Examining ANOTHER Experimental Film

Hey blog reader! What's up? I hope you are doing well! 

After watching "Wake Up", I became more intrigued about experimental films. Thus, I watched another experimental short film called 5 Films About Technology. The film was composed of 5 "mini-films" all about people and the way they use technology. The mini-films featured "relatable", humorous instances in which technology can hinder, us not help us. For instance, in the first clip, we see girls sitting down for brunch. They are all on their phones. When the waiter comes to bring their food, they immediately get off their phone..but just for a quick "thank you" to the server. Then, they immediately take out their phones to photograph what they are eating, most likely for social media. This clip showed how people go out to"hang out" but in reality, are super disconnected. This mini-film ended abruptly, in the middle of them taking the photo. Classical music plays as a transition into the next short clip. Each clip is cut just as you are beginning to laugh. There was nothing unnecessary that was shown.

This short film was also created in square format. I think that was GENIUS because of its reference to how humans rely on technology and view the world through technology. The film's utilization of abrupt cuts and music transitions really helped to make the piece comedic. Since my partner and I are limited to very few shooting locations(our houses), it was a glimmer of hope to see that I can make a short film that is about a very simple topic. Also, if we utilize editing techniques and such, we can turn a simple story into a masterpiece!

Examining an Experimental Film

Hi blog reader! I decided to watch an experimental film called "Wake Up". It begins with the girl waking up in the hospital. She is disoriented and wants to leave. Once she escapes, she is amazed by the world around her, especially the fact that people are consumed with technology. People are pretty much unaware of her existence because they are so mesmerized by their screens. At the end of the film, we see the girl viewing a girl get hit by a car who was looking at her phone. It is the same actress. Since the film is experimental, it's not confirmed who the girl that got hit by the car is. The girl is waking up from the coma but she is also waking up to the notion that people need to be less engaged in their screens. 

The film utilizes sound to help portray the girls feeling as she escapes from the hospital.  In the hospital, a song plays that is very mellow and elevator-music like. When she escapes, the beat dramatically drops to show her feeling of happiness. At one point in the film, the girl approaches a collection of people on their laptops. The sound of multiple people typing can be heard in the background. There were so many people typing all at once that it sounded like a swarm of cicadas. I thought that was a unique way to highlight the idea that people were not doing their own thing, rather collectively just immersing themselves in another world. Towards the middle of the film, the girl
dangles herself off a ledge and in the background, you can hear diegetic car sounds that help explain the danger of the situation. There was also a repetitive, anxiety-inducing sound in the background to help convey the seriousness of the situation. Another sound aspect I liked from this film is when the girl is walking and you can hear all the thoughts in her head. It's a bunch of incessant whispers repeating reminders over and over. It showcased how all of our worries are in our own head. 

The sounds used in the film really stuck out to me. They aided in making me feel the emotions the girl was feeling. Also, I noticed how important it is to have a good actor. The girl's acting was extremely good and made the film feel more "real'. Elly and I better take some online acting lessons. Anyway, I'm glad I watched this short film because it opened my eyes to a new type of film making.

Thoughts in my Head

Hello lovely blog reader! I hope you are doing well! I am currently writing this with the biggest headache of my life. Want to know why? I checked the screen time on my phone and turns out I used my phone for 14 hours today. Not only are my eyes strained, I feel ashamed of myself. So much time wasted just scrolling through tik tok and Instagram aimlessly. This is a wake-up call for sure.

I have been in my house for over 2 weeks. I not allowed to go anywhere(except walks around my neighborhood) and people cannot come over. I'm bored. However, when I'm bored, that's when the best ideas strike me. Well, I don't really have any solid ideas right now but maybe I could make a short film about boredom but showcase it in a way that's not boring to the audience.  Just an idea. This was probably becuase Elly had me listen to a song called Paralyzer by Nf. It is about someone who feels "numb" and realizes they dont enjoy life like they used to.

