The schedule is conflicted...

 OKAY so something has come up during the main weekend we were planning on filming! YAY!

basically our primary antagonist, andreina, MIGHT take a tour of the college she is going to on that weekend. KEY WORD: MIGHT!

This means we still need to write the script and have it ready by the weekend in the case that she decides not to visit the school. Either way, this creates conflict for us because its essentially hard to ask 5 people to keep their weekend open on the CHANCE we film something that day. 

Were also already around a week behind our original schedule, meaning we'll only have around a week to edit, and less time for our critical reflection, which is not the best. I hope we'll be able to film next weekend so that we can whip together atleast a draft of the film in the edit in the 3 or so days following, so that we can have 2-4 days to FINALIZE the film as well as create the many many social posts that are needed.

writing da scrip

 "A wise man once said, write drunk edit sober"

- Nico, 2026.                                        

Okay so were obviously not doing that, but thank god for my team member Nico who late at night and in a sleepy drowse (basically the same thing as drunk) wrote out what we wanted in our script.

OBVIOUSLY it's not perfect, but thats what the edit sober part is for. I overall genuinely like this new direction and I do think it creates a more dynamic character for claire.

Going through changes

OK so today we got on a call and decided, the general story as we have it is kind of bland.

The most prominent issue being the fact that nothing really makes our audience care about our main character. In the film she goes through a physical struggle, but none of that struggle really makes anyone root for her. SOO we decided to tweak the original idea!

After some discussion we came to this: instead of anything along the lines of what we were thinking before which would've been a malicious spell steals claires life force, and she needs to find a way to stop or counter it, we decided it would be much more intriguing if the witches actually were welcoming her in to their squad. We decided the main conflict of the story should be something that tests her need to fit in. A placeholder example we used for this was the 3 witches ask her to help them bury a dead body. This creates a more inner conflict within her: should she help the witches and finally fit in to a group, or should she do what she knows is right and stay alone.

I think this change definitely fixes the issues with attachment to the main character because it creates a more personal aspect that can make an audience really connect to the character.

So this is the point at which we have the script right now (just one page longer than last time) and I will update once we've written out our new idea!

The shoot from heaven (?)

Considering we only locked down our actors just yesterday (bad form i know) the shoot today actually went AMAZING!! but before I elaborate on how the shoot went let me explain why we even shot today (considering the script isn't even finalized)

OKAY SO basically I would consider us behind as far as writing goes, we realistically should've atleast had a first draft by now, buttt life gets in the way, and atleast for me, several doctors appointments later, I wasn't really in the physical capacity to write, and with my partners catching up on make-up work from STN we never properly coordinated a script. Now yesterday, we created the first scene, and we tried to refine it the best we could for today. Also one of our group members would be gone the entire break, basically meaning we wouldnt be able to film (he has the equipment). 

Anyway on to the shoot which actually went really well! Our lead actress Claire is genuinely perfect for the role, and our Mean girl clique is also very dynamic in their presentation of the classic "chic" personality that we hoped to capture. Anyway as far as equipment we used Zach's tripod, his mics, and my camera which is a Lumix S5. Luckily the class we shot in had these weird rolly desks which allowed us to do a psuedo dolly shot:

We also were able to finish ahead of schedule, so now our plan is to take spring break to really fine tune the writing and make it absolutely stellar for when we shoot after break!

Hi my name is the script from hell

 HI GUYS!!!

It is like 1am but blogging cures my insomnia so I'll tell you about the crazy action packed day I had. 

Today was Thursday and also an early release day for my school, so naturally I planned to spend the entire day with my group writing a script. Basically we got really lucky with our schedules, and we have 3 classes together back to back where we can script, and since its an early release day, our teachers have nothing planned. 

So after school, me and Zach, went to waffle house to finalize create start a script before filming TOMORROW at school since it would be the only day the school is closed for us to film in (teacher planning day)

After coming back to my home to finish what we had planned for tomorrow this is what we we ended up with!

Alright its a big day tomorrow as were filiming the first ever shots of our film so wish us luck and ill be sure to update you guys with everything that happens TOMORROW!!

What is a postcard anyway?

The postcard would need to create visual interest, as well as reveal the general themes of the film. Below is an example that my sibling made not to long ago for NFFTY.

So for our print component we need to make a postcard that could be handed out at film festivals. The goal of the postcard is basically to advertise our film to potential sponsors at the festival or anyone else who we might want to watch it.

As you can see the postcard is in 4x5 aspect ratio and has a front cover and a back cover. The front cover is a still from her documentary and the back is a general synopsis of the film. But after some further research its not the perfect postcard.

What it does right is choosing a still that is well composed and creates visual interest. Without reading any of the text on the card, it easy to tell what the film centers around.  The front cover also features the title, credits for the director and DP, but most importantly the location of the screening as well as the date and time it occurs.  The back cover also is good because it keeps the films title graphics as well as a small synopsis of the film. At the bottom it features a call to action that tells people what screening to see it at, and reiterates the location, date, and time.

It would be useful to potentially include the film festivals logo on the card (in the case that you might hand it to someone way before the festival). It also missing any kind of contact information or social media for the director which is the main way someone would find you after the seeing the film. 

Overall while this postcard is good, its not a perfect example, and I believe that learning whats missing from this one will help me pay closer attention when I create the postcard for my film!

How to cope: Changing your idea in 2 steps

 OKAY SO. 

Today my group met for the first time to officially address the idea of writing a script. They all brought back some comments from some group meeting held during class that I was unfortunately unable to attend due to my sick condition.

The basic idea that everyone brought back was: "uhhhh i dont get it" which we realize kind of means we would need to massively rework the idea to be a lot more straightforward. After all it is a SHORT film we only have so much time to deliver the key concepts to the viewer, and having to establish the idea that the camera itself is a character would take longer than we actually have time for.

How I imagine our classmates reacted to
our idea (i have no idea i wasn't there)

After some discussion we eventually decided to revert to an older idea, the mean-girls-witches-esque idea. Ill paste in the outline of the story we came up with below but for those of you who dont read

TLDR: After getting invited to popular group, lead girl discovers they are witches using dark magic to stay popular/powerful.

Girl who's pure gets invited by popular Trio to stay on at popular Trio leader house and the sounds backfires and she gets possessed and after she gets possessed she can break the fourth wall and then stuff happens from there ethical stuff a real ethical stuff something that changes her as a person deep down inside 

Beginning:

• MC is introduced as pure cutsie girl type:

• She meets popular girl trio (band of classic prissy hot pink popular girls)

• she takes one of their seats in class and they sit around her

• They start talking to her, in a fake kindness tone

• They invite her to one of their popular girl hangs (mean girls esque)

Middle:

• Hard cut to her outside the door of the hangout

• She talks to the camera while waiting in excitedly, but gets cut off with the door opening

• Popular girl briefly questions who shes talking to, but MC waves it away quickly, but also notices a charm around her neck

• The do classic girly stuff, MC notices the other 2 wearing the same charm

• Popular girls suggest doing a witchy spell casually “it’ll be fun” its revealed that they are practicing witches, and have been doing magic for a while (they maintain their prior characterization though)

• They start the spell, MC notices her energy draining and stops the spell

This idea seems a lot more straightforward and were honestly excited to finalize a script and begin filming, but I have to be honest, im worried that this change in story could've kinda thrown a wrench into the momentum we were building with th previous story. It also come with its own potential issues like finding A LOT more actors and also possibly filming in school (yuck)