Final Project: I Love Music

     I've recently found a Youtube channel called Sideways, which breaks down the musical elements in various films to explain why their bad or why they work. He talks about various aspects of films that are good, bad, and where they tie into classical opera or what the places mean in past musical studies. 

    Here's the link to his Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi7l9chXMljpUft67vw78qw 

    I think his channel is extremely good for breaking down how the music changes a scene, and what it means for the overall value of the production. I like that the channel dives down so much deeper into various aspects of the production and how they can be improved or why they work. 

Final Project: Further Planning and Roofers

 Since I've been gone all of Spring Break, doing further work for the filming was difficult. However, it did pose a unique advantage for me to that way the set was consistent. The roof of my house was being done, so before we left for the trip, I had my brother fly a small drone over the entire house to ensure that the roof was going to be done on time, and my mom's coworker has been doing checks on the roof. I'm very excited to report that the roof of the house will be done tomorrow, which means that I will be able to have something with a consistent set. 

    This is important because there are a few scenes that will be filmed outside, and these scenes needed to have consistency in the roofs that were behind and in front of it. My neighbors are also getting their roof's done, and I don't want to have any inconsistency in my background, because it wouldn't make sense in the context of the piece, since not much time passes between shots. 

Final Project: Spring Break Scheduleing

 Cypress Bay had Spring Break at a very inconvenient time this year. I wanted to do some of my filming during this week, but I was not in town and thus didn’t have access to my house, equipment, or any of the actors that I planned to use on set. Thus I was faced with a dilemma. How could I still be productive without access to many materials. So I got organized. 

    The project realistically will not take me much longer to film then any other videos that my friends and I have made in the past, which take several hours but are also planned on set that day. Since planning takes up most of the time and the project has been mostly planning and research, I anticipate that actual filming will not take an extremely long period of time, and that an entire weekend will be enough time for me to film everything I need, while also giving me time to double check footage in case I need to do reshoots later on in the week. 

    I contacted a friend of mine who is also taking media studies and she agreed to help me by being an actor on set. She will play the victim. I also have a friend that goes to Western High, who will be helping me with lighting and set preparation. I think that given a decent amount of time on a Saturday night, we will be able to film everything I need to ensure that the project is going well. 

Final Project: How Visual Analysis Helped

 There were two things that really helped with brainstorming for this project. The first was research from watching or rewatching various pieces that I thought matched perfectly the aesthetic that I was trying to accomplish. This was discussed in early phases of the project with various research blogs on various things I thought were interesting. 

    The second one is what I want to discuss today. The visual analysis essays that we’ve been completing in class have forced me to look at various aspects of production and how they add meaning to the overall product that s seen on screen. By engaging in academic activities where someone is forced to look at the details of a production, it makes me more aware of things that I could put into my production to add subtle meaning and nuance instead of shoving things down the audience’s throat. 

    I forget who it is but there’s someone with a quote that talks about giving the audience enough to understand what it going on without spoon feeding them, which I think applies to everyone’s projects at this point, because I’ve learned various aspects of production that add meaning, and I want to ensure that I don’t miss any marks, almost as if I’m writing an essay about a piece that I haven’t even finished. It’s an interesting thought that occurred to me the other day as I was watching Breaking Bad, and it made me realize that the essays are forcing me to look at production in a more meaningful way. 

Final Project: Storyboarding Process 2

     The second phase of the project in terms of a storyboard comes from a combination of two things. The first is a wonderful application called storyboarder, which allows you to use your computer to draw on your screen and build a storyboard from scratch. I had a few ideas in my head and was able to draw a few of them inside a storyboard using that application. I honestly cannot believe that its completely free and I love using it, even though my storyboards look like they’ve been drawn by a kindergartener. 

    The second aspect of the story boarding campaign comes from mocks of what I want to film. I tested a few ideas out to see if what I wanted to do was feasible, and then I decided from there how I would alter the story that I had outlined. I did things such as examine whether or not I could properly cover street lamps to artificially alter the lighting for the scene(I could not) and also tried out various angles to see if they would look good for the project, using a Halloween prop as a stand-in for my actors. Overall this process was pretty effective and caused me to reconsider some of the things that I had previously thought would be a good idea. 

    Overall this process allowed me to go through all of the aspects of production to determine what would work and what wouldn’t, while allowing me to maximize my ability to film effectively given a budget of zero. 

Final Project: Storyboarding Process 1

    I haven't spent many blog postings discussing my storyboarding process, so I'm going to dedicate this weeks' blog postings to a storyboarding overview for the project thus far. It went in a few phases, and each phase helped me realize what worked and what didn't, as well as giving me ideas for the future for the project. 

    The first of these phases was the brainstorming phase. The second this project was assigned, I knew I wanted to do a crime thriller, but I wasn't sure how I would go about doing it. Thus began phase one. I do this thing when I'm brainstorming for written pieces and visual pieces where I listen to a music compilation that I think matches the mood I'm going for, and I close my eyes, trying to imagine scenes playing out in my head. This gave me a few scenes that really clicked with me in my head, which allowed me to move forward with the pieces that were feasible. 

    The second phase was figuring out which of these scenes I wanted to use, and how they could potentially tie together. At this point of the project, I eliminated anything that didn't make sense and then I added in scenes for the parts that I was missing, leaving a few scenes from my 'vision' while still having a project that felt polished and good. 

    The third step was a physical storyboard, with drawings and images depicting what would happen in the scene. I've never been great at drawing, so this is where I used the LEGO fill-ins to help supplement the physical drawings that I had done. Once that part of the process was done I double-checked the relationship that the piece had with research and made further changes at that point. 

