The Day Continues (and so does our filming)

 Yesterday we were successfully able to finish filming. After finishing at school, we drove to Lauren's house to use her bedroom for Jordyn and film our final scenes.

When we got there, her room was a lot more decorated than I expected and we only had to change a couple of things in order to make her bedroom look more like what we had in mind for Jordyn's room. I did feel a little bad since we didn't end up using most of the posters I had printed for her bedroom but at least we were overprepared and not under. After setting up, we got right to filming because we wanted to make sure we got the shot before the sun set at six. After we set everything up, we began filming our scene. At first we wanted to follow the storyboard and have Jordyn sitting at a desk with Amelia laying behind her, but because of the way the desk was set up and how bulky the desk chair was, I decided it'd be best to scrap that angle and have Jordyn sit on the bed next to Amelia. The shot is a bit less interesting, but it was the only way we could make the space work and have both of their faces be visible without the large chair back in the way.

Angle we started with

Angle we decided on

It was a last minute fix but we felt like it really changed the framing of the scene for the better, especially now that you can actually see Amelia. Overall I feel like today went really well and I'm so glad we finished filming because now we can move onto post production. I can already see the project coming together and I'm really excited to make and watch the final product of all our efforts.

Day One Redo

 Soo we started over...

We wanted to make sure we got filming done before next week so that we wouldn't fall more behind and decided today would be the best day to film everything. We were able to get Isabel (Amelia) back to help us reshoot some scenes, but Haley wasn't able to come back because she had something until late afterschool and we needed to be at our bedroom location before sundown so that we could have plenty of time to shoot Jordyn's bedroom scenes while we still had daylight; this meant that Hayley was out of the picture. Luckily, Mariana was feeling better and could take back her role as Jordyn. Unluckily, this meant that we would have to scrap everything we had done before and start over completely, which we were dreading.

Hallway BTS

We weren't able to get back the same actors we had filmed yesterday but some underclassmen who were also in drama but weren't rehearsing for the school play were able to and willing to help us reshoot by being background actors. Since we had already filmed everything before, setting up the shots was a lot easier and there was less experimenting since we already knew what shot types and angles we liked from our previous attempt. This made filming go by much faster, and we felt a lot more confident about our scene framing and the choices we made. This time around, I also felt a lot more comfortable directing Elke as she was the cinematographer. We had decided before filming that Mariana would play our actress, Elke would film, and I would direct, splitting the work evenly and all of us playing our part to bring all of our visions to life. We weren't aware before we started filming, but the band was practicing in the room over, which made it difficult to get shots that were quiet and it also made it more difficult to concentrate. We decided that the best thing to do would be to dub over the voices and mute the video in order to get clean lines. This definitely makes it more difficult, but I honestly think it'll make our project better.

Day One of Filming?

Yesterday was supposed to be our first day of filming and although we got a lot done, it was unfortunately almost completely unusable. We felt that we were falling behind our schedule and wanted to make sure we had as much time as possible to film, edit, and complete our CCR so that we could ensure we'd have a project all three of us could be proud of. So when our lead actress Mariana got sick, we had no choice but to find a replacement pronto to try to keep our schedule from getting derailed anymore than it already had. Luckily, our member Elke had a friend who resembled our main character Jordyn, and we were able to have her help us at the very last moment. 

Filming BTS

Although Hayley had no prior acting experience, she did a great job at portraying Jordyn and was amazing despite being nervous. Apart from Hayley, our member Mariana had convinced her theater friends to help us by being background characters for our film, making the hallway look full. Everyone involved was extremely helpful and I'm so grateful we got to have so many people help us on our project. 

But that's where our issues arose. Since we had so many people who volunteered to stay after school to help, a lot of them couldn't stay for very long and we had to accommodate by filming scenes out of order so we could have all the shots where they were needed out of the way and people could start going home. Unfortunately, we made a huge continuity error which ended up costing us most of our footage. Today's plan was to put all the clips together and begin editing, but as we were doing that we realized that we should've thought it through more when we decided to film out of order and send everyone home.

Scene #2 : Empty Hallway

Scene #3 : Student Hallway

These scenes, which were supposed to be direct continuations of each other, had completely different backgrounds, one of those hallways was empty. This was an issue because most of our shots looked like scene #2, and an empty hallway made no sense narratively so we have to reshoot those scenes, which was all but #3. Getting people to help us again is going to be difficult, since we need to have actors in the background to refilm our shots and have it look continuous. Right now we're just trying to figure out when we're going to refilm everything, so hopefully we have a solution soon.