I also had an idea of making a short film about maybe my brother. All he does is sit and play Roblox all day so it may be fun to explore that idea.  Then again I can't trust a 10-year-old with my project. I also had an idea to make a film about someone who is trying to cook dinner for their family but it all goes awry. These are just ideas that popped in my head but maybe they will inspire me to write a story. I am limited to my house, Elly's house, and thats it. Thus, I'm going to have to get a bit creative Who knows?

Also, my classmates informed me and my partner that we should really take a look into experimental films because we have limited actors and filming locations. That is something that I plan to research because that may be a route that my partner and I take. I am very inspired right now.

I hoped you enjoyed reading me babble.

Websites Galore

As part of the project, we need to make a website for our short film. While we are in a bit of a tizzy about that right now, I think it is important to research how to make a website. I have made a few websites in the past but I would not say that I am very good at it. Luckily, my partner Elizabeth is exceptional at website making so I am going to be relying on her a lot for this aspect of the project. In the past, I have used Wix to make my websites, but I have been informed that there are a plethora of other website designers so why not check them out! 


1) Wix

Wix, like I mentioned earlier, is something that I have used before. They offer many website templates. For instance, I worked on a music marketing project last year and I was able to specify that I was making a website for a band. Then, Wix offered me a template that would meet my needs. Wix has many drag and drop tools. While it can be a bit overwhelming and confusing, once you get the hang of it you can make some pretty nice websites. Also, Wix is free which is pretty neat and handy!

2) Go DaddyI have never used Go Daddy before but many people have recommended this website to me. Go Daddy is known for being a very quick solution to website building. It does most of the legwork for you. The issue with go daddy is limited creative control, which is something that may be an. issue. We want our website to be really creative so this may not be the software for us. However, it is still something to consider.

3) SquarespaceI have never used Squarespace before but this website has also been raved about. It lets you create websites that are very sleek and modern, very professional. This would be super useful because my partner nor I are professional website builders. This may be of use to us. Sadly, Squarespace is not free. They have a free trial we can sign up for but then we may feel rushed to finish our website within the allotted time. 

 

After examining my choices, I think we are going to use Wix because we are more familiar with it and also the fact that it is FREE!  What more could you ask for?

Online Class Meeting

Hey blog reader! In the midst of all this panic, my teacher decided to hold an online meeting today through Canvas to chat with my class about how we should proceed with our project. We will not be back in school for a few weeks(if ever) so I'm really glad we were able to have this meeting. It was very reassuring to kind of be back in the "classroom environment". She informed us that our project is still going on and to try to adapt. She said we may have to revise our ideas so that we can now film under new conditions.  Of course, many people are a bit concerned because they cannot shoot at certain locations or their actors are in quarantine. I told my teacher that I am not allowed to leave my house and I cannot have people over. She once again said that we must adapt. One of my peers suggested that maybe we try to make an experimental film because then I could possibly shoot just in and around my house. i have not watched many experimental films so that is something that I may want to research if I need to completely change my filming idea. I am a bit overwhelmed with having to do this project under these conditions, but I know that my partner and I will eventually accomplish the task at hand! 

My partner and I are still deciding how we want to approach the short film but we are working on it!

Um Excuse me Corona Virus You Are Interfering With My Aice Media Project

Hey blog reader! I hope you are doing well. I am currently under quarantine because of the coronavirus. My parents will not let go anywhere or allow anyone to come over. I understand this precaution because even if I do not fall victim to the virus, I could potentially give it to someone who may not be able to fight it off. While this is annoying, I know this is what needs to be done to possibly make the virus go away faster. With that being said, I am not allowed to hang out with my partner. This means that we are probably going to have to work on this project from the comfort of our own homes. Maybe in a few weeks, we could see each other, however, it is important not to waste valuable time. Luckily, we have facetime and skype so that we can converse with each other often about the project. We also have google docs which allow us to both edit documents from the comfort of our own homes. 

We are probably going to have to change our short film idea because it is no longer feasible because our shooting locations are closed and our actors are all in quarantine. This is a very stressful situation but I know my partner and I are going to get through it. Over the next week or so, my partner and I will devise a new approach to our project!

Stay safe! Practice social distancing!

