Group Meeting #1

Good news! The feedback I got from our first group meeting was very positive. The people in the group said that they liked my script and story concept very much, and they also praised the photos that I provided in my "Storytime" post. Some of them said that they thought that they were professional photos that I googled, and the fact that they thought that makes me confident in my cinematography skills. One piece of advice that I will take into consideration is to further illustrate the intense heat of the scene by having the man on the bench drinking water and sweating, or by showing people suffering from the heat in some of the establishing shots. Overall I think that the first group meeting went very well, and it's given me a good idea of what I should be doing moving forward.

Because I need to incorporate some kind of multi-media into this, here are some more photos of the location I want to use for filming:

Editing the Script

 Maybe I was a little too enthusiastic earlier, as I did end up making a number of revisions to the script. Firstly, I changed the weatherman dialogue to just be from one person, and I also made it sound more dry and serious as opposed to the darkly ironic humor I was going for previously. Next I changed the static shots to be from various areas surrounding the park, progressively closing in on it. The specific of upbeat music is to illustrate the lively nature of the park without necessary having to show crowds of people. It's also to create a sense of situational irony compared to what's about to happen. When the music fades out, it gets the audience ready for this shift to a darker tone, highlighting the isolation of the character who is about to become the first victim of the mosquitos. Everything after this point is the exact same, with the death of the man on the bench and the introduction of Todd. The only other things I changed were a few formatting mistakes and typos.

I wrote the script!!!

 So I wrote the script, and it was a pretty easy process as I basically already knew what the events in this opening would be. One new choice that I made was to have the main character, Todd, have the profession of health inspector. The idea is that he deals with his germaphobia in an unhealthy way by constantly trying to make spaces clean to his liking to an obsessive degree. I also came up with a title for the film: "The Summer of the Swarm". Without further ado, here's the script, which I wrote using a script writing software called Celtx.

Storytime

 Finally we reach the point where I have to write the script for the film opening. Before this, I need to think of what the overall plot of the movie would be. I've came up with a brief summary that goes as follows:

The Plot

 Todd is a timid young man from the Midwest who has an intense fear of germs and getting sick. One summer, he reluctantly agrees to go with his girlfriend, Ellie, on a trip down south to Florida, where the two will stay in a rental house by an Everglades tourist park. Part of the purpose of the trip is to held Todd get over his fear, as advised by his therapist. Things take a dark turn however when a rare species of mosquitos begin to emerge, biting victims at the park and infecting them with a deadly toxin. When the park refuses to shut down, it becomes up to Todd and Ellie to stop the swarm, teaming up with a local entomologist named Mike and the park's down on his luck gator wrestler named Dan.

Approach to the Opening

 In the first two minutes of this film, I want to establish the threat of the mosquitos and character of Todd, highlighting his specific phobia. The opening will begin with static shots of the Everglades park. The idea is to use these shots to create a feeling of curiosity, as the shots being static encourages the viewer to scan the frame, trying to fins something out of place. It's a technique used by two of my favorite directors, Ari Aster and M. Night Shyamalan, as well is in the film Paranormal Activity directed by Oren Peli. Here I have some photos that I've taken that will inspire me for the introductory shots:

 While this is happening, a voice over of a weather report will be heard, describing record breaking high summer temperatures. This helps to establish the film's primary setting, and the description of the extreme heat creates a sense of discomfort. After these first few shots, there will be a shot of a person sitting on the bench, possibly reading or listening to music. Whatever they're doing, it makes them oblivious to what's about to happen. The camera switches to the point of view of a mosquito. A buzzing sound is heard as the camera flies through the air, approaching the individual. It lands on them, waiting for a bit before delivering the bite. Once the audience is shown the bite, the scene immediately transitions to long shot, with the person still sitting on the bench. Then they close their eyes and fall over, before the title card appears. The idea here is to use the normal looking wide shot to give the viewer a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness, as this initial death is treated like a normal occurrence that can't be impacted. In the last shot of the opening, we would be introduced to the protagonist, Todd. At the moment I'm not quite sure what he will be doing when introduced, but I want it to establish his germaphobia without it being super obvious or generic, like having him washing his hands.

What's all this buzz?

