Filming that complaining mother...

Today we filmed our second false story shot with a complaining mother. We took many many shots of this scene. We first started off with Camila sweeping while on the phone while slowing zooming out. Then we also shot her at a bar in my house drinking wine from a wine glass (apple juice) and on the phone. Then we also shot her cooking while complaining on the phone. These were all actions of a typical house mother which we really wanted to portray.

However we did have lots of issues with this scene because we really wanted it to transition well from the office scene to this scene. At the end of our office scene we created a still frame where we stopped our successful guy at his face so that the voiceover can say "unfortunately this is not my story". So we wanted our complaining mother scene to start the way the office scene ended. It took us a while to get Camila positioned exactly like the office scene ended, same side of face, same camera distance, etc..

WE STARTED FILMING!!!

We finally started filming today. Today we filmed the office scene which is the scene where we are making the viewers believe that the main character is the very successful business man.

We filmed it at our friends fathers office which had a ton of offices that we got to use and lots of space which we all really liked. 

We started off with the car pulling up into a parking spot and a super cool close up of a nice show stepping out of the car. Then of course we progressed with our business man walking through the office and saying high to various co workers and all down to a final close up of his face which is were we will pause the film and have our voice over progress the plot to our actual main character. 

My favorite spot today was our long take which was a long shot of a hallway and our business character walking down the hall and saying high to various co workers. We had to strap our tripod to a chair and slowing wheel it down the hallway as he was walking towards the camera. It took so many takes but I am so happy with the result and I cant wait for everyone to see it. 

However we did have a lot of trouble with transitioning from the downstairs floor of the building to the second floor. The problem with this was that the first floor has marble flooring and it was imperative that we filmed down there because that is the entrance to the building. The second floor is all carpet so that was also hard however we did not shoot the ground in the first shots downstairs so that solved all of our problems. Anyway very proud of everything we did today and also very happy we are staying on track.

We are going to have to cut out our shot of our receptionist saying hi to our false main character. It does not transition very well. 

"EIGLARSH EXECUTIVE OFFICES, Commercial Industrial - 2625 Weston Rd, Weston, FL 33331, USA." XXX. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2017.

Opening sequence

So we really wanted an opening sequence for our video so that we can include our credits. We come with a few things to help construct our opening.

Our moral of the movie is that life moves really fast and is really unpredictable and dreams don't always come true but eventually everything works in your favor. We wanted our opening scene to be similar to the opening scene from love actually  In this opening they have the voice over start out saying that whenever he looks down or lost hope in the world he see the arrivals gate at the airport. We loved how this opening centered around there main thing that love is actually everywhere. However we did want to make a few changes to help that fit our own film.

In our film we wanted to have our opening sequence center around young kids wearing super hero outfits, winning the spelling bee, and any other dreams or hopeful accomplish you make in your youth that can make you hopeful for the future. This will successfully tie into what our voiceover will be saying about how when u grow up you think you can be anything and do anything which will go straight into our actually filming.

We have tons of old pictures of our friends in super hero costumes, any career related costumes, and or winning any award. These will go in our opening sequence to help get our credits in. However, if we do go over time because of the opening sequence we our willing to cut it out as it will be a plot boost but now the most important part of our 2 minutes.

HOWEVER!

We also have a plan b because what could we possibly do without one. We also wanted our opening to be like Napoleon Dynamite opening which was mentioned in an earlier post. Our idea was filming a desk and having folders slam onto the table with things written on it like "student loans" and "food assistance program" which will tie into our main character and how he is poor and a deadbeat. Inside each folder on of our names will be in it or any of our casting members.

Spankyenriquez. "LOVE ACTUALLY Opening Scene : Heathrow Airport." YouTube. YouTube, 23 Dec. 2010. Web. 26 Mar. 2017. 

Casting

We came up with a casting list for our filming that is starting this week. We are very excited that we have friends that are willing to be in our video and work with us.

