Postcard: The Print Component

 The short film portfolio project contains a print component in the form of a postcard advertisement. The postcard is meant to be handed out to persuade potential viewers to watch the film at a film festival showing. After a lesson by my teacher, I felt a lot more confident about the postcard component because she explained exactly what should be on it and what Cambridge is looking for. 

The postcard should contain: the name of the film, the name of the director, director's contact information, and when/where the film is showing. The postcard can also be vertical or horizontal.

Here is a real world example of a postcard advertisement made by Samuel's sister (a film student!)

Front:

Back:

For our postcard I am thinking of doing a dark color scheme: think dark red, purple, green, etc.

However, I want it to be very traditionally " teen girl movie" font and layout wise. I was thinking of doing something like the mean girls poster, but with the witches. I think it could be cool to contradict the standard conventions but still hint to what the film takes inspiration from. 

We summon the devil on a teacher planning day pt 2

Hellooooo Blog!

Our shoot went well! We're making a film! Yay!

I am so so happy. To be completely honest this project has been stressing me out so much and just knowing that we have part of it shot makes me feel so much better. 

Yesterday, Zach and Samuel met up to write the scene that we filmed. I will say, we are behind on writing...

Thankfully, spring break is next week which gives us plenty of time to finalize a script. Here is what we have so far:

Onto filming..

I would say the shoot went very well. Since it was a teacher planning day at school we were able to film in an empty classroom which gave us freedom to move around the desks to get cool shots. Our actresses did very good too, and I think we made great choices casting wise. For equipment we used Zach's tripod and hollyland microphones, and Samuel's camera, which is a Lumix S5. 

Here is a video from the shoot:

Deciding our cast

 Hi Blog!

Tomorrow is my teams first shoot and we have just finalized our main cast. Actors are crucial to the film, as they are the people bringing the story to life. When coming up with our story and writing our script I already had someone in mind for the "queen bee" character, and the main witch. This character needed to be portrayed by a strong actress, which is why I was thinking of my close friend Andre. 

Andre has been involved in our schools musical theatre program for 4 years, and has played roles like Malificient in Descendants, and Sharpay in High School Musical. 

Thankfully after a quick text and phone call she agreed to be in our project!

After casting our queen bee, the other two witches were easy to find. I asked one of my best friends, Ambar, who I know through my schools television production club. She is one of our main actresses whenever we make short films, and has acted in countless short films, so I knew we could trust her to do our character justice. 

For our third witch we asked Sarina, another member of the television production club, although she doesn't have AS much experience acting, she has been in a few projects, and we trust her to portray the character. 

Finally...

casting our protagonist.

I'm not going to lie blog, this wasn't an easy task.

We debated for days about who could play our lead, and asked multiple girls if they were willing to. However, since we plan to film during spring break it severely cut down our options, since many people had plans to travel. 

But then! Samuel had a lightbulb moment and came up with a perfect actress! Claire is a freshman in our tv club, so she has that innocent look, but she's also involved in our schools theatre program and she is truly an amazing actress. (She just played the lead in our schools spring musical.) Thankfully, after asking her she agreed to act in our film! Yippee!!!

I'm so glad we casted our leads! Stay tuned to hear about the shoot tomorrow :)

We summon the devil on a teacher planning day

 Hi Blog!

We are stressed. Like very stressed. 

After switching ideas for the third time we realized that we actually have a lot less time then we thought. In reality we have next week (spring break) and the week after that to finish our project. Because of this, we want to finish filming as soon as possible to have time to edit, and complete the other components of our project. During spring break, one of our group members (Zach) will be on vacation, so we have planned to begin filming this Thursday and Friday to get the big scenes done before he leaves. However, this means that we need to lock in and finish our script in the next few days.

Thankfully, Friday is a teacher planning day, so we have a full day to dedicate to filming. On Friday we plan to film every scene that takes place in school.  A big advantage we have is that Zach's mom is a teacher! And since we need a classroom to film in it works out perfectly. 

On Thursday we're planning to film the big seance scene, as it is a very important scene to our film and will take time. Thursday is also a half day at school, so we will have plenty of time after to film. 

A seance film from a previous film I produced

Yes the stress is definitely stressing, but thankfully this week gives us a good amount of time to film.

I'll update you next week blog....

The plot thickens (....switches again)

 Well blog... this is a little awkward

We switched our plot again. 

I know I know! It's already week 3...

But unfortunately our previous plot idea just wasn't working when we were writing, so we ended up switching gears... or more like going back to our old gears.

We ended up circling back to our previous idea but making it more detailed. We met up at Panera to plan, and got until the middle of the plot. 

Here's our plot outline (still in progress):

Main plot: Girl who's pure gets invited by popular Trio to stay on at popular Trio leader house and the sounds backfires and she gets possessed and after she gets possessed she can break the fourth wall and then stuff happens from there ethical stuff a real ethical stuff something that changes her as a person deep down inside 

Beginning:

• MC is introduced as pure cutsie girl type:

• She meets popular girl trio (band of classic prissy hot pink popular girls)

• she takes one of their seats in class and they sit around her

• They start talking to her, in a fake kindness tone

• They invite her to one of their popular girl hangs (mean girls esque)

Middle:

• Hard cut to her outside the door of the hangout

• She talks to the camera while waiting in excitedly, but gets cut off with the door opening

• Popular girl briefly questions who shes talking to, but MC waves it away quickly, but also notices a charm around her neck

• The do classic girly stuff, MC notices the other 2 wearing the same charm

• Popular girls suggest doing a witchy spell casually “it’ll be fun” its revealed that they are practicing witches, and have been doing magic for a while (they maintain their prior characterization though)

• They start the spell, MC notices her energy draining and stops the spell

Right now our main focus is figuring out our ending. We've had some conflicting ideas, so we're meeting up again sometime this week to figure it out.

