_Nathaniel's_Computer_

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:

 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.

 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.

 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 t...

 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 ...

 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, ...

  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 ...

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 t...

 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 rel...

 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 fa...