Creating our production logo

 ELMAI Productions 

Although a production company logo wasn't something required for the film opening, we wanted to personalize our project further and create a logo that reflected the tone of the opening and our own taste. To come up with the name, we combined the names of everyone in our group, (Elke, Mariana, and Isa) and used just the first two letters in an order than looked simple and easily memorable. At first, we had named our company ELMAIS productions, but I dropped the S so it would be less of a mouthful.

Initial Brainstorm

Since I'm the only one in our group with spare time and a background in art, I volunteered to design the logo. I came up with some super quick concept sketches just to brainstorm some ideas for a simple and "professional looking" design and then went into Canva and began playing around with the positioning and fonts that could work with the simple logo. I knew I wanted the logo to be animated in some way, so I wanted to keep the rest of the design simple so I could easily add the little star below ELMAI and not have it be something that is too overwhelming and cluttered.

At first, I wanted to keep the design super simple and have the fonts and colors be on the more neutral side. Again, I wanted to keep it professional and was scared it would look tacky if I added too much but I ended up with something that's uninspiring and honestly, a little boring. I know its just a short logo at the beginning of the film, but my group members agreed that if we were going to go through the trouble of making a production company logo we should go all the way. My partner Elke wanted to make the background blue and add stars so it would look like a shooting star, but I felt like it was too reminiscent of the Disney logo, so I dropped the star idea and went back to brainstorming.

New Ideas

 For the next couple of ideas, I went with a fish theme because I wanted to have something a little more designed than just the word ELMAI and a star. Honestly, I was listening to a Radiohead song about fishes and began doodling because I couldn't really come up with any other ideas. This ended up being the final brainstorming session, luckily, as my group and I found a design we really liked.

After tweaking the colors and font style a bit I ended up with something we all really liked. I'm still not sure if I want to animate the fish in the space between the words since I really like how simple it looks with just the bubbles, but I'm going to try it out and add it to this post if I end up really liking it. But, for now, this is our final product:

Film Opening Soundtrack

 For the sound aspect of our film opening we wanted to keep it simple. The main dialogue will be mostly recorded like normal and we plan to use Foley sparingly, like for simple sound effects like a door closing for example. Since Jordyn is going to address the audience and break the fourth wall in a way that focuses only on her, we're going to have to find a way to isolate her voice that we can sort of muffle the sound around her when she focuses on the audience. Our biggest issue right now is figuring out how we're going to isolate her voice, but once we find a way the rest will be pretty straight forward. 

We also wanted to include a song for our opening and we already have one in mind. One of our group members found the song "It Won't Always Be Like This" from a small band named Inhaler. After we all listened to it, we decided it would be the perfect fit for our film opening as it has a very upbeat and sort of spunky vibe similar to our main character Jordyn. The song also sets the tone for a fun and light-hearted film, perfect for our project, and the title reflects our character's journey which helps set the plot in the two minutes of our film opening. The team member who found the song already emailed their manager in order to get the rights to use the song in our film opening. Right now, we're just waiting for a response, but we don't currently have any backup copyright songs in mind so we'll have to look for some if this song doesn't end up working out.

Storyboard

Last week we had worked on and finished the script so this week we made our storyboard. In order to make filming easier, we tried to draw every scene where a camera placement or angle change takes place and made sure to add notes where there are specific changes, like the focus shifts when Jordyn addresses the audience, for example. For some scenes, I wasn't sure how I wanted the characters to be framed or what kinds of shots I wanted to use so I went back and added them afterwards (Like the over-the-shoulder shot I added on page 4 which belonged to the second scene on page 3).  Drawing everything out like this will help make filming easier as we follow the storyboard like a sort of guideline when we begin setting up our camera and filming our scenes.

Storyboard:

Jordyn's Bedroom

 The first thing we had to do after coming up with our script was figuring out the setting and how we would do our sets and props. The two main locations we'll be using for our film opening are Jordyn's bedroom and the school hallway.