Hazel's Costume Design

Hi friends! Welcome back to my blog! Over this weekend, Elly and I discussed what clothes we want our main character Hazel to wear. We want her to have a quirky, aesthetic vibe, thus we will put her in quirky, aesthetic clothes. Right now, the 2000s fashion is becoming trendy again. All the cool kids are wearing shrugs, cute little hairstyles, etc. Hazel will be emulating this style becuase we think it will make her appear "cuter'' and girly. This will help to play up the "love-stricken" aspect of the short film. 

I have many of these types of clothing because I myself like this style. I also have a terrible shopping addiction which meant I had a myriad of options to choose from. Thus, instead of going to the mall, I walked 3 feet to my closet to look for some fits. Elly and I previously discussed wanting to incorporate the color yellow into our film because it will add that the "quirky" factor as yellow is often associated with that. I noticed that I do not have many yellow tops but I found a couple that we can choose from. Hazel is going to need a couple of outfits so here are some of the clothing options for her!

SO CUTE RIGHT?

Script is Coming A Long

Hi, in the midst of this corona-virus induced mayhem, I have some good news. The script is a comin' a long. Wow, who would have thought we would get to this moment. Tuesday, Elly and I began writing our script on Celtx. While we only have the first scene down, it is a wonderful start I would say. Scriptwriting on celtx has been pretty easy. The interface is very easy to work with and it makes what we wrote look super-duper professional. We feel like scriptwriting queens.

What we have written so far is the opening scene in which Hazel and Lucas exchange numbers. In the opening scene, we want to establish the idea that Hazel is a "quirky", love-stricken girl and Lucas is a super-chill, laid-back kind of guy. We wanted the opening scene to have a bit of humor in it as well to set the tone for our short film. Elly and I couldn't stop laughing when we wrote the dialogue of "Hey, so when do you wanna do it?" "Do it...Like right now." This adjacency pair really helps to establish the dilemma for the rest of the film. 


We obviously have way more to write... but hey... at least we have the beginning done!

GO AWAY CORONA YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE

Hi, today Donald Trump declared a National Emergency because of the Corona Virus. While I am concerned about my health and my loved one's health, I am worried about how this is going to affect my project. My dad did not even let me go to school today, and that was before Trump even declared a national emergency. He is worried about me going out and interacting with large groups of people. 

Essentially, he is quarantining my entire family in my house until further notice just to be safe. Elly and I have not yet finished writing our script but there are scenes that occur outside of my house....so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the project deadline being so close. Oh, did I mention? School is closed this week and next week is spring break. I'm not even sure if we will be back in school after the break ends. Elly and I do not want to have to change our idea because it already took us so long to even get to the idea(you would know that if you read my other blog posts). 

I'm very nervous now because how are we going to shoot in a school if the school is closed?? Maybe we can stage a classroom but I do not have 30 desks and an empty room to stage one. Maybe we could go somewhere else like the library, but that is probably closed as well. I am very stressed. I do not want to have to change my idea. In summation, there is no summation. 

Some memes that made me a bit happier:

Casting Issue

Hi, lovely blogger. I hope you are feeling splendid today.  Today my partner Elly and I met with our teacher today to discuss an issue. in our short film, we are going to have a few scenes that take place at school. These are the scenes where Hazel gets Lucas' number, the end of the film where they meet at school again, and possibly a few other scenes that we have not yet written. We were considering making my boyfriend, Dylan,  play the part of Lucas because he is very accessible and I would consider him to be a very good fit for the role of Lucas. One issue, however, is that Dylan does not go to my school. He graduated last year and he is in the fire academy. 

We wanted to utilize the classrooms at school but bringing Dylan onto campus may be an issue because my school has super strict ID rules. We then considered maybe shooting these scenes after school because they don't check IDs then, but we would have to convince a teacher to let us use their classroom after hours. We may choose to get an actor for Lucas who already goes to our school as then we won't have to worry about this issue. However, they may not be as accessible and if we need them in other scenes, there may be immense scheduling difficulties. Once we are done with the script, I think we will have a better understanding of when and where we need to shoot and can worry about solving this issue at a later date! Goodbye for now!

Beginning to Write...

