we needed and how to execute our ideas correctly. For example, in our discussion, one of the members focused on the fact that we only have two minutes to present our ideas since it is a film opening. Therefore, we can't reveal too much of our story since technically there is a full-length film that follows these first two minutes. Receiving feedback and learning new ways to go about things is really important, which is why I really enjoyed this activity and I look forward to the next group meeting with different peers that will offer new opinions. 

Planning

         Schedule for my portfolio project:

    From past projects, I've realized that coming up with a schedule is going to keep me on track of things and make sure that I have enough time to make any changes that I want. 

    Soon, I want to start finalizing a title for my film and playing around with different styles and fonts until I find the perfect match. 

Technical Elements

     For my film, I want the Mise-en-scene to play a big part in the focus. The lighting and the set will resemble the way that the protagonist is feeling. For the opening scene, I want the lighting to be very dull and almost feel like it is lacking an element of life. Relating back to how the protagonist has lost himself and became the drugs he is now dependent on. 

    Throughout the film, whenever the protagonist is high and under the influence, I want to play around with some editing techniques. For example, I want to use fast cuts and experience with different opacities. Making sure to blend and overlap different shots together to make it seem like the actor is disoriented and not fully in touch with his surroundings. 

    Additionally, I would like my film to have the vibe of the show Euphoria. I want my film to be cinematically beautiful, while still keeping and resembling the essence of what it feels like to be going through a mental illness and a strong addiction. My goal is to make the audience feel what the protagonist is feeling. I would want to build a disoriented atmosphere, playing happy music while something tragic happens and just making everything seem out of place, kind of what the main character would be feeling throughout the film. 

            

Plot Aspects

     For the plot of my film, I want the audience to know that the protagonist is suffering from a drug addiction from the moment the film begins. The protagonist will be in a room contemplating whether they should take the drug or not. The first scene will take place with the pills spilled all over the table and the protagonist having a mental breakdown trying to decide if they should be taking the pills or not. 

    Later on, the music will increase and then a school bell will ring. The scene will transition to the protagonist completely under the influence of drugs while sitting in a classroom. They aren't aware of any of their surroundings and the teacher will be calling the protagonist's name trying to catch his attention. Eventually, the protagonist will finally come to his senses and realize that he was too high to even hear the school bell ring and that it's time to go to his next period. 

    The remainder of the film will follow the protagonist through his journey of suffering from an addiction. The audience will be confused as to why the character is addicted to drugs. But as the film progresses, viewers will realize that the protagonist suffers from past trauma having to do with a relationship that ended due to sexual assault. The character is deeply in love with the individual of the past relationship and develops a mental illness that drives them insane and down the path of drugs. 

    Towards the end of the film, the protagonist becomes heavily dependent on drugs and the individual from the past relationship abandons the protagonist. The protagonist is left alone with no one by their side, all of this because he pushed away everyone who cared for him. 

Genre and Characters

     While researching the genre of drama, I found this really detailed website with the specifics of drama and examples of films that fall under this genre. 

here: https://www.filmsite.org/dramafilms.html

    When reading through the website, I realized that dramas are severe presentations or stories with settings or life situations that portray realistic characters in conflict with either themselves, others, or forces of nature. Therefore, I am aware now to keep all of this in mind when creating my film opening. 

    Additionally, dramatic themes often include current issues, societal ills, problems, concerns, or injustices. An example of some of these issues is drug addiction, which is what I want the plot of my film to be based around. 

    For my protagonist, I want him to be a 17-year-old junior in high school. I want him to be faced with conflicts with himself and his own mental illness. My protagonist is always competing with himself and his mind. He experiences a lot of trauma from past events that have happened in his life, therefore he turns to drugs in order to distract himself from what is happening around him. 

    This addiction is so strong and powerful over this character, that I want it to be shown within the first two minutes of my film. I want the audience to know the intensity of this from the beginning, and later find out all of the reasoning behind it. This situation is so severe that the protagonist is seen under the influence of drugs at school. 

