How to make it horror?

    Hey guys, today I wanted to talk about some elements I’m including in my opening in order to alter the mood. As I have previously established, the first scene in my opening will consist of horror elements while the following scenes will touch on the coming-of-age aspects. I have been doing some research in order to figure out how exactly to bring all the horror elements I can, so I wanted to let you know about some techniques I will be utilizing. I am going to start with two that may or may not be used; The first is when shooting the shower scene, instead of having the sliding glass shower door be open in order to get a clear shot of the characters face I may leave it closed in order to give it the feel that somebody is watching them. Obviously this is not a POV shot from the stalkers perspective but since this is a stalker piece using this technique may give it that feel. The next trick I may use is using my fog machine in order to make the shot extremely hazy, this one I am mostly unsure of because I do not know if it would make the shot look good or unnecessarily blurry. The "fog" would make sense as it could be played off as vapor from the shower and could make the shot more ominous especially in combination with the next technique I am going to mention. Lighting is obviously super important and I am going to utilize colored lighting; I am unsure of what color to use as I want this scene to be eerie but at the same time the facial expressions of the characters are important as they all just went through something traumatic. I do believe I will most likely end up sticking to red lighting for the sake of the shot but another idea I have been toying around with is giving each character a different color that best matches their personalities. Now onto the editing, the plan for going from one character to the other in the shower scene is to just have cuts that keep getting faster and faster and faster and then they abruptly stop and land on one of our characters who begins to scream out of the frustration, the quick cuts represent how the characters are feeling in that moment as they are meant to make the audience very anxious. During the entire shower scene, except for when one of our characters scream, the background sound utilized will be a Shepard tone. First of all let me clarify what a Shepard tone is, it is a sound that creates an illusion that it is constantly either rising or falling in pitch so it is great for creating suspense; Here is an example. We plan on using a Shepard tone as we think it will work perfectly along with our quick cuts in order to induce anxiety in our viewers and build up for the scream. The scream is not meant to be a jump scare or something that scares the audience at all, there are no elements meant to actively scare the audience during the shower scene but we want to create an uncomfortable environment so the audience knows that they are not watching a regular coming-of-age film. That is all for today and I hope I was able to explain a bit about different elements going into the shower scene, talk to you soon!!

Maybe social media isn't all that bad

    Hey everyone, if you read my first posting of the week, you may have noticed that some of the letters throughout were in bold. If you were to line up the letters in bold the word ‘Silversphere’ would have appeared and to many that word will have no meaning. Now, you may be asking “okay Thiago why did you do that?” And I am here to explain why. Silversphere is actually the stage name (Birth name being Sophie Cates) of one of my favorite artists of all time, she is a 21 year old pop singer who I have admired for many years. I began listening to her music around 3 years ago when I stumbled upon the music video for her song “Drinking Games” I instantly loved the song and followed Sophie on instagram where I messaged her telling her how much I adored the song. Something happened to me that never had happened before which is an artist that I messaged responded to me. Ever since then we have been messaging back and forth and she even follows me on instagram. I instantly knew that I wanted to message her about including a song of hers in my opening and i’m so thankful that she answered almost instantly and was super on board with the idea. I know this is an opportunity that not everybody is able to have and I feel so lucky to be able to utilize her music to elevate my film opening. Please check out her Instagram and her Apple Music page. Below I also included some images from her latest “all my boyfriends” era, the first image is a still taken from the music video for her song “ghosts!”, which I encourage everyone to checkout. That’s all for today! I really hope you guys are all as excited about this news as I am; and please everyone check out sophie’s incredible music!

