♬ Music ♬

     Hey everyone! Yesterday during class we were put into groups again and had the opportunity to get into groups and talk about our projects. We gave each other feedback, helped give each other ideas, and helped with any problems that we might have been having. One of the things I mentioned was that i'm having a hard time choosing what songs I want to use within the trailers. They told me that the best route would probably be to look through non-copyrighted music and chose witch one's suit my trailers the best because at the moment the only songs that I have in mind are copyrighted. Which means that I would need to get permission from the artists to use their music within my trailer. There is one song that I know that I definitely want to include for a part of the video but I have yet to hear back from the artist. The song is called Stop This Train by John Mayer and it goes perfectly with what the main character is going through/ how she feels. Another thing that we talked about was differentiating the two trailers. I decided that for one of my trailers I'm going to make it a bit more dramatic/ personal and the other one is going to be a bit more on the funny/lighthearted side. The more dramatic one would strive to reach the younger spectrum of my target audience by relating with them, while the other one would be more broad since almost all ages love watching a lighthearted film every now and again.

      After school, I also got the chance to film a bit more and I got some pictures that I'll definitely be able to include in my website and might be able to use one for my film poster. I took a lot more pictures than I thought I was going to so I still have to look through all of those, but out of the few that I've already seen, I've really liked them. I also started editing yesterday, and it's a bit difficult since I don't have all of the shots that I want, but with the voice-overs and the shots that I have so far I've been able to put some of it together. I know that I have A LOT left to go, but i'm trying my best to use everyday to my advantage.

Voice overs

     Hey guys! Yesterday I got Bailey to do the voice overs that wanted for my trailer. It was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be because neither one of us wanted it to sound staged. What I ended up doing was showing her the script and telling her what I was planning on showing while she'd be saying that. With that she put some of the voice overs in her own words so it would sound a bit more, personal and a lot less read/scripted. Along with that, we came up with some other ideas of shots that I could include withing my trailer and we filmed them right then and there! 

     The reason why I chose to incorporate voice overs within my trailers is mainly due to the fact that it works to introduce the characters and a bit about what the film is going to be about. For my first trailer, i'm thinking of incorporating it in the beginning to introduce the characters and a but about whats going on. For the second trailer there's going to be a bit less, but its also going to help introduce some background info on the plot/characters. I got some of my inspiration from The Perks of being a Wallflower trailer, which starts out with a voice over of the main character who is explaining what he's been doing, who he is, and then is dispersed throughout the trailer for important and engaging phrases. Another film trailer that also uses voices to move the plot is, Me and Earl and The Dying Girl. The trailer starts out by showing the main character in various shots paired with a voice over, then its followed by some important shots and then a voice over is used again. Both trailers' voice overs are the voices of the main characters, which I liked a lot and is why I chose to do that with my trailers as well. They both also go back and forth between voice over and dialogue and they are both accompanied by suitable music that helps progress the plot and establish the mood.

Last but not least, I am going to be filming tomorrow and Friday as well in order to get some of the other shots that I am still missing. I'll let you all know how that goes!

AND... ACTION!

      Hey everyone, I finally started filming!! I started to film on Wednesday and I got loads of footage, but I still have many more scenes to film. I used my script as a guideline, but I ended up filming that and so much more. I think that it's always better to have more than to have less. What I stated to film were the shots that showed my characters at school. I got shots of them talking about senior year, casual things, how stressed they are and I also got various close up shots of each and every character.  I got the shots that I wanted of the group of friends at school and I even got one more friend to act in my film. I've been looking through the footage and I'm really happy with how the shots turned out, in the majority of the shots you can hear each person very well and I made sure to get different angles of them all. I'm going to start putting some of the shots together tomorrow to see how it looks, and see if maybe it'll bring forth some new ideas as well.

      Originally I was planning on only having 3 main characters, but since I had another friend that was also staying after school I decided to include her in the filming process as well. So now instead of there being 3 characters there are going to be 4. There's Bailey, the one who's stressed out about not knowing where she wants to go. There's Justin, the guy friend who's dream is to be a race car driver, loves playing guitar and is a bit shy. There's M, the outgoing fashionista, who just got into her dream school. The newer character is Jen, she's going to play the part of the misunderstood artist. She loves to draw, and paint, but she tends to go a bit overboard when it comes to talking about art.

     Another thing that I wanted to mention was that with some of Wednesday's footage I put together a very short Behind the Scenes video for the website. On it you will see that it has the "WeVideo" logo, which is because I have a Chromebook and Its one of the only things I can edit on. Fortunately, my uncle allowed me to borrow his laptop for the time being for me to edit on! That is going to be the first, and only BTS video with that logo because I now have access to a different/more advanced editing system. I'll let you all know how the editing goes and any problems that arise. Goodnight!!😀

Posters

     I hope that everyone's week is going great so far! Today I've been working on the website and I feel like there are so many things that I can include and so many different ways that I can design it. I really want it to be simple, yet visually engaging. Along with the website, I've also been listening to many songs to help me choose a few for the trailers, and I've been thinking about how I want to make my poster.

