Production - Items Were Buying

 Introduction 

Hello and welcome back,  today we’ll be going through the items we are purchasing to make the production of our film easier. We will be using Amazon to purchase the products and will be making sure we pick items that will arrive before our filming date or hopefully a day or two before so that me and my partner can meet up to try the equipment. We will be splitting the price evenly and hopefully return most of the items after using them. The items we will be buying are small microphones, a stabilizer for our phone, and a light attachment.

Small Microphones

This product was the easiest out of the tree to find thought all the products were easy to find since we used Amazon for shopping. But after searching up microphones in the search bar, this one was one of the first to pop up, likely due to the significantly cheaper price compared to other microphones.

This product had good reviews and was conveniently small, perfect for hiding in collars during filming or attaching to the stabilizer since it has a clip.

Another factor the threw us to purchasing this was that it came with two small microphones instead of one, this is important since in our third scene, majority of the scene is a long take between Emily and her mom. We could also film that scene with one microphone between them but that would make it harder to hide from the audience and using two is much more convenient.

These microphones are also Bluetooth and the audio connects to our recording device by plugging in the black block into the phone so it’s simple and easy to use, which was exactly what we were looking for and will only cost us $24.99 which is the most expensive out of the three items but this is also an important piece of equipment.

Phone Stabilizer 

This item was also significantly easy to find, it just required a bit more scrolling and comparing then our microphones but the product looks like a great match for us.

This product allows us to hold our phone more stable for filming while also being able to attach other things to the frame like a microphone and our light.

The frame also has a button on one of the handles that allows you to take picture while holding it and we may use that feature while testing the item or taking pictures to show our progress while filming but it’s not likely we will use it much.

This stabilizer also has good reviews and cost $19.98.

This will make the whole production process much easier since if we were only recording with the phones and the light and microphone our video would be shakier and someone else would have to hold the other equipment.

Light Attachment

The last product on our list is a light attachment, this was a bit harder to find. My partner scrolled and compared different lights to find the one we through would work best for us which is this one seen below.

This product has three different settings which you can access by clicking the third button. The first is a bright white light, the second is different flashing lights you can scroll through like flashing cop lights or disco, and the third setting is a rainbow where you can scroll through the colors and it goes through all the different gradients. There’s is also a button you can use to control the intensity of the colors.

We plan on using this product for the first two scenes. We will use some low but colorful lighting on the first scene and some harsh white lighting on the second. The third scene we want to use completely natural lighting but it’s good to have the option to change our minds. This cost us $18.95 being the cheapest item.

Conclusion 

The prices of the three items added together will be $63.92 plus taxes and shipping cost will give us a total of $57 for the three pieces of equipment so we will split this between the two of us and each pay $28.50.

Me and my partner do believe this equipment will come in handy and we are excited to try out the equipment together when it arrives.

We purchased the items through my friends account to utilize Amazon Prime for faster shipping so it should arrive on time. Thank you for reading and see you next time.

Production - Script Share

 Introduction 

Hello and welcome back, today we will be sharing our script with our cast and sharing some pictures of most of our cast with the scripts. Our cast will share their thoughts with us as well.

Script Sharing 

We were only able to get pictures sharing the script with Isima and Shannon because we weren’t able to meet with them in person and we didn’t want to inconvenience Zara and Gaby’s parents by having to print out the script so we shared it digitally.

Coach Shannon was given our printed script by Noemy at the gym. She liked the script and we talked about the gym with her such as which part of the gym would be the best match for us to film the second scene and where should we film the first scene. We agreed we should use the right corner of the gym since their is a kid corner with nice natural light from the large windows and the second scene should be recorded next to the kid corner where the beams are and the light is harsher.

We also spoke about the air conditioning/ fans since we want to limit background noise for our scene with dialogue and she said we can turn the fan off while recording which will greatly improve audio.

I personally shared the script with my mom Isima by letting her read off my iPad so we wouldn’t waste paper. My mother liked the script her only remark was that she was “yapping a lot” in the third scene but she didn’t ask to change it and she agreed it was necessary. We also reminded Isima that we would need the Defender for filming that day and she agreed to talk to her husband aka my dad to let him know we would be utilizing his vehicle.

After reading over our script digitally, Zara gave it a thumbs up which was important for us since she will play our main character. We reminded her of her costume for the filming and she asked us a couple questions about the time we would film and after answering her questions that concluded our conversation.

Getting Gaby’s opinion is different due to her age so we shared the script with her mother who approved it since her daughter doesn’t have any dialogue in the film and her mother let Gaby know in which she responded “okay”. We then spoke about Gaby’s costume and hair and her mother proposed she would do Gaby’s hair in a bun since she likes it that way and would have practice shortly after helping with our filming, and she will also have a bow in her hair to show her child like passion and joy in gymnastics.

