Filming Ideas

    Here are my actual filming ideas for my opening: 

    While the credits are being presented, there will be sporadic cuts of Arlo all over their room doing different things. Pacing, rocking, laying on their floor, mindlessly staring at the computer/phone, etc. The images are supposed to convey the image of stress, anxiety, and depression. 

    I'm thinking of keeping my opening silent, no dialogue, it's still pretty flexible and I can add dialogue if need be. However, I think when it comes to mental illness, actions speak louder than words, and I will portray Arlo's inner turmoil through their behavior. To balance the lack of dialogue, I want to focus and work hard on the sound design of my opening and try some really cool techniques. 

    The house is very bleak and empty. Some scenes will be in the dark (night), while other will have a very washed out, dim, lighting scheme. A black drape over an orange wall, with the orange peaking out. Red and blue books scattered, Arlo might have a red sweater on, 

Lighting/filming inspo: 

Plot

     Here are the ideas I have so far for the plot/story of my film: 

    My story is going to be about Arlo finally expressing how they've felt for so long and their road to recovery, so the opening serves to set up Arlo's mental state. Their is going to be a lot of inner conflict (character v. self) as well as conflict between Arlo and their family (character v. character). 

    The movie starts with Arlo finding a video of when they were younger and a photo that was taken that same day. As mentioned before, Arlo's cheery younger self fills them with disdain, but they don't really understand why, and these conflicting feelings stress them out. In a fit of rage and confusion as Arlo seems to be having a panic attack, they throw the picture frame, breaking it. 

    After the frame breaks, Arlo falls to the ground, picking up a broken piece. The piece appears sharp enough to cut through skin, I think you can see where I'm going here. I will not be showing the act of Arlo hurting themselves, but it will be heavily implied. I know self-harm is a hard and kind of taboo topic that can be very triggering, but I also believe it needs to be talked about more. 

Character Profile

Name: Arlo Winston

Pronouns: They/them 

Age: 16 

Date of Birth: 1/17/2006

Parents: Mariah and Paul Winston 

Siblings: none 

Pets: Luna (family dog) 

    Arlo is someone who is severely depressed and unmotivated in life. They look back at memories of when they were young and hate how happy they were as a child. They grow angrier and more frustrated as they struggle to fins out what went wrong. Why did they turn out this way? What happened that turned such a happy child into a miserable teenager? 

    Arlo is home alone a lot and their parents don't ever pay much attention to them. This resulted in Arlo having to suffer alone through all of their issues, which only caused their mental health to deteriorate even more. Their state of mind becomes frantic at times. They experience intense mood swings, they can be stressed running around one minute and laying on the floor motionless the next. Arlo never fully learned how to deal with their emotions, so they cope in negative ways and are easily swayed towards self harm and other self destructive behaviors. 

I love Undertale (frisk is a big inspiration for my character).
They are a good example of a non-binary character. 

List of Materials

    I wish to compile an official list of materials to buy or anything that I would like to use during the filming of my film opening. This way I can refer to this list anytime I need it. Like in many projects and many aspects in my project specifically, of course, this list is subject to change over time, I could add or take things from it depending on where my creativity takes me. 

    A lot of these I already have at home, but you best believe that Amazon is going to be my best friend during all of this. Jeff Bezos really got me with that online ordering website. 

Necessary materials: 

- Stack of books (3-4)

- Tripod 

- Lighting of some kind

- Picture frame (2x)

- Printed picture 

- Black sheet to drape over the wall

- Wig? 

- Computer

Additional Research - Target Market

     Let's get more specific about the genre of drama. I've already explained what it is and given an example. Since then, I've narrowed down my film into a 'contained melodrama.' Contained: Set in a singular place (the house). 

Melodrama: Main character experiences intense emotions.

    Through my research I've found that the usual target market for drama films would be females 15-25. This is most likely due to the fact that drama is seen more feminine by society as it often is expected to include elements of romance and has sub genres such a period dramas, all of which are stereotypically better liked by women. 

    However, I plan for there to be no romance in my film, it will only focus on Arlo's deteriorating state of mind, worsening mental health, and how they combat it. In this manner, I'm slightly changing my target market to still be young people, 15-25, but both male and female. Also, any other genders of course since Arlo is non-bianary, so inclusivity is key. 

Here it's clear the difference in drama film preference between females and males:

Sources:

https://nofilmschool.com/drama-genre-film-and-television

http://maddiemedia.weebly.com/audience-expectations-and-target-audience.html

http://samhowsa2media.blogspot.com/2015/10/audience-research.html

Genre Research

    While doing research for the main genre of my film opening: drama, I chose to more specifically focus on the role that characters play (haha). During my research, I also found that the drama genre is BIG. It has a broad spectrum of different sub-genres, from romantic dramas to courtroom dramas. I believe my film would fall under teen drama or a tragedy. The film adaptation of the stage play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, directed by Volker Schlondorff, is a great example to look more into. It's constant use of flashbacks to show trauma, emotion, and mental illness is something that I would like to play with in my film opening, looking at the past. 

    Going back to my focus on how characters act in a dramatic film, drama is conflict, in my case conflicts that are very likely to happen in real life, maybe it's slightly exaggerated at times for the aesthetic, but dramas are meant to be real and raw and emotional and have a connection to your audience. For all these reasons that I just listed in the longest sentence I think I've ever written, characters are crucial in a drama. They are the pillars of the movie, the ones that audiences will feel connected to, attached to, or relate to. So, characters must be well-defined, emotionally-driven, and must move the plot forward. 

