Creative Critical Reflection

Here is the link to my ccr! I worked on this project with  my amazing partner Andrea Briseno

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1piod8-EcDIkZ1zkvaR3BM8PNVzNOnCb2/view?usp=sharing


I'm so proud of Andrea and I. We worked super hard to put together an amazing film opening. I'ts relieving to be done, but i'm also a bit sad. But here is a quote that I would like to share with y'all:

My Film Opening is Finally Done!

MY FILM IS FINALLY DONE!!!!! I'm so proud of it!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A8MjI5XVYm-g0PaJiCbdswchKYzd7kJ5/view?usp=sharing


Featuring the copyright free song "English Country Garden"


BY RACHEL GROSSMAN AND ANDREA BRISENO

Many changes...

Hey everyone!We have been on a wild ride. When we first were assigned the project, I thought Andrea and I would make a film opening that was a "character driven" story. We could not think of any ideas that we would want to pursue concerning that topic so we decided to come up with something else. That's how we ended up doing a story about a girl that can talk to a tree. I'm glad we ended up going this route. Our film opening is unique and very cute if I do say so myself.


At first, we thought that a girl named Eva was going to play the role of Alice, but she backed out. Andrea could have played the role(she has lots of acting experience after all) of Alice, but her foot was broken at the time...so I had to step in. I was a bit nervous at first, but I soon came to accept the idea that I was going to be the star. We also had difficulty finding time to meet up and shoot. Andrea had to go on a drama field trip and I was drowned in homework. We thought that maybe we would never shoot our film opening. But luckily, during spring break, we were able to finally shoot.

Andrea and I also encountered some difficulties when trying to find song for our film. The song that we use on our film, “English Country Garden” from the YouTube Audio Library ,at first was too short. It was only about a minute and a half. At first we were disheartened that we were not going to be able to use it in our film, but then Andrea came up with a brilliant idea to edit the song to make it longer. I have no idea what she did, but she increased the length by 30 seconds.

We also encountered difficulties with the voice of Winola. Winola is voices by Andrea’s friend Caitlin Turner. She sent us Winola’s audio by using the voice memos app and then sending it to Andrea via text. We really liked the pitch and emphasis on the words, but the clip was too fast. Thus, we used an app that was able to slow down the tempo but not the pitch. That was honestly such a lifesaver.

Lastly, I was showing my unfinished film to one of my friends named Liz so that she could critique it.   She helped me figure out how to incorporate the voice over of Winola in the least cheesy way possible. At first, the music was playing in the background when Winola utters her line. But we determined that it would be best if the music faded out. This made the Winola's voice more dramatic and abrupt.

Reflecting on my project makes me proud because I now realize how much work that I put into this project. Blood, Sweat, and many many tears.

How we plan to distribute our film......

When people see our film, we want them to be in awe of the relationship between Alice and Winola. It is a relationship that audiences have never seen before, and we think that people will find it sweet and wholesome. We want our audience to connect with the characters, whether it be them seeing their current self in the characters or themselves when they were children. Our film will be full of childish wonder. Thus, we believe that we have two target audiences. Our primary target audience is children between the ages of 8-16.  Our secondary target audience are adults aged 30-50(many probably the parents of children seeing the film). Children love the mystical element that the fantasy genre is oh so famous for.  The 2010  Tim Burton Film "Alice in wonderland" did approximately 1.025 billion dollars in the box office. It was labeled as a fantasy/adventure. This film was targeted to adults and children as the fantasy drama is something that kids and their parents will enjoy. We can assume that Alice in Wonderland was a film that many kids went to with their parents. With a total lifetime gross so large, we can infer that lots of people enjoyed and watched the film. I do not think our film will come even close to that enormous number since we lack a famous and noteworthy director like Tim Burton and a budget of 200 million dollars. Yet, I think it goes to show that films like this can attract both kids, tweens, teens, and adults.