Conclusion 

Lucky our cast liked our script so we didn’t have to make any tweaks to it therefore our script is final and we are looking forward to what comes next. Me and Noemy will stay in contact with all of cast members to make sure things stay on track for our film day. This will be all so thank you for reading and see you next time.

Production - Cast List

 Introduction 

Hello and welcome back, today we will be going through our cast characters for our upcoming film, we will go through some information about each one them in order of importance and why they are a good pick for our production.

Present Emily

For this character we have chosen to use Zara Gonzalez-Puig. Below is a picture of her and bullet points about her that share information about Zara and why these points make her a good fit for the role.

  

• She is a gymnast who practices at Alpha Gymnastics. That is the same studio my partner practices at which is how we got in contact with her.

• She has brown hair and brown eyes, aka the most common so easiest to find a younger girl to portray her.

• She is a three time Florida State Champion so she is skilled at gymnastics and proposes less worry of landing wrong when doing a flip  for our film since she has more practice.

• She is 5 foot and one inch tall so she isn’t too short to be confused to be the same age as younger Emily.

• She has experience being on camera since she is regularly photographed by the popular Clay Morgan from Clay Morgan Productions.

• Since she is a real gymnast she has the physique of one so it would match what a gymnast should look like for example her leg muscles. 

• She has an instagram account where we are able to contact her at gymnastics.with.Zara. and on her instagram you can see videos of her practices and accomplishments.

• She is 12 years old so she is easy to work with due to be closer in age to me and having 7 years of experience with gymnastics since she started at five years old.

With all these points I’m sure it is easy to see why Zara makes a great actor for our main character Emily.

Laura / Coach

This character will be played by Shannon Kennedy. Below is a picture of her from her instagram profile and bullet points that share information about her and why she is good match for this role.

•  She works for Alpha Gymnastics, which is the same gym that Zara and my parented Noemy attend so she is familiar with both of them and they will work well together.

• She is a coach at the gym so she has real life experience with being a coach and she can help us with the stunt our main character has to perform for the film.

• She is 5 feet and six inches tall which is perfect for the over the shoulder shots in scene 2 because we want their to be a change in angle of the camera throughout their conversation whenever the camera changes to show how the Coach has authority over Emily and she is someone Emily up towards both metaphorically and physically.

• Her working at the gym also means she can act as a techie and help us operate the gym lights and fans to make the setting more optimal.

• We can contact her through her instagram account as well which is Shannok_77

Veronica/ Emily’s Mother

This character will be played by Isima Chiong Diaz and below is a picture of her along with bullet points describing her use to the film and information about her.

• She is 43 years old so an appropriate age to be Emily’s mother.

• This is my mother so we can easily contact her and she can help us with our production if needed.

• She has 20 years of driving experience in Florida and five more years of experience in Cuba so her driving in the third scene will be no issue.

• She is 5 feet and two inches tall making her slightly taller than Zara.

• She works as her own boss as a sales person for Garbage company’s so she can make herself free during our scheduled production time.

• She already ownes the costume needed for her role since it is normal clothing.

• She is of Cuban origin with Spanish as her first language but she is fluent in English so there should be no issue with dialogue.

Young Emily 

This character will be played by Gabriela Diaz. A picture of her instagram profile  and information about her in the form of bullet points is seen below.

• She is gymnast who practices at Alpha Gymnastics like Zara and coach Shannon so she is also familiar with our other cast members.

• She has brown eyes and brown hair plus similar skin so will match the older Emily nicely.

• She 4 feet and six inches tall so her height is perfect for the role since she is shorter than Zara.

• Her instagram account is gaby_dgymnastics and the account is run by her mom. Her mom is a very nice lady who we spoke to in order to get permission to film with Gaby and we are keeping in touch with her mother.

• She ownes plenty of leotards so her costume is already provided and her hair will be done by her mother so that takes care of her costume.

• She is friends with Noemy since they attend the gym together so communicating with her though she is young will not be very difficult.

Conclusion 

This post showed who our cast will be and why, also moving us closer to production because we now have our actors for the film. Our next blog will be quite short since we will just be giving our scripts too our cast to look over and give us any pointers. Like always thank you for reading and see you next time.

Planning - Storyboarding and Script Writing

 Introduction 

Hello and welcome back, today we’ll be going over storyboarding and script writing. Me and my partner struggled to get together due to our schedules and after school activity’s but we were finally able to align our schedules and meet up after school at a local coffee shop to discuss our storyboard and get it all on paper. About two days later we met up again to script write which wasn’t significantly difficult because we just followed our storyboard.

Storyboarding Scene 1

Me and my partner each printed the sheets seen below prior to coffee date so that we would have an organized way of getting these ideas down, the first type of sheet with six boxes was given to us in class and we printed the other three box style just in case and thank god we did, we liked how the papers organized our scenes and had space for a brief description which we used for explain the shot and transiting that would follow plus if the particular shot contained any audio.