Jordyn's Bedroom

A large part of developing characters in the coming-of-age genre is creating a bedroom they can identify with. For Jordyn's bedroom, we wanted to give her a room with a more laid back and sort of "edgy" aesthetic, and we felt that one of our group member's friend's room would be the best fit. At first, we wanted to use our group member's sister's bedroom since she's away at college, but with the way her room was decorated we felt it would be too difficult to try to change it into a more "alternative" aesthetic similar to Jordyn.

Although the room is almost perfect as is, we wanted to include posters that would allow us to more obviously showcase Jordyn's personality through her bedroom. Using the Spotify playlist we had made before, I found posters on Pinterest that felt would capture her taste and personality. I'm planning on printing these over the weekend and putting them up whenever we can begin filming. After we're done with them, I plan to keep most of the posters for my own dorm in college since Jordyn's taste is pretty reflective of mine (nothing goes to waste!). 

School Hallway

The scenes that would need to be shot in a school hallway we would just film at our own school since it'd be easiest. Since its an actual school hallway, there isn't a lot of set designing we can do, but we selected a hallway that we felt fit the tone of our film the best (Our school has different looking buildings with many hallways that give off different vibes.) The only prop we needed for the hallway scene was the flyer the characters will be using when Jordyn comes up with an activity they can do to cross an item off the bucket list. We first planned to put up the flyer towards the top where all the other club flyers are, but because we wanted Amelia and Jordyn to block the poster during one of the scenes, we might put it on a lower wall with other posters to make the shot work.

Composition

 Since our main character Jordyn is breaking the fourth wall, I wanted to figure out how we could position the camera and frame the characters in a way that makes it obvious to the audience that they're being addressed. Characters breaking the fourth wall isn't something that is done often in film, but it is often done in a similar way. 

The character's who break the fourth wall are often framed using medium close ups, with a soft focus on the character speaking. I want to utilize this when creating our film opening and utilize focus shifts in order to properly illustrate the shift from addressing the audience to speaking to the other characters in the scene. Another thing I want to be mindful of when framing the characters is how we place Amelia and Jordyn. Since Amelia and Jordyn have been friends for a long time, I want the audience to be able to see how close they are to each other by placing them in the same frame and showing them together in almost every shot. Since we're only doing the first two minutes, this wont matter, but if we were to make the whole film I would frame Amelia and Jordyn separately during their argument and use shot and counter-shots to frame their conversations and create a juxtaposition to how they were shown in the beginning of the film.

Fleabag (2016)

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

Enola Holmes (2020)

Meet Jordyn Diaz and Amelia Jackson

Jordyn Diaz

Jordyn Diaz is a 17 year old high school senior born April 4, 2007. We wanted to give her a specific birthday because we decided she should be an Aries as they are known to be energetic, impulsive, and courageous. Along with a zodiac, we wanted to further develop her personality by giving her an mbti type: esfp. Esfp's are known for being extroverted, impulsive, stubborn, and optimistic which creates a specific personality for Jordyn. The reason we wanted to give our characters an mbti and zodiac sign is because we felt it was the most simple way to develop a more well-rounded personality that we could base the rest of our character on. With her basic characteristics stated, we can better understand what kind of dialogue, mannerisms, and voice she would have.

When deciding her aesthetic, we wanted to give her a name and style that matched her more stubborn and outgoing personality. The name Jordyn we came up with when trying to find a unisex name that would suit her. Alex, Blake, and Jordan were names we were torn between before landing on Jordan with a different spelling. We wanted to further develop her aesthetic so that we could have something to work with when we eventually get to creating her room which will be seen in some of the scenes. Other than just creating a mood board, we also wanted to give her a playlist so that we can know what kind of music she would listen to and what kinds of posters or items she might have in her room that are reflective of her music taste and other personality traits. Spotify Playlist

Amelia Jackson

Amelia Jackson is Jordyn's best friend and one of the main characters in our film. Amelia is also 17, born July 21, 2007. Cancers are known to be loyal, emotional, and overthinkers which is why we selected that to be her birthday. We also decided to give Amelia an mbti type because we also wanted an easy way to develop her mannerisms and personality, but also because we wanted her personality to reflect Jordyn's and to showcase how the two main characters would interact with each other. We gave Amelia the infj mbti type as they are known to be sensitive, idealistic, and reflective which we felt fit the role Amelia will play in our movie and how their contrasting personalities could lead to the climax of the story when they have their falling out.