 

Group meeting + Feedback

    Hey everyone, this morning I had the opportunity to have a meeting with members of other groups also creating a film opening. Our meeting consisted of six members all working on creating separate openings and it was honestly an amazing experience. We all went around telling the others what our openings consist of and our creation process, when it was my turn to tell the group I got a lot of positive feedback; This felt amazing as I (like many others) love being reassured about my work, especially a project like this that I am super passionate about. I did get a few pieces of advice, some I have already been thinking of and others I haven't. I have been playing with the idea of using different lighting during the shower scene than in the rest of the opening as the shower scene is more ominous and should make the audience feel stressed in a way. My original idea was to have very dim lighting for the shower scene to the point where the characters were indistinguishable but now I am definitely leaning more towards the idea of using colored lights for the shower scene as I believe it could really elevate the scene and bring more emotion to it; I want it to bring emotion to the scene as I want it to be more about what the characters are feeling in that very moment rather than what they did or the fact that they are covered in blood. The following scene will be a character rushing to get ready and then gets into a car with our other two main characters and an idea I was toying with was following the character from their bedroom to the car but the feedback I got during the meeting was that if I do intend on doing this I should definitely not utilize shaky cam. If you don't know what shaky cam is, its basically a technique where the camera is being shaken in order for the subject to appear distorted in a way. Using shaky cam was an option but not what I was set on doing but after discussion during todays meeting, I am going to scrap the idea as a whole as I received feedback signaling that the use of shaky cam will only make my opening messier and less professional. Alright guys, that was everything I had for ya'll today! Check back in tomorrow for a fun announcement!!

A little research never killed nobody

    Hey everyone, how are you today? I've honestly been having a great week but that's beside the point. If I am being completely honest todays blog may not be the most entertaining to sit through which is because  I am going to touch on some more of the research I have been doing. Although I do feel confident in what I know and my teams and I plan for shooting, researching a little more never hurt anyone. The first resource I used was an article all about planning the shooting of a film, this article was honestly really informative as it went in depth about the three major things to focus on when shooting; Breaking down the scene, having a shot list, and creating a schedule. I will admit that there was a lot of information given that would have been more helpful to a professional with access to expensive equipment rather than an unexperienced 16 year old with an iPhone. The breaking down of a scene chapter of this article was honestly something I needed to read as it highlights the importance of every single detail in a scene and everything that goes into shooting just a single scene; This isn't something I was unaware of but I know that having read such a detailed article about it made me realize how important every little detail truly is. An aspect I loved even though it didn't really help me was how the writer included examples of everything to really put in perspective how large scale some filming processes can be. The second article was one on how to plan a film and although I definitely felt that I learned less from this one there were a few key takeaways. One thing I realized is that I don't have a full story done and by that I mean that I can't imagine what the climax of the film looks like or even the ending; I realize that this is due to the fact that I only have to film the first two minutes of a film but having the entire story planned out will affect how I want characters to move, what I want them to say, and what their surroundings will look like. I also plan to create the shot list and storyboard with my teammates in the upcoming days because although we aren't starting to film yet we want to have everything go smoothly once we decide it is time to begin shooting. That is all for today guys but I would keep my eyes peeled for my postings this week as I have an exciting announcement to make.

Who does what??

 Hey everyone, I hope today has been great! Today I wanted to loosely touch on how my team and I are going to split up the work. First of all, I want to say that nobody is purely in charge of any aspect of this films creation as we are a team and are communicating throughout this entire process. I am focusing on the writing and treatment as I tend to write often in my free time and it is something I love to do. As the genre of film we are creating is one of my favorites and I am really passionate about it, the treatment for our film is going to be made by me. I am really excited to start on the writing, but if I am being completely honest I am a little scared; I usually write poetry but have written some short stories, my biggest task with the writing is to make sure that the dialogue sounds real and to convince the audience that what they are hearing is an actual conversation that would occur. Lorena and Larissa are more artistically inclined than I am so they will be in charge of creating the storyboard. Prior to them creating the storyboard we still have to host a meeting where we create a shot list for the opening. The filming and editing we are actually not planning on splitting up but rather finding a covid safe way in which we can all edit and film together. If we ultimately find that it is not possible to collaborate with these, we will host many meetings to tell the person filming exactly what everything should look like and when it comes time to edit we can host a Zoom meeting in which the person with the footage will share their screen so it is sort of like we are able to edit together. That is all for today! I just wanted you guys to have a clearer idea of how some aspects will be divided among us.