 Alright, so after my research and planning it's now time to come up with a story for this thing. By that, I mean that I need to have a basic idea of what the story for the entire film will be, and then I'll decide what I want the opening itself will be. Once I do that, I'll begin scripting and storyboarding the opening. 

So as I've stated before, I want to make a thriller/monster movie. One of those classic kind of killer animal movies like King Kong or Steven Spielberg's Jaws. Why do want to do this? Well I just think that it'll be cool, and it's the type of genre that I think will really make my project stand out. Monster movies are an interesting subgenre of thrillers because they automatically provide a tangible threat for the characters (and audience) to be afraid of, and there's much spectacle to be created when it comes to ways that the monster is visualized and much suspense to be created in the ways that it's hidden. 

To get even more specific with my monster movie, my original idea was that I wanted the monster in question to be a gator, partly because I live in Florida in a suburban community built on the Everglades, so I wanted to get some home town representation in there. That was my plan for a while, but then I started writing this post and really started thinking. My original thinking was that yes, killer gator movies have been done before (Alexandre Aja's film Crawl comes to mind), but there was no monopoly on the idea. I felt like it hadn't been done enough that it had become oversaturated, like shark movies or spider movies. Then I started thinking: spiders. Why are they the only bug that gets the monster movie treatment? Certainly there are others that are scary enough to be thrilling antagonists? Then I really started to think about and it all began to come together. I had the idea of getting a shot from the gator's POV in my original idea, but one from the perspective of an insect would be far more creative and possibly easier to accomplish with simple resources. I thought of ants, which could work but I felt like I needed something better. Something scarier. Then, like a stinger to skin, it hit me. Mosquitos.

A quick Google search of "the most dangerous insect" will bring up the mosquito as the top result. Honestly, it's a wonder why their hasn't been a monster movie about them yet. The way they consume blood makes them a lot like vampires, one of Hollywood's favorite creatures of myth, they're presence preys on the same fear of disease as zombies, and their small size creates a perfect opportunity for suspense, with the possibly that they could be flying around anywhere and you wouldn't see it. There's a lot of potential in the idea of having a swarm of these tiny little pests, which reminds me a lot of the film Arachnophobia.
Additionally, mosquitos habitats are warm, temperate environments such as Florida, so I can still incorporate the familiar setting that I live and breathe (I like the idea of starting the film opening with a weather report on record high temperatures). So that settled it. This film will be giving a starring role to one of earth's deadliest creatures: The mosquito!

The Plan

 So now comes the time where I need to make a schedule for how I want to do this thing. Obviously, there's a lot of components to the project, so I tried to make it so that each week focuses on a specific one. At the time I'm writing this, it is Sunday, February 18th (the end of week 2) and I have until Tuesday, April 2nd (Two days after the end of week 8) to finish both the film opening itself and the creative critical reflection. Here's the schedule I came up with:

2/19 - 2/25 (Script Week)

Come up with the story and begin working on the script. Keep practicality of filming in mind in addition to incorporating genre elements and keeping it engaging. Also make sure it realistically functions as the opening to a film while staying in the 2 minute time constraint. Get feedback on the script from peers and other people I know.

2/26 - 3/3 (Storyboard Week)

Finish writing (if necessary) and begin storyboarding, making sure that various visual techniques are incorporated while, again, making sure it is realistically doable. Find locations to film in (this should be considered when writing the script) and start contacting people who can act in the film and have schedules that work with mine. Begin to gather and create props and costumes.

3/4 - 3/10 (Filming Week)

Begin filming the film opening. Try to get as much done as possible (if not all of it) during this week. Be prepared to make edits to script and/or storyboard if needed.

3/11 - 3/17 (Editing Week)

Finish filming (if necessary) and begin to edit the project. Get feedback while I work on this process, so I know if things are coming along well, if things need to be cut, or if things need to be added or reshot. Make sure my actors and I have time for any possible reshoots.

3/18 - 3/24 (Reflection Week)

Finish editing (if necessary) and begin planning for the CCR through research and examples, and plan how it will be presented and what I'll say.

3/25 - 3/31 / 4/1 - 4/2 (The Home Stretch)

Create and finish the creative critical reflection, publish it along with the film opening itself to this very blog.