To  come up with Amelia's name we wanted a sort of unique name that would make her stand out as an important character. The name "Amelia" means hard working, which we thought was fitting because our character Amelia has spent all of high school worrying about her grades and focusing on her studies over her social life, working hard to maintain her gpa. We wanted to develop Amelia's aesthetic but didn't find it necessary to create a playlist for her since the viewer will never see her room. We settled on a mood board to give her an aesthetic that would help us visualize the character and how she would dress.

Film Script

Before we can begin filming, we have to create our script and storyboard. This week we decided to work on the script because we find it a lot easier to figure out what happens in the scenes before we visualize the shots. When working on our script we had a couple of difficulties because we wanted our character to break the fourth wall so we had to figure out how we could do that in a way that works.

Still from Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Before working on the script, we had a short Nearpod we could look through which went over the basics of script writing. I was able to use it to help format the script while working on it. We also took inspiration from the script for the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off and used it to model how our script would look when our main character turns to speak to the audience. Another issue we had was the dialogue since we didn't want it to come off as cringe or cliché given the plot of the film. Some of our dialogue is still up for corrections but overall I think we managed to figure it out and came up with a pretty decent script. 

 “FILM TITLE” 

by

Elke Gomez, Mariana Aldana, Isabella Acosta

SHOOTING SCRIPT

February 14, 2025 

“FILM TITLE AGAIN”

Screen opens with a montage of JORDYN DIAZ and AMELIA JACKSON, photos/videos of them as children displayed on the screen.

JORDYN (V.O.)

I’ve known Amelia Jackson ever since the first day of sixth grade, and we have been inseparable ever since. We do absolutely EVERYTHING together

A montage of photos of Jordyn and Amelia flash across the screen, emphasizing their time spent together over the years.

INT. BEDROOM - DAY  

JORDYN’S BEDROOM. POSTERS ALL OVER THE WALL, HIGHLY DECORATED. A PILE OF CLEAN LAUNDRY LIES ON THE BED BESIDE AMELIA. SUNLIGHT FILTERS THROUGH THE WINDOW.

JORDYN sits at her desk writing in a notebook (offscreen), AMELIA is behind her laying on the bed, reading a book.

 JORDYN: 

(To Audience)

 Since it’s FINALLY our last year of high school, I decided that we needed a change of pace. 

AMELIA (checking her phone: the time reads “7:30”)

AMELIA: 

(Panicked)

 Oh god it’s 7:30 already. (grabbing her bag) We're gonna be so late !! 

 AMELIA scrambles out of bed, EXITING and shutting the door behind her. CLICK. 

JORDYN puts away the journal she has been writing in. She fumbles with her bag. The door reopens. 

AMELIA:

Hurry up !!

JORDYN: TBD

(To Audience) 

Alright guys, I’ll be right back, I have to go to school…

JORDYN grabs her bag, covering the screen (playful) 

BLACK SCREEN 

MAIN TITLES 

SCHOOL BELL RINGS. MUSIC BEGINS.

EXT. SCHOOL 

BUSY HALLWAY. STUDENTS LINGERING IN THE HALLS. LOUD TALKING. WE HEAR BITS AND PIECES OF TYPICAL ‘HIGH SCHOOL’ CONVERSATIONS/TALK.  

JORDYN and AMELIA walk through the busy hall, AMELIA is reading from the journal JORDYN had been writing in previously. JORDYN (expectant) waits for a reaction from AMELIA. AMELIA looks up from the journal, her expression unreadable.

AMELIA: 

(Exasperated) 

No…No way. A bucket list? 

Okay, one: that is (emphasized) SO cliche 

Two: How would we even do all this?

AMELIA begins to ramble, her voice fading out. JORDYN turns to the camera, rolling her eyes and grinning (playful)

JORDYN: 

(To audience about AMELIA)

She’s always like this. But she’s right.. (quickly) don’t tell her I said that. 

 I’ve gotta have a foolproof plan if she’s gonna go along with this. (frustrated) How can we even (emphasized) BEGIN to tackle the list? 

Still addressing the audience, JORDYN glances up and spots her solution. (Off-camera)

JORDYN:

(Looking back to Audience)

(Grinning) Talk about convenient. 

AMELIA’S voice fades back in, her arms crossed as she finishes her rant about how absolutely impossible JORDYN’S goal is.