This is the first half of our first scene, this our nostalgic scene where the setting is established while credits show in the corners and nostalgic music plays while young Emily is seen happy and having fun.

Whether of most we have the extra kids isn’t completely determined since it would be ideal to have the extra kids since it would be more realistic while creating a bigger contrast between Emily in this scene and after the nostalgic scene where she is alone with the coach. 

The issue we have at hand is that the time we are allowed to film is between 12 and 3 because the gym is closed at that time on a week day since kids are still at school, meaning me, my partner, and our actors will have to miss at least two hours of school so the more actors we want the more difficult this becomes, especially with younger actors since they don’t have much of a say in missing school and we’d have to talk to each parent about the filming. 

Luckily we have two idea to overcome this issue if it does arise, first, we stay at the gym a little after three which we are allowed but the gym will fill with kids making filming a bit harder but then we’d be able to ask a couple parents and kids to help with our film. Hopefully it doesn’t come to this but it’s good to have options.

Second solution is we find only one child aka young Emily and then the nostalgia scene will be just her which would still work since private lessons are a thing and the scene would be focused on her.

Scene 2

This is our second scene which takes place at the same gym but takes place a couple years after the first scene. The transition between the two is match up between the feet of young Emily on the beam and the older her, followed by a vertical pan revealing the new older her which from facial expression and body language is clearly much sadder and drained.

Then she fails a flip and has a conversation with her coach about it. The different shots and transitions can be seen below on our paper plus a simple drawn picture of what we are imaging.

We wanted to make sure we drew our scenes out to stay on the same page about what we expect this to look like and frequently through this process we would imaginen what we have so far and how many seconds the scene would be to make sure our film opening is within the required time of two minutes but also not over. The scene ends when the conversation does and then transitions with a straight cut to scene three.

Scene 3

This scene takes place in Emily’s mother’s car as she picks up Emily from her private practice. To set the location for this scene we added a clip of the cars wheels in between the scene of Emily’s conversation at the gym and her conversation in the car, also allowing a break from dialogue and instead having the sound of the car on pavement  driving away from the gym.

In the car Emily and her mom have a conversation that upsets both of them and then they drive past a park while Emily reflects out the window comparing herself to the happy kids in the park.

Script Writing

This part took less time then the storyboarding since we were able to use our papers as a guide for the script. We did have to do a little bit of research on how to format our script in a realistic manner but after some researching we got the hang of it and started the process of thinking of line that matched our scenes and character emotions, then after we typed down the lines we thought would work, we spoke out the scene as if we were recording.

This helped us make the dialogue more natural sounding and concise. This also allowed us to figure out what tone or what way the sentences should be said to better match the idea we had so we wrote tones for things into the script which you can see below. This script was also done after school where we had a bit more time then we did at the coffee shop so we had some extra time and used it to look for sounds and music we could use in the nostalgic scene and the car scene that was background music from the radio.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_OraBWnLJf8nAW2wRjhq3aGTnJ8Ewkrtd512ucKNSMk/edit?usp=sharing

Conclusion 

This week has been very productive and I’m happy me and my partner were able to meet up a couple times to work on our storyboarding and scriptwriting. This is our last planning post so I’m glad we got this done and I’m excited to start our production phase. We know these papers and script will help us when filming time comes along with other things we’ve accomplished in our post like the characters outfits so we’re looking forward to using them. Thank you for reading and see you next time to start our production phase.

Planning - Title Font And Color

 Introduction 

Hello and welcome back to my blog. Today we’ll be going over what font and color our title and words on screen will be plus what time it’ll show in our film opening to help us be better prepared for our next blog on storyboarding and it’ll help us when we have to edit our film together in the future.

Title Decision

Me and my partner met up during lunch at our school to discuss possible titles because we had previously thought of some names during class and written them down. Our brain storming during class led us to end up with a list of about ten different titles that could work for our film, meaning these titles all helped convey what our film was about and it fit in with our sports drama, coming of age genre. 

The next day during lunch we looked over our list of titles and I came up with the idea of comparing the titles to each other sort of tournament style to help us narrow down the list since that’s the method I usually use to choose nail designs. We went through the list comparing 1 with 2 and so on and we ended up with our finalist being “Stuck In The Air” and “Off Balance”. After some discussion me and my partner decided to go with “Off Balance” because it matched better with our gymnast theme and the phrase rolled off the tongue better.

Title Font And Color

Now that we have our title we must choose how it will be shown in our opening. We will be using Adobe Premiere Pro for editing so we have to make sure the font we like is available on the app. Me and my partner decided on the Title quite quick during lunch since we had similar opinions so we had extra time during lunch to look into different fonts we could use. We were looking for a font that felt serious but not too dramatic since it is still a coming of age and since it’s set in the modern year we also didn’t want a font that felt old timey or too professional but also not too childish since our main character is a teenager for most of the film opening. With all these factors in mind me and my partner decided to go with the font “ Clarendon Condensed” which you can see below. As for the color we decided on white because it shows vulnerability and the chance to grow, perfect for a coming of age centered on an athlete.