Thrilling Discoveries

  After some thinking, I've decided that I want my genre to be a thriller. Specifically, one that involves a monster (or in my specific case, a really vicious animal) that the characters must survive and defeat. When working in such a specific genre, I naturally did some research on these types of movies to gather ideas for how I want to approach my film opening.

Deep Blue Sea

Yesterday, I watched a movie called Deep Blue Sea, which is one that I feel is somewhat similar to what I want to do. The opening features a common feature in these types of movies, which is a set of characters who only exist to be victims of the central threat, in this case, sharks. There are POV shots from the perspective of a shark swimming underwater, which build anticipation before it's grand reveal as it breaks through the bottom of the boat. There's also the visual of the boat rocking, an element of motion which also builds anticipation in the audience in relation to the shark's size. This technique of hiding the creature from the viewer is one that I want to use, both for the purpose of building suspense and for practical reasons. One thing I like about this opening is how it subverts expectations by having the shark hit with a harpoon before it's able to kill anyone, which goes against what the audience would expect.

Life

Life is a film that I found during my research, and from what I can gather is a thriller about the crew of a spaceship who discovers a lifeform from Mars. The opening scene is done primarily as a long take, showing a team of astronauts recovering the lifeform from a capsule. It builds mystery, as we don't know exactly what's in the capsule for a majority of the scene. The suspenseful nature of the spacewalk one character goes on to retrieve it establishes the tone for the majority of the film. One common thread I'm noticing in these movies is the theme of science. Although it's not shown in the opening, Deep Blue Sea is set on an aquatic research base doing experiments with genetic modification, and Life is about astronauts conducting research in space. The idea here is that the film's monsters are the results of science gone too far, which is an idea that I find fascinating and would like to incorporate into my project.

Malignant

So in all honesty, Malignant is a movie that I don't really like, but I do have to admit the opening scene is excellent, so after it popped up in search results I rewatched that scene for my research. The main element of this opening that I love is the chaos. The way that the viewer is immediately dropped into the action, and the way the camera frames the action in off-kilter angles with frantic cuts puts the viewer on edge as soon as the film starts. It also establishes the mystery of "Gabriel", as the audience knows that he's dangerous even though they don't know what he is. Like the other films, this one continues the trend of science and medicine gone wrong, which seems to be very important to these kind of monster thrillers. It also contains the trend of minor characters who exist as initial victims. I've come to the conclusion that these are both elements that I want to include in my opening for a thriller movie.

A getaway driver, a programmer, and a giant lizard walk into a bar...

Seeking Inspiration

My problem right now isn't that I have no ideas, it's that I have too many. My brain is so full of concepts and genres that it's nearly impossible to narrow it down to one that I feel could really work. I decided that to start, I would research existing film openings and try to get some inspiration. So to begin, I pulled out the old reliable technique of typing "best film openings" into google. Doing so gave me a lot of movies that I haven't seen but probably should, like Pulp Fiction and The Godfather. There were a few that I had seen, however, so I focused on those.

Drive

Drive is a movie that I have seen, and it's an opening that I really love. It begins with a shot of a map of streets while we here the voice of the elusive driver, the camera tilting up to reveal his stylish scorpion jacket before his face is even seen. He talks to his contact on the phone about the heist he's about to participate as a basketball game plays on the television. After this, we then see the driver, well, drive to the location of the heist. And with that, everything we need to know is established; the driver's cold personality, his job, and the brooding, sleek tone of the film. Even the basketball game is important, as later in the scene the driver disguises himself as a fan at the stadium to make his escape. This is something I want to do with my opening, which is clearly establish the tone and style of the film. I also like the idea of doing something like that basketball moment, having a seemingly unimportant detail that is actually crucial.

The Social Network

The Social Network has a relatively simple opening, but it's very effective. It's extremely dialogue focused (which fits the overall film) but all of that dialogue, even the smallest minutia in word choices, serves a purpose. Like with Drive, we know exactly who the protagonist is the first two minutes. Through his dialogue, we see Mark Zuckerberg's combination of over-inflated ego and insecure desire for validation which fuels every decision he makes. I feel like I want to do a sort of combination of Drive and The Social Network's approach to introducing the protagonist, using both visual techniques and dialogue.

