CCR Introductions

 Today in class we had a lesson, in which we learned all about our Creative Critical Reflections for the portfolio project. In my notes, I covered most of the important aspects that you need to know.

In class after learning about the CCR questions, I tried to brainstorm ideas for the creative pieces in which we answer the CCR questions. I know that there have to be TWO pieces, but so far I have only come up with one idea that I would like to play around with. 

One kind of interview that I have seen with many celebrities are known as The Puppy(or occasionally Kitten) Interviews from Buzzfeed, in which celebrities are interviewed while playing with small puppies. Not only does this create an enjoyable video for a viewer to watch because there are cute dogs running around the screen, but also it creates visual interest because there is movement on screen with the dogs running around, rather then the actor just plainly answering interview questions.

Here is a link to access a playlist of these interviews, and embedded below is an example of one of these interviews.

This idea is only potential, but if I were to follow through with this, I am dog-sitting a dog named 'Io' for a month, and this should give me time to film my CCR with Io. Additionally, my partner for this portfolio project, Alex, said that If I do follow through with this idea, I ca also film with her dog, Baci. I will insert images of both Io and Baci.

Filming

Today was the day!

    So, today we finally filmed! It took us about 5 hours, with some laughs, snacks, and breaks included. We started filming at around 2pm, but luckily, daylight savings time has just begun and the sun set right when we finished filming all the scenes that required daylight just in time for the sun to set (which was around 7:30 pm.)

    We only had one MAJOR change today caused by scheduling conflicts, but we were able to solve it. Originally, our actor for Bella was my friend Andreina, but she was unable to come, as both she and I just got back from a 3-day school trip for our French competitions(Go Cypress!!). With some convincing, our friend Gabriela(Gaby) was able to take the position. So, today our actors were as follows: Andrea as Valerie, Alex as Mara, Gaby as Isabella, and myself on cinematography(with help from those who were not being filmed depending on the shot). Our filming did really go well, with no major hiccups, and we all had a good day. Coming up next is video and sound editing, which will be completed by me and Alex. More to come soon!

(Here are some pictures from the filming)

5 stages of grief

The 5 Stages of Grief-and how we want to implement them in our film opening.

In class earlier this week, my partners and I we’re discussing ideas for the very ending of our opening, when I remembered how the movie ‘La La Land’ is split into different seasons, and I came up with an idea.

Rather than split our film into seasons, I proposed to that we split our film into 5, deriving from the five stages of grief. This way, we could do something similar to ‘La La Land’ and write on the screen which stage of grief Valerie is experiencing at the time.
While we were originally planning on showcasing Valerie sometime after her sister's death, using grief as a divider will make this much more clear.


Grief is the most emotional time when a person is suffering the loss of a loved one, so in this point of the movie, Valerie will be more depressed and upset, as she is only just beginning her journey of accepting this death. In our film opening, we will only briefly show Valerie's suffering, but the audience will see enough to understand the deepness of her pain. A clear and easy way of showing grief is like crying and releasing emotions, so we plan to implementing this into our film opening.

Mise-en-scene

 Mise-en-scene is a major part of developing a film, however there are a lot of different aspects of mise-en-scene, and not each one is relevant to our particular film opening.

    Originally, I thought that lighting would be an important aspect in our film opening, and we as a group 

The most important mise-en-scene for our film opening are:

-location/set design

-costume design & makeup

    For the location/set design, we are filming entirely inside Andrea's house, using her and her parents' room for the sisters' rooms. We plan on decorating the rooms to look more 'girly' by using pillows and throw blankets and other small accessories that would commonly be seen in a teenage girl's room. Below is somewhat of a tour of Andrea's house, showing all the rooms that we may film in, depending on what angles we use when filming. The filming location is nothing out of this world, as it not meant to be the focus of our film opening. Similarly, we are focusing on the use of natural lighting for our film opening. Originally, we were planning on making a contrast in the sisters by using lighting and color, such as using blue lightning to show sadness versus orange lighting to show happiness. However, after discussing our teacher, we decided against this because it would be difficult for the viewer to watch. To emphasize the character's contrasting emotions, we will focus on costume design instead.

Costume Design:

    I think we will style Mara in a dark, baggy outfit like this to emphasize her sadness and somewhat of a disinterest in looking presentable.

For Valerie, as a group we have not discussed an outfit, but I believe we will do a simple basic outfit, in order to show how she is just like any regular teenager. I will insert inspiration below.

We will most likely have both characters with little to no makeup, as we are going for a more natural look. However, one of our actors,  Andreina, is very talented in doing makeup so there may be a little bit of makeup to show the characters emotion.

