Storyboarding Stuff

One of the biggest parts of planning for me is storyboarding. This makes me sit and really think about what I want every shot to look like and how I want every scene to go.

For my opening, I created a storyboard of every shot with small description of what is happening in each drawing because I am no artist. This helped me decide what types of compositions I wanted to use and camera movements I could employ to tell my story.

So this is what I came up with :)

Mise-en-scene, or as I like to call it, aesthetic 😍

A really big part of movies for me is the aesthetic and vibe of the production as a whole. Sometimes when I'm in the mood to rewatch something it's mostly because of the feeling the visuals evoked in me. I want my aesthetic to be well-defined and consistent. 

This is also true for my characters. I want them to have a set vibe that they stick to at most times. 

Amelie:

This vision board I created for Amelie shows the colors she's associated with are mainly pastels and whites, with splashes of black thrown in for a clean look overall. Her outfits are all very put-together and she enjoys looking and feeling good. She likes to wear simple, gold jewelry, bows, sunglasses, and light colors. I want to use my own backpack as Amelie's backpack in the opening because I hand-embroidered flowers onto it, which is something I feel like Amelie would do. I also included the main props in these vision boards. I added her iPad, headphones, and books, which are all things I feel are staples of the character and reflect her interests. These are all props I want to include in my opening that feel begin to develop character.

James:

The same thing I did for Amelie, I did for James. The first thing I put on this vision board is James's main colors, which include all shades of dusty blues, charcoal, and beige. I also included lots of silver jewelry, baggy clothing, and dirty converse, which I feel are pivotal parts of James's wardrobe. I also included some props for James that I feel are important to her character and to be included in the opening. I added wired earbuds, a basic composition notebook, a pencil case, and books. I definitely want to include these in my opening since they let you see part of James's character at a glance, like the fact that she loves music, art, and reading.

I will be filming in a public library so there's very little I can control aside from what my characters wear and what I place around them but one thing I also want to focus on is lighting. I want the production to be mostly bright, especially at the beginning to establish the highest points of lighting so that when the film progresses and shows darker scenes, darkness can be used to create mood.

Overall, I want to pay close attention to the costuming of my characters and the props I place around and on them. I want to be methodical with all of my choices to ensure that my characters and their appearance are consistent with their descriptions and personalities.

And The Title Is...

Up until this point, my film had not had a name. This is because of one very important reason: I hate naming stories I create. However, now that I have really created my characters and nailed down the idea for my opening, it felt like a good time to think of names for the project.

When I name things I like to take an impactful moment that the audience is going to remember and create a title from that, and for this story, it was no different.

The name I chose for my film is "In Between The Lines".

When I'm editing my film, I will choose the best option for the coloring of the title, but this is what it will look like.

Here is the explanation behind the name. When the characters unknowingly first meet each other, they make eye contact between the shelves of a library. They can only catch a small glimpse of each other through the small line of space between the tops of the books and the next shelf. This is one instance of them being literally in between the lines of the shelves and the rows of books.

Also, their hobbies both include reading. Since they both read the same books in some cases, they will write notes for each other in the margins and in between the lines of text inside the books. In these books they leave small messages to each other between the lines and they can look back on them. 

At the end of the story, when the girls go their separate ways, they have the small notes that were left in between the lines of the books they read for each other to look back on and never forget each other.

Casting

For my film opening, only my two main characters have been featured in the two-minute clip. While I thought casting would be one of my most difficult challenges, I actually did it quite easily. 

I wanted my casting to be authentic. I didn't want a bunch of straight people in my movie about queer teens. I wanted queer teens to be playing queer teens. When I asked my friends, they also shared this sentiment, that the gay characters in my story should be played by gay actors, and in this case, actresses.

For Amelie, I knew I needed someone who could look very put together, and be polished, refined, and organized. For this role, I chose my friend Sophie. Choosing her was my best choice because she is not straight, she is similar to the character in personality, and she is Hispanic, making my film's cast quite diverse.

Sophie has dark brown hair, brown eyes, she is decently tall, and very polished in appearance, which is exactly what I was looking for in someone to play Amelie.

For James, I knew I needed someone who could have their hair slightly unkempt, their outfit kind of wrinkled, and generally disorganized in appearance and vibe. This character will be played by Male, whom I've worked on projects with before. She was enthusiastic about playing the role and I feel that she fits the character well.

Male has brown hair with slight blonde highlights and light-colored eyes, and she's short. Her real-life personality already goes quite well with her character and the fact that she has no lines and can focus on her physicality on camera is a big win since none of my actresses are in drama or AMT.

That's the latest update on my film opening!

My Project Schedule

 I have decided to make a detailed schedule to ensure I will not fall behind. While most of these are goals that I set, if I don't manage to get everything I want to be done on the set day, if I finish it by the end of the week I've set it to, I should remain on track.

