Camera techniques

Hi blog! Today in class we did not have a lot of time to work on our film opening, so instead of having another brainstorming session that we would not be able to fully finished, we decided to discuss logistics. We decided that to make our film as professional as possible, we would borrow a high-quality video camera from Beacon TV. We have rented out camera equipment from them before and think that this is the best option to really make our opening great.

Although we are not certain we will stick with the idea we came up with in class the other day, we decided to use our limited time to discuss if the idea was practical from a filming standpoint. We thought we could use interesting shots and angles to make our film opening unique. We thought for the scene where the girl was burying the dead body, we could film the scene from below, as if from the point of view of the body being buried, with dirt being shoveled onto the camera and the girl in the background looking like a powerful figure from a low angle. We would also include an establishing shot of the woods, as well mid and long shot showing the girl burying the body.

When the girl is burying the body, we want few cuts and just her actions represented. However, as she runs through the woods, we were thinking of incorporating many swift cuts conveying motion that will hopefully represent the anxiety of the situation and the girl's feelings. At this point, we are not sure how we want to film the portion of the scene that includes flashbacks of how the girl ended up in the situation of burying a body. In our next team meeting, we will discuss this further.

Inspiration and Ideas

Hi blog! Today in class we wanted to set a concrete idea for our film opening. Having gone back and forth for so long deciding on a genre, we knew that we were running slightly behind schedule and that our brainstorming process would take longer than we had originally thought. Even though we decided on drama for our umbrella genre during our last team meeting, we still needed to choose a subgenre that we wanted to focus on. We tried to come up with initial ideas, but felt stuck and could not think of any plot ideas. This is when Callie came up with a brilliant plan to watch some of the openings from last year that might spark inspiration.

We went to our teacher's website, where we found all the foundation portfolio projects from last year. We scrolled through the past student's blogs and watched 5 videos until we figured out the direction we wanted to go in for our video: drama with a hint of suspense. We started listing ideas that came into our head. Lauren suggested that we film a shipwreck but I pointed out that with limited resources, it would be quite difficult to create that sort of set, and also that a shipwreck might not leave room for suspense. Callie suggested that an idea of a girl running through the woods looking dirty, possibly after hiding a body in the woods of someone she has murdered, or attempting to escape a harmful situation. 

We all liked this idea, but I suggested that we develop some sort of context behind it. Since we are all teenagers and decided that our film would be about teenagers, I drew from my research about what makes a good teenage movie, and how most movies revolve around some sort of relationship. We decided that the girl in the woods would be running away from a boy whom she had recently started dating, and something went wrong in the relationship that caused it to take a morbid turn. This is still an idea in progress, so hopefully after our next meeting we will have a more developed idea. Stay tuned!!!

Teenage Movie Madness

Now that our team has decided on an overall genre, teenage drama with a hint of suspense, it was time to conduct some serious research on all that teenage drama movies entail. In order to be successful, teenage drama movies usually include some sort of "rite of passage," which is a turning point in a person's life. Usually, rites of passage are developed throughout the entirety of a movie and the crucial event that leads to a turning point is not reached until the end of the film. Although we will not be able to reach this event within the first couple minutes of our film, we can include foreshadowing that would ultimately lead to this rite of passage. Another important element that should be captured in our film is the essence of being a teenager. This includes the typical teenage struggles, speech (such as teenage slang) and lifestyle choices--being teenagers ourselves it should be pretty easy to accomplish this.

Many teenage drama movies are so popular because of how relatable they are to young audiences. Characters face simple issues that are not too far off from what normal teenagers face. For example, one of the most iconic teenage drama movies, "Mean Girls" is an exaggerated comedy about a girl trying to fit in and survive high school. A concept as simple as this, along with an insanely humorous script and attractive actors, has made "Mean Girls" a staple teenage movie. "Mean Girls" also effectively combines humor and drama. This is especially important because although we decided it would be too difficult to focus on the genre of comedy itself, we do possibly want to incorporate some aspects of comedy into our film opening. Hopefully, we can embrace our inner comedians and conjure up a couple laugh-worthy lines in our script.

Martin, Daniel. “What Makes a Truly Great Teen Flick.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 31 Jan. 2008, www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2008/jan/31/thejunomachinehasarrived.

Brody, Richard. “Why ‘Mean Girls’ Is a Classic.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 3 Oct. 2018, www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/why-mean-girls-is-a-classic.

First Team Meeting!

Today in our media class, Lauren, Callie, and I (aka Llama Productions) had our first official team meeting! We brainstormed many ideas for our film opening. We went back and forth with a couple of topics that we wanted to focus our film opening on. We felt very defeated because we could not immediately come up with any great ideas for our film. Instead of trying to immediately come up with an idea, we decided that we would start broader and first just pick a genre first.

We talked through each film genre and listed pros and cons of how we could make an idea for each genre come to life. We went through the genres of horror, drama, and comedy. The pros for horror included that we could have an effective opening that could foreshadow future events in the film. However, we do not have the means to create a great film opening for horror because we do not have access to special effects or sets that would be crucial elements of horror films. The pros of drama included that it was very broad and we could include elements of other genres within the film. We could not think of any cons for the genre of drama, which persuaded us to highly consider it for our film. Lastly, we discusses the genre of comedy. The pros were that it did not have to include any complex elements and could be made with materials and locations available to us. However, the script would have to be really funny and we were not sure we would be able to come up with a humorous enough script that would effectively set up the film as a whole.

We eventually settled on drama as an umbrella topic for our video. We decided that there are many subgenres within drama that we could end up leaning towards, but overall we all agreed on wanting to create some kind of plot that revolves around drama, most likely also including elements of suspense. The other important decision that we agreed on in our meeting is that we wanted the film to be about teenagers. With the broad genre of teenage drama, we are thinking of focusing our film on suspense but we are not quite sure we want to go in that direction until we can come up with a great idea for the plot.