For our main character in the office scene we are choosing Danny Cooke who looks like Christian Grey from the 50 Shades of Grey movies (they are bad I know). We chose someone who looks like Christian Grey because he is very successful looking which is what we wanted to represent in our character.

For our Office scene extras we chose 3 friends that are willing to help that we all older looking so that they can represent people that actually look old enough to be in the work place. They were not as important as there time on scene in so limited and their representation will not distract from the overall product. 

For our voice over we chose Sam B whom is also part of our group! We chose him because he has a very funny voice that can almost take any sentence and make it sound sarcastic and giddy which is what we wanted our voice over to sound like. Our inspiration was Jonah Hill because he is one of the top comedic actors in Hollywood right now. Here is a voice over done by Jonah hill. 

We chose Camila, our group member, to be the complaining mother. We wanted to represent them more off of their clothes then their looks so outfits from brands like Vineyard Vines and Southern Marsh for the preppy look and outfits from Pacsun and Brandy melvile for the most skin showing look for the girl. 

Dickson, EJ. "In Defense of 'Fifty Shades of Grey'." The Daily Dot. N.p., 11 Dec. 2015. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.

"Sabra TV Commercial, 'Unofficial Meal'." ISpot.tv. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.

The Original Southern Outfitter. Quality Clothing from the South. Men's and Women's Casual Clothing. Southern Clothes. "Southern Marsh Collection." Southern Marsh. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2017. 

Preppy Men's Clothing, Women's Clothing and Men's Silk Ties – Vineyard Vines." Preppy Men's Clothing, Women's Clothing and Men's Silk Ties – Vineyard Vines. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.

"PacSun." PacSun. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.\

" Brandy ♥ Melville Germany         online Shop."  Brandy ♥ Melville Germany         online Shop. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.

Filming schedule

So today in class my group and I finally decided that we were going to get a move on with this project and came up with our filming schedule!

Monday March 27th- Film office scene

Friday March 31st- Touch up on office scene and edit

Saturday April 1st- Film our introduce the character scene

Sunday April 2nd - Thursday April 6th- complete editing for office scene and introduce character scene and complete voice over.

Friday April 7th- Complete any last minute editing

Saturday April 8th- Individual ccrs

On top of this we are also going to leave some time to touch up on some of our shots. For example, re filming certain scenes that could be better and such.

Voiceover!

So since my group is pretty much set on doing a voice over I spent my time today researching how to create a voice over in general. You can't create a voice over if you don't know how right?

You see, we can probably try to work with iMovie and figure out how to do a voice over, but its more about how to do it well. Then I came across this video and it solved all my problems.

In the video they say that the first step is a suitable place to set up all ur equipment for the voice over. This is such a minor problem for us because we have each found a suitable place in each of our houses that we can use, my garage, Sam's garage, and Camila's room. Thats a plan a, b, and c! Now once we officially have a place to set up shop we are going to need heavy drops and backdrops to even further minimize the noises. This can be anything from a heavy sheet to closing the door to make sue that we block out all sound. Our voice over is going to be such an important part of our video that we cannot have background noise making it sound cheap. There is a feature on IMovie that we are going to use that helps enhance voiceovers but that is more of a touch up.

We also need to learn how to sound dampen however I was so beyond confused as to what that is but it is just minimizing the echo in your set up place which we are going to do with the heavy sheets and such.

One thing i didn't even think of was a microphone! What are we even going to record our voiceover on? Upon asking some friends we found someone who would love to lend us his microphone which can be plugged into a laptop and all sounds can be downloaded. However we are more set on just using the voice memo feature on our iPhones because it can easily be transferred from our phones to iMovie and will have no transferring issues. So A MUCH SAFER BET!

Videomaker. "How to Record Voice Overs." YouTube. YouTube, 12 Mar. 2012. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

Its all coming together...

After many many days and dead ends we came finally came up with a genre!! It is going to be, what we call, a com dram, or in other words,  comedy and a drama. We decided on doing a comedy, but as we were researching characteristics of comedy films we found that there were subgroups of comedy.

