Mood Boards!

    I designed mood boards for our two main characters and a couple post ago I promised I would post them soon. Well, here they are! The first mood board I designed was Ricky's. Ricky is of the bad boy trope and I tried to show that on his mood board. His mood board shows his hobbies, his aesthetic, and a couple of his favorite things. 

As previously stated, Ricky rides skateboards, drives a 1986 Ferrari Testarossa, and is a mountain biker. He plays video games, loves the movie The Breakfast Club, and is a huge fan of rock and heavy metal music. In fact, he will have tickets to a Queen concert in our film opening. Additionally, Ricky loves the drink Mountain Dew, he drinks it every day and even takes a bottle with him to school. He loves junk food and you would be able to find countless bags and wrappers of unhealthy food around his room. 

April is a very introverted young girl who focuses on her studies and hobbies above anything else. She loves to read, play the piano and acoustic guitar, and paint. April could also be considered a bit of a goody-two-shoes as she has never sneaked out, never gotten drunk, never gotten a detention, nothing that would end in a severe punishment from her parents. She drives a 1978 Volkswagen Super Beetle Convertible and bikes around her neighborhood and even to the beach. 

Well, that is all for today! Write to you guys later! 

    Isa :)

More Characters

    We went above and beyond the call of duty and developed some side characters for our film opening. Although these side characters are most likely not going to be pictured in the two minutes we are going to submit to Cambridge, we may have so much fun working on this project that this two-minute film opening may turn into a short film! Who knows? We just want to be prepared. And in doing so, let me introduce to you our four side characters!

    Our first side character is Danielle, April's best friend. She is also a senior in high school. The idea is that she and April met at the mall about a month before the film begins. She and April instantly clicked and got very close, they became best friends really quickly. Unlike April, Danielle is very outgoing as she is involved in many clubs and extracurriculars, even being the leader of a couple. She additionally is a hardcore feminist and supports multiple human rights movements, having stickers and posters of such movements all around her room and school supplies. 

The other three side characters we developed are Ricky's group of best friends. This group consists of Will, Noah, and Jake. Will is a senior in high school and Noah is a freshman in college. These two are both players who date girls just for a week then dump them and ghost them for no apparent reason. Jake is the nicest out of the three friends. Jake is also a senior in high school with Will and Ricky. These three are Ricky's best friends. They're all athletes although they all play or participate in different sports. Will is a lacrosse player, Noah plays basketball, and Jake surfs. 

            

Well, that is all for today! Write to you guys later! 

    Isa :)

Characters

    We've decided to take major inspiration from older 80s romantic comedies such as The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Say Anything, and When Harry met Sally for mise-en-scene, characters, and costume designing. We've started brainstorming our main characters and started designing mood boards which I will be posting soon. 

    So far we have established our two main characters and their aesthetics. Our female lead is named April, she's a senior in high school and is one of the artsy kids. What do I mean by this? Well, she paints, plays the guitar, plays the piano, and used to dance ballet. She's also a bookworm and a goody-two-shoes. We have a really well-rounded idea of who she is. Additionally, she'll drive a 1978 Volkswagen super beetle convertible which we thought fit her personality and aesthetic pretty well.

Our male lead is named Ricky and he's also a senior in high school. He is of the cliche "bad boy" type however not too cliche that it's cheesy. Ricky has 2 little brothers, skateboards, mountain bikes, wants a motorcycle, and drives a 1986 Ferrari Testarossa. He spends his Fridays partying with his friends and may end up in detention multiple times a week. He puts on a facade when he's at school compared to when he's at home with his family though. 

Well, that is all for today! Write to you guys later! 

    Isa :)

Romcom: 80s film

    Sabrina and I have been working on thoroughly developing a plan and schedule for our film opening. We have decided to set our romantic comedy in the 80s and portray that on camera through the mise-en-scene. Here are some of our ideas. 

    We are focusing on the set design in order to clearly show that the film is set in the 80s. Our two main characters, one male and one female, will have rooms full of 80s props such as walls covered in posters, 80s technology such as cord phones, band instruments, and perhaps even roller skates. I took inspiration from the character Kat's room in 10 Things I Hate About You (first image seen below). Additionally, Nancy Wheeler's room from Stranger Things (second image seen below) also has many 80s props that we could include in our film opening. 