AMELIA:

(annoyed) Jordyn?

JORDYN: 

(dismissive)

AMELIA: 

Hellooo, are you even listening?  Come on, we’re gonna be late-

JORDYN: 

(cutting AMELIA off)

 (Grabbing AMELIA’S shoulder) Amy (AMELIA) look, I just found our solution. 

JORDYN makes her way to the other side of the hallway, ripping the poster from the top of a board that she had spotted during her tangent.

JORDYN shoves the poster in AMELIA’S hands and reaches in her book bag to grab her journal. They flip through the pages of the bucket list until they find the right one. 

JORDYN, AMELIA: 

(AMELIA still looking down at the journal and JORDYN looks up to the audience)

List Item Number Seventeen, spend the night at a park

The item of the bucket list pops up on the screen it reads: #17 Spend the night at a park.

JORDYN pulls AMELIA away to walk to class. The screen focuses on the poster, making the writing legible to the audience. Afterward, students start to walk across the hallway losing focus on the poster 

Summary of Film

Yesterday our group met up after school to work on our project because one of our team members would be out of town for the rest of the week. During the meeting, we figured out our characters, the plot of the film, and began writing our script for the two minute film opening. Our story centers around Jordyn Diaz, a senior in high school who spent most of her high school career focused on her school work and grades, neglecting her social life. She and her friend Amelia Jackson had been friends since middle school and Jordyn decided this year that she wanted to make senior year memorable for both of them. Jordyn takes it into her hands to create a bucket list that will make this year the best year of their lives so far before they move away for college. Their bucket list goals range from having her first prom date to trespassing and other tasks that bend (or break) the rules. As Jordyn and Amelia cross things of their list, things begin to get out of hand and Jordyn needs to figure out how she can fix all her mistakes before her friendship and senior year are jeopardized. 

The five stages of our plot are:

Exposition: Jordyn brings up the bucket list to Amelia, coming up with ways to complete the list alongside her best friend.

Rising Action: Amelia and Jordyn begin to cross things off the list, some of Jordyn's goals being risky and breaking some rules.

Climax: Jordyn and Amelia get caught as things begin to get out of hand. Amelia tells Jordyn the bucket list isn't worth all this trouble and Jordyn refuses to give up, ending in a fight and a falling out between the two.

Falling Action: One of Jordyn's teachers confronts her about her slipping grades and worsening behavior. Jordyn realizes she had lost sight of her goal, that the only reason she had made the bucket list was to create lifetime memories with Amelia.

Denouement: Jordyn apologizes to Amelia and after the two walk the stage at graduation, they cross one last thing off the list and realize they had completed the bucket list.

A subplot we're including in our film is a small romance between Jordyn and another character as she wants to find a date for the prom to cross it off her list.

We also wanted to have Jordyn break the fourth wall at certain points of the film, interacting with the audience as if they were her friend.

Some notes I took during our meeting:

Media Theories

 A large part of our class revolves around media theories and how we can incorporate them when creating and analyzing media. For my film project, I wanted to explore Todorov's Narrative Theory of Equilibrium. The theory states that every narrative has distinctive parts, where they follow a structure in which a story begins at the state of equilibrium, the state is disrupted by an event, then the characters work to restore the equilibrium and end up reaching a new state of balance by the end of the narrative.

Equilibrium: Characters are introduced and story begins, everything is as it should be.

- Jordyn and Amelia are introduced as best friends who have known each other since middle school.

Disequilibrium: Includes "initial disruption", something changes the protagonist's life and disrupts the equilibrium.

- Jordyn creates a bucket list in which all the goals get more and more difficult to achieve.

Acknowledgement/ Solving: Protagonist realizes the event that disturbed their equilibrium and works to regain balance

- Jordyn and Amelia get caught and Amelia backs out of the plan. They have a huge falling out and after Jordyn continues to complete the list, she realizes Amelia was the reason she wanted to complete the bucket list in the first place and it's not the same without her so she goes to apologize.

New Equilibrium: Protagonist has solved the disruption, if they haven't its for a good narrative reason.

- Jordyn and Amelia make up and become friends again, they also realize they were able to complete all the items on their bucket list.

“Todorov Theory.” Selina Argyrou, 16 Jan. 2014, selinaargyrou.wordpress.com/todorov-theory/.