What our opening consists of

     Hey everyone!! Todays blog will be a little shorter than usual as  I wanted to talk to you guys a bit about what the film opening will look like and what scenes we are going to show as of now.  The first scene we show will be clips that line up perfectly compiled together of our three main characters in the shower. You see only their heads and some of their necks which are covered in blood, we might also show blood going down the shower drain in order to make the scene feel more dramatic and eerie. We then see our lead get out of the shower (Head only) and as they begin to dry their hair they scream into their towel, the scene then gets merged with clips of our other two main characters yelling into their towels. The screen then goes dark and the film title, which is yet to be decided, appears. We then see one of our characters getting ready, this scene is important as their surroundings and their daily routines are going to reveal a lot about them to the audience. I want to include a shot of the three leads in a car so that the audience can get a glimpse into the dynamic the friend group has with one another. The few final shots are going to reveal the villain of our film. We wanted the big bad to be a killer and not a supernatural entity for a few reasons, the first being that we were unaware of how to make a supernatural villain make sense within our plot. The second reason is one that I have for a very specific reason which is that killers enjoy killing and that's why they do it, there has to be no big reason on why the target is exactly that, a target. The 2008 film The Strangers touches on this take with the tagline being "Because you were home" This is a really interesting dynamic not often shown in horror movies with the villain usually attacking a family member of a specific group of people when in reality murderers are just insane and usually do not have reason behind their madness. Alright guys, that is all for today and I really hope you're excited for how this is gonna turn out because I know I am; Till next time!!

Meet Betty, James, and August!

     Hello everyone!! After a bit of discussion with my teammates we have officially created our three main characters! I want to introduce you to them one-by-one and touch on a few of their traits. First of all we have 15 year old Betty, she's extremely school oriented and feels immense pressure from her religious parents to be perfect. Next is 15 year old James, he has been best friends with Betty since they could walk pretty much, not as mature as our other two leads and struggles to find himself and who he wants to be. Our final lead is 17 year old August, she is James' cousin who recently moved to town, extremely close with James, causes Betty to question wether to listen to her beliefs or her heart. Okay so those are our characters!! If anyone reading this has recognized the names chosen odds are you're a swiftie as I named the characters after the love triangle in Taylor Swifts eighth studio album Folklore. I did this for two reasons, one being I am a huge swiftie and the second being that I truly believe she captured the teenage essence when writing about these characters and they are very well developed so I wanted to pay homage to them. 

    One thing that may sound strange to others is that I am absolutely willing to gender bend any of the leads. This is due to a very specific reason which is the pandemic, my team and I are unsure who is going to portray our characters yet and if we can only find a person of a certain gender which doesn't match the character description then the character description can change. My original plan was to have August be a non-binary character but after a bit of consideration and discussion with my group I realized that none of us know anybody non-binary and we would never cast a cisgender person to portray one. Representation is extremely important to us but as you may have realized, I didn't include any physical attributes for the characters; This is for the same reason as why I am considering the gender bending of the leads, which is that I do not know who is available and open to acting right now due to the pandemic. There are a few plot points that I also know I would love to include but I will touch on that in an upcoming post!

We've selected a genre!!