Here is an example of natural makeup:

Film Opening Research

 Film Openings: Samples and Interesting Techniques Found

The film opening that has supplied a majority of my inspiration for our film opening is the one of The Virgin Suicides. While it obviously covers the topic of a teenage girl's suicide, which is relevant to my film opening, I was also always attracted to the entire film and its opening, as it introduces the aesthetic of the piece nicely while still being able to provide context for the story. The opening uses text on the screen stylistically to provide context and add visual appeal, which I would like to use in my film opening. 

The opening also uses dialogue sparingly, choosing strong phrases to really impact the audience, such as "Obviously doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl." Dialogue like this is used to evoke emotions in its audience. In this case, it makes you feel sorry for the character, as she is suffering in life from such a young age and feels misunderstood. By using strong dialogue in my own film opening, I will be able to somewhat manipulate the audience's emotions, making them feel bad for the characters in my film opening, and making them want to continue watching.

My absolute favorite part of this film's opening is the title card. I really just like how it looks. As it repeatedly shows the title of the film in different fonts, it gives a very 'cute' feeling and somewhat of a girly vibe to the opening, which helps to introduce that the target audience of the film is more focused towards the female gender.

Group Meeting

 Group Meeting #1

Yesterday in class, we held our first group meetings to get feedback on our projects from other classmates. Previous to actually meeting in groups, we watched a TED talk, shown by our teacher, providing helpful information on story writing. I will provide an image of my notes from the class period, in which I wrote down the most important things that I thought could benefit my film opening.

In the top section, you can see my notes from the TED talk video, and on the bottom, by quick notes from the group meeting.

    During the group meeting, I met with 5 other classmates, one of them being my partner, Alex. Each person proposed their idea for their film opening, and then we discussed any questions we had and any recommendations that could improve our piece. We also had access to looking at other classmates' blogs, to reference whilst they spoke about their ideas.

    The first thing I wrote down from the group meeting was not said out loud, but was more of a recommendation that I had for myself. I saw on my classmate, Agam Gago's, blog that she had written a blog on representation in the characters in her film opening, and I thought I should write this down as it would be a good blog post to create for my own film opening, as it will allow me to further research characteristics that the characters in my film opening will have, such as how they process emotions. This will allow me to create a better piece, in the end, as I will have a deeper analysis and understanding of our characters.

    When it came time to explain my concept during the group meeting, Alex and I explained our plans for the film opening together. While we did not have any major issues that we were encountering, our classmates were incredibly helpful in giving us recommendations to improve our film opening. As we explained that the film in its entirety would be about the older sister, Valerie, our group members expressed concern that the film opening seemed to be a bit too centered around Mara, and that if we wanted to introduce that the rest of the film is about Valerie, that we should begin showing this towards the end of our film opening. They proposed that we could show a scene, set a few days/weeks in the future, showing Valerie's strong emotions dealing with the loss of her sister. I think this was a great recommendation that solves an issue that I had not yet thought about, and I like the execution of the potential solution. After the group meeting was over, I discussed this with Alex and Andrea, and even offered that we could show dates on screen using text in the film opening to make it clear to the audience that time had passed.

     Overall, I think this group meeting was incredibly successful, as it not only helped improve my project by giving me feedback from others, but also allowed me to hear about my classmates' creative ideas for their own film openings! I can't wait to see their projects in the future!!

Small Update!

Character Names and Film Title

Character Names:

Last class, my partners Andrea and Alex, and I compared our research on names and came up with these final names for our characters:

Valerie(Val): For person A, the main character in this film, and the older sister of Person B.

Mara: For person B, Valerie's little sister, who eventually passes away in the film opening.

Isabella(Bella): For person C, the friend of both sisters.

    Research for both Valerie and Mara can be accessed here, in one of my previous blogs. The name Isabella, however, was proposed by one of my partners, and we decided on using the name as it is a very common name, and has a meaning that ties back to friendship.

Film Title:

    I'm excited to say that Alex, Andrea, and I have finally decided on our film title! We decided on the name 'Dear Mara'. The name of the film is meant to reinforce that the entire piece will be about Valerie overcoming the loss of her sister. We will be hinting at this title in our piece as we plan to briefly show Mara writing a letter addressed to her sister in the film opening(which the audience can later assume is something of a suicide note, leaving her last words for her sister to read). By titling the piece 'Dear Mara', the audience can make the inference that the film will be about Valerie overcoming her sister's passing, and that she would write a letter displaying her emotions after her passing and her journey overcoming this tragedy. Obviously, we are creating film OPENING and not an entire movie, and therefore we thought that using this title would be a creative way to hint to the audience what the contents of the film would theoretically be.