The MonsterVerse

Alright, let's take a break from these internet lists and talk about the MonsterVerse, a cinematic universe containing the likes Godzilla and King Kong and created in collaboration between Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures, and Toho. One genre I'm considering working with for my film opening is a monster movie, so I wanted to look at some examples. Three of the current MonsterVerse films feature elaborate opening titles montages, and although similar, also represent the different tones of each film. 2014's Godzilla opens with ancient drawings of sea monsters, before transitioning to grainy footage related to nuclear testing and brief glimpses of Godzilla himself while foreboding music plays, establishing the mystery of the creature and an ominous tone. The opening titles to Kong: Skull Island tell a different story. After zooming in on Kong's eye with the title card, the audience is shown archive footage from the end of World War up to the early 1970s while hearing the speeches of prominent American leaders from the time. This establishes the film's time period while also setting up a more adventurous tone through the words of progress. Then there's the opening to Godzilla vs. Kong, which hints at plot elements while using graphics to illustrate the film's upcoming battle as the culmination of a sort of monster tournament bracket, establishing an exciting, action heavy tone. What I really admire about these title sequences is that they illustrate their respective film's tone and hint at things to come, getting the audience hooked.

The Takeaway

I definitely want to establish the main character in my opening, and I want to use both their words and the visual techniques of the film to introduce what they're like. It's also really important to me that my opening by exciting, something that would glue the audience to the screen, maybe drop hints towards a central mystery. It's starting to form, my idea. There's some kind of disaster, we don't fully see it on screen but we know it's happening. And we know whatever caused it is something not human. We're also introduced to the film's lead, and even if they don't know it yet, they're the only one who can stop it.

Opening the Film Opening

 Well, the time has finally come. After months of anticipation the portfolio project is finally upon me. I have been given the task of creating the two-minute opening to an original film. Coming up with the idea for an original film is easy, but illustrating it through only the first two minutes is a different story entirely. Through this blog I will be documenting to you, my wonderful reader, the process by which I accomplish this feat. I'm talking everything from brainstorming to writing to filming to editing. The whole nine yards of filmmaking which may suck in the moment but will become worth it in the end (hopefully). 

 So, types of openings. There's a bunch of those and they each serve different purposes. My first goal is to pick which I type I want to do and then move from there. So the first type of opening that interests me is the one that develops character. Character is equally as important as plot when it comes to a story as they sort of have the symbiotic relationship to each other. The actions of the characters influence the plot, and the developments of the plot influences the characters. I'm a big character guy, I like when they're memorable and the stand out part of the film. I want my film opening to establish some individual who would play a major role in the film's story, whether it be the hero, villain, or some guy whose only purpose is to do one specific thing that puts the plot in motion.

 

 The other kind of opening I would like to explore is that of the opening that establishes mystery. I believe that the best kind of film openings are the ones that leave the audience with a question they want answered. This question can be posed in many ways. You could introduce a character who is shown as important, but not provide any background or information as to who they are. You could then take it even further by obscuring this character's appearance, creating even more mystery. Another way to do it is with an event, some occurrence that is clearly out the ordinary appearing at the very beginning of the film, leaving the audience to begin to wonder what just happened and why. I think that this is a really solid direction to take for a film opening, and one that I would want to take.

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

 The music marketing project is one that I was pretty excited for. I love music and I love music videos, and a music video is a major component of the project. The other major component is creating a marketing plan for a fictious band that is meant to be promoted through the video. The project began when our group got randomly assigned got a genre to work with, ours being heavy rock. This excited me because it's a genre that I really enjoy. We then received the songs we would have to choose from when it came to what song to use for the video. Although it wasn't my first choice, the song we choose was Duality by Slipknot. It wasn't my favorite out of the available songs, but looking back it was probably the best choice. It has a rhythm which is really good for fast paced editing, which is good for music videos. 

 The next step was research. Our group had to create a document of research for two record companies and two bands/artists signed to each, these bands having to fall under the genre we were basing our project on. The subjects of our research also had to have released new music in the last five years. We started on deciding on two artists first, then picking two more based on their record labels. The first band we choose was Korn, because they've been a major influence in the metal scene since their inception. I also decided that we should also use Rob Zombie, mainly because I'm a big fan of his work, and also because heavy rock tends to be dominated by bands, so I wanted to mix in a solo artist. We divided the research among ourselves and got to work, mainly focusing on our subjects' use of marketing tactics, especially the incorporation of social media and the internet.