Sadly, we were not allocated 200 million dollars to make our film, or even 10,000 dollars to be matter of fact. Since our film is so low budget and we do not have many connections with high profile Hollywood individuals , we think that the best plan to distribute our film would be to first start out at film festivals. We could first show our film at local festivals such as the Florida Film Festival and then maybe show our film at some higher profile festivals. We don't know if our film will garner enough attention to make it to box office, so we think that it would be smart to release our film on Netflix. According to CNN, Netflix has 139 million paying subscribers as of January 2019. That is more than Hulu, SlingTv, and Youtube TV combined. We will also create a website for our film and social media pages so that we could create a bit of media buzz.

Embracing Genre Charcateristics and Inspiring our Audience

The Giving Tree

Pocahontas

Our film Winola is going to be a fantasy drama. Since our film includes a mystical element, our talking tree Winola, it is established that our story is not something that any of us would encounter in our day to day lives. As for the drama side, we are going to be creating characters that the audience can empathize with and  include lots of tension with an even intenser climax. Our goal as film makers will be to move the audience emotionally and make them feel a specific way after seeing our film. Our story will be heart-wrenching and unique. There have been similar stories such as Pocahontas(Pocahontas goes to Mother Willow to seek spiritual advice), and The Giving Tree( A boy forms a relationship with a tree as it provides him with many necessities), but our film will focus on the issue of deforestation. We want our audience to think about the role that they play in nature. Deforestation is a very serious issue that is effecting the world globally. According to the World Wildlife Fund, we are losing "18.7 million acres of forests annually, equivalent to 27 soccer fields every minute." This amount is astronomical and devastating at the same time. Maybe after seeing our film, people will be able to reflect upon their past relationship with nature. We need trees as they provide oxygen for us to breathe and clean out the carbon that we exhale. (I took biology honors I know a thing or two about photosynthesis). Even if only one person decides to change their habits after watching our film, we will be more than delighted. 



We also want to represent the idea that anyone can provoke change, regardless of their sex, gender, age, race, sexuality. Our protagonist Alice is a teenager. Many teens feel as if they cannot make a difference in society because of their age and the fact that they cannot vote. However, in our film we are going to show that anyone can make a difference. She is up against a large corporation, but she is not threatened by them. She stands up for what she believes and after all of her efforts, she ends up stopping the corporation from tearing down the land where Winola grows. We want our film to inspire young girls and show them that they can make a difference. 

A 19 year old woman named Emma Gonzalez who is an advocate for gun control

Deforestation

References:
https://www.filmsite.org/fantasyfilms.html
https://www.filmsite.org/dramafilms.html

OUR FILM WINOLA

Hey everyone! Andrea and I finally came up with a title for our film: WINOLA. Winola is the name of our talking tree. We chose the name Winola because it means "charming friend". Throughout our film, our main character, Alice, will be developing a relationship with Winola.


Eessentially, in our film we are developing this relationship between girl and tree over the course of 3 years - starting when Alice is 12/13. We want Mother Winola to be a grandmother type figure to Alice so we would depict Alice coming to visit the tree everyday and she’d tell the tree about her day and her problems and Mother Winola would give Alice advice and explain to Alice her role as a human in nature. The central conflict introduced in the film would be that Alice finds out the area where Mother Winola resides will be destroyed and deforested to make room for a big corporate factory. After learning about and spending so much time in nature with her tree, Alice knows she must put a stop to this. Mother Winola who always has the right advice, tells Alice that she should not get involved since she is just a child and has no real power in this situation; for the first time ever Alice goes against what Mother Winola tells her and attempts to put an end to the destruction of her favorite place. In the end she succeeds and begins an initiative to protect the environment and plant more trees, Alice proves to herself, Mother Winola, and everyone else that it doesn’t matter how old or young you are, anyone can provoke change.

WINOLA

Let's Edit!

Hey everyone! On Thursday, Andrea and I met up at 5:30 to edit and go through all of the footage that we had. On Tuesday, a day after we filmed, I noticed that we were missing a shot. There is a scene where I look up at the tree and one would assume the next shot would be a picture of said tree but we lacked that content. Thus, for the sake of the eyeline match, we had to go back and get that footage. At around 6:40, we went over to the ridges to get the shot and then headed back to my house.