Title Timing

Now that we’ve decided on what it’ll look like, we have to choose how to show it. Using our loose story board from a previous blog, we know we want the credits and title to show during the first scene. The credits will come first and we want them to be display small in the corners of the screen, small enough to read but not to distract the audience of the setting being shown in the opening scene.

We want the credits to show for about 15-20 seconds during the first nostalgic scene and each credit like the producer, director, costume designer, etc will show for about three seconds before cutting and a new one shows in a different corner a second later. 

The title will show at the end of that nostalgic scene and will take up most of the screen for about five seconds. All the credits will be in the font we choose as well.

Conclusion 

This post has helped us better visualize our production while also acting as future outline for our first scene. This is also important since it’s a usual convention if a film and though we’re only producing a film opening, it is realistic to a full film and our project. Thank you for reading and next blog we’ll be doing storyboarding and script writing.

Planning - Production Timeline

 Introduction 

Hello welcome back to my blog, today we’ll be creating a production timeline to make sure we stay up to date on our blog post and film production. I sat down with my partner to discuss our timeline to make sure it was something we could both keep up to date with and it would work for both of us. Now let’s get started on this timeline that will map out what we have to from now till April third, the last day to complete this portfolio.

Week of 2/16 - 2/20

This is the last planning week and a shorter school week so me and my partner choose to do two important blogs we have yet to create which are:

- Title, Font, and Color Type, because this post is necessary to show the planning process of our film since the title will have to show in our film opening at an appropriate time and the font is an important aspect of this since it needs to match our film.

-  Story Board and Script Writing, since this will be shorter week but we still have to blog about both our storyboarding and script writing we decided to combine them into one blog. This decision was also based off the fact that these two post go hand in hand and separately would be shorter post.

Week of 2/23 - 2/27

This week will be the first week of the production phase, this phase contains shorter post and we will be doing three a week. This week will not be starting the filming process, instead we will be preparing for film day and our blogs will follow this.

- Cast List , this post would show the cast characters we choose for our film opening and why we choose each one of them.

- Script Share , this post will show us sharing our script with our established actors from last blog and we’ll hear and share the reactions to our script along with any comments about our script from the actors.

- Items were Buying , this post will be about the items we decide to buy for filming and why we bought it and how we plan on using it.

Week of 3/2 - 3/6

This is the second week of the production phase and our scheduled date to film is 3/6, so the other two blogs of the week will be about us preparing for filming day on Friday.

- Timeline for Production Day , this post will be a timeline for our production day since we have a scheduled time that we’re allowed to film in the gym which is 12-3 pm and then the rest of our filming plus school will also be in the timeline for that day.

- Practice for Production Day , in order for our filming day to run smoothly, me and my partner will meet up the day before filming so we can practice using our equipment to reduce technical issues the day of filming and that is what the blog will be about.

- How Film Day Went , this post will be made after our filming to discuss how it went, what went well, if we ran into any challenges, and how we overcame any challenges.

Week of 3/9 - 3/13

This week will just be editing our film and putting the film opening together.

- Editing Scene #1 , this post will be about the editing process of scene 1 and how it went.

- Editing Scene #1 Part 2 ,  this post will be a continuation of the editing process of scene 1.

- Editing Scene #2 , this post will be about the editing process of scene 2

- Editing Scene #2 Part 2 , this post will be a continuation of the editing process of scene 2.

- Editing Scene #3 , this post will be about the editing process of scene. #3 

- Editing Scene #3 Part 2 , this post will be a continuation of the editing process of scene 3.

Week of 3/16 - 3/20

This week is spring break so me and my partner won’t see each other as much due to traveling so there will only be one but very important blog post made this week.

- Final Product: Our Film Opening - OFF BALANCE , this post will be the reveal of our completed film opening.

Week 3/23 - 3/27

This week will be mostly about working on the CCRs for this project.

- CCR posts 1-4

Week of 3/30 - 4/3

This will be the last week before the portfolio is due so it will probably be used to go back to my old post and correct any mistakes I’ve made throughout all my blogs like spelling errors.

Conclusion 

This timeline will help me and my partner stay on track and keep our ideas organized, there is the chance that some of the times may be changed due to factors that may pop up in the future but overall this process has been helpful to create an outline for the near future.

Planning - Costumes

 Introduction 

Hello and welcome back to my blog. Today we will be planning what costumes will be used in our film opening so we will be looking into the outfits of our main characters: Emily ( young and present version ), Laura the coach, and Veronica the mother. Costumes and props are very important to how the audience understands visuals and characters and though me and my partner don’t plan on using many props, we do have a specific vision of what we want each character to portray so lets get into it.