Portfolio Project Beginnings

     Right as we were informed on the commencement of our portfolio project, I knew I wanted to make my film in the genre of drama. I wanted to focus my film around this genre because I love acting and I want to put my acting skills to the test! Additionally, I knew I wanted the Mise-en-scene of my film opening to be heavily prominent since I love the way that the Mise-en-scene further develops the entirety of a story. Since this is a long-term project, I definitely want to plan out and make a schedule of how I am going to accomplish this whole process. 

    For the actual plot of my story, I want to base it on the terrible on-going problem of drug addiction and how it affects the main characters mental health. I personally have experienced people in my life who unfortunately had to go through this horrible time in their life, and I want to make sure that this is something well addressed and informed on. After all, we learned from the TedTalk, that films and creating films is all about telling stories of what we already know. Therefore, I want my film to focus on this topic and I want to make sure that the protagonist and their struggles are seen from the first 2 minutes of my film. 

    I am going to be putting a lot of time into the planning of this project. Creating character mood boards for their style of clothing, make-up, and overall appearance of each character. Moreover, I want to come up with a storyboard and shots list so I can fully transmit my visions and finalize how I am going to approach all of it when filming. I can't wait to see how this process is going to unravel and the final outcome of my portfolio project! 

Music Marketing Experience pt.2

     Once my team and I decided on our song, we got straight to work. Immediately, we began to make a schedule since we knew that this project was going to take us a few days to get done due to the many components. After creating the schedule, we started storyboarding our music video and got ready to start filming. We wanted the focus of our music video to mainly be all about the Mise-en-scene of the production. We wanted to include fun lighting, 80's clothing, and use specific color patterns that would make our film stand out with the Mise-en-scene elements. 

    It ended up taking us 5 days to film our music video because we decided to work with graphic matches, and those were very challenging to get precisely. However, we decided to take on the challenge, and fortunately planned correctly and had a lot of time to film. When filming, we would set up a new scene and practically a whole new "set". With every scene, we wanted there to be a completely different feel to the music video and make the production seem abstract. I believe we did a pretty good job with that and I am very proud of the final product. 

    When the filming process was done, one of our group members began to edit. She focused a lot on color grading and making sure that the saturation and the hues matched the Mise-en-scene and the vibe of the scene. The graphic matches turned out just the way we had imagined and the long hours of filming days really paid off. The cuts would transition seamlessly and she did a great job with pacing the video and editing to the beats of the song. 

    After 5 long days of filming and a few days of editing, our music video was completed. Therefore, it was time to get the presentation ready and make sure that our brand was fully developed. We made sure that the presentation fit perfectly with our brand and the vibe of our music video. Each one of the group members dedicated their time to a part of our campaign/brand and made sure to be fully knowledgeable of the information that was going to be presented. 

    Just a few days later, it was time to present! Presenting our music marketing project in front of our class was very simple for me because I felt confident with the brand we had created and the information we were presenting. I felt like the campaign and marketing techniques that we came up with were very unique and were going to be enjoyed by our peers. Additionally, presenting our project felt like reaching the long-awaited finish line. We had been working on the projects for so long, that it felt rewarding to finally present all the hard work we had put into developing our brand.

    All in all, this project was a rollercoaster. We faced some obstacles, and challenged ourselves, but were able to combat them and make it all work. In the end, we ended up with a satisfying result that turned out just how we had first envisioned, and we were all very proud. I learned a lot about how much goes into developing a brand. I had no idea of all the aspects and elements that go into it, as well as the effort that needs to be put into every marketing technique. Additionally, I realized the importance of time management and figuring out a schedule in order to have time to work around any unexpected inconveniences. My team and I faced many delays in our schedule, but since we gave ourselves lots of time, we were able to make it work and have time to get back on track. I believe the aspect of this project that will be the most helpful for my Cambridge portfolio will be the fact that it was a long-term project. I personally had not worked on a project for this long of a time, so with this, I was able to get a feel of what it would be like and I can feel a little more experienced since the portfolio project is a longer-term project. :)