When we were filming, we thought that we were not going to have enough footage. However, we actually had too much footage. How ironic! Since we had too much footage, we had to figure out how to chop it down to the time limit of 2 minutes. First, we tightened up all of our shots and edited them together seamlessly. That helped shave off some seconds to reach the time limit. Even after tighteneing all the shots, we still had 2:48 seconds of footage which is WAY over the time limit. I then came up with the idea to speed up some of the shots so that we could emlimiate some time. After about an hour of playing around on iMovie, we were able to go from 2:48 to 2:08. I'm very proud of that!


After getting all of our clips organized together, we than began trying out some of the songs that we had previously found. The song that I found, Ischia, was not a good fit becasue it was not whimsical and quirky enough. It just did not fit the vibe. However, Andrea showed me a song called "English Country Garden" and I think it is perfect for our film opening. Sadly, it's only 1:30 seconds long and we need the song to be at least 2:08 seconds. Andrea said that she is going to try to edit the song and try to make it longer. I hope she can do it becuase I really do think it is a perfect fit for our film opening.

Perfect and Passionate Production

Hey Everyone! Today we actually began shooting our film opening today. I bet you thought this day would never happened! Well, let me tell you how our day went.  Andrea and I met up at 2:30 to go get props for our film. We needed to obtain a fluffy pink pen, flowers, and a copy of Moby Dick. We went to Office Depot and A.C Moore in search of a fluffy pink pen, but neither store sold one so I pulled out my amazing DIY skills and made one myself. We bought a tiny pink boa and wrapped it around the end of a pink gel pen. At AC Moore we were able to find flowers. We bought 4 bouquets of flowers and they were  99 cents each. What a steal!

We then went to the Broward County Library and checked out a copy of Moby Dick. It was the last one they had so we got extremely lucky. At the library is where we decided to get ready for filming. We made all of our props there and Andrea did my hair for the film opening. We were able to turn the library into a little makeshift salon. She braided and curled my hair and did my makeup in the middle of the library. I'm surprised the librarian didn't yell at us and kick us out. After getting all glammed up, Andrea and i went to The Ridges to shoot our film opening.

We got to The Ridegs at around 5:30 to plan out what we were going to do. We knew that we had to wait till around 6:30 to begin filming because that was when there was "golden hour". We were pressed for time because we had to get all of our shots before the sun went down at 7:35.  We had to shoot all of the shots in chronological order because we couldn't have the sun be lower in the opening scene than it was in the last scene.  I'm so glad we made a storyboard and script because  it helped us to stay super organized and we were able to be super productive. We may need to go back to reshoot if we do not like the way something looks, but for the most part, we are done filming!




After we got the shots we needed, we headed back to my house an immediately air dropped all of our content to my computer and placed all of our clips sequentially into iMovie to see if it flowed nicely. As of right now, i'm very pleased with the footage that we have! This was a pretty successful day if I do say so myself!

How did I forget to mention the script?

Hey everyone! I cannot believe that I forgot to mention that Andrea and I made a script for tomorrow . We made this script a few weeks back, and I completely forgot to inform you dedicated blog readers.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dwUIUFAmg2QzaYCnuSywLGs_u6bCjIsG2C35tqav5z8/edit?usp=sharing


Tomorrow is our first day of filming, and I am starting to get jitters. I'm the type of person who stresses over everything and I guess it can be a good and a bad thing. Its good because it means that I put lots of effort in the work. that I produce in the sole hope that it turns out amazing. Its bad because it is not good for my mental health.  I have gotten a lot better at managing my stresses, but sometimes I become overwhelmed and I let it get the best of me. Right now, I'm in a pretty good state other than the fact that I have a few jitters, but that is to be expected because this is a huge project after all. Wow, that was like a diary entry. I digress.