Group Meeting 1!

One of the most useful parts of the portfolio project process last year was the group meetings. During the group meetings we meet with members of other portfolio project groups to give each other feedback and advice. 

Today we had our first A level portfolio project group meeting. My group consisted of Victoria, Fabiana, Adriana, Daniela, Emi, and I.

I took notes during the meeting, splitting them between general info, concerns, and suggestions. Here are my notes from the meeting:

Emi: Working with Joaquin and Andrew

• Dark comedy short film 

• Critique of power struggles

• Statement about joining religions for power

• Completes task for devil, loses humanity at the end 

• Script is finished

Concerns: 

• Location filming

Suggestions: 

• 1 death (instead of 3)

• Film at markham park 

• Make your own symbol (instead of the pentagram)
  
  

Adriana Vega: Working with David 

• Comedy short film 

• Guys teleports by flipping a penny

• Everytime he goes somewhere new he tries to do a kind act and it backfires

• Interested in using fast cuts

Concerns:

• Scheduling

Suggestions: 

• End with David completing a kind act but when he tries to teleport again he drops the penny down a drain/sewer (for comedic effect)

Aneesa Bajaj: Working with Quinn, Nico, and Zach

• Meta dark comedy 

•  Heavy on breaking the fourth wall

•  Camera starts on initial subject and falls in love with another subject, subject 1 tries to win back its attention

Concerns: 

• Developing storyline and it making sense

Suggestions: 

• spotlight turning off on main subject 

• mic turning off of main subject

• -give context to studio setting 

• -casting call (actor desperate to get role)

 

Victoria Duque: Working with Kenna and Renn

• Coming of age 

• Message: even through fears and stress, you keep growing

• Girls plants seed, life gets stressful, she forgets about it

• Friendship breakup (friend gave her the plant) 

Suggestions: 

• End with voice over

• Buy 3 different plants to show the growth of the plant

• Focus pulls 

• Use calendar to show days passing

• Weeks instead of days

• Camera is calendar- writing on camera 

Mariana Aldana: Working with Audrey

• Drama short film 

• Starts with a therapy session 

Suggestions: 

• Quick death 

• Ideally have an adult play therapist 

• Maybe car crash

• Younger 

• Not dd 

• Therapy a year later

• Put date on bottom

Fabiana Castillo: Working alone

• Psychological thriller short film 

• Guilt is getting to him after killing girl

• Protagonist goes crazy 

Suggestions: 

• Give context at the beginning - like crash and show year of crash and then year 

• Dead person is signified by item specific to them

• Time doesn’t pass

• Hes like bipolar so he writes the notes himself and just through the movie show the different personalities 

• Limited dialogue 

• Daniela Gonzalez: Working with Gaby

  • Music promo

  • Annie Lemasters 

  • Dramatic vibe (olivia rodrigo drivers license vibe)

  • Story based 

  • artist in nashville

  • Story will be fully acted out 

  • Build up to running on the beach at the end (sitting on beach, walking, then running.) 

  Suggestions:

  • Go to the beach during sunrise instead of sunset

  • Have everything completely planned out before, as there is very limited time to film.

  
  

Overall, this group meeting was very helpful to all of us and gave useful suggestions and advice for each

of our projects.

Social Media Research

 Media text: World of Tomorrow (short film)

Social media tool: Instagram

Description of types of posts: World of tomorrow itself does not have any social media, but it's director Don Hertzfeld, has an account. Hertzfeld posts a variety of content including stills of his projects, personal images, and awards he has won.

Description of how branding is developed (or not): The branding of this account accurately develops the creators personal brand, but doesn't spend much time on the film itself. I will be posting specifically to market the film.

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence: I like the more casual approach to social media this creator takes, however I will have a more cohesive and professional social media to promote my short film.

 

Media text: The Carrot (short film)

Social media tool: Instagram

Description of types of posts:The production company for "The Carrot" has a professional instagram. They have posts such as clips of the films, meet the director posts, and stills from the short films. 

Description of how branding is developed (or not): The branding isn't super clear, the posts aren't all cohesive or their isn't some overarching theme within the instagram. .

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence: They do "meet the filmmaker" posts which I really want to do for mine. Additionally, I think this showed me how to not make my feed look. I want mine to be more aesthetic and cohesive. 

 

Media text: Don't be Shy (short film)

Social media tool: instagram

Description of types of posts: "Don't be shy" doesn't have a specific instagram or social media for itself, so this analysis is on the production companies instagram. Short frame film is very cohesive, they have one type of main posts, which are clips from each short film. However I loved the covers of the reels, as they all were done similarly, looked great on the insta, and kept the brand of wave length going.

Description of how branding is developed (or not): Branding is developed by having a set color, and font to use for posts, showing cohesion. Additionally, since every post is the same idea, audiences will see the reels and automatically think of this account.

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence: I like the top 3 posts to introduce our short film in a creative way, and the visual aspects of the account of a whole. I will probably do similar things with my social media, like the matching profile, highlights, etc.