 Hey guys!! I am super excited about todays blog because I have some news for you. In my last posting I touched on how there was a certain genre I had in mind but still had to talk with my group before finalizing anything; I reached out to them with my idea and everyone was on board! So for our film opening we are creating a *drumroll* Horror coming-of-age film! Horror is my favorite genre so I instantly knew I wanted whatever we create to have horror elements involved but when I began to think more in depth about it I realized making a very dark and serious film may not be the best move. When I realized this, my mind went straight to a coming-of-age horror film as they include heavy horror elements while still having light-hearted scenes led by teenagers. This genre may be one of my favorites as I believe teenager led horror films work well as kids tend to be very curious and not make the best choices which lends itself well to the horror genre. I specifically focused on researching one movie when looking into this genre which was IT. IT (2017) was a huge success from the moment it came out, it ultimately grossed $328.8 million in the United States and Canada. Something that highly attributed to the success of IT was the dynamic between the main characters who are teenagers, their friendship gets tested throughout the film but they all ultimately grow from it. Having the leads in a film be quirky young characters is very effective as the target audience is viewers around that same age that may find themselves relating to a character. I do not have an exact clear vision of who I want my characters to be yet but I do have a few personality traits that I want at least one lead to have. I do plan on posting a blog on a very broad plot that we design and a plot touching on who our characters are; This is important to me as I really do want you guys to be with me on every step of this assignment. Alright guys, that's all from me for today!!

The power of Youtube videos

 Hey everyone! Yesterday I hinted that today I was going to make another post and share a bit more information with you all, so here I am!! First of all, I hope everyone had a great Valentines Day (Personally I stayed in binging the Twilight films) Today, I wanted to touch on the research I am doing before we begin production. My team and I have not touched on what genre of film we plan to create yet so as I could not begin to look into specifics such as target audience and marketing I decided to broaden my search and research how others create films. As one naturally does I began to watch numerous YouTube videos of people explaining the process of creating a film from start to finish and I stumbled upon two that I really liked. The first video touches on how the film process may look like when one has little to no budget and it's honestly kind of inspirational too; It talks about how a super high budget isn't necessary when shooting a film and the most important thing to have is passion, if you truly want to create a project then you will find a way to do it. A huge crew or fancy equipment are just nice commodities to have but are not essential to the project, and as corny as it may sound this video actually really helped calm my nerves. As much as I don't want to admit it, I was really scared going into this project; Every thought running through my mind was along the lines of "How will this look good with no budget?" and "The quality will be so bad if shot on a phone." But now I know that if I work as hard as I can, this film opening will be everything I want it to be. The next video is less about the production aspect of creating a film but about what makes a film opening great. The opening of a movie is what's going to drag the viewers in, it introduces absolutely everything; Characters, plot, and scenery. The opening scene of a movie where viewers are introduced to the main character is pivotal as it tells audiences exactly what they must know about this person and EVERY. DETAIL. MATTERS. From the way one gets out of bed to how their room is laid out can reveal much information about one so every little aspect has to be planned out extremely strategically. This week I am going to converse with my group and try to reach a decision on what genre of film we want to create. I must admit that there is a genre of film I would love to create an opening for so I am crossing my fingers and hoping that my teammates like the idea I have created. I will check back with you guys very soon and let you know how everything is going. Bye now!!

A new chapter!

     Hey guys! I wanted to give you guys some information about the project I’m currently working on, I sadly don’t have too much information to share but can talk about the basics. I’m creating a film opening and I am honestly super excited about it. Again, I can’t say too much but I do know who I am working with and am so happy with my team. My teammates are Larissa and Lorena, and although those names may not sound familiar to you, I have worked with both of them on previous projects and am super stoked to see what we create together! I have been brainstorming for a while now as I knew this project was coming up and I have a few ideas that I think we could really use. I know todays post was super short but I don't want to give everything that I know so far away just yet; But who knows, tomorrows a new day ;)

Music Marketing Update!!

    Hey guys, how are you?? These past few weeks, I have been super busy with this project but my group and I finally presented our final and it went amazing! I was extremely nervous to present; One, because I really really dislike presenting as I feel I am going to mess up and two because I was really proud of what my team and I created and really wanted others to receive it well.  I almost forgot, before I dive into the steps my teammates and I took to finalize our project, there's something I need to touch on. The week my team and I were supposed to go shoot our music video, I tested positive for Covid-19. It was definitely a less than ideal situation; I had various symptoms and they were all very prevalent. I inevitably missed a few classes and lost pivotal planning time with my group but we were able to push through and achieve a great final product.

