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:

 

Edit: I animated the logo! Here is our final final product for ELMAI Productions:

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