Final Project: Looking Forward to the Next Group Session

     I can't wait for the next group session to occur. There are a few aspects of the project that I want to get second opinions on before I proceed. The first of these concerns is major and something I've been thinking about over the past few days. I have a rough outline for how I want the scenes to look like and I think that what I have is good, but there are a few difficulties with production that I want to discuss within the groups that we will be doing next week. 

    I think that there is a portion of the project that requires a possible change. I was thinking originally to have the murder location be outside, but it would be much easier to control lighting inside my house then outside it, and thus I think that I will consult the group to figure out which one will end up looking better(I'm leaning towards inside but I want a second opinion). 

    The second aspect of the project I want to possibly change is an inclusion of a character. I've noticed that the main character for all of these movies and TV shows are introduced differently, but all of them are introduced at the beginning of the film. At first I didn't think I would have time for the inclusion of a main character, but I think that I will have time at the end of the excerpt to introduce the detective that the movie will follow. I'm planning on doing a few blogs on my planning process next week. 

Final Project: Musical Sidetracking with Chosic

 Chosic is such an amazing website and I'm so glad Mrs. Stoklosa mentioned it in class. Chosic is a website that allows people to search for music, then find tracks that are similar to the tracks that they've been looking for. So for example, if I wanted to use a song similar to Bathroom Dance from Joker, I could search for the song using Chosic's similar feature. This allows me to gain songs that are similar to the one that I'm looking for, while still giving me copyright-free music that can be used for my final project. This is an extremely useful tool and it allows me to get musically involved in my project while maintaining the same overall aesthetic that pieces deliver. 

Chosic also has genre features, new music to discover, and thousands of songs to listen to. I played around with it for a bit and found a few tracks that I think are interesting and that I would consider putting in my final project. I mentioned in a previous blog post that there are things that I wanted to reach out to friends who made music, but I recently found out they can't do what I'm asking of them, mostly because the project isn't finished and they think they can't write the music for something that isn't done yet in a short amount of time. 

I think Chosic will be a perfect alternative, and as the project enters the next phases of development I look forward to finding out which music pieces work best with what I am thinking of doing. 

Here's the link to Chosic's homepage, because it's an absolutely fantastic website. https://www.chosic.com/

Final Project: Reflecting on Reflections

     Last class, we discussed the final portion of the project, which meant that I was forced to think about various aspects of the project that I hadn't previously taken into serious consideration. The first thing I looked into further was audience and platform. I conducted further research first on the audience and looked at the pieces that had been featured in my research during the initial phases of the project to determine what my general audience for the project would be. Considering that Criminal Minds is rated as TV-14 and that movies like Seven and Joker are rated R, I think that the audience goes from roughly 14-20 and 30-year-olds.

    In terms of distribution, I looked at statistics on usage on various platforms for the project. There were various platforms that had high use among this age group, such as Netflix and Youtube. I think that the most attainable release for this project would be Youtube, as well as submitting something through various student film festivals that happen in Florida. 

    As for the reflection, I'm thinking of doing something along the lines of a director's review, where I discuss various decisions I've made about the project during production, which allows me time for reflection about so many aspects of the project. 

Final Project: Distracted by Lights

     This time it wasn't me getting a gift that sidetracked my progress. My brother got a set of LED lights that plug into the wall, and I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate them potentially into the production. They're the type of LEDs that have multiple color variations, which I can use to color various parts of the scene differently without filters and without spending any money. 

    This apparatus, combined with the ring light that I have and the 2 phone tripods I have, can provide me with various angles and lighting schemes for the piece. This would allow multiple lighting schemes and angles that make it so the piece can achieve dynamic lighting without the piece feeling cheesy and without ridiculous amounts of money being spent. 

    I think that there are various things I can do with various setups with these different lighting apparatuses, and I think that it will come in handy as I continue to flesh out my idea regarding the production of this project. 

These are all of the pieces of equipment that I have(except for the tripod, which I cannot move at the moment because I am working on a stop motion at the moment. 

Final Project: The Camera Interrupts Me Again

     I received an email from my grandfather regarding the camera and thought I could take a day to go over it and try to fix the issues that I was having with the camera's compact flash drive. I did a bit of research into the issue that the camera was experiencing and didn't find much to help me with my situation. 

    At the moment, I think that trying to fix the camera is not a great use of my time, and I don't think I will come back to it since I have wasted enough time messing around with it when I could have been doing actual work for the project. There were other things that I could've been doing and I don't think this camera is going to be a valuable use of time at this stage in the project. 

    Overall I think that in the future I need to manage my time better and try to avoid getting distracted and learn that certain things are not going to be able to help me in the time constraint that I am given. 

Final Project: Planning the Opening

I tend to plan things based on how they looked visually, and I'm not great at drawing so a typical storyboard doesn't help me too much(I have started one and I will attach a copy of it in my next blog post). For this small 'problem' of sorts, I have an interesting and fun idea that I've been trying out to plan the shot. I've been using LEGO figures to try and map out where I would put the camera for scenes with various interactions in them. I have a few photos that I will link below. 

The main character is the stormtrooper with black arms. The first picture in the middle of the document, and they are leaving the home of the regular white-clothed individual(costumes will obviously be much more different on set). The second picture in the top left shows the victim being stalked by the would-be killer. I think that I will add a tracking shot, much like in The Shining, to heighten the fear and tension for the scene.

There are a few things that I have noticed with this setup. I cannot track movement very well, and scaling is extremely difficult. I also have to keep in mind size constraints, and thus I've avoided placing the camera too high above the figures. I still think conventional storyboarding is important, but I've found that this is a good way to physically interpret some of the ideas that I have without using any actors or setting up a camera rig. 

As I continue to develop the shots and angles for the project, I will move onto using real sets and people for test runs of the project, just to see how everything fits and flows, and if I need to add anything to the piece at the beginning or end.