    My team and I researched two different record labels, being 'Columbia Records' and 'Fueled by Ramen'.  And four bands, Panic! at the Disco, Vampire Weekend, AC/DC, and Twenty One Pilots. All of these artists create a certain sub-genre of rock music (Vampire Weekends with indie rock, AC/DC with hard rock) This was extremely helpful as many sub-genres of rock have different target demographics which means they inevitably have different marketing strategies. Since research was our first step we had not created our fictional band Kings & Queens yet which meant that we had no clue what our target demographic was going to be so having many examples of how rock artists use their platforms was incredibly helpful. As mentioned in my last blog posting, the brainstorming and planning process was definitely that, a process. We spent many hours pitching ideas to one another (Majority of them being scrapped once we realized they were either unachievable or just plain bad) As you may know we landed on having our music video revolve around grief and how losing someone close to you can affect your mental health. The weekend of the shoot approached and I was unable to be there but my team pushed through and was able to get all of the necessary shots! After one of our team members edited the video (Cristy you're incredible) It was ready to go and heres the final product! We then began our powerpoint presentation that went into target audience, our marketing campaign, and selling points. I focused on creating the marketing and distribution process which consisted of three main steps. I am a huge lover of music and am always waiting for my favorite artists to interact with fans or announce something so I went into this process with the fan mentality and focused on creating a marketing scheme that would make fans happy. In the marketing plan for Kings and Queens I created an exclusive album play through, a tactic to sell merchandise, and a week of events for the album release.  I also created an album cover and mock-up vinyl (Shown below), these weren't necessary for any specific aspects of the assignment but its just something that I enjoy doing and knew it would add flare to the final project. The final aspect of our project was the presentation, each member wrote bullet points on the slide they had to present and while speaking would elaborate on them. We did this in order to show that we knew what we were talking about and not just reading copy and pasted material from our screens. I touched on this before but presenting was 100% what I was most nervous for during this project but honestly it went amazing! After everyone presented we were tasked with doing peer critiques and I must admit when everyone had posted theirs and it was time to read what people wrote about our project, I was terrified. When I began to read critiques and saw how much positive feedback we received I was happy beyond words. I tend to rely on praise from others as a deciding factor if I should be proud of myself, which I know, it's a terrible habit to hold but one that is hard to break. The only negative feedback that I saw multiple peers touch on was that someone in the group (comments varied from "some" to "one") was speaking too fast making what they had to say hard to understand. Overall, I was really happy with how smoothly our presentation went and proud of myself and my teammates!

    I can ultimately say that his project really elevated my teamwork skills. Although I have been attending school online for many months now, this was the first time I truly felt as if I was challenged and grew from a project that had to be done virtually. My team and I held brainstorming sessions out of class which also helped us create a bond (at least with the members who would show up to these sessions) Becoming friends with the majority of my teammates was a really great experience as I felt more comfortable asking them questions and when we would collaborate on certain aspects of the assignment it didn't even feel like work. I definitely believe that once it is time to work on my Cambridge portfolio I will use what I learned from this project; One of our first steps with this project was to do research and it was a very trial and error experience as I found that many websites tend to post random information without an official source and certain information found can be extremely bias. I also now understand how important having a shot list and storyboard is when filming. Having a shot list makes the filming process much smoother as one can see exactly what clips they must shoot which is extremely helpful in my case as I get distracted and become unorganized often. A storyboard is not going to be extremely helpful to everyone but it is very important for me to have as I am a person who relies on visuals and having my shots laid out before me helps me understand which shots may be effective in certain scenes. Basically, everything I just rambled about can be summarized into one sentence that says "I am extremely grateful for this experience and what I have learned from it." There were definitely trials throughout this experience; Between me getting COVID, having to do the entire assignment virtually, and a member of the group not putting in as much effort as others. I can ultimately say that my team and I were able to push through and create something we are extremely proud of.