    Hopefully, I can achieve that with my character. I'm thinking of only having one character in the opening so I can focus more on them and make them the best I can. It's clear that I am a "less is more" kind of person. 

Sources: 

https://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/952-drama/

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-identify-film-genres#13-classic-movie-genres

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

Project Planner

    I finally got around to making an official calendar of events for this project. I know it will be extremely needed considering how much of an undertaking this project will be. Planning ahead of time will hopefully succeed in taking that stress off of my shoulders ahead of time so I can focus more on other, more important, aspects, such as actually constructing my film opening, filming it, and editing it. I specifically set dates weekly for my blog posts, I have no guarantee that I will follow them 100% of the time but they're there to help keep me in check. 

    I am leaving the entirety of next week and the week after for planning and preparing for filming, so storyboarding, getting materials, setting everything up, etc. (there might be more research along the way). Then, I'm starting to film at the end of the 2nd week and into the 3rd week due to an upcoming field trip. I will be doing most of my filming that week and hopefully be able to film during spring break as well if needed. After that, all that's left is post-production/editing and my CCR. Below is my actual calendar organized as a visual aid. 

More Inspirations

TW: Picture with blood!!! 

    Having already chosen my genre as drama/coming of age. My next step is to do some research on what works best for a film opening of this genre. Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, despite being more of a dramedy (drama and comedy) compared to my film, dives into some topics of depression and burnout that I would like to take inspiration from. Specifically, the character Richie Tenenbaum, someone whose sadness leads him to act irrationally. I want my character to be someone reminiscing on their childhood, loathing their younger self for being so happy when they can't be, these feelings causing them to take extreme measures. I also LOVE, LOVE, Wes Anderson's use of color in his movies. Holy crap I love color, I will try my best to make Anderson proud while using color in my film opening. I'm determined! 

    Additionally, during class, we were shown some student portfolio projects from pasts years and one of them piqued my interest. A film opening by Sophie Diebold called Barely Legal. What particularly spoke to me about this person's opening was the fact that it was all filmed in one room, which as I mentioned before, I planned to do. The attention to detail was really what made this project amazing, and I hope to do the same while filming mine. 

Portfolio Project!

    Finally! The project I've been anticipating all year. I've seriously been thinking and coming up with ideas for this project since October of last year. I'm already fairly set on making my film opening's genre be drama/coming of age. My main source of inspiration is Bo Burnham's latest Netflix comedy special: Inside. 

"Inside is chaos, at first glance: Burnham is in one room, working alone to make the special,... using a disco ball and colored lights to dress up the plain space. He slam-cuts between footage of himself sitting at a keyboard singing and footage of himself in a near-catatonic state,..."

    I am fascinated by the prospect and challenge of filming in a single room. I think this leaves 'room' (pun intended) to put more effort into the mise-en-scene elements. Having one primary place to film helps me focus more on the colors of the set, the lighting, props, and costuming, all of which come together to tell a story without even needing to use dialogue. The image below shows the room that all of Bo Burnham's Inside is set in. Bo is great at using what he already has to make the most of a small space. 

Photo provided by Bo Burnham @boburnham/Twitter

Like Bo, I also intend to use dramatic and intense shots/cuts in my film opening to add to that dramatic element since I plan to have a darker tone to my story. I'm so excited! This is going to be amazing! 

Quote source: https://www.npr.org/2021/06/04/1002491153/bo-burnhams-inside-is-a-musical-fantasy-about-terrible-realities

Music Marketing Project Reflection

BLÜME Marketing Campaign 2022

    Our music marketing project began where most projects begin, research. Our main goal was to find artists within the same genre as BLÜME, R&B, that could provide some ideas and inspiration when it came to advertising techniques. We really wanted to focus on being creative and using as many tools as possible to reach as many people as possible. Furthermore, we of course used our research to also find what was effective and successful for other artists. Some popular artists we used in our case studies were Tyler, the creator and Childish Gambino. 

    As I detailed in a past post, our brainstorming and planning process went pretty smoothly once we had an idea of where we wanted BLÜME's brand to go. All aspects just came together like pieces of a puzzle, the blue and pink color palette, the signature flowers everywhere, the particular name. It all can be seen as we tried to incorporate BLÜME's style and aesthetic into everything we planned to show for this project. 

    I have helped produce a music video in the past, but I had never been this involved in the process. The making of the storyboard proved difficult due to my struggles to communicate and organize my thoughts at times, I found myself deviating a lot from the original plan when actually filming. This definitely affected the final product, it wasn't the best and had much room for improvement. Thankfully, our presentation was very well-planned and organized from the get-go, so we were able to get all out points and ideas across productively. 

    When it comes to post-production, the editing of the music video and the presentation itself was probably the hardest part for me. Editing proved to be difficult this time around, we tried a lot of new things that we weren't really experienced in. Although I consider trying new things as something positive, most times it doesn't turn out the way it was intended to, and this video was no exception. I've never been very good at graphic design either. It definitely took some work, but I challenged myself by being the main creative lead for BLÜME's official website, which I think came out pretty well. 

    Throughout the course of this project, I truly learned how much work, time, thought, and planning goes into creating a fleshed-out marketing campaign. There are a lot more elements in a project of this magnitude that would've gone completely unnoticed by me before I had to participate in making one myself, with a team. What will mainly be assisting me for my upcoming Portfolio Project is the making of the music video for our campaign. I'm hoping to carry all the mistakes and everything done right during production into the filming of my film opening.