Naming our Characters

 In my previous blog post, I simply referred to the characters that will be in my group's film opening as Person A, B, and C. My partners and I had a brief conversation that before creating our script, we should finalize the names of our characters. We made the ultimate decision that we will each research names separately, in order to focus on names with strong meaning behind them. Thus, I began to research potential names for our characters.

Each character in our film opening has a different role:

Person A is the main character of this film, and she is the older sister to Person B.

Person B, the little sister, which is shown committing suicide in the film's opening.

Person C, Person A's friend who is invited over, is also friendly with Person B.

 

    For Person B, I am very interested in the name 'Mara'. Depending in the culture, the name has different meanings, one of them being death. This is very direct to the characters' fate and thus I find it fitting. However, an alternate meaning to the name is 'bitter', which can be related to the root of Mary in Hebrew, which my partners and I can play off of because the root of the issues in this film would stem from"Mara".

For Person A, I am intrigued by the name 'Valerie'. The name Valerie means 'strong' and 'brave' in Latin, which would be key personality traits that I would like Person A to have, as she must be both emotionally strong and brave to face the trauma of losing a relative to suicide.

    Playing off the name below, I think Amy is a fitting name for Person C. As person C's primary role in this film is to be a good friend to the other characters, I tried to slightly alter the name 'Amity' by removing two letters, this way the name would originate from one with the meaning 'frienship', which is a strong characteristic that Person C holds.

    In the near future, my partners and I will review each other's research towards naming the characters of our film, and come to a final decision for the names of our characters together. 

Story Outline

 Finalizing the Plot

In previous blog posts, I mentioned the idea that me and my partners had for our film opening. Today in class, we had a long, thorough, discussion in which we brainstormed a large variety of ideas we had for the plot. I will insert an image of our *nearly* final idea and plot. We made sure to include the ideas of all members as well as work off of each other's suggestions.

One thing I would like to add is that we verbally discussed further details of person B's death. This was important for us to discuss as we want our film in its entirety to bring light to the struggles that come with drugs and addiction, and so we want to show that the cause of death comes from an overdose. In the scene of person B's death, we plan to imply the character's cause of death with a shot of a pill bottle with pills spilling out of it, similar to what can be seen in the image inserted to the left.

Additionally, I referenced the video below as inspiration for the death scene. I was reminded of this scene as the character 'Violet's' death was also caused by an overdose in a bathroom, as well as the male character 'Tate's' strong emotional reaction. My partners and I can reference this video during our storyboarding, shooting, and editing for inspiration on what the shots and pace of editing may look like during the scenes leading up to person B's death as well as when it actually occurs.

I was also interested in the use of a running shower to subtly hint to the viewer the idea that life moves on after death. This particular idea was inspired by Psycho (1960), in the scene in which a woman is murdered, but towards the end of the excerpt the camera focuses on her blood flowing into the drain to reinforce this idea. This will likely not be strongly apparent or emphasized in the film opening, but it is, hopefully, going to be present to hint to the viewers that the rest of the film would theoretically cover the main character's (Person A) journey overcoming her difficulties in life after her sister's (Person B) suicide.

Portfolio Schedule

 Scheduling/ Planning

As mentioned in my previous blog, my group members and I have determined the plot for our piece, and plan to include a sneak peek of the plot in our film opening. The plot for the piece covers the lives and emotions of teenagers as they experience the loss of a friend to suicide. In the opening we plan to show the characters suicide and the protagonist numb feelings caused by the death.

To properly complete this project with enough time and not create stress as a team, we have created a detailed schedule to follow. The schedule can be seen in the images below.

As a team we plan to follow this schedule and even attempt to get ahead of the schedule when possible. Seeing as I will be busy during many weekdays due to sports, me and my teammates have discussed the importance of communication. Luckily, we are all good friends, having know each other for many years, so we have regular conversations and know how to communicate  with each other well. 

Genre Research

 Genre Research: Coming of Age

    After some back-and-forth discussion, my group members and I finalized our idea for the plot of our film opening, as well as settled on the idea that our piece will be a coming-of-age story. 

    Coming-of-age stories focus on the protagonist's journey into adulthood(maturing and experiencing large events), therefore the title 'coming of age'. The protagonist typically faces a major challenge that ultimately leads to their growth as a person. These pieces typically use a combination of both humor and drama to tell a meaningful story. To introduce characters and their struggles, coming-of-age pieces regularly use strong, impactful dialogue to influence their audience.

    We researched a few different coming-of-age films such as Thirteen(2003), The Breakfast Club(1985), and Lady Bird(2017)  to get inspiration for our piece. During this research, we found that the target audience for coming-of-age films is teenagers and young adults, and we feel that this will help us when creating our film opening as we are creating this piece as teenagers, and therefore we are the target audience for the same thing we are creating.

    My group members and I researched a variety of topics generally covered in coming-of-age stories and decided that our protagonist's challenge would revolve around the issue of suicide. We hope to make the film opening for a piece that would cover suicide and its impact on the people close to the issue. Our main focus is covering the idea of recovering from a large trauma (which in this case would be losing a loved one to suicide) and facing discomfort while healing and growing from the experience. We plan on conveying strong emotions in our film opening to really focus our audience on the tragedies of suicide.

Let's switch things up!

   Starting my portfolio project...