The boy could have the following in his room: 

• Stickers
• Converse
• Sammy’s electric guitar?
• Video Games
• Skateboard (s)
• Comic books
• Concert tickets
• Same posters
• Jean jackets
• White tank tops
• Caps
• Clothes on the floor
• Trophies

While the girl could have  the following in her room

• Posters (Guns and Roses, Queen, The Bangles, etc) 
• Wired phone - Amazon wired phone 
• 80s filter
• Scrunchies on the bed on top of burrow or bookshelves
• Skates 
• Rubix cubes
• Polaroid 
• Polaroid pictures
• Ring pops
• Fun glasses
• Pacman related
• Stuffed animals on the bed
• Same concert tickets
• Typewriter

Well, that is all for today! Write to you guys later! 

    Isa :)

Ideas

Now it's time for us to layout a plan and schedule. 

Here's what we know so far:

• Our film opening will be a romantic comedy
• It will follow a heterosexual couple
• We want to film outside of Weston in order to get a variety of different environments
• Maybe on the beach??
• I want to get in depth when creating the characters so I plan on making:
• Background stories 
• Playlists
• Maybe even getting my friend to draw out the characters for me

    I've been thinking of romantic comedies that we could use as inspiration. One that came to mind was also a coming-of-age film: A Cinderella Story. This is the 2004 remake with Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray. I used to love this movie. I was actually thinking of this movie when we were discussing what genre to choose. This film has a modern twist to the classic Cinderella story and it's super fun to watch even if it's not a great movie. However, it does show the characteristic romcom arch and we could use it as a model. 

    Well, that is all for today! Write to you guys later! 

    Isa :)

Romantic Comedies

    Since we have officially decided we will be doing a romantic comedy 2-minute film opening, I have decided to start researching the sub-genre. There are some key characteristics that make romcoms romcoms:

• Obstacles
• "Genuinely Lovable (and Ideally Shaggable) Characters"
• Humor

    I've been relying on The Script Lab for research on this and likewise topics (here is the link from which I got this information). 

    Some of my all time favorite movies are romantic comedies such as 10 Things I Hate About You, Notting Hill, and Only You. This shows that I am very familiar with this genre. 

    In the past I have written various poems and short stories that could be categorized as romantic comedies or romance. I would love to include these into my project somehow. I love writing so I wouldn't put it past me to write out the character names, backstories, and practically the script of the whole film though we are only going to film a 2-minute opening. 

    Needless to say, I am very excited to post my brainstorming on my blog. Here's a first peek:

• Beach
• Band performing at the beach?
• Walking by each other when displaying the title of the film?
• Can you listen to the thoughts of both?
• Meet cute?
• Dramatic phone call with friends - girl’s friend trying to set her up with guys she knows and the girl being annoyed and saying that she wants to meet someone on her own
• Guy is a mystery => we do not know much about him 

    Well, that is all for today! Write to you guys later! 

    Isa :)

    (PS I'm going to start signing off like this. I like it, what about you guys?)

Genre

 Romantic Comedy

    Romantic comedies, more commonly known as romcoms, are some of my favorite movies to watch. Many of them are intentionally cheesy while others are not supposed to be but end up being. Romcoms have to be well produced and written in order to be considered 'good.'

    I love romcoms, I practically watch them religiously because I'm a hopeless romantic. Because of this, we decided that our genre would be a romantic comedy as we are both huge fans of these types of movies. I think we can take inspiration from multiple successful films and make a film opening that shows an intro into a romantic comedy but one that is done our way. 

Brainstorming

 
    Since we are starting our portfolio project, I have been going through old projects that Mrs. Stoklosa has on her website (linked here) and gathering inspiration as well as admiring the great work that so many students have done in the past. 

    If I'm being completely honest, many of the film openings that I watched were incredibly impressive but I haven't seen many comedy, musical, romantic comedy, or science fiction final projects. Some of these, of course, make sense such as sci-fi as this genre requires special effects and would be understandably difficult to make. Sometimes genre isn't well portrayed in the first two minutes of a film though. A musical seems like it would be difficult to create a two minute film opening for. 

    This leaves me with two options: comedy or romcom. I love both these genres, though a romcom is more of a genre within comedy, a sub-genre if you will. Comedies take many different shapes and sizes as many films such as Night at the Museum are classified under two genres. The website The Script Lab does a really nice job explaining sub-genres within comedy as well as hybrid movies. 

    Romantic comedies are a bit more specific as romantic comedies (or romcoms) are usually considered light hearted films where a couple must overcome obstacles in order to be with each other at the end of the film. I'm a huge fan of romcoms because I love romance and everything that comes with it. I would love to create a romcom film opening for our project so tomorrow I will be discussing it with my partner and we will be deciding our genre. 