Well, take a look at the script. It's pretty much complete. Tomorrow we can make changes to it if necessary. I better get a good night's rest because we have a BIG day tomorrow.

We want that golden hour!

Hey everyone! I'm pretty sure I have mentioned it before, but we want to shoot our film opening during golden hour. If you are unaware of the term "golden hour", I will explain.  Golden hour, as defined by golden-hour.com "is often defined as the first and last hour of sunlight in the day when the special quality of light yields particularly beautiful photographs. Shooting during golden hour will allow us to make our shots look more whimsical and engaging. Here are some photos that were taken during golden hour:




As you can see, these images are bright and full of warmth.  I did a quick google search and I found out that the sun will set at 7:35 pm on Monday. Knowing this information, Andrea and I will make sure to head to our filming location at about a quarter to 6 to get a feel for the area and begin staging out or shots. If the weather is bad on Monday, we are going to be VERY upset. I checked the weather for Monday and it says it is going to be PARTLY CLOUDY. I do not think that that is a bad thing, but I guess we will find out Monday. If it rains, I may cry. That's too dramatic. I will probably shed a single tear.

So Uh Change of Plans

Hey everyone! I know that in a few blog posts ago I mentioned that we were going to go to our filming location to stage some shots. Unfortunately, this did not happen because we could not find time. Andrea and Eva had to go on a field trip and I was overwhelmed with tests and homework. Also, I would like to announce that sadly, Eva will not be in our film. Andrea and I discussed that it would be a lot easier if I just play the role of Alice, rather than Eva. We decided it would be a lot more easier because then we only have to rely on ourselves. So if we need to do a reshoot or something of the sort, we both can easity go over there and not have to wait on a third person.

The last time I acted was in my 4th grade production of "Alice  in Wonderland". I played a flower. You may think that is a pathetic role to recieve. Nope! I had lines and everything and I even had a (brief) solo. Thus, I think that  with my training from 7 years ago, I am ready to reprise my role as an actor. You may be asking why Andrea can't play Alice. She is in drama after all. Well, Andrea still has an injured foot, so she wont be able to climb trees or frolick about.  I think that I will be able to play Alice. Everyone tells me that I look like im 12 anyway, so I guess I unintentionally give off that innocent nature that we want to convey.

We are going to begin shooting on Monday, March 25.  Hopefully everything goes as planned and we will not have to alter the story or have to buy new props. My pessimistic attitude is acting up.... I better go. Goodbye for now.

Haha I think i'm funny

Typography and Color!

Hey again! Our project is due in a couple of weeks and we still do not have a name for our film opening. However, I think it is essential to determine what font our title will be. The font will help to convey the overall vibe and aesthetic of our film. I definitely don't want our film title to be written in trash comic sans. That would just be dreadful. I'm thinking something more whimsical and with straight lines. Something closer to cambria, but much more magical.

The color of the opening. title will also probably be in a bright yellow or orange. Yellows tend to convey a quirky nature, which will be an important element in our film. Normally, yellow is a color that is difficult to be seen, but if we choose the right shade of yellow, it should be able to be easily seen. After all, our girl is able to communicate with a tree. If yellow does not work out, we will probably just go with orange.

We plan to have the title appear over footage of the sky. We still have a lot of logistics to work out, but hey, you gotta start somewhere!

Down below you can see some of the fonts that Andrea and I may use for our film opening:

Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

Hey everyone! As I mentioned in a previous post, we were not able to film last Wednesday due to some unfortunate circumstances. Currently, we are on track to film during spring break. Before we film , Andrea and I are planning to go to our shooting location to figure out how we want our shots to look. Since Eva is busy all this week, I am going to be in the shots. We will also be able to see how easy it is to climb our talking tree. This will be the time where we will perfect our storyboard so when we are ready to shoot, we will know exactly what shots to take. We are planning to do that some time this week when time permits. This is the last week of the quarter after all. Only three and a half days left till Spring Break and there will be no slacking! Andrea and I will be ready to shoot during Spring Break and will be able to produce an absolutely amazing film opening. Optimism is key for this project. Negative thoughts are not permitted. I tend to be a very negative person but do not fret, I will do my best to suppress these emotions as we work on our film opening.

