Time to get organized...

 Ok so. As we wrap up on the actual film itself, I should start considering how I plan on tackling the questions asked for our Critical Reflection (CR for short). This is an essay of around 1000 words basically asking 4 questions about what kind of message our production itself is sending to the world.

Here are the 4 questions:

How do your products represent social groups or issues?

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

How do your products engage with the audience?

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

Here are my notes on the CR that i took from class;

So for the first question, I think its important to explain

    - We reviewed productions like Fleabag, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, and Deadpool, when we first formed our     idea, and then when we changed it we looked into films like Mean Girls and The Craft to inform our           ideas for w*tch!

    - We specifically honed in on how they write for a character breaking the fourth wall when we reviewed

    productions like Fleabag

    - Our Genre is dramady

    - I think the research we did that impacted production the most was fleabag, and mean girls, we really

    took a lot of notes on how mean girls wrote their characters for the main trio, and we adapted a lot of        how fleabag would break the fourth wall into our main character claire.

The second question is a bit more complicated. Making our products reallly engage with the audience is important. I think the primary we did that was through the social media and the kind of messaging we used. 

We posted several posts such as the one on the right, indicating the target audience for our film. This communicates that our target audience (teens and young adult, primarily women) should watch our film.

Our post card engages the audience by introducing the atmosphere of the film. It features a front graphic, in line with the branding on the social media, and on the back a short description of the film, and where to go watch it at Lightning Film Festival. 

The film itself engages audiences by capturing the emotions of viewers. Everyone has felt alone at one point, and thats the kind of emotion we are trying to channel.

For the 3rd question, Our branding makes a very clear statement about the film. The posts themselves are either formatted as tarot card, or feature them as elements. To do this, we scanned the deck we used from the film to create several brand elements. The font usage is also super important. We use 3 fonts; Angelic War for titles, Slacksluger for headings/subheadings, and Shrikhand for body text. These fonts are all very flowy, with the heading and title fonts being detail oriented.

We also focused on a very gothic design language, commonly associated with witches or otherworldly concepts.

For the fourth and final question, It's important to show that we represented highschool girls, and more importantly their social groups. It happens very often that teenagers, sometimes make decisions that they don't agree with to "fit in," this often can leave others feeling abandoned. This is what we tried to represent as the main conflict in our film. 

We also represent witches in our film, in which it is important to consider that there are real practicing witches in our world. And while non of the witches in our film are specifically of any denominational organization, its important that we represent the practices were adapting properly. For this we used a real tarot deck during the production, and used a real spread that is actually used by practicing witches.

 

the ACTUAL last day of filming

 So we've made an addition to the script! meaning we need to film for another day unfortunately.

Basically, in editing we realized that there isn't really any moments between Claire and Sarina during the timeline of the film. Like sure, theres flashbacks showing their relationship, but nothing that indicates where their relationship is NOW. 

So we decided to add a little tid bit of a conversation, between the montage and the Tarot reading that basically serves this purpose, as well as having Claire take more of an active role in the story by confronting Sarina.

So we called back just Sarina and Claire to shoot this scene, and we also decided to last minute shoot something on the black void that we may or may not use:

In Ariana Grande's music video for "No Tears Left To Cry" Ariana dramatically spins around, and leaps off a building.

What captured my attention about this is that in the behind the scenes, it look extremely simple.

Music Video

Behind the Scenes

So we decided to take a shot at it, record it very quickly, and if it turned out bad we wouldn't use it

We shall see how that goes in the edit, but the next update about this film specifically should be the film itself so STAY TUNED

FILMING (the third and final day)

 Yesterday's shoot was a success! We started by using black trashbags to board up my entire house so that the daylight wouldn't show through (since it is kind of an evening scene)

You can see the trashbags if you look hard enough

Once our first two actors arrived we wrapped up recording some flashback scenes that were missing from the previous shoot! Next we started on the all the montage shots. We wanted to have a more dramatic shift, so we used natural lighting for the montage, up until the tarot reading where we dramatically shifted to a more creative style of lighting.

My dog in the red and purple lighting 

(he wanted to be included)

 This scene actually ended up taking until 10 pm to shoot :( but its okay because we wrapped :)

2nd DAY OF FILMING!!

 So today we actually had major success filming!

One of our actors was busy with work so we had to kind of be weird about what scenes we shot. We ultimately came up with this: today we would film all the flashbacks and black void scenes, as well as the scene right outside of Andreina's house and the new opening. This would allow us to get all the location shifting out of the way so that tomorrow we could focus on just filming all the single location stuff.