      Before brainstorming ideas for the poster, I decided to do a bit of research for inspiration. Since I've been using a few specific films as case studies, I decided to use their film posters for conventions and inspiration as well.

The Kings of the Summer has multiple posters to promote the film, but these two stood out the most to me. Both of the posters have an image of a memorable scene from a movie, and it clearly gives out that these three teenagers are simply living free and having fun. They both make it abundantly obvious what film it is without making the title the main focus, and they both include the release date, reviews and awards. I think that including the reviews and awards work really well to give the film credibility and engage the viewer. I really love how the poster on the left incorporates a memorable/ meaningful phrase with the image of the boys jumping into the lake. It all works to make the poster visually pleasing. Since my film is a revolves a bit around having fun as well, I think that a memorable and visually engaging film from the film (or in this case the trailers) could be an interesting way to promote the film.

      Whiplash & The Perks of Being a Wallflower both had completely opposite posters. The colors and the highlighted words within the Whiplash poster gives it a darker, and more powerful tone, while establishing that the movie is going to revolve around drummer. It's so simple and yet they used a similar technique to the one of the posters above, by intertwining the image with various words to create a specific tone. The poster for The Perks of being a Wallflower is much more lighthearted, and simple than both Whiplash and The Kings of the Summer. Although the poster for Whiplash is very powerful, I don't think that that style would go well with my film, so I'm leaning towards doing something like The perks or the Kings posters. Some of the most important things that I have to remember when making my film's poster are: the title, the release date and creativity.

Work in progress

      Hey! So I finally wrote out my script, and its going to serve as a guideline so that both the actors know what to say and I know in what order everything goes. As of now im planning to start filming on Wednesday, but i'm trying to establish exactly how I want the school scenes to look. Initially I wanted to film some of the scenes in the cafeteria, to establish that it was a school setting, but I just realized how noisy and difficult it would be. Instead I think i'm going to have the group of friends at a picnic table outdoors, so that it still establishes the setting without taking away from the character's dialogue.

Here's the first page of my script/ guideline:

      Another thing that I just started to work on was the website. To make it i'm going to be using weebly.com because I've used it before and I really love all of the options that it gives the user. So far I've only chosen a template, but i'm very excited to start personalizing it. Before I get to that I've been looking at the websites for some other films like Whiplash, and Kings of the Summer. The film Whiplash has its website linked to the company that produced and includes various movie elements like the synopsis, the cast, the crew, reviews, external links, the trailer and where the full movie can be seen/ purchased. The website is also extremely user friendly and although it is simple it connects well to the film with the colors and images that were used. The website for the film Kings of the Summer is also a subpage on the website of the company that produced it. It includes a summary of what the film is about, the cast, filmmakers, reviews, news, and most importantly the trailer. I'm going to use these sites to gain inspiration and use them as a sort of guideline as well. That's it for now, but I'll be sure to keep you all posted!!

Scripting & Scheduling

     I know I probably waited too long to do this, but I finally made a schedule for myself. I feel that having one will really help me get more things done at a quicker pace and have more time to fix/ change any minor details that might need correcting. Although I didn't specify what I want to do every single day, I set a date for when I want certain things to be completed by. For this upcoming week, I'm going to focus on filming, editing and starting to work on the film's website. The following week, I want to film any scenes that I have left/ any new ideas that I want to include within the trailers, finish editing, the website and work on the promotional poster. I'm hoping to have the majority of those tasks done by April 2nd so that I can dedicate the last week to any final changes/details and the Creative Critical Response.

      On another note, I've also been writing out some of the dialogue that I want the character's to say, but i'm leaving it with flexibility because I really want the character's personalities to stand out and since each one of the actors has such a distinct personality I want to see where it could lead. At this point I only have drafts of what I would like them to say for certain shots, which were the ones on my storyboard in the previous post, but i'm working on a more solid script and I want to have it done by tomorrow so that I can start filming as soon as possible. Once I have it done, I promise to post it on here to give you all a sneak peak of what the dialogue will be like.

Storyboarding & more

      Hey! I hope everyone's Saturday is going great! Today I have a lot of things going on because it's my mom's birthday! Before we all celebrate, I have a few things I need to show you guys. On Thursday I got to hang out with one of my closest friends, and the main character for my film, Bailey Smith. I had chosen her initially because of the fact that she is very musically talented and I wanted to make a film about music. Although my film might still include that musical element its not going to be the main focus. The main focus is going to be her and her friends and all of the many things that they go through/ do during their senior year of high school. When we met up I told her about the role that she was going to play and we talked about the people that could possibly play her crazy friends. I also showed her the rough draft that I made of some of the shots that I would like to take.

   

     The storyboard/rough draft pretty much includes some possible shots that I would like to take paired up with possible dialogue. At the end of the paper I wrote some of the fun things that the friends can take the main character to do and some other possible ideas. Now that I have a general idea of what I want the main trailer to look like, I need to make sure that all of the things that i want to film are plausible and what shots I can use within the second trailer. In regards to the second trailer I also need to think about what is going to differentiate the two trailers whether it be the distribution method, the target audience, or something else. I want to have all of those elements set by Monday so that I can begin the filming process.