First there is slapjack comedy, which is basically what they used to rely on old time silent films because it is visual action that causes the humor. For example, horseplay, pie in face, loss of clothing, people chases etc.… An example of predominantly slapjack comedy is the film It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad world. (1963).

There is also deadpan, verbal comedy, and screwball. Deadpan comedy is characterized as a very expressionless face. For example, Comic hero Buster Keaton. Verbal comedy is pretty self-explanatory because it is any dialogue that induces humor. There is also the screwball comedy, which is a sub-genre of romantic comedy films, was predominant from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s. The word 'screwball' means craziness, eccentricity, ridiculousness, and just straight up odd behavior that makes us laugh.

There is also Black or Dark comedy as well as parodies and satires, however for our film those are very far off.  Based on the definitions of comedy films we decided to label our film as a Verbal comedy because of our voice over and using dialogue as our main source of humor.

Now we also decided on making our film a drama. A drama is characterized as a presentation of realistic characters in a realistic situation that are in conflict which themselves, others, or forces of nature. There are also a few different directions we can go with a drama film. One direction is a social problem drama, which is pretty explanatory. There are also mental illness films, alcoholism, youth and generational conflict, race and civil rights, and courtroom dramas. Based on this we have decided to make our film a social issue drama because our film more of deals with the character at fault with himself and just life in general.

"Comedy Films." An Award-winning, Unique Resource of Film Reference Material for Film Buffs and Others, with Reviews of Classic American-Hollywood Films, Academy Awards History, Film Posters. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

"Drama Films." An Award-winning, Unique Resource of Film Reference Material for Film Buffs and Others, with Reviews of Classic American-Hollywood Films, Academy Awards History, Film Posters. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Mar. 2017. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

Lights Camera Action!

We finally came up with a film idea!!! Okay so this is how its gonna play out. We were so set on our voiceover idea so we wanted that to be both a source of comedy and a way to introduce our character.  We got inspiration from the movie Definitely maybe. This movie is very funny and has a prominent voiceover in the beginning that gives it its comedic boost.

So our movie is about a man who was very successful and ends up almost a deadbeat. Our characters name is Sean Rivers. He was always very good in school and got all the girls, went to all the parties, got accepted to the best fraternities, and then everything went downhill. We wanted our film to be about life and how unpredicable it is. So our opening is going to start with a very successful man walking into an office bulding and waving hey to all of his employees and the voiceover will go through all of this and then the camera will pan out to a mom like character who is complaining about her teenage daughter and then the voiceover will be like "woah woah woah didn't mean to show you that" we wanted to do this because since the voiceover is clearly male this will also add in more comic elements. We want the audience to believe that the successful man is our main character and then surprise them and show them our actual character. Of course this is all very confusing and we are very interested on ho wit is going to turn out on screen.

Location wise we have a friend who has a family connection to an office building which we will have access to which will be perfect to film our office scene in. We will be filming next weekend and we are going to start with our office scene and then move onto our opening sequence which we have yet to figure out but we are leaning towards showing unsuccessful things on very successful items. For inspiration we like the Napoleon Dynamite movie opening. Now of course their opening makes no sense but we did like the simplicity of it.

First things first

Now aside from all of this plot and genre drama we are going through, we must first focus on how we are going to film our film. We want our film opening to be good quality. Many things go into a quality shot like lighting, camera angles, movement, but most importantly what is chosen to film it on. Our group decided that we want to film it on our group members phone Camila because she has the latest update of the iPhone which is better quality than my phone and my other group members phone Sam. Now we have also decided to order a tripod to make sure that our longer takes and any movements are stable, because that can make or break a shot.

We decided to use Amazon to hunt for a good tripod to buy. We chose amazon because both me and Sam have Amazon prime, which is when you can free shipping and fast shipping. We decided to go with a tripod that has moveable legs that can bend and twist which is perfect to grasp onto chairs and arms so that we don't just have to hold it. Can be perfect for longer movement takes!