Hello, blog reader! I hope you are feeling marvelous :)

We are now at the stage of creating our script. My partner and I wanted to create an outline of our story before we write the script so we can get an idea of how we want our short film to move.

We already know that our main character is going to be Hazel, a quirky, love-stricken girl, and Lucas, her laid-back crush. It's going to be divided into three parts, as stated in a previous blog: the conversation, hazel fixating over the conversation, and then the resolution.

My partner and I decided that we want our characters to meet because they are put into a group to do a project. This will cause each other to share their numbers with one another. While they are exchanging numbers, we had the idea to have Lucas turn around and ask for her number with hazel imagining him do this in an extremely flirty manner. We think it will be funny to portray Lucas being unaware that hazel likes him. This will, in turn, make hazel appear more irrational and ditsy.

Next, we want to show hazel getting a text message along the lines of "Hey, can we talk?". This message is what will cause Hazel to spiral and overthink.  Then, we want to show Hazel going about her day. Elly pitched the idea of her getting ready in the morning but I told her that may come off as a bit cheesy. Then she suggested that we could make it super raw, showing Hazel look kinda gross in the morning. This would add another humorous aspect to the piece. We created a list of things that people do in the morning, even down to going to the bathroom. We aren't going to show anything graphic, maybe just a trickling sound.

At the end of the piece, we will have Hazel and Lucas meet up. The audience will in this scene find out that Lucas didn't mean anything significant by the text message. His calm relaxed demeanor will be highlighted and it will be funny seeing his reaction after all that hazel went through worrying.

With the outline near finished, we will write the script soon. Elly and I want to work on it together next to one another so we can bounce ideas off each other. We are planning to coordinate this very soon! Bye for now!

Character Development is Crucial!

Before writing the script, my partner and I thought it would be super important to decide and develop the characters for our screenplay. We ended up deciding to make our main character a girl named Hazel and a boy named Lucas.  We decided that we wanted to make Hazel a teenage girl who is a tad bit shall I say crazy and bit quirky. We would be able to convey this with mise en scene elements such as room decor and her clothing. We want to make Lucas a laid back, super chill dude. He doesn't really care about much and just goes with the flow. My partner and I created a list of character traits that we wanted our characters to have. This will help us in scriptwriting because knowing the personality of our characters will allow us to write dialogue that matches the character. in our film, the dialogue is going to be super important. Our whole film revolves around a conversation after all.

When developing Hazel's character, we sort of based her off of the one and only.....me! It was then easy to develop Hazel because my partner and I just started writing down things about me. My partner is one of my best friends so it was easy for her to identify my character traits. 

When developing Lucas, we thought of those nonchalant guys who just "show up". They do everything so effortlessly and you wonder how they don't stress about anything. This type of personality contrasts with Hazel's so this will make for some very interesting dialogue!


As we were character-developing, Elly suggested that we created mood boards for our characters. Elly is a Pinterest mom so we want on her account and selected photos that would invoke further inspiration for character development.

As you can see, for Lucas we were inspired by cute film and television characters such as Archie from Riverdale and Aaron Samuels from glee. Both these characters have girls swooning over them and they have a typical "boy' style. What I mean by that is they don't dress too nice or too sloppy. They wear jeans and a t-shirt, maybe a jacket if they are feeling crazy. They have a relaxed demeanor and don't have to try to get girls, they just come to them.


As for Hazel, we were inspired by these photos as they had the "quirky' aspect in them. We really liked the outfits these girls were wearing and think that they would be perfect for hazel to wear. The yellow and pink tints also are something we may want to include in our from. We also like the flowers because they represent feminity, something very important to Hazel's character, allowing us to contracts her from Lucas.

I'm super excited to soon write a script based on the aforementioned!

Story Time!

Hi lovely blog reader, today was an extremely productive day. I am currently patting myself on the back because I am so proud of my partner and me. We now have an actual STORY, not just an idea.