Emilys Costume

This character will actually have two separate outfits instead of one because we want to create a contrast in emotion with young Emily from the first scene and older Emily from the second scene. This contrast in emotion will be chosen through clothes and movements.

We want younger Emily to feel more happy, free, and child like then the present her so we will show this main difference between the two through clothing and hair, makeup will remain very similar because while it may be acceptable for older Emily to wear some makeup, it will be very light and natural since wearing lots of makeup in a setting where you will physically exert yourself and sweat isn’t ideal. Younger Emily on the other hand will wear no makeup at all because she is a very young girl.

Here we have two picture examples of the light and natural makeup of teen Emily and we have two pictures of young Emily as well.

  

As for her hair, we want younger Emily to have a looser hair style while teen Emily will be tighter to signify the change in pressure that is being put on Emily and how she felt more free as a younger child. Some hair styles that can show this are a loose ponytail vs a slicked back bun since either way her hair must be up to not effect her performance in the sport. We could also show a looser maybe messy bun with colorful accessories like glitter or colorful hair ties or bows to show her freedom and joy while teen Emily will just have a slick back bun with nothing special so maybe just a black hair tie to show that she has lost some of that joy/spark. Below are some examples of this.

                                       

Older Emily may also have short nails with polish while younger Emily will not due to age like makeup but most important is their leotards, younger Emily will wear colorful clothes to show her child like sense of wonder while older Emily will wear a plain dark blue leotard to signify her seriousness and loneliness, this will be a reflection of how she feels. The dark blue and her tight bun will also both signify control since that is a critical skill in gymnastics and something that though Emily is Troy to control, it is slipping from her grasp which will be the main challenge for her to overcome in the film if we were creating more than just a film opening. This creates a drastic change from scene one to scene two since opposite emotions are being shown through costume and this concludes Emily character in own film opening.

Lauras Costume 

Laura will be Emilys personal trainer so her outfit will differ from Emilys and be more similar to Veronicas. Lauras outfit will consist of comfortable clothing that is still athletic because as a coach she will needs to be able to help run drills and practices stunts. 

The gym is also cold for the safety of students so that they don’t get heat stroke while practicing so Laura will be wearing a hoodie since the coach does not need to physically exert themselves as much as their athletes. Me and my partner also discussed the colors she will be wearing and we decided on black since Laura applies much pressure to Emily because she believes in her and knows what she can do but this causes Laura to be harder on Emily and apply more pressure which she thinks will help Emily but it is doing the opposite.

 

As for Laura’s makeup and hair, we want it to be natural look for makeup and her hair will be in a loose ponytail or messy bun since she wouldn’t want her hair to affect her performance as a coach so her hair needs to be out of her face but still in a comfortable way, this character would also be allowed nails as long as they aren’t too long so she doesn’t accidentally scratch students. Below are some examples.

Veronica’s Costume 

Last but not least we have Veronica’s character, Emily mother who picks her up from practice.

Veronica’s outfit will be comfortable less athletic clothing like sweats or loose jeans and a jacket since she is likely coming from home to pick up her daughter. Me and my partner discussed what color we would identify with this character and we ultimately landed on black and red because Veronica is the antagonist of the story because she applies the most pressure on Emily and this is shown well though red but we also want her to show some vulnerability since she loves her daughter so she will wear a darker shade of red to show some love. She will also wear comfortable shoes like sneakers since she is just driving around.

 

Veronica’s hair and makeup will be very similar to Laura’s, she will wear natural everyday makeup or less then usual and her hair will be a ponytail but tighter and either mid or low on her head. The tightness of her hair style will show that she is a bit uptight.

Conclusion 

Planning the costumes of our characters has helped us visualize our film opening while helping us apply knowledge we’ve learnt through our research like how we are applying color theory to our characters and giving each character a main color to represent their emotions and what they mean to the story. Thank you for reading and see you next time I hope you enjoyed this blog.

Planning - Settings / Locations

 Introduction 

Hello and welcome back to my blog. Since we’ve figured out our loose plot and characters it time to establish the settings for our scenes, this will help us get further into our planning and closer to our finished project.

Setting #1

Our first and most important setting is the gymnastics gym because it’s where our story begins and much of our opening film takes place there. Out of the three scenes in our film opening, two of them will be this gym. Luckily Noemy attends a gym because she is a gymnast so she scheduled a meeting to speak to the owner about permission to film in the gym. Luckily her meeting went quite well and the owner is allowing us to film from 12-3 pm on march 6th, this is also helping us have an idea on our production timeline since we know what day we’re filming. But we will also have to miss a couple hours of our school day that Friday but it is only five minutes away so that’s great for us and coincidentally the class were missing is our Media Studies class so we informed our teacher of this and I later inform my 3rd period teacher that I will miss the last 20 minutes of class that Friday.