 Once the research was done, it was time to plan the presentation and video. To do that we had to decide who our artist would be. Early on we decided that it would be one singular person as opposed to a full band. This would make it easier on us, as we only had to promote one individual and only needed one person to play said individual in the video and in photos (that person being me). Given that this was a new artist we would be promoting, we decided that our target audience should be young adults and that social media would be very important to our marketing. We then came up with the idea of our artist being someone playing a character. We talked about how there wouldn't be a consistent band playing at every show, which led one of our group members to parallel that to the idea of a spider that regenerates its limbs. This led us to our character concept: an alien spider that uses the power of music to assimilate people into its colony in a sort of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" scenario. We started planning our video around showcasing this concept, with a group of teenagers coming across the alien entity. In a word document, we planned out the plot and began to highlight and annotate the lyrics. Things were going good, until I really started to think about what our plan was. It was clear to me that we were trying to bite off more than we could chew when it came to our video's concept, and we had to scale back. The rest of the group agreed. The video's plot changed to being themed around alien abduction and experimentation with a more vague and implied plot, and our artist (who still lacked a name) would be simply preform as themself, although the alien bug motif remained. I made a storyboard based on our new direction, and soon enough it was time to film and create our marketing presentation. 

A page from our planning. Many of these ideas were kept while others were discarded.

 Originally, I planned on filming the entire video at my house. I even designed to the storyboard to allow for this, due to the fact that I didn't know what the availability of my group would be. Thankfully, I realized that we had the time to film in my school's TV production studio, so that's where we began to shoot footage. The TV studio provided a great set, as it was nearly pitch black with the lights off, so all it talk was a phone flash light and some clever angles to get some pretty cool shadow effects. It also had the somewhat industrial look that I wanted. I volunteered to be the one being filmed, making me take on the role of the artist. We had a clay model spider, courtesy of one of our group member's craftsmanship, that could be pulled along a wire web, and got a few angles on that to use in the video. We used the storyboard as our guideline to filming, but it was more of a vague suggestion than an exact instruction manual. A lot of things were done differently, and some things were just done on the fly. Overall, it went very well, but by the time class ended and we couldn't film anymore, there was still work to be done. 

 The following weekend, I filmed the remainder of the needed footage at my house while also editing everything all together. This was so we would all have time to work on the presentation together when the week began. Filming and editing at my house went well, all though it was definitely half-hazard. After filming some storyboarded shots that I new were needed, I began to put everything on the editing timeline, attempting to cut shots to the beat of the music the best I could. I soon realized that I still needed more footage, so I quickly grabbed a flashlight, set up my tripod, turned off the lights, and crawled underneath my desk to lip sync in the dark with the light illuminating my shots. I actually ended with some of my favorite visuals from this, moving my face towards and away from the light to get some dynamic shadows. I also got a shot where it looked like my eyes had gone fully black my face looked somewhat grayscale, making me look an alien. There was no editing involved with that, just lighting. 

 After editing was over, it was time to finish the marketing presentation, which we really split the workload one. We started by finally coming up with a name for our artist, Fang Threat. We then came up with a timeline for what our marketing would be, including shows at small venues at social media posts. Those social media posts went to me, as I had to film myself as Fang Threat promoting his music. I also created an "About" page for the Fang Threat website that one of the other group members made. This page told the story of who Fang Threat is, who I decided would be a young man named Alex Andrews, a musical prodigy, lover of journaling and doodling, and horror and sci-fi geek. I felt like these qualities placed him firmly within the common traits you would expect of a metal artist, as well as a modern indie artist. After that, all I needed was to record the audio for my slides of the presentation.

 Overall, I think this project came out very well, especially in regards to the video. It certainly helped to plan using the storyboard and to have the group members there to help out in the process. Next time I definitely want to be better with time management, so I don't have to film and edit at the same time again. I think that when it comes to my portfolio project, I'll really need to plan well and make sure my idea is something that's actually filmable with my available time and resources, so I won't need to make significant changes to it.