      

Transition Post

Portfolio Project

    Starting soon, I will be working on my portfolio project that counts for half of our AICE exam grade. The portfolio consists of a variety of blog posts over the next nine weeks, a 2 minute fiction film opening, and the Critical Creative Reflection or the CCR. 

    On the film opening, I will be working on the film opening with Sabrina Staab who I've known for years. The film opening can be done in groups of two, three or four. However, because Sabrina and I are close, we know we work well together and have been successful partners on projects in this class before. 

    The CCR is to be done alone with either the help of or just mentions of your partner. The CCR is a reflection with aims to answer many questions regarding one's experience in this class, what they've learned, and how they were able to demonstrate it all in their portfolio. 

    Because we have just been introduced to this project and we have not been able to decipher any plans on what our chosen genre is or what our film opening should be. I will be posting more about this over the next week or two. 

    Hopefully, by February 20th, we have an idea of what our film opening is going to be and we can start planning. We plan on spending our time wisely, organizing everything and being productive. Sabrina and I are great partners and I am confident that we will be a great team throughout the course of this project. 

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

 Music Marketing Project

 RESEARCH

    When assembling the PowerPoint for our Music Marketing Project presentation, we made sure to include several successful soul artists. Tyler, the Creator, is one of the artists that we researched in-depth as well as Silk Sonic which is the newly combined duo of Bruno Mars and Anderson.Paak. Important details in regards to modernized soul music and the genre of soul music in the 21st century were taken into consideration for our campaign and our music video as a result of the research that is outlined below. 

BRAINSTORMING/PLANNING

    The brainstorming and planning were a combined process. We brainstormed during class and planned when, where, how, and what we were going to do. As stated in the previous post, the brainstorming was not easy as we weren't extremely familiar with the soul genre and the culture that comes with it. Not much of our brainstorming was done on paper, rather it was done by bouncing ideas off of each other and combining them in order to form a cohesive concept for the music video and for the marketing campaign. The music video was going to be filmed entirely out of school, and it was. We filmed at various locations across Weston including Town Center and Markham Park. However, the marketing campaign's PowerPoint was worked on during class and out of school. We used Snapchat to communicate with each other, we had a group chat. 

PRODUCTION & POST-PRODUCTION

    When producing our video, our group worked very closely as a team and bounced ideas off of each other as we continued through shooting. Additionally, three group members were actors in the music video, two being the main characters and one (me) being a side character in one scene. We filmed the entirety of the music video on Sunday, January 30th. On that day, we traveled all over Weston in order to film and we came up with creative ideas such as shooting the camera's screen at Publix and shooting through the window at The Cheese Course on the spot. Production went very smoothly for the most part. However, because we filmed the entire music video so close to the due date, Helbert, our editor, had to edit and release the final video within a limited time frame. We were able to get it all done on time and (in my opinion) it came out really creative and the intended message was clear. The audience (our class) understood it and really enjoyed it based on the comments we received in class. Below is our finished music video:

PRESENTATION

    The presentation consisted of the slides that introduced our new artist and outlined our marketing campaign as well as the music video. Each group member was assigned a couple of slides to present and I was behind the laptop, clicking to change the slides as we presented. Logan was in charge of the introduction of our artist, the Converse collaboration pitch, and the major selling points. Helbert presented the slides that demonstrated the social media influence of the artist and the outline of how we plan on distributing the single. Nina focused on the release date, the feature of the artist on Euphoria, and the other popular soul artists from who we drew inspiration. I built the artist's website and therefore, presented the artist's internet presence, showed off various potential examples of merch, and explained it as well as the idea we had of giving a portion of the proceeds towards cancer research. 

    The presentation went very smoothly, everyone was aware of their parts but I was really nervous which could be noticed by my stutter and how I tripped over my words. Overall, our presentation was cohesive, clean, and well organized. However, if I could do the whole thing over, I would change so much from the PowerPoint. The video, however, I liked and was satisfied with it.

REFLECTION

    This project was a great way to learn to accept others' opinions and make sure everyone is included. Additionally, this project was super fun and was a great way to explore new genres of music that I wasn't extremely familiar with.

    Various aspects of this project will be helpful when developing my Cambridge portfolio. Working together in a group was good preparation for the portfolio project as well as for future endeavors. I'm a perfectionist so giving up complete control was difficult for me throughout this project but it helped me in understanding that different viewpoints combined result in something far more intricate and detailed than just one idea. This project also allowed the freedom to experiment with different shots, angles, composition, and editing techniques. This prepares us for the portfolio as it familiarizes us with various techniques that we enjoy and find visually pleasing. I'm super excited for the portfolio project.