Ideas

 After brainstorming many many ideas I've come up with an idea. A shoutout to Mel for helping me out! From the beginning I've known I wanted to do something realistic and that I can relate to. I'm really leaning towards this idea of having a dog's perspective with dealing with the kid in the house leaving for college. I think this is something very common that people go through, and myself included, has been thinking about this for a long time. I'm going to leave home in a few months and I'm dreading having to leave my dog home and leaving the house that I've known for the past seven years of my life. The only thing is I hope this isn't a very overused idea because I feel like this might be common, but I want it to be original. 

If I go through with this idea, I was imagining doing pov shots from the dog's perspective and shift throughout the short film to shots of the teenager seeing the dog and what she is going through. I absolutely love Disney and Pixar short films, they always have a deep message behind them that many can relate to them. I think they always accomplish what their goal is, so I definitely watched them to get my ideas flowing and taking inspiration. Here are some of my favorites:

 

While all of these short films are animation and that is not the route I am going for, each one has a message for the audience. 

Short Films

 This is my first time ever creating a short film. Maybe it's just the nervousness of starting a new project, but I'm having trouble coming up with a specific storyline for this short film. It also doesn't help that some of the ideas I have, I feel are too long to be able to fit into a five-minute story. Most of the short films I watched are coming of age short films but they have a different genre to them too such as drama, thriller, romance, etc. 

The first short film I watched it called Angst. While I don't think the structure and format of this short film is something I will do similarly for mine, I think it captured the essence of being a teenager well. It had many concepts that many can relate to, so I think this was a strength for this but at the same time I want to focus my short film on only one topic. 

The second short film is titled Bru'dhars. It follows the story of these two siblings as they navigate life and their relationship while dealing with trauma and his past. It definitely has a more deep and emotional aspect to it than the previous short film, which is something I hope to incorporate into mine. The short film below is a little over fourteen minutes, so they had the opportunity to explore the plot and characters more but I enjoyed the format, it truly felt like a story that I was following along. It has less montage and more dialogue within the scenes compared to the first short film. By watching these different short films, it is helping me visualize mine and see what I like and what I don't, so that when it is time to create my script, storyboard, and film it, I will know what I want to include. 

The following short film is not necessarily coming of age and it is animated, but it is one that I have seen before and impacted me a lot. I take inspiration from it and hope to create a piece that is just as impactful and emotional. It is called If Anything Happens I Love You. According to the synopsis, it revolves around "Grieving parents journey through an emotional void as they mourn the loss of a child in the aftermath of a tragic school shooting." It is something that I think touches people on a deeper level and as someone who was deeply touched by it, I think people leave with watching this short film with many changed perspectives on life. This is the type of piece I want to inspire mine from, to have a beautiful yet impactful message on the audience, whether it is a happy or tragic one. 

Genre Research

 I have decided that I'm going to create a coming-of-age short film with some elements of drama. I found this great pdf that goes into detail on the genre of coming of age that I'm finding it to be extremely useful. The main focus is to highlight an event or lesson that the protagonist (a teen) has learned about the world or themselves that changes their perspective. 

I'm wondering if I should focus only on short films or larger films too. So far my research has been primarily on short films and their process because that is more specific to my project, but I think researching coming-of-age films will be helpful too. I found a website called Think Shorts that has amazing short stories and I was able to look at only coming of age short films, so that was helpful. On one of my upcoming blogs I will discuss some short films that are in this genre, along with some others that I really like and have given me some inspiration Here is the link for the short films: https://thinkshorts.com/subject/coming-of-age  

Films that deal with coming of age that came to mind and I researched were The Edge of Seventeen, The Princess Diaries, The Perks of  Being a Wallflower, etc. 

I noticed that in a lot of these films comedy is a strong common factor, but for mine, I'm going to go for a more deep route and get straight to the message, after all, I only have about five minutes to tell the story. I'm going to further my research on coming-of-age stories that have a more serious and simple outlook on the story, but I want to take a different approach when creating it. 

Portfolio Project

From now on my blogs will be based on my journey as I complete my Portfolio Project and how I deal with my challenges and successes for the next two months. I began working on my portfolio project last week and so far I have been extremely undeciding. I was between choosing the short film or the film trailer and after much consideration I'm going to choose to create a short film. 