Group Meeting Reflection

Today in class we had group meetings. We met with people from other groups so that we could discuss our projects and give each other ideas. Being able to get an outsider's perspective on our project was really helpful because I was able to get advice from people who could listen to our ideas and give feedback and ask questions that helped us later develop the plot for out film. We shared our blog URLs and went through them, using the information we had posted on here as a guide while we explained our film idea. Since our idea still isn't really developed , my partner and I weren't able to get much feedback, but I did get some good questions we can keep in mind when we go to develop our project further later on.

"What are the character's motivations?/ Why did they make the bucket list?"

Jordyn makes the bucket list because she wants to make memories with her best friend Amelia that don't just revolve around their school life. She wants to create life time memories with Amelia that they can look back on after school and know they got to do something with their lives before they had to take on the responsibility of adulthood.

"What kinds of goals are going to be on the list?"

The goals will range from more typical bucket list items to something more dangerous, bending the rules to create memories. The goal is to make their senior year of Highschool memorable so their list will range until they eventually get too ambitious and get caught.

"How is the fourth wall break going to work?"

We want Jordyn to refer to the audience casually, turning to almost include them in the conversation in a way that is fun and lighthearted.

Since our idea is not entirely developed at this point, the people in our group didn't have that many questions or advice to help us work through our plot. Hopefully, as we develop the story more we'll be able to use the questions like the character motivation or the items on the bucket list, which I hadn't really put much thought into before, to aid us in creating the story. Someone in my group mentioned Malcom in the Middle, a sitcom in which the main character breaks the fourth wall constantly, addressing the audience in a way that is lighthearted and humorous, which is something our group might want to do for our film opening.

The Art of Set Design

 The easiest way to bring a vision to life when producing a film is to create an environment for the characters to live in. In the coming-of-age genre, the story is focused on the characters and their interactions with their environment and how those experiences shape them and help them develop throughout the film. Mise-en-scene is the only way to shape these characters in a visual medium. Of course costuming and dialogue are important to develop the characters, but set design is the simplest way to create a world for them. 

The kinds of props and sets used for films depends on many different factors. The time period, genre, and overall mood that you want to set through props and sets for the film should enhance the storytelling, not take away from it. A certain kind of consistency should be kept in mind when designing. For example, a film about a lighthearted romance wouldn't be set in a dark forest as that would take away from the visuals and create a discrepancy that would pull the viewer away from the story instead of into it. 

Set design can be split into two categories: 

Wicked (2024) BTS

re-creation and conceptualization. Recreation is where the scene or sequence needs to be shot in a real world location but needs to be recreated to fit specific criteria while conceptualization is a set that can be designed to the director's vision as it doesn't need to fit real world constraints; think Hogwarts or Batuu in Star Wars.

While learning the elements of set design and how they can help with storytelling and character building, I found a website here which described how you can create your own movie sets. The first step is to understand your script, knowing what kind of themes and concepts the script is going for is crucial. Its important to visualize the world that you're trying to build so that you don't miss any details that would take away from the story. After my group and I come up with a rough idea, we'll work on sketching the set during our storyboarding process while keeping the camera in mind. Understanding how the props and setting will interact with each other, the camera, and the actors should be kept in mind even during the planning steps. Afterwards we'll gather any props we need and make any we might be missing, like printing room posters if needed. 

Because I'm focusing on coming-of-age for my film opening, I wanted to find out what elements go into designing sets and props for that genre so that I could use both my understanding and the instructions to create a set for my film opening that would develop my characters and their story. 

Ladybird (2017)

Your bedroom is a direct reflection of who you are. Your interests and personalities are up on display both plastered on your walls or with the several trinkets you have laying around your bed and tables. In coming-of-age films, this reflection can be used to build your character and show who they are by what they have in their room. When you're a teenager, your bedroom is your personal space, and creating that for your character through what they have laying around or what posters they chose to put up gives them depth and can even be used to hint at their character development further down the line. When designing bedrooms for characters, all the details have to be intentional. 