It's important for me to have a schedule because it breaks up such a daunting task into smaller pieces and will allow me to stay focused on what I have to do and not get overwhelmed by this project's magnitude. My schedule will include research, planning, production, and revision time so that my whole project can be completed in a reasonable time, with time left over to make sure it's my best work.

All about queer and wlw representation in media

    In this blog post, I wanted to research queer representation in media and highlight wlw (woman-loving-woman) representation in film and TV, since my film is a romance that stars two LGBTQ+ girls and follows their relationship. 

    This research will help me not only create a realistic relationship between two girls but also allow me to be aware of harmful stereotypes that I should steer clear of in my film and opening.

History:

    In the mid-1900s, gay representation in media was all but banned from Hollywood and TV. Any instances of homosexuality were portrayed in a negative light whereby the gay person in question was a criminal, victim, or drag queen.

    This changed in some capacity in the 70s and 80s, when gay characters began appearing in some TV shows, however, they were only ever in single episodes and their sexuality was usually the problem of the one episode they were in. The story of the gay character's sexuality was usually seen through the eyes of the main character, and the main focus was how it affected the straight people in the show to know a gay person.

    The late 90s was the beginning of LGBTQ+ representation that wasn't completely harmful and stereotypical. The number of LGBTQ+ characters in media has risen greatly compared to what it once was. But these characters are often still portrayed with harmful stereotypes and are still incredibly underrepresented.

WLW (woman-loving-woman) Representation:

    In the present day, efforts have been made by many productions to include LGBTQ+ characters in their stories. Because of this, the number of shows and movies that include homosexual characters and relationships has increased dramatically. While this representation is great for the community, much of the most recent queer media that is released for wide audiences has revolved around mlm (men-loving-men) relationships. If you were to search for popular teenage LGBTQ+ films and TV shows, a vast majority would feature mainly mlm relationships at their forefronts.

    For example, some of the most successful LGBTQ+ shows and movies in recent years have been Heartstopper (2022), Young Royals (2021), Crush (2022), Call Me By Your Name (2018), Love, Simon (2018), The Half of It (2016), Moonlight (2016), and Euphoria (2019). Out of those eight productions, only three featured main characters and main love stories that were wlw. And while, yes, Heartstopper included a wlw couple, Tara and Darcy were side characters and the show focused mostly on Nick and Charlie's relationship. 

    So, while queer representation has become more commonplace, wlw couples are still overshadowed in media.

Stereotypes:

In the past, most LGBTQ+ characters were violent criminals. Today, there is much more positive representation, but many queer characters written in movies and TV shows are simply stereotypes that are harmful to the community.

One big stereotype that is incredibly harmful and widespread is that lesbians and bisexuals cannot be monogamous and are disloyal. Many lesbian characters are written as wife-stealing cheaters that will try to steal a man's husband for themselves and are incapable of staying in a committed relationship. Many people still believe that bisexuals (people who are attracted to at least two genders) want to be with everyone, not just that they are attracted to two or more genders. This misconception is damaging as many people will be biphobic (homophobic toward people who identify as bisexual) as they believe bi people to be untrustworthy and disloyal.

Members of the LGBTQ+ in the media are also often portrayed as caricatures of what many consider to be a stereotypical gay person. When many people think of a gay man, they think of a flamboyant man with a high-pitched voice, and that is often what is represented in the media. 

But on top of that, writers often make being gay a character's entire personality and arc. Most of the struggles that queer characters face in media revolve around being gay. Whether they're being bullied or coming to terms with their sexuality, most queer characters' problems are solely because of their sexuality or is their sexuality, and audiences, especially queer audiences are getting sick of it. Many people looking for good queer representation on TV or in films are looking for something where the entire story and plot is not a character's coming out story because it's been done to death.

In my film, I want to stay very far away from that. Being a part of the LGBTQ+ community will not be my character's only personality trait and the story will not be about their coming out at all. I want my film to convey that being queer is normal and not always a struggle. I want it to be a part of my characters but not their entire being and I want my characters' struggles to come from a place other than their sexual orientation.

Sources:

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, January 16). LGBT stereotypes. Wikipedia. Retrieved February 18, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_stereotypes#In_general

Cook, C. (2018). A content analysis of LGBT representation on broadcast and streaming ... UTC Scholar. Retrieved February 18, 2023, from https://scholar.utc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1133&context=honors-theses

Why is WLW content less popular than MLM? • the daily fandom. The Daily Fandom. (2022, August 7). Retrieved February 18, 2023, from https://thedailyfandom.org/wlw-content-less-popular-mlm/

Who's this movie about anyway?

Amelie:

Name inspiration/backstory: 

The song "Amelie" by Gracie Abrams describes a girl who was everything Gracie could have wanted. She wanted to spend all of her days with her and give all of her time to her, but she left and doesn't even know Gracie's name anymore and she wonders if she was all just a dream.