Now for my ideas, I want to create a piece that is deep and realistic. I'm trying to be realistic with my abilities and don't want to go too much over my head, just to end up not being able to bring these visions to life, but this does not mean I'm not going to push myself and try to create something unique. My goal is to keep it simple and impactful. I want it to be about a life lesson or something that many can relate to. I'm not the best at using visual effects and creating things on the computer, so I think this is my best shot. I've been researching steps to create a short film, and while I know there is no "right" formula, I just want to get my ideas flowing. Looking at past blogs from students that took AICE Media A Level and created a short film has helped a lot too, because I am able to see their process and mistakes, as well as how they overcame them. 

Film Distribution Project

The first week of working on the project was rough because the three of us did not see each other in person for that first week due to some of us being sick. Each one of us read the various options of stories that were given to us separately and reported back to each other the stories we most liked. We picked two stories, but the one that compelled us the most and had our attention from the beginning was The Unwritten. It is a dystopian/post-modern film that follows the protagonist, Meira, and her best friend, Vee, as they try to uncover who is behind the letters and trying to survive simultaneously. They live in a "perfect" society where many citizens get letters from a supposed group that states their names, their time, date, and reason for death. The letters tell them when and how they die and they are always right. They have been around for so long that people just accept their faith, but not Meira. The two girls receive their letters and are determined to unmask who is behind them and escape their death. The film is full of plot twists and suspension. 

We researched other dystopian films and their distribution strategies. Analyzing the poster made me realize how each detail is taken into consideration, from the font all the way to the lighting and the character(s) in it. We focused our case studies on Ready Player One and Reminiscence. Although we fully analyzed these two films, we looked over posters from many other dystopian films that had the same aesthetic as our film and took inspiration for the trailer from film and tv shows in general. 

To have a better understanding of the story, we compiled a list of questions to ask Paula. We wanted to take this as seriously as possible and make the whole process realistic as if it was really going to turn into a real film. This made our vision for the trailer clearer by letting us know what we wanted to include and illustrate in the teaser and trailer. One concept we focused on a lot was keeping a balance between building suspension and not giving away too much of the plot, but also making the audience be interested in the film and understand what the teaser and trailer were about. 

First, we created two different shot lists. One for the teaser and one for the trailer, where we just wrote shot ideas we had that we believed could be used in them in no particular order. After we started deleting some of the shots we did not like or thought it wouldn't make sense for the story. 

Maya, Nicole, and I filmed some scenes at school and took pictures for the poster at school too. We met at Weston Town Center because we believed it perfectly captured the "perfect" society Vee and Meria lived in. 

Part of the project was creating a distribution strategy that best fits the film and our theme. Our group created a presentation that includes all the details of the film and our strategy to reach our target audience in the best way. 

Below are the links for the teaser and the trailer. I hope you enjoy them!!

Teaser

Trailer

Documentary

We started learning about documentaries in class and we were able to watch various types of documentaries to better understand them. Some of these documentaries were: Abstract: The Art of Design, American Promise, and Exit Through the Gift Shop. 

For this project, I was paired with Mel Bertalan and Andres Benavente. We originally had another idea that we were somewhat set on but Mrs. Stoklosa did not believe it represented our group well, and she was right. We wanted our documentary to be interesting (obviously) but also be something many could relate to. What better way to relate to a group of people than to discuss procrastination. Unfortunately, it is something that many of us can relate to in many aspects of our lives, whether that is procrastinating work, school, or chores, we have all been there at least once. 

We divided our documentary into sections and for each of them, compiled some questions we believed would be the most interesting and produce detailed answers. Mel and I interviewed three different people, Derek Amador, Clara Vansan, and Luana Ferreira; while Andres interviewed Tomas Aparicio. We knew we wanted to include three people in our documentary but we interviewed one extra person just in case something went wrong, and it is a good thing we did that. While we were watching back the videos and Andres was editing the documentary, we noticed the audio for Luana's interviews was harder to hear. We ended up using Derek's, Clara's, and Tomas's interviews, and they actually had diverse answers and are different types of students. 

One specific topic within our procrastination topic we wanted to discuss is the science behind it. I found some articles on the negative effects of procrastination and how it impacts the brain. We researched and even included graphics so the audience can have a better understanding of what we were talking about. 

Below is the link for our documentary: Con-crastination

Con-crastination

AICE Media A Level

 It is officially time to get back into posting blogs for my portfolio project!! Only this time around it is goin got be for my AICE Media A Level class. To transition into this new chapter, I want to talk about two previous projects that I have worked on this year that have helped me with coming up with ideas to complete my portfolio. 

For my portfolio project, I am leaning more towards the short-film package that will include a short-film that lasts about 5 minutes, a social media page for it, and a postcard advertisement for it at a short film festival. I will be documenting the entire process, my triumphs and challenges, so I hope you enjoy going on this journey with me.