This setting is also crucial for our story because we will use the controlled environment to highlight the contrast between the opening scene and the second scene. In the opening scene the mood will be oposite from each other, it will feel nostalgic and joyful and then the second scene will be harsher no longer warm and happy. This will help us show how Emily no longer sees the gym as an inviting place anymore because she feels the pressure of the sport instead of the fun of it.

Setting #2

Our second setting for the film opening appears in the third scene, this is where Emily argues with her mom Veronica and where Emily is seen looking out the window and internally thinking about how her life compares to the lives of the other kids at the playground.

This setting is the inside of my dads car, a black 2023 Defender. This car will be a good match for our film because its a fairly large car with a big interior perfect for filming and it also matches the story because the car will belong to Veronica and in the film she will have to have a stable and generous income to afford Emily’s private trainings like the one we will be showing in the first two scenes of our film opening. The car will also be easily accessible to us since it belongs to my dad who lives with me so I have asked him to switch with me and use my car that Friday instead of his so we may use it for filming.

Conclusion 

Now we have established both of the settings we plan in using for the film, this has moved us further in the right direction and next blog we will be getting more into the specifics of our characters costumes. Like always thank you for reading and see you next time.

Research/ Planning - Project Proposal

 Introduction 

Hello my names Melanie Justo- Chiong and my partner for this film opening is Noemy Buenaventura. We chose to go with a sports drama with the sub-genres of coming of age and a bit inspirational but that sub genre may not get its moment to shine in the film opening due to the length of our project. The reason we chose this genre was because we’ve both enjoyed films from the genre, also I love dramas and she loves gymnastics so the idea came pretty naturally.

The target audience for our film opening will be 10-18 year old female gymnasts and fans of the sport, also parents who accompany there children/teenagers. Our film will also show representation for athletes who feel overcome by pressure because that will be our main characters main challenge in the film.

In order to produce our film we plan on using Adobe Premiere Pro because it is easily accessible to us from our school and there are plenty of resources for us to figure it out for editing like YouTube tutorials so even though we don’t have much experience with the software, I’m sure we’ll figure it out.

We plan to use the information we’ve learned through our research for this project like color theory, different shots, mis en scene and more. We also plan on buying some tools to help us with our shooting day like a handheld stabilizer for our camera and some lights, both will likely be purchased on Amazon and we will share the cost. Other than that, now that we’re in the planning portion of this project we are going to start meeting up more after school to work on some collaborative elements like storyboards, script writing, production timeline, and also we just want to take a day after we storyboard and script write to practice taking our chosen shots so that production day may run smoothly. That’ll be all for this blog thank you for reading!

Research/ Planning - Character Types and Narrative

 Introduction

Hello and welcome back, last blog we created a loose plot and mood board, my loose blog included the names of my three main characters which I discussed with my partner. Today we will dive deeper into these characters by first researching what character types and narratives their are so we can classify our characters into our findings.

Narratives 

First I’d like to explain narratives because this is the order of the story’s events. Therefore we have a couple to discuss, I’ll be going over the six most popular narratives, linear, nonlinear, circular, multi strand, open, and closed.

- Linear : This narrative is exactly what it sounds like, it’s a story in chronological order like for example Karate Kid that I’ve dove into before, the story progresses through beginning > middle > end.

- Nonlinear : This is when the story is told out of order meaning there’s either flashbacks or time jumps to the future. An example of this is The Titanic since the movie begins in the present and the rest of the story is the past.

- Circular : This is when a story ends where it begins, so the ending is revealed at the beginning of the story and the story comes full circle, meaning it goes present > flashback and then continues till we’re back to the present scene where it’ll usually build off to come to a conclusion.

- Multi Strand : This is when a story follows multiple characters at the same time so there’s parallel story’s for the characters with one larger story. This is very common in TV shows like Stranger Things for example that uses multi strand narratives to create complexity.

- Open vs Closed Narratives : Closed narrative means that at the end of the story it all comes to a conclusion whereas open means that’s question are left at the conclusion of the story so that the ending may be up for interpretation which spoiler alert, open narrative is used in Stranger Things since Ellen’s death or escape from the wormhole is never confirmed. Frozen on the other hand uses closed narrative because the story comes to a complete close, no monumental questions unanswered.

My film opening will use non linear narrative because it will contain a flash back.

Character Types

Character types can be used to categorize story characters depending on what they give and how they are presented . The main 7 are protagonist, antagonist, love interest, confidant, deuteragonist, tertiary characters, and foil.

- Protagonist : This is the main character of the story, they usually need to be relatable or have a backstory/character arc to understand their motivations. Story’s are usually told from this characters point of view like in The Hunger Games where Katniss is the main character and the story is from her perspective which also makes Katniss an unreliable narrator which is common from the first perspective story telling. 

My film’s protagonist will be Emily, a 13 year old girl who is struggling with a mental block from the growing pressure of being a young and committed athlete, which in her case in gymnastics.