Group meeting #2

Hey everyone!Today my teacher organized another group meeting so that we could get feedback from others that  have not heard about our project. It was really beneficail to get opinions from people that were not me or Andrea. Andrea and i are super connected to the project and alrady have a specific mindset, so it was good to hear from this group.  Many people told me that they thought my idea was original and unique, but may be hard to pull off. They said if we do it right, it can come out fantastic. But if we do it wrong, it could be a disaster. We do not want a disaster. Thats a huge no no in my book. One girl in my group said that we should make the field in our film opening an escape for our character and I really like that idea. I think that is on par with our current idea. This one kid in my group thought that we should use a smaller tree, but I then informed him that our character needs to climb it. I think that it is really hard to fully inform others about my idea becuase it is indeed random.  My group members told me that they thought it was a good idea that we were dressing our character in white becuase it will help to convey our chracter's innocent nature. Overall, this group meeting was a lot more beneficial than the last one becuase I actually had a film opening idea to share with the group.

Music Madness

Hey everyone!As you know already, our film opening is going to help portray our main character Alice as an innocent and pure girl. We are going to dress her in white and show her doing a lot of child-like activities. Our film opening is also going to take place outdoors in a grassy field so it is going to feature lots of nature. We want the music in the opening scene to have a specific mystical/ fantastical/quirky vibe. Music will help set the tone and pace for our film. If we choose the wrong track, it could mess up the entire piece. We must choose the perfect tune.

We have been browsing royalty free music websites because then we do not have to get approval from those who created the music. This is much more simple. There are many websites that offer royalty free music and I have been perusing them. Here are some of the royalty free music websites that I have checked out if your interested.

https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music

https://filmstro.com/music/romantic

https://www.hooksounds.com

However, I did not find any tracks that peaked my interest there. I did end up checking out the Youtube Audio Library and I found this royalty free track called "Ischia" that may work. It has a romantic sounding whimsical esque beat that I think may work for our film. I find it really hard to describe songs so why don't you just listen for yourself. I'm not 100% sure that we are going to use this song, but there is a great possibility!

Uh Oh

Hey again!I mentioned a few blog posts ago that Andrea and I would begin shooting our film opening tomorrow. But unfortunately, the universe hates us and some obstacles have appeared in our way. First off, our actress Eva broke her foot while performing in a play. I feel very sorry for her that poor girl, but now we are going to have to wait a few weeks to shoot because we do not want our character to have a boot on in our film opening. There would be no way for her to climb the tree if she had a boot on and it would be very hard for her to run through a field(something we have been planning for her to do). Not only is Eva's foot broken, I was just reminded today that it is my dad's birthday tomorrow. I know I am a bad daughter please do not come for me. Well, we are going out for dinner tomorrow night so even if Eva's foot was not broken, I would not have been able to attend our shoot.

Honestly, I think it is a good thing that we were not able to shoot tomorrow. I think it would have been a bit rushed. Andrea and I do not yet have all the props that we need for the production. We are planning to go to the dollar store sometime in the next week to accumulate some affordable props.  We also will probably end up shooting during spring break because next week Andrea, Eva, and I just have a lot going on. None of us our leaving, so we will be able to shoot during this week and even reshoot if necessary. After all, the shooting location is 5 min away from my house. Andrea, Eva, and I are strong, independent women who can problem solve and can always figure out what to do when we encounter some obstacles!

Alice and our film's props

We have determined who is going to play the role of Alice. We  decided on a girl named Eva Daskos. Eva is 15 years old and is of a slim build so she will pefect at playing Alice,  an imaginative and curious young teenage girl. Eva, has been in many theatre productions such as "The 25th Putnam County Spelling Bee" and "Honk!". Since she already has previous acting experience, she will know exactly the right facial expressions to make to establish her character. She also has a difficult task of talking to a tree so her previous acting experience could make this task easier for her.