  At this point in the year, the time comes when I am transitioning my blog posts to be centered on the processes of producing my film opening for the Cambridge exam. My previous blog posts consisted of research on topics such as genre and representation, or reviewing the production process of other projects, such as the Music Marketing Project or my Soundscape project.

My initial feelings on this project is that it will be a large project that I am afraid to start, as I know that not only is it half of the AICE exam for Media Studies AS level, but more so that I have to create an original production with such a large amount of freedom, in a large period of time. But, I do feel excited to get to work on such a creative production, because such a feeling of liberty in choosing to do exactly what I want in a project does not come often in high school.

While I do not have a clear idea of what I want to create in this production, my research on different approaches for a film opening does help to narrow down what I want to establish in this project. I will include my notes below.

The first approach for creating a film opening that calls my attention is that of establishing a character. In this kind of film opening, the main goal is to introduce and develop a character. Mise-en-scene, dialogue, and character interactions are commonly used to create this kind of film opening. For example, mise-en-scene elements such as makeup and costume design can help the audience infer the character's age and profession. Dialogue and character interactions, on the other hand, may allow the audience to see the character's personality.

Another approach to creating a film opening that interests me is that of creating mystery. By building mystery in a film opening, it can attract the viewers' attention and intrigue them to continue watching the film. Film openings that aim to create mystery commonly focus on three things: using sound techniques, mise-en-scene, and posing a question. By using these, techniques, a film opening can build suspense and can engage its audience.

 

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

 Music Marketing Project Process:

    The task at hand for this project was center around making a campaign for a new artist using a selected song. My group members(Andrea A., Corina F., and Sofia B.) and I selected the song "Send My Love(To Your New Lover)" by Adele, and therefore we got to work researching pop as a genre. 

    We began by creating case studies(seen below) researching well-known pop artists Adele, Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, and Ariana Grande, as well as researching their respective record labels. These case studies consisted of an analysis of these artists' marketing and distribution techniques, allowing us as a group to learn techniques commonly used for pop. This allowed us not only to further build our understanding of pop as a genre but also helped introduce us to techniques we may want to use in the marketing and distribution of our own project.

    The next step of our project was planning, in which we discussed who we wanted our artist to be. We used our knowledge of genre characteristics to develop a rough idea of our artist, and we decided on creating a young, female, humble, and relatable artist named Rayn. We also studied the lyrics of our song and came together to create a storyboard for our music video to have an outline of what we would like our music video to look like. The general idea that we developed was that the video would be a combination of a promotional and storytelling music video, in which Rayn discovers her ex-boyfriend has a new girlfriend, and she expresses her feelings towards her ex-boyfriend's immaturity.

    The production was very enjoyable, as it allowed us as a group to be creative with the creation of our music video. Since we were going for a very home-made feeling for our music video, that is enjoyable for the viewer to watch, we kept the production of our video very positive. During the production of our video, we made sure to film in a variety of different backgrounds and use lots of camera movement to create visual interest for the viewer.

   

     Post-production for the video was also very collaborative, as different group members would share ideas that we could implement in our video. An important aspect that we wanted to include was the use of different cameras, so we used videos filmed on a digital camera, to create a home-made and comforting feeling.

    For our presentation, we wanted to emphasize Rayn's focus on being a relatable and humble creator, so we made sure to provide lots of content on how this would be achieved, such as the use of social media, and the inclusion of social media samples. We also focused on creating a visual appeal of Rayn as well, as this helps to attract and create interest in fans. I will provide some samples of slides from our presentation below.

 

This project allowed me to greatly expand my knowledge of marketing and distribution techniques for music, particularly the importance that social media holds in the promotion of music. As for the creation of the project as a whole, I created enjoyable connections with my classmates and learned the importance of time management for large projects, such as this one. Two very important parts of this production that I believe will be helpful during the creation of my Cambridge portfolio are the experience I gained from filming the music video, as well as importance of planning and proper time management for larger projects.

Music Marketing Blog Post #1

    The first step of this process begins with doing research on the pop genre, seeing its common characteristics and how it is seen by audiences. After learning of some of the regular characteristics of pop, such as its popularity amongst younger audiences and its tendency to be marketed on social media, my group members and I were able to move on to planning for our own marketing project. The most vital step of the planning for the music marketing project was to decide, as a group, how we wanted the artist to be portrayed. We discussed and decided that we want our artist, Rayn, to be very down-to-earth and relatable, to create a more personal connection with fans.

    By creating case studies as a group studying 4 different successful pop artists(Harry Styles, Adele, Taylor Swift, and Ariana Grande), we were able to learn how different artists use pop music to create connections with fans. This research also provides great examples of what techniques real-life pop artists use for marketing and distribution for their own pieces of music, and gave us inspiration and ideas that we could work with to use for our own campaign.

   

 As a group, we also discussed heavily how we wanted our music video to look and what message it would convey to audiences. Taking aspects such as the target audience and the fact that our artist is new and does not have a large fan base established into account, we decided to create a music video that is a combination of artist promotion and storytelling. This allows us not only to introduce our artist, but also to create a video relevant to our chosen song that tells a story by capturing the essence of the lyrics. Finally, we are piecing together a presentation that combines our potential marketing campaign for Rayn, consisting of information such as what marketing and distribution techniques we will use, as well as showcasing our music video and other research points.