- Antagonist : This is the villain of the story but not to be confused with an Anti hero which is when a villain is the main character like The Joker movie. A good example on an antagonist is the Evil Witch in Snow White, she affects the story by being an obstacle for Snow White since she seeks to harm her.

The antagonist of my film is Veronica the mother and Laura the coach or trainer. Both of these characters will be antagonist because though they aren’t villains or wishing harm on Emily, they think that applying pressure on her is helping her succeed but in reality they are posing the challenge of losing passion due to stress on Emily.

- Love Interest: This is the main characters object of desire, this character should be compelling and three dimensional. A good example of this is Daisy Buchanan for The Great Gatsby. My film though, will not have a love interest because she is young and we are focusing on her love for gymnastics.

- Confidant : This is the main characters side kick or best friend, this character can be comedic relief or be very influential to the story like Hermione in Harry Potter. My film opening will not have a confidant.

- Deuteragonist : This is character who is also close to the main character but they don’t greatly affect the story with their character arc. My film’s though will also not have this because it has limited character’s.

- Tertiary : These are background characters who exist to populate the films story but don’t affect the story’s plot. These are common in films and my film will include this in the opening scene and closing scene.

- Foil : This character exist to make the main character look better, a good example of this is Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter because he is constantly compared to the main character, emphasizing Harry’s ability’s as a wizard. My film opening doesn’t include this either since the film will only be two minutes so there isn’t much time to introduce every character that would be in an hour long film.

Conclusion

This research helps me understand these characters I’m building and better understand the story of my film opening, building off my last blog on a loose plot. Now that I have a foundation for this film I will create a project proposal in my next blog post. Thank you for reading and see you next time.

https://nownovel.com/narrative-examples-strong-narration/

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/guide-to-all-the-types-of-characters-in-literature#1upL7GRqdD5Pl3OwBlcUD4

Planning - Loose Plot And Mood Board

Introduction

Hello and welcome back to my blog, in my last post I compared two great and new sport dramas featuring female protagonist who are young so their films could feature that coming of age aspect I hope to portray. In this blog I will be explaining a loose plot for my upcoming film opening and showing/making a mood board to be a physical example of what I want to include in this film.

Loose Plot

To discuss the plot of our film, me and my partner sat down and just talked about the story we wanted to create, we discussed this for about 45 minutes to make sure we were on the same page.

Our Film will focus on a young gymnast who is struggling with growing pressure and has to overcome a mental block caused by the stress she is put under. The film will begin with a flash back of the young gymnast we will be naming Emily, we want this flashback to be nostalgic and happy like a fond memory of her enjoying the sport. That will be our first scene and the title will be displayed at some point in the flashback.

Our second scene will be older Emily in the same gym but no longer happy, she will look tired and stressed to show that the sport is taking a toll on her. The transition between scene 1 and 2 might be something like a flip, jump, or pan, anything that will help correlate the younger Emily with older Emily and the fact that though the mood of the experience has changed, the setting has not. Therefore the second scene will have harsher brighter lighting no longer nostalgic and warm. In this scene Emily attempts to do a stunt that’s part of her routine and fails because of the mental block, then her coach makes her try again in which she fails and then they have a serious talk before Laura (the trainer) dismisses Emily from practice. 

The next scene will be in the moms car, the transition between the two might a be a straight cut or a transition to something about the car to set the new setting. Emily will be in the car with her mom Veronica who will ask Emily about practice and then apply more pressure on her when she finds out it wasn’t great. My film opening will end with Emily looking out the window at kids playing in a park because that shows how she feels isolated and wants to feel like a kid, she wishes she could feel passion for the sport again and enjoy it like she used to.

Mood Board

This mood board below has some images to help portray the mood we want to create in our film opening through lighting like the warm vs bright or depressing lighting of scene 1 vs 2. It also shows setting like the car and also some mis-en-scene like gymnastics outfits.

Conclusion 

This loose plot and mood board will help me with this project because I now have something to look at and read for a guide on what my story will be about and look like. Next blog we will dive deeper into our character and what they mean to the story through doing a bit of research on narrative and character types. Thank you for reading and see you next time!

Research - Comparative Analysis

Introduction 

Hello and welcome back! Last blog we researched color theory, this time we’ll get to use that research along with many other things we’ve learned through research on films because I’ll be doing a comparative analysis of the first two minutes of two different sport dramas to compare them and get ideas for my film opening.

I am limited to only movies on Netflix because of my subscriptions but I found two great movies to watch and compare. I am going to watch the opening of Skater Girl and The Swimmers. 

Netflix Over View Of Movies

After reading the online and Netflix descriptions of the movies I found that Skater Girl is an inspiring drama about a rural Indian girl who grows a passion for skateboarding, she wants to compete but faces opposition from family so she through the movie she overcomes social and gender restrictions.