^^^^ That is an example of what we ordered. It was really cheap only 20 dollars which is perfect and affordable for all of us to chip in.

In other news, next weekend is going to be our first filming which we are very excited about, except that we have no idea for a film yet :/. Just 5 days left to brainstorm!!!

Wish us luck x


"Cameras & Photo." EBay. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

"Bell & Howell DV30HD Touch Screen Digital Camcorder (Black)." Focus Camera. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

Moynihan, Tim. "Digital Cameras: Best Places to Buy." TechHive. PCWorld, 23 May 2010. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

"Price Match Guarantee." Price Match Guarantee - Best Buy. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

NEXT STEP!!!

When looking for inspiration there is a no better place than Netflix. My group and i went through film openings today from all of the three genres we are looking at, Drama, Romance, and Comedy. From all of this we hoped we would gain the common characteristics of each genre opening so we know how to start ours when we finally chose our genre. So to start we watched film openings a drama film.

This may be cheesy, and also one of the worst movies ever, but the  Twilight film  isn't so bad. 

Up until the long shot and the tilt from the shinning sun to Bella, the main character, we hated. However we loved the tilt and the voiceover!!! The voiceover in comparison with the shots that follow the moves and topics of the voiceover. With our film we would love to follow that simplistic way of introducing the character and even alluding to a part of the conflict which is that she is moving. However the first half of the opening is terrible with the quick shots and the randomness compared with the voiceover and it simply won't fit our more realistic film ideas. 

We also watched the opening on the film The Switch

This film again features a voiceover which my group is starting to show special interest in. We love the time lapse for this opening especially compared to the voiceover talking about his life and time. We also liked how the show the location of the movie by simply just writing it on a black screen. Its so easy and gets the message across so well. However we do not like the periods of time lapse without much sound or absence of voice over. With such short time for our film we wanted each second to matter. My group saw how cool time lapses can be and how you can introduce your character at the end to match the voice with the face and how straight forward that can be. 

Now the third opening we watched was from the comedy Superbad

The opening credits was perfect for this film because that is something we are really interested in doing. The dance scene was very engaging and got the job done of putting all the opening credits into the opening. This film didn't have a voiceover and instead had actual dialogue, shocker. We loved and shots of the the two main characters on the phone because it does a perfect job in introducing both characters which is a concept we wanted to do in our own opening. The music when introducing the boy in the car is a great way to show character development. WE ALSO LOVED how the sound changed between each character and helps show the difference in location.

So so far we are pretty much stuck on our genre choice but we really like all of these intros but seem to be leaning towards the simplicity of the twilight opening and how we can create a plot around such an opening.

Cjj72. "Twilight Opening Credits." YouTube. YouTube, 28 Mar. 2010. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

Buffam, Noelle. The Script Lab. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

"10 Characteristics Of Romantic Movies." Odyssey. N.p., 01 Feb. 2016. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

"See What's Next." Netflix - Watch TV Shows Online, Watch Movies Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

LETS GET STARTED!!!

The time has finally come!!! This week we started our long, and quite frightening journey, but my group and I are off to a pretty good start. First things first we wanted to try to come up with a movie genre. We waned to stay far away from historical fiction and anything from another time period. With such a low budget and few resources, the rise-en-scene that goes into productions like those are beyond our capabilities. We also cancelled out any horror/ thriller film opening. The creation of fear, suspense, and panic wasn't exactly what we wanted to create. You see, we all have a certain vision for what we want. We have decided on three genres to choice from, Drama, Romance, and comedy. Now of course a romantic comedy and a comedic drama are still in the cards for us. Now we wanted to have ur film focus on introducing the character. We wanted to introduce the character by elevating the characters status by a close up or showing that this character is important. But of course here is time for that....now we just have to pick a genre. Decisions decisions!!!

Fusco, Jon. "10 Ways to Successfully Introduce a Character." No Film School. N.p., 14 July 2016. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.