Booksmart (2019)

Understanding your character and figuring out what kind of interests or hobbies they'd have and what that would mean for how they choose to decorate their bedroom is essential in developing their personalities and motivations. Keeping other details in mind is also important, like knowing what is popular for certain time periods or how certain archetypes would behave. For example, a girl in the 90's wouldn't have a One Direction poster up on her wall and a grunge rock fan probably wouldn't have a Taylor Swift poster in her room. Of course, in real life people can have many varying interests, but even we tend to stick to certain "aesthetics" when setting up our rooms so it's important to exaggerate that in characters so that it is clear to the viewer what they are like. For our project, we're still not entirely sure what kind of story we want to develop, but we're doing a teen girl set in modern times so that we're not constricted by the technology and fads of certain time periods. We'd focus on 2020's pop culture and current trends when figuring out the sets we want to film with.

Creating a Timeline

    One of the easiest ways for my group and I to keep track of what we need to do in order to finish our project on time is to create a timeline that breaks own all our tasks by week. With seven weeks left until the final project is due, following the timeline as closely as possible will be the only way to ensure we can complete it on time.

Week One (1/29-2/2)       

- Researching film openings

-Genre selection and research

Week Two (2/3-2/9)

-Develop plot (Beginning, Middle, End)

-Character Creation (Mise-en-scene)

    -Create mood board

    -Character motivations

-Storyboard

-Create filming schedule

Week Three (2/10-2/16)

-Select filming location(s)

-Write script

-Begin filming (?)

Week Four (2/17-2/23)

-Filming

-Record VO and Foley if needed

Week Five (2/24-3/2)

-Finish any filming

-Begin editing

Week Six (3/3-3/9)

-Finish editing

-Research and plan for CCR

-Create CCR

Week Seven (3/10-3/16)

-Edit and review CCR

Week Eight (3/17-3/25)

-Complete anything that bleeds over

    -Buffer Week

    I'm going to hopefully stick to this schedule as closely as possible and update it if any changes occur during planning or production. My time management is definitely something I need to work on so I'm going to follow the schedule as much as I'm able to to make sure my group and I are able to complete the project on schedule and do our best to focus on the quality with the time we have.

Opening Credits

 For our next film opening research we had to pick three different films and analyze the credit sequence. Credit sequences are important because they highlight the most important cast and crew, showing the audience the masterminds of the project. How you show the credits is just as important, as the way the credit sequence is presented sets the tone for the rest of the film. For my portfolio project, my group and I are still deciding what we want to go for, but we know we want a more light-hearted tone and will keep that in mind when figuring out how we want to display our credits.

                                            Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

The film opens with a black screen with only the sound of a typewriter working as the names of all the actors are shown one after the other. The opening credits are simple, with a type writer font to allude to the fact that the main character is writing to someone, this creates a more personal tone which shows the audience this film will delve deep into the main character and his personal journey. Throughout the credit sequence, a montage of a highway at night is the only thing that is visible other than the credits displayed in the middle of the screen which gives the film a cozy feeling and focuses on the actors who play the characters, highlighting that the characters are the main driving point in the film. A soft song plays in the background of the sequence, further creating an intimate mood before the main character is first shown narrating a letter he wrote to someone, the music fading away and the film beginning.

                                                             Superbad (2007)

The 2007 film Superbad, directed by Greg Mottola, takes a more creative approach. The opening credits are the main actors dancing on the screen with a "funky" song in the background. Only the characters silhouettes are visible as the different credits pop up on the screen in a bold and brightly colored font. The backgrounds change color throughout the dance number with everything in bright and saturated colors. Although the opening credit sequence doesn't reveal much about the plot of the story, it creates a tone for the film. Superbad is a coming-of-age comedy which focuses on humor and doesn't take itself seriously at all. This playful tone is set with the credit sequence, with a catchy and fun song and bright visuals to draw the viewer into a funny and sort of non-sensical film. For our project, we don't plan on making any drawn credit sequences but I found it interesting how the film's tone was set using color and sound and thought my group could do the same.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

For the final film I wanted to do an opening credit sequence that was more focus on a certain visual aesthetic than a vibe. The credits in Moonrise Kingdom are small and in a pretty cursive font in the corners of the screen. This causes the viewer to focus more on the visuals, watching as the camera moves from room to room in the house and introducing the characters daily lives. The credits are cohesive with the aesthetic of the rest of the film, setting a tone and a vibe for the film while not really introducing much of the story but rather the characters and their behaviors. The sequence also overlaps audio, mixing the sound of the radio with classical music which adds to the overall aesthetic of the film.