The Swimmers on the other is a biographical drama; biographical is a film dramatizes the like story of a real person. The film follows two swimmer sisters who flee war to compete and swim in the 2016 Olympics.

Now that we’ve looked at what the movie will be about lets get started.

 

Skater Girl

The movie begins with 9 seconds of the Netflix signs with the black background, then the background goes completely dark before displaying the production companies. The first real clip is at 16 seconds where the scenes fades in to a short and slow pan of the ground where a wooden board is being attached to a purple rope with nostalgic or melancholy music playing in the background. Then as the board with roe hits the ground the title of the film appears in purple letters The background is the pale dry looking dirt ground with a yellowish tone, going with the music and the purple in the scene represents transformation and creativity.

The next scene starts with a girl running, the camera is following her from behind and pans up from her sandals slapping the ground to all or her in frame and a little boy in frame as well who she seems to be dragging on wooden board with the purple rope. They both have brown hair and skin and the girl is wearing a flowy cultural dress. The boy is laughing as the sweet music continues to play and the background is this path in a vibrantly green forest.

  Then the camera angle switched to next to the Boy she is pulling. He is holding onto the rope and yelling go faster while wearing a red book bag, flip flops, a blue shirt, and shorts that look like a uniform. The camera then goes back up to the girls face who looks very happy and the music turns more upbeat.

The next about ten seconds shows more clips of the happy girl pulling the happy boy on the board through their rural town, once they come to a stop the girl says bye to the little boy and he goes to school. After leaving the boy who appears to be her brother she looks much sadder and serious.  And the whole two minutes the director credits fade in on the side of the screen.

That is the end of the two minutes, from this short part of the movie we can tell that she likely loves that boy and he is probably family, the wooden board is likely foreshadowing her pasión with skateboarding as well and I wonder how the music and mood will change when she is without the boy and what come next for her.

 

The Swimmer

This film also begins with the Netflix sign and a black background and once that fades out the production company’s logo appears with the name of the company. Next a serious sounding music starts to play as the first scene fades in, this music raises a feeling of caution. The scene shows the blue sky with clouds as the year 2011 appears with the location “A Suburb of Damascus, Syria”.

The camera begins to pan down as the sound of seagulls is heard, followed by a high pitch scream and older looking buildings appears among trees. There is also a dry mountain in the background as well, the camera continues to pan until a public pool is shown, the colors of the pool, people, towels, and floaties is much more vibrant then the original scene and then the music changes to fun and upbeat music, completely changing the mood of this opening scene.

Next we see and hear kids laughing as they jump into the pool with the upbeat music, they are wearing colorful floaties and swim suits, then we see people floating in colorful floats, then more splashing and kids playing while adults also enjoy the pool, each of these clips are only a couple seconds long but they flow together.

Director names also pop up on the sides of the screen in a bright shade of orange. Mothers play with their children in the pool, teens lay ball and punch each other into the pool, and little kids learn to swim. Then one of the teenage boys throw a toy into the pool that splashes and then sinks as the camera follows, the music also changes and becomes more muffled as the camera goes under water.

The music then stops as the boys jump in after the toy so this must be some sort of game maybe to see who can grab the toy first, one of the boys grabs it and then the music pans to the other side of the pool, the music becomes more dramatic and playfully mysterious  during the pan.

We hear muffled splashes and we then see a girl swim along the bottom of the pool. Then the title appears in orange and the camera focuses on two other girls in the background under water. The two girls are lying in the water just floating facing down together and one of them is holding a pink wrist watch that shows a minute and ten seconds.

This is the end of the first two minutes of The Swimmers, the two girls are most likely the main characters and their future as swimmers is foreshadowed by them practicing holding their breath, the scene after this will likely show more of their practicing, this sets their swimming roots and leaves questions for the rest of the film.

 

Conclusion

The opening sequences of the films both have similar things like starting with the darkness and music fading in with the first scene, also the director names fading in to the sides of the scenes and the title showing as well but the first film showed the title much earlier then the second film.

The second film also feels different because of the mood changes and setting change. But both films follow female protagonist on their journey to surpass challenges for the passion of their sport which is a bit different from my film since my protagonist starts to lose some of her passion due to being overcome by the pressure of her sport, nonetheless this was still very helpful and educational since I would to include fade ins in my opening and I would like it to start with a nostalgic tone as well where my protagonist enjoys her sport before her feelings change.

Thank you reading and below I have some useful sites you can check out.

 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/06/11/1005499252/skateboarding-gives-freedom-to-rural-indian-teen-in-netflix-film-and-in-real-lif#:~:text=in%20your%20browser.-,YouTube,extremely%20low%20—%20especially%20among%20women.

https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/what-does-biopic-mean/#:~:text=“Biopic”%20combines%20the%20words%20“,artists%2C%20athletes%2C%20and%20scientists.