Social Media Research

 For my social media research, I looked for 3 movies that follows the same genre as our short film to learn more about the different ways we could possibly incorporate into our own social media page. 

Media text: Anyone But You

Social media tool: Instagram 

Description of types of posts: Posts are mostly videos of funny or romantic clips from the movie, with added-on graphics and music. Some posts show the actors doing various trends and highlighting their off-screen chemistry. For example, in one post it shows the two main actors doing ASMR while saying pick-up lines to each other. Many of the posts contain big texts in yellow and red. They also incorporate emojis to reach a younger audience. 

Description of how branding is developed (or not): Branding is developed by coloring, text font, and the content of the social media page. The types of post follow the genre of the film along with still targeting specific audiences. The use of bold text on almost every post is intended to draw in viewers esspecially with steamy phrases like "Electrifying Chemistry" and "Guess the Rom-Com quote"

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence: 

We will definitely adopt the idea of following social media trends to target our younger audiences along with using various video clips of the film as a teaser. 

Media text: The Kissing Booth

Social media tool: Instagram 

Description of types of posts: The first 9 posts of the Instagram page shows a collage of various moments and photographs of the film that highlight the character's relationship. The color scheme also seems to surround the color blue as it gives a tone of calmness. However, in the latest posts, it often compare the characters from the first movie to the most recent emphasizing their character development into a more mature adult. The posts also show big and bright texts that contain quotes from the movie, giving audiences a nostalgic and heartwarming feeling. 

 

Description of how branding is developed (or not): The brand is developed through the use of texts on the videos/photos and the content of heart-felt images of the character's love and even funny clips of the movie to keep it interesting. 

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence: What I would like to use from this social media and incorporate into mine would be the use of fonts especially using heart-felt quotes to intrigue other audiences to watch the film. 

Media text: The summer I turned Pretty

Social media tool: Instagram 

Description of types of posts: The posts are different from the others we have researched. The page itself does not seem as cohesive as the others have. There is no color scheme or any type of aesthetic that makes it different or stand out. There is a lack of text in
our bright, loud posts that draw people in. It is mostly the faces of the actors in pictures of short clips of the show. 

Description of how branding is developed (or not):

The brand is very poorly developed. Although it still shows the content of the clips from the show, it still lacks big texts or something that draws in audiences. People also shouldn't have to click on the post to find out when the show is coming out or more information, people on social media like to see very easy accessible information without having to look for it.

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence:

We will be using clips of our film to advertise it on our social media page. However, we will not go for the simple non-cohesive page, as we really want our social media to be professional and effective to our target audiences. 

More on Genreee

 In my previous post, I mentioned Genre and certain conventions that we wish to follow for our film. However, I want to go even deeper into it. 

Genre: Romance; As it has been established our short film will be romanced based. And although romance can be cliche and basic, we want to explore the specific conventions of the specific niche of romance we are doing it in. We will mostly be focusing on the Romance genre, as we wish to establish our characters as having an intense connection. 

For us to achieve this look our mise-en-scene will loosely follow these:

Boy: Howie will wear a casual button-up beach shirt with swim trunks. He will also wear sunglasses to follow his charismatic and playful personality. 

Girl: Nati will wear feminine clothing that is appropriate for the beach, like a beach dress over her bathing suit or shorts and a beach cover-up. 

But it is important to take into account that each film is different and can take place at different times and places. Since the clothing in the 1950's like in the notebook wouldn't be similar to the ones in our short film. 

Lighting in Romance movies ESPECIALLY romance dramas is vital to correctly set the tone for the audiences, this is where the movie Waves, really helped inspire some colored lighting incorporations. However, for any decent shot, it is important to make sure that the audience is not drawing attention away from the character when that is not the intentional purpose of the lighting. 

additionally it is very important to make sure that the lights come off as natural and not something that is fake for production reasons. For example in the notebook when the protagonists are in the room together the lighting shining through is natural because it looks like it is coming from the sun. 

 similar for the scene where they are dancing on the street alone together at night, the moon and street lights are their main source of lights. However, it is clear that in any regular camera, street lgihts and the moon won't properly light up a shot. That is why we will make sure to bring light kits along with sun reflectors to make sure our shots are visually pleasing. 

continuation on research

As promised in my last blog post, I watched the movie Waves, and wow, what an insanely sad yet beautiful movie.

 

For those who don't know this movie, it is about Tyler and his harsh journey of dealing with an injury that affects his wrestling scholarship along with the tense relationship with his father Ronald underscores a mental and physical battle with ideals of masculinity, on top of that he finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. He insists that she should abort the baby but she refuses. She eventually ends the relationship due to his aggressive temperament. This pushes him over the edge, and he begins using drugs and getting drunk, until one night he crashes a party that his sister and ex-girlfriend are attending, he gets into a heated argument with his ex-girlfriend, he hits her, and she falls to the ground, hitting her head. Thus, leading to her death. Everything after that goes downhill for him and his entire family. He is sentenced to life in prison and his family is left to suffer with the marriage of their parents dwindling and an extremely isolated and depressed sister., Emily. However just when the movie seems to be over, Emily becomes the protagonist and meets a boy who also shares similar traumas, they fall in love and are there for each other. 

This movie was honestly so heartbreaking, to see how an accidental and drunken mistake led to a life time expense along with two broken families. However it had a nice ending and it tells audiences that through the darkest of times there can always be room for growth and compassion. 

Now for the techinals aspects. One thing that stood out to me the most was the use of color throughout the entire film. It was honestly such a nice touch and elevated the film to the highest regards. In the beginning when Tyler was dealing with this anger and anxiety The use of reds were so prominent throughout the movie when relating to Tyler. 