Since at our last Socratic seminar the bell rang in the middle of our turn, we were able to get feedback from our peers again today.  One of my classmates offered the idea that we should make our short film about a petty fight that gets blown out of proportion. This would be very comical, something that I and my partner wanted out of our short film. This is something that is super relatable as well. I mean, I got in a fight with my friend the other day because she replied K instead of okay and I thought she was super pissed at me so then I got really pissed at her and it became a whole thing when it was really nothing to begin with. Do not worry that has been resolved. Anyway, we discussed with our classmates how we could structure our story.

Notes taken during the discussion

One person offered the idea that we could have the fake conversation occur in our character's head and then they would eventually "snap out of it' and then go back to reality. The issue with this is that this may appear a bit boring and not engaging. Then someone elaborated on that response and said: "why don't you film the character going about their day fixating on the conversation." My partner and I really liked this idea because it will allow us to get a myriad of shots and will be much more entertaining and engaging for the viewer. After a bit more conversation, one of our classmates offered the idea of our main character getting a text message along the lines of 'hey can we talk?" Then, our character can then overthink and question what the other character wants. This is something that I have done a plethora of times because it can be very difficult to gauge the tone of text messages.  we then asked for help with the structure for our piece.  We would begin with the conflict, the character getting ready pondering the conversation, and lastly the resolution. Technique is going to be super important in creating this short film because the concept is very simple. We are going to have to play with color and obtain different types of shots such as tilts, over the shoulders, and pans. Our teacher also. suggested that we download an app called Filmic pro because it has a neat zoom feature that you can time out. Sounds pretty neat! After the discussion was over, my partner and I discussed what the conflict should be. We thought the most realistic conflict would involve a girl and her crush. This is something that many people can relate to, even you, blog reader! Right before class ended, my partner had the ingenious idea of titling our film "Out of Proportion"(because our main character blows the situation "out of proportion." We could also have fun designing the title because we could make all of the letters different sizes, almost out of proportion you could say. What a successful day!

An Idea? Finally!

Hey kind blog reader, I am happy to inform you that my partner and I finally have an idea for our short film. Let me explain the conception of our idea!

My partner and I one day were just randomly talking about those times when you reminisce about a conversation and think about what you could have done/said differently. My partner, Elly then suggested what if your reflection in the mirror could talk back to you as you re-enacted your previous conversation. I shrugged off the idea as I have already dabbled in that area( my A.S project about a talking tree) and had much difficulty executing it. We went back and forth bickering about what to do for our short film. We had discussed wanting to make a simple film about a mundane topic. We felt that these simple stories always ended up being marvelous if properly executed and relying heavily on using proper techniques. 

Then, today at our class' Socratic seminar, that's when we were able to get an idea of what to make our film about. We talked about the "wanting to go back to an old conversation" and our classmates gave us advice on how to turn that into a short film. They all said they too have experienced this scenario, coming up with comebacks to a previous situation. They said why not make a short film about a person who reenacts a previous situation by altering what they said. One of our classmates even suggested that in one of our scenes we could maybe show our main character's voice coming out of the mouth of another character when reenacting the scene. That would provide a comedic aspect to our film. While we don't have a finalized story, I'm glad that we finally have an idea!

Our classmates also told us to watch some movies and shows that involve a similar concept such as Donnie Darko, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Fleabag, and one of our classmates A.S film opening. I'm excited to see how we turn this idea into a short film!

I may not know what I am writing about...but at least I found a way to write when I have an idea to write about!

Hello, you may have noticed my unnecessarily long and convoluted title. I feel like that title encapsulates how I feel right now. ALL OVER THE PLACE. I want to have an idea on what to write my short film on so bad! But alas, no ideas. During last class, some students were able to explain their predicaments and get feedback from other students. My partner and I were unable to share due to lack of time but we will get to share next class. I think conversing with my peers will open my horizons to some new ideas and perspectives. 

On a brighter note, I found out about a script writing service called Celtx. Celtx is a free script writing service that helps you properly format a script(like the professionals). While I myself am not a professional screenwriter, I think having a properly formatted script will make me feel extremely put together and organized. Celtx has a free and paid version but I think utilizing just the free version will suffice. It has options such as headers and it has the typical font that you see in most scripts. Pretty neat! I played around with it for a bit and while I have a few things I need to learn, I'm off to a great start!

Celtx Interface