What props will be featured in our film opening?



Props will be essential in helping to establish what kind of person Alice is. They will help to convey her interests and personality.

Alice will have two stuffed bunnies that she will play with in our film opening to help display her child-like nature

Alice will have a basket that she uses to carry her meals in

The pen that Alice will write with. The colors and pom poms help to convey her girly nature.

This is the dress that Alice will be wearing. The dress is dainty and the color white conveys innocence. 

Alice will read a book that pertains to adventure so it helps to convey her curious nature

We are going to begin shooting our film opening on Wednesday, March 14th.  If we need to reshoot or add more to our film opening, we will meet up again over the upcoming weekend. 

Locating the Location

Hey everyone! As you already know, our film opening is going to take place in a field of some sorts. We also are going to need a tree becuase that is a very important aspect to our film opeing as the girl will be able to converse with it. Andrea and I have did some research and found three possible filimg locations. Being young highschool students, we do not have the opportunity to scour the world in an attempt to find the world's most beautiful setting. We are limited to locations that are 30 minutes or less away from our hometown of Weston, Fl.

In spite of this, we found three possible fiming locations.  Yesterday afterschool, Andrea and I drove to these three filming locations.  The three contenders were: Vista View Park, a random hill in the neighborhood "The Ridges", and Tree Tops Park. Let me explain why/why not we are choosing the location that we chose(scroll down to the bottom for the answer if you want to know now, or continue reading if you want to see how we determined which shooting location would work best fro us)

Contender #1: The Ridges

This location offers a large grassy field with a tree set atop of a hill. The tree for our video needs to have branches pretty low to the ground so that are actress can climb the tree. Sure enough, this tree does have climbable branches. I also really like the fact that the area behind the tree is elevated. The hill blocks the houses in the back, masking the fact that we are in
a neighborhood.



Contender #2: Tree Tops Park




This park offers large trees and a grassy field. However, this location can be deemed a bit more "foresty". The trees at this park overlap oneanother, and that is not optimal for our film opening. We want a stand alone tree as it can help to establish emphasis on that specific tree and make it stand out. Also, you cannot tell in this picture, but behind the tree on the right is a playground. We would not want that to be seen in our film opening.



Contender #3: Vista View Park





This grassy field is actually a landill. You would nevr know that by these photos however.  I like the large grassy filed, but unfortunately, the trees are just too small. The only tree that could possibly work is the one in the photograph on the right, but unfortunateluy in the background you can see the road which is a hugeee no no.



Drum Roll Please.........

Contender 1 is the winner! The best part, it is only 5 miutes away from my house. The photos in all of these photos look a bit drab which is not the look that we are going for. We are going to film are film opening during the time of sunset, so we can get that "golden hour" look and get some pretty colors in the background of the film!

Storyboarding!

Hey everyone! Andrea and I have been working tirelessley to create the story for our film opening. Since it is only a film opeing, we are  trying to keep in mind to not give away to much information, but rather just convey what the rest of the film will be about.  Otherwise, it would not be considered a film opening. We decided to go the paper and pencil approach to storyboarding becuase then we could quickly make changes with a magical device called an ERASER.  Andrea did the drawing of the storyboard  becuase I can barely draw stick figures. I then would assist her in coming up with shots and ideas for what we wanted to show in our film opening. We are still not completely done with it, but we have completed a great majority of it. We do, however, have the rest of what we want to show written out in a list.

In our film opening, we want to establish a little bit about our main character. I am going to start to refer to her as Alice, but her name will probably not be mentioned in the film opening.  We want to portray alice as a young tween who is playful, curious, and imaginative.  The last 20 seconds of our film oeping will eatsblish the fact that the girl can converse with a tree. The majority of the fil mopening will just be providing a sense of the girls personality and nature. I am going to write an entire blogpost about the props that we will be using to help establish this.

Andrea drawing the storyboard

A cute selfie of Andrea and I

A close up of our story board  ^
                                                 |

The rest of the shots