There was even one scene where Tyler was under the influence and imagined Alexis (his ex girlfriend) being there across the fire. This scene highlights the fire seperating both his girlfriend and himself. Fire is a symbol of destruction, foreshadowing the death of Alexis. In continuous with symbolism, the colors when in context with Emily and her boyfriend, Luke, the colors are purple and bluish tones giving viewers a calming and peaceful tone. 

Another thing that caught my eye was the changes in aspect ratio of the film. Throughout most of the film, it is the regular 16:9 ratio. However, when something crazy happens like when Tyler kills Alexis, it cuts to black then shows up as about a 1:1 ratio. This vast change is one of the many symbolic things that the makers of this film correctly placed. This dramatic effect tells viewers that there is a big change in his life and it will never be the same again. 

Before                                             







After                                              

There are so many elements that I wish to incorporate into my own film. The use of coloring that differ with certain people would be such a great add-on to the film. I would also love to do this aspect ratio change for mine. Since I do wish to include a plot twist in my love story this subtle yet obvious change will definitely help elevate the intensity. My goal for my film is to try my best to have the best cinematography like this film has. I mean the color grading incorporated into this film is such an A24 classic. 

Overall, I had a lot of fun watching and breaking this movie apart and I can't wait to research even cooler movies. 

Genre Conventions+Research

 Typically, The romance genre has about 20 tropes. These love tropes can consist of star-crossed lovers, enemies to lovers, bad boy, billionaire romance, and so on. So from all of these conventions that we could have picked, it was difficult to decide which would be the best one to fit into a 5 minute short film. 

So we decided on what truly matters to us and that is showing the deep connection two people can have. We had initially added many components to the short film script that we decided (after consulting with Ms.Stoklosa) we should cut. Since it is so short we have to just stick with the important parts. However, we did follow the love at first sight trope, but we did not choose it first, it just coincidently fit in. 

For research, we both decided that these 2 movies (shown below) would help inspire us to continue with the script as we are beginning to get stuck on the story and are still trying to figure out how we can keep it progressing. 

The notebook depicts young love, and how they are still new to life they are hopeful We wanted to research this movie because of the obstacles both protagonists have to jump over to finally be together in the end. We wanted a similar idea towards the end of our short film because life isn't perfect and we don't want our story to be unrealistic. It also helps us get a more realistic idea of what young love should be like. However, we would most likely not follow other components of the film like mise-en-scene and costume design. The costume design would not follow our short film since its based in the 1950's. However one scene that i would like to make similar to mine would be the scene of them at the beach and just being playful with eachother. 

 

Another movie that i was so strongly recommended to watch and use as research was the movie Waves. I still need to watch the movie but first glance at it, the movie poster really inspires me for the short film's poster and what it could be. I love the font and the color scheme of mainly blues to represent the ocean and sadness. 

In my next post I will delve deeper into this movie and other research products. 

The idea for the project

Nati and I have decided to follow the romance genre, after many back-and-forths of what our idea should be, we finally decided it would be about a girl who meets a stranger and begins to fall for her but realizes he is not the person she thought he was. Nati and I are both hopeless romantics and have seen so many throughout the years, that is why we knew immediately that our short film would fall into this category. However, we still have to conduct research regarding the storyline and hopefully, it will help us decide on an ending. 

We have also began the script just so we can begin organizing the story line. It is very much a work in progress and we will look for feedback to help improve the structure of the script. We also are still coming up with a title name. 

Time Line

In order to manage our time wisely and feel more organized, Both Nati a have created a reasonable timeline for our project. 

Week 1:

Pick genre for our short film.

Research genre conventions.

Begin to develop the story.

Week 2:

Continue to develop/finalize story!

Create an outline/inspiration.

Find similar media (more research).

Week 3:

Storyboard our film

Begin to think about the other components

Research the other components (social media + print)

Start thinking of our recording schedule

Week 4:

Further the research and plan

Begin recording

Document how recording process is going

Elaborate on whether or not our decisions were smart

Start posting to social media 

Keep posting to blog

Week 5:

Further research and plan

Continue recording

Start editing + documentation of the editing process

Speak about how hard or easy and enjoyable the process is

Continue posting to social media + blog

Week 6:

Continue editing

Start creating print component

Document print component

Continue to post to blog and social media 

Week 7:

Research CCR components and information

Continue working on print

Further social media postings

Finalize video component

Week 8:

Build CCR

Finalize print component

Post to social media

Post to blog

Week 9 & 10

Blog about the overall process

Final tweaks

Changes in decisions 

Finalize CCR

Create project reflection

Post all components to the vlog

Post CCR

We are soon finalizing our ideas for the short film and will share it on our next blog post. 

new year new portfolio!

I've recently finished my distribution project where I had to create a trailer, a teaser, key art, and a powerpoint describing the distribution plan. We were given stories from the creative writing class and based on that we made our trailers. I enjoyed the process and the final production, however, I didn't enjoy it like i would have if it were a short film or telling the complete story instead of giving sneak peeks of it. 

 

Although the pre-planning part of the distribution project came off a bit easy and the production of it was fun, the post-production was a challenge since it had to be fast-paced yet understandable and make sure to not give away the entire plot of the story. It was also hard to meet the minimum time limit of the trailer. 

As the school year's end grows closer and closer, I have not been assigned the portfolio project for A level. There are four different categories that we can make: music promotion package, film promotion package, documentary package, and short film package. Currently, I'm more towards the short film package. I was also interested in music promotion, however finding a real band/ singer could be a problem, and having to work around other people's schedules could also be a hassle. Thus, working on a short film is something that I can do on my own time and something that can originally come from me. I have also decided to work with my friend Natalia Szabo since I know handling this can be a lot on one person and she can help brainstorm ideas and she could possibly act as well.