So today about an hour after I got home from work, the Crew came to my house to film, we started setting up my sisters room to be Claires room, and we had to take a quick detour to pick up the black backdrop from my dads friend (my dad lent it to him over the weekend) Once we got back we did the lighting set up for the backdrop which looked like this:

Our actors mostly showed up late :/ so we finalized all the character posts while we waited for them to show up!

So after our actors showed up we started with filming the bedroom scenes, then we shot everything in the void, and finally around 6:30 we filmed claire arriving to Andreina's house. 

Tomorrow we're actually filming the plot so stay tuned to see how that goes!

Creating the socials

 So one thing we kind of neglected to begin was the social media BUT THATS OKAY because were doing it now and its going to be amazing.

Today we had our cast and crew come over to my house take pictures on this black backdrop thingy!

Aneesa and Nico had this amazing idea of putting them into tarot cards so we actually loved that idea and went with it.

Here's an example of what the raw photo looks like:

Now heres the photo once we designed the tarot card and put some fun filters over it

I actually really like this because it feels like a clear and cohesive brand that we can use for all of the posts to come!

Writing win

 OK SO today 2 of my team members and I met to actually finish the script so that we could actually shoot things on Sunday when we film!

We went back and fourth with ideas about how to end the story before we ultimately decided on changing it AGAIN!! But it's a long road to greatness so it's ok.

We ended up deciding to have the void play a more meaningful role in the story, as well as scrapping most of the scene since they mentioned random people that didn't really mean anything. We also replaced Will with Sarina, since we didn't want to bloat the cast, and we already had 3 characters that go through barely any development. So we made sarina a past friend of claire's, giving claire a better motive to try and break into the popular girl group. We also slightly rewrote the opening so that it would fit better with our new story.  

So without further ado here is the final script:

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)

Some social media research...

Given that our short film is going to be a dark comedy centered around a single, fourth-wall breaking protagonist I thought it would be useful to take a look into the social medias of some similar stories!

Media text: Fleabag

Social media tool: Fleabag instagram (@bbcfleabag)

Description of types of posts: The posts begin from promo of the second season. While It starts with a 9 post mural teasing the themes of the 2nd season, the rest of the posts are a sort of "meme-ification" of the show. They take short but attention grabbing clips and stills, and post them in a meme format. The most common theme between the posts being specifically moments featuring a direct address, framing it as a relatable moment.Later on, posts begin featuring reposts of tweets about the show, photography from the set of the show, and occasionally a relevant meme, reformatted to reference the show. In the end the grand majority of content seems to be 5-8 second clips from the show made to grab attention, and leave the audience with intrigue.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Fleabag (@bbcfleabag)

    

Description of how branding is developed (or not): Towards the beginning all posts on the instagram feature the BBC-3 channel logo, however around awards season, the posts lose the logo, it comes back later in the year as a pink frame around every post. From that point forward nearly every "meme" follows a BBC-3 specific branding and format, up until the last post which drops it.

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence
I think the most important take-away is the type of content, by sharing short clips and stills, we can grab peoples attention, and build interest in the show. The decision to only post 5-8 second clips keeps a certain mystery around the content of the show, that viewers are only able to satisfy by actually watching the show in its entirety. I also think we should take note to make sure some kind of watermark or logo is on every post, because clips could easily be reshared out of context, and without a watermark or call to action, viewers wont know where to find the source of the clip.

Media text: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Social media tool: Crazy Ex Girlfriend instagram (@cw_crazyxgf)

Description of types of posts: The instagram seems to have had a rough start, the first few posts seem to be from a time where the show's branding was still a bit up in the air. The first few posts feature a different logo, but they also started the account a whole 3 months before the shows release. Around the 2 month mark seems to have been when they finalized the style. From here posts include character introductions, premiere countdowns, and stills from the show with captions teasing the plotlines in the show. The instagram also heavily features the primary key art, using it whenever possible. They also make sure to heavily feature the lead played by Rachel Bloom, who had reached online virality at the time for her comedy music videos. There was also a brief partnership with a greeting card company, featuring quotes in the same humor and themes of the show.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (@cw_crazyxgf)

 

Description of how branding is developed (or not): This is one of the better branded instagram pages I've seen. Each posts features brand specific fonts and colors, as well as following a format. The posts sometimes include editorial promo photography, and most promotional posts are either a still from the show, or some kind of "white void" style photo with the lead actress as the main focus of the photo.

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence: I like how this page consistently uses the key art and logo for the show, and beyond that develops its own personality in the wording of their posts. All the posts feature the same graphic style and almost never stray away from it. I also like how they did a countdown for the premiere of the show, and I think we could do something similar with our short film's instagram.

