Shots Shots Shots

Shots, Shots, Shots

     Vicente and I met up today to discuss what we wanted our project to look like. First, we discussed possible filming locations. Some places that we looked at were Markham Park, Vicente's house and finally, my house. During our scouting of locations, we also determined a basic plot of our opening.
   
     The film will open showing baby pictures on the walls of the home of the protagonist. Showing the pictures will also serve as an opportunity to roll the title credits of the film, including the actual names of the protagonist, director, and writer. Once the baby pictures have faded through, the camera will cut to a wide shot of a bedroom with people crowded around a bed. The camera will move between people to show a person lying on a bed. The person lying in the bed (the protagonist) will suddenly snap their body up so that they are facing the camera. This movement will show his dissent into limbo.
   
     This is most of the story that we have thought of thus far, although the rest of the story will be revealed in my next blog post when I will show my storyboard for the entire opening. Tomorrow I am planning on emailing the record labels Virgin Records, Idea Records, Geffen Records, and Cooking Vinyl about usage of songs for my opening.

Target audience Tango

     Vicente and I agreed that it would be so much easier to decide on a tone for our film if we figured on a target audience for our entire film.  To do this, we will compare the idea of our film to movies with a similar genre to ours that can only be described as paranormal drama. Two movies that fit that criteria are The Sixth Sense and Constantine. 

     

     Constantine is an action thriller with a heavy focus on a supernatural battle between heaven and hell.  The movie was rated R and had a target audience of adult males 18-45.  I feel as if I will use some aspects of the film and ignore others.  Like Constantine, my movie will revolve around a mystic world with biblical context; however, we both felt that since the movie is about a neutral zone, it would not have as much action.  The Sixth Sense about how a young child can see and talk to dead people.  What I like about this movie's tone is that it does not try to be scary, only   creepy and anxious.  The target audience of this movie is slightly younger with boys and men aged 15-45.

     After my partner and I looked at these similar movies, we decided that we are going to stick with a serious tone and a more mature feel to our film opening.  Not only would it fit our newly decided target audience of adults aged 18-45 (based on looking at both the films above), but it also help keeps the suspense and drama that is consistent of the genre.  What this also means is that I will have to change my song choices since they don't fit the tone.  The one song that I would have possibly used is "Stairway to Heaven", but my teacher advised me to choose a different one since it may be impossible to get permission to use.  For my next blog post, I will focus on trying to get a song to use that does not require permission.

Schedule Scuttle

     This week has been very disorganized for me in terms of this project.  I have been thinking about it aimlessly with no real objective in mind.  This doesn't really surprise me, though.  For all of my projects for this class, I usually complete them with no schedule in mind whatsoever.  This results in me rushing to finish the project last minute, which is not a fun experience.  To combat my procrastination this time, I created a schedule for my partner and me for the remaining six weeks (and it's even color coded).

     The salmon represents the planning phase.  In the first week, we have already established a basic plot to follow and started to think about possible music since that needs to be started early.  The second week will have a focus on finalizing the tone, target audience, and overall feel of the film opening early on so we can also have a good idea on what exactly will happen in the scene.  During the third week, Vicente and I will create a storyboard in order to finalize all the shots we will need to film and the equipment required.

     The tan section represents preparing to film.  This consists of obtaining equipment film wise such as cameras, lights, and a set as well as costumes and props.  Even though this won't be that hard of a task due to having friends in the television production program at my school, I gave it a full week and a second that overlap other parts of the process.

     The green section is filming.  Going into this part very prepared, I do not believe that it will take long at all. This makes me think that I might find myself ahead of schedule at this point (I am aware this is wishful thinking), which makes me happy because I believe the next section will be very challenging

     The purple section represents editing and the creative critical reflection.  In all honesty, I think the filming will take take four or five days maximum, so the week that I have overlapping for filming and editing will mostly be used for editing.  Editing has always been a grueling process for me, as I am not that experienced with it.  Fortunately, I have talked to my friend and he will allow me to use his professional editing software, Premiere.  I plan on watching tutorial videos to help me learn, so hopefully the editing will go faster than it usually does.  I think the CCR will be easy to do right since I plan on taking clips from the film and doing a voice over for them, which I've been told isn't hard at all.

     I really hope that this schedule will prove to be effective.  I plan on trying to follow this the best I can so I don't fall behind.  My partner also now has a copy of this so hopefully he'll help me stay on track to assist my lack of self motivation.  I will let you all know how it goes as my project develops.