Our Plot

What we learned from the meeting:
-Do not rely heavily on montage footage, it will be boring.
-Focus on character development and keeping things real.
-Incorporate cinematic footage of main character creating their "movie".
-Make sure there is a clear story.
-Take a look at the techniques used in the hit movie, "Mid90s" for incorporating the effect of archived or amateur footage.

Overview:
Raul and I have decided on creating a narrative around the everyday footage that a senior takes on their phone before leaving for college. In the digital age of today, people can now see in detail moments of their life that would normally be lost in memory. Revolving around a montage that a high-school senior creates during their last moments before college, we plan to insert footage to show the connection that a group of friends has with one another. Parallel editing will occur between the montage footage of the kids and the "behind the scenes" look at their lives to create a sense of real-life and character development. At the end of the story, we want to combine the two plot lines by having a shot of the group of friends watching the end of the video together.

Other Info:
Shots needed: Hand-held camera shots from an iPhone. (For the montage with music behind)
                       Cinematic behind the scenes shot with dialogue.

Characters: 1 main character, 3+ supporting characters
Locations: 5+

Next Steps
This is certainly a rough idea of how it will work out but it is certainly going to be what we are working to accomplish. We still have to work out the specifics in terms of the plot and title of the piece which will be done once we finish our screenplay this Sunday. Figuring out the plot has definitely been a process and we are going to have to work extra to hard to catch up with our schedule.

In-class Socratic

Today in school the wifi was out and we had no way of working on the project. So, Mrs. Stoklosa got our tired selves into action and my small class moved our desks into a circle and we just brainstormed ideas with each other for the entire period. I really thought the meeting was helpful because Raul and I got a ton of great ideas and it was nice to see where everyone else was with the project as well.

I took some notes during the meeting about what other people are working on...

Manuela: She is working on a coming of age short-film of a girl trapped in a convent. Her ideas were very much in the works so I am excited to see what she does.

Sophie: Continuing off of her work on the documentary project, she wants to focus on teen vaping. The class gave her a lot of ideas regarding ways she could make her piece be meaningful and really stand out.

Nick: Being his creative self, Nick wanted to do something creative with the plot, which led to a very confusing discussion about looped plot lines. Nonetheless, he is making a short-film in the thriller genre. So at this point, I will just have to wait and see what he comes up with.

Katalina: Katalina wanted to be creative and create a short-film in the thriller genre about a girl with OCD. The controversial part was when she stressed there be a love story incorporated in the film. Mrs. Stoklosa, not too keen on the idea of noting the unconventional nature of a thriller/love story.

Reem: Deciding on a documentary, Reem knew she wanted to create a piece on minority representation in the media. She initially wanted to make the piece focus around the Muslim community but was torn over whether or not she overuses the subject. Ideas were thrown around to address the Chinese community after recent worldly afflictions by the Coronavirus.

Valentina: She chose to create a documentary focused on special needs kids and teens. Her main premise was to focus on her little sister and her true day to day life.

Andrea: Andrea too wanted to incorporate a time loop into her story. She stressed that she wanted to take a more biblical route, with her plot involving a religious woman in purgatory making a cake and the story restarting every time she eats it. Andrea is extremely creative so I am excited to see what she comes up with!

Timeline

I felt a little bit overwhelmed with all that we have to do in such a short time frame so I found this cool website called visme.co which has a ton of cool templates to create timelines. I thought it would be nice to roughly visualize all that needs to be done in one document. So here ya go...

Deciding on Genre

Raul and I had a meeting today to share our ideas for the film. Although we couldn't decide yet on a definitive plot, we reached an agreement on our genre. Pretty much, we want to expand on what we did last year. Our film opening was meant to provide a glimpse into the life of an everyday teen, however, I feel as though it fell flat. There were issues with this piece ranging from lighting to just overall selection of characters. Despite the numerous faults from our last attempt, Raul and I think we really have some potential as long as we really focus our efforts on character development and create a smooth well-produced piece. The teen drama genre is what we are leaning to again, noting our lack of budget and access to a large pool of actors in that age range. Plus, I really just love teen dramas. Similar to our film opening "Younger" we want to have a small cast, with the main character essential to the progression of the storyline.

Thankfully, I have already done genre research on both the drama and teen genre.

Drama genre research: https://pearsemediastudies.blogspot.com/2018/12/genre-research-drama.html
Teen drama examples: https://pearsemediastudies.blogspot.com/2019/02/research.html

I'm back

I am excited to announce that I will be resuming this blog in order to document the progress of my AICE Media A Level project!!! Things have definitely stepped up from the last year, with one major and two minor components to get done. Working again with my partner Raul Passarini, we hope to improve on our work last year to create a five-minute short-film that we can really be proud of. Creating an entire short-film is something I have never done before, so I am both excited and nervous to get started on this. This year, we practiced a lot with editing and filming creating projects including a trailer and documentary so I feel like I have a good grasp on what needs to be done and the hard work that is going to be needed.

For this week, I want to put a ton a focus on just thinking about genre and what kind of story we want to tell. From then on, it's about what we are willing to do to make this thing come life. Research and preparation is something I really want to improve on this time around, so this blog will hopefully be reflective of that. Alright, I'm gonna stop typing and start thinking...