Media text: Deadpool Movies

Social media tool: Deadpool X account (@deadpoolmovie)

Description of types of posts: All posts are written in character, as if the account is being run by the character himself. They also all feature some kind of media outside of the text post, whether its a photo, video, or an embed of another post from a related account. Videos include teasers and highlight reels from any upcoming movies, while photos are mainly posters or stills from the movie. The account also frequently reposts tweets from Marvel Studios and Ryan Reynolds that discuss the movie.

Peggy. Dogpool. Mary Puppins. She goes by many names. She’s obviously a very special cast member. What many don’t know, is that she was also the Intimacy Coordinator on #DeadpoolAndWolverine. Which was a complete disaster, start to finish.

What kind of Intimacy Coordinator says… pic.twitter.com/8PYEH5dqz2

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) August 12, 2024

Description of how branding is developed (or not): Branding is mainly developed through the tone of writing. Every post is written from the character's perspective, and in his own voice, By building this personality around the account it makes the posts easily repostable and recognizable to audiences. Beyond this nearly all the photos or videos are specifically of either posters or teasers which include brand elements like the key art or logos.

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence: This profile is the most developed of the 3, I think its important to take from this one that its not just the content of the post that matters but the personality and tone of how its posted that really contribute to the accounts overall branding. Creating a visual style for the brand in the end may be an easier task than creating a brand voice to write from.

Breaking the 4th wall

SINCE our main character will be a fourth wall breaking protagonist I thought I would look at how some other film or shows explore this idea and put it into a character in a way that still feels real.

The first show I would like to talk about is Fleabag. THIS WILL NOT BE THE LAST TIME I TALK ABOUT THIS SHOW. Anyways I find it an excellent example because it is similarly a dark comedy with some tragic things happening and a not so serious main character at the center of it all.

Recently I watched a video from Insider that explored the techniques used in the show, and I really found it quite amazing. My key takeaways from the video were how the show is written. The main character of fleabag consistently breaks the fourth wall specifically as a sort of coping mechanism that allows her to stay detatched from the situation. This could be good to think about when writing our character, to make her direct address of the audience feel more natural. I also thought the exploration of the jarring editing technique was important to think about. There might be moments in the film where it would be more fitting to 

Insider. (2020, September 13). Why there can never be a third season of ‘Fleabag’ | 10 minutes of perfection [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAD9hyXAkB0

errr Scheduling?

 Today my group got on a video call to discuss how we plan on splitting up the time we are going to dedicate to each section of the project.

One major issue is that we all have a huge competition coming up called STN, which basically is taking a whole week of time from us. Luckily (or not) its next week! Meaning that because its early on, we'll be fully in the preproduction stage, so it wont be interrupting the production itself. 

So ultimately, our plan is to break up the work in 2s. Were givinf ourselves 2 weeks to finalize scripting, storyboarding, casting, and scheduling, 2 weeks to film, and 2 more weeks to edit. This is simple but I think it will be the most effective approach, especially since the timeline neatly converges to allow for the 2nd week of filming to hit square on spring break!

I think this schedule will definently give us a good shot at making something were proud of, but well just have to see...

OFFICIAL SCHEDULE

Week 1 - 2/17-2/21

    - Decide Project Type

    - General Planning and Scheduling

    - Brainstorming Story

Week 2 - 2/22-2/28

    - Case studies

    - Genre Research

    - Develop key plot details

Week 3 - 3/1-3/7

    - Half of week consumed by STN

    - Pin down plot points

    - Begin scripting when we return (3/4)

    - Decide on brand identity for social

Week 4 - 3/8-3/14

    - Finalize Script

    - Plan shooting locations

    - Shot list

    - Plan shooting times

    - Create social media posts

Week 5 - 3/15-3/21

    - Begin shooting

    - Start title graphics

    - Begin posting on social media

Week 6 - 3/22-3/27

    - Wrap shooting

    - Sort footage

    - Postcard Design

 Week 7 - 3/29-4/4

    - Finalize edit

    - Announce distribution plan on social media

Week 8 - 4/5-4/10

    - Write critical reflection

Portfolio Project Part 2 Electric Boogaloo

 Ignoring the extremely cliche titling of this post, can we tell im excited?

For our portfolio project my team has decided to create the short film package. Im running it back with my documentary group, so expect a perfectly adequate amount of effort squeezed into a regrettably short time-span. Im excited to finally make what i would consider to be my first short film that I play a larger role in writing. Ive always been more of a camera guy but its going to be nice to excercise that writers muscle.

When we got together to discuss ideas, we bounced around between many different concepts. Naturally we came up with nearly a million different ideas involving vampires. One with witches, and one involving my dog turning human which sparked the concersation of which of our friends was most like my dog Bono (We decided luke)

The last and most promising idea weve gotten so far, was something revolving the main character consistently talking to the camera, treating it sort of like a character within the story. This one is for sure the most exciting to me and im excited ro refine it and see where it goes!