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.

 

Film Openings

Our group decided to create a coming-of-age film opening for our portfolio project. In order to create a good film opening for that genre, we first had to study different openings from coming-of-age films and analyze their elements. Because we wanted a more lighthearted feeling for our film, I chose to analyze The Breakfast Club, Ferris Buellers Day Off, and Napoleon Dynamite.

                                                    The Breakfast Club (1985)

The opening scene of The Breakfast Club is used to establish the plot of the story as well as the setting and the characters right off the bat. The film opens with several establishing shots of the school with a cheerful song, Don't you (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds, to create a sort of light hearted and sort of "80's teen rebellion" tone which is later added to with the letter voice over of one of the main characters complaining about being sent to a Saturday detention and listing different character archetypes. After, there are several different shots of the characters talking to their parents as they're being dropped off at school and their reactions, showcasing their different personalities as they're introduced and allowing the viewers to connect the characters to the archetypes the voice over had listed previously like "Jock" and "Basket-case". A small glimpse of the characters interacting is also shown when they first get to detention, solidifying their archetypes and setting up for development that will occur throughout the film.

                                                 Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

The opening scene of Ferris Bueller's day off starts with several characters being introduced as well as their dynamics. The film begins with Ferris feigning an illness to get out of going to school because its a beautiful day, his motivations immediately revealed. His sister and parents are also introduced, with his parents believing his lie and his sister becoming irritated with him getting away with it, setting up motivation for her as a sort of antagonist in the film later on. The opening also does something I found really fun and want to play around with myself: breaking the fourth wall. The way Ferris breaks the fourth wall is like he considers the audience his friends, speaking directly to them like he's having a casual conversation and giving the audience tips to fake being sick, creating a fun and light-hearted tone for the film paired with the fun and upbeat song that plays after his parents left him home alone. 

                                                    Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

In hindsight, I should have selected Napoleon Dynamite for the upcoming credit scene post since I really loved the credit sequence and how creative it was. However, I feel like the film opening also does a great job at establishing the tone of the film. Within the first few minutes the viewer is introduced to Napoleon and the kind of character that he is through his mannerisms and his dialogue. When Napoleon first gets on the bus, the camera shows the rest of the students, highlighting the age gap when he sits next to a kindergartener who tries to have a conversation with him. He's then shown to be awkward and asocial when he refuses to converse with the kid and instead throws his toy out the window attached to a string while the kid beside him reacts with confusion. This provides the audience with a clear image of Napoleon's personality which sets the base for the rest of the film as he's further developed.