What drives her?:
Her ardent longing to leave her town and explore life outside of it.

Personality/Story:

    Amelie is a Type A, neurotic student. She works her butt off every day to follow her dreams of going away to the college of her dreams and leaving her hometown. She works a job, takes all AP classes, and runs multiple clubs at her school. She is what many would see and describe as perfect. But Amelie is stuck in her own head, constantly feeling like she isn't good enough, smart enough, or pretty enough. She suffers from the thoughts that plague her mind day in and day out. She turns to music, movies, and books to silence her own thoughts. She is a total bookworm and obsessed with listening to music.

    Amelie's home life is also what many would consider the stuff of dreams. She has a beautiful home, lavishly decorated. Her parents are happily married and in love. They provide for her and her older sister who is in college. Amelie has all the material possessions she could want, but her home feels empty with her workaholic parents never being around. Everything appears perfect from the outside, but Amelie craves the love and attention other kids get. Her parents constantly compare her to her sister, who is going to an Ivy League college and was in the top 1% of her class. Her sister was perfect. She was everything Amelie wanted to be, but she constantly lived in her shadow, never able to break free from it.

    Amelie didn't have many close friends, she was popular but those people weren't her friends, they were just people she could say "Hi" to in the hallways and chat with in class. She didn't have a best friend to whom she could talk to about anything and everything. She longed for it, but she liked to keep it out of her mind, focusing only on her goal. She would be out of this town in no time anyway, who needed friends when you'd be leaving soon?

James: (James is a girl)

Name inspiration/backstory: 

The song "betty" by Taylor Swift is about a boy who feels like he knows nothing and doesn't have his life figured out. He feels like he's constantly making mistakes and constantly trying to make up for them.

What drives her?: 

She wants to feel useful and do what makes her happy so she doesn't spend her whole life miserable.

Personality/Story:

    James is not perfect in any way, shape, or form. Her home life is a disaster, with two parents who, to put it nicely, despised each other, but wouldn't divorce because they "could never split up the family". James used art and music as a form of escape. When she wasn't working her job at the library, she was painting and making music. Those were her passions in life. Those were what got her through the long days and the long nights of shouts coming from down the hall. 

    James worked hard to help support her family since her parents' paychecks could barely hold on each month. She used part of her money to help out, but another part she kept just for herself, it was one of the few things she did for herself. She used that money to fund her art and her music, and also to help take care of her little sister. She usually did this in secret, in a private closet in the storage room of the library. Her boss let her have it since she was one of only two employees and she worked most of the shifts. She was dependable and bright, she simply hadn't been handed many opportunities in life.

    With all of this going on in her life, James didn't quite care about her grades. She kept them up enough to make sure she passed and graduated, but she didn't waste her time and energy on something she didn't feel was necessary to her plans for the future.

    James kept to herself, sort of a lone wolf. This was mostly by choice since she didn't find it easy to interact with other people, and caring about others was only a way to be disappointed when they inevitably hurt you. Her parents had done it countless times. It was easier not to care than to be hurt over and over again.

    She came off as abrasive and cold, but that was how she liked it. If no one wanted to talk to her, it was only that much easier to not have friends. 

___________________________________________________________________________

By meeting and falling in love, these girls learn that letting their walls down and opening themselves up to new experiences is what makes life worth living.

I watched a bunch of romance movie openings and called it research!

I wanted to watch openings that I felt reflected the same vibe as the film I am trying to create. To start off, I watched the opening of Crush. Crush opens with shots of someone drawing and lots of sketches by someone that goes by KP. This introduces the main plot point of the movie King Pun, an artist that vandalizes school property with drawings of puns. This opening helps to establish the movie's conflict without any acting or dialogue.

    In my movie, I want to use the opening not only as an introduction to my characters but also as a foreshadowing for the ending and to convey how the larger plot unfolds. I can use my props and costuming especially to tell a larger story within the scene.

                                                         

    The next opening I watched was for the TV show Heartstopper. The scene opens with upbeat music and aerial views of the school the boys attend. 

    The reason I wanted to watch this opening was that this show reflects a vibe very similar to the one I want to convey in my film. It also has incredible representation of the LGBTQ+ community which my film strives to have as the romance is between two girls. The upbeat start to the show reflects the younger audience and the light nature it has, which is how I want to start my film.

    The opening also does a great job of introducing the main character, Charlie, and what he is going through when the show begins.

                                                       

    The next movie opening I watched was 10 Things I Hate About You. This movie's opening starts with the title on a pan of the city they live in. This introduces the setting as the characters' neighborhood is shown. Music is playing to give a lighthearted vibe but that is cut off by the entrance of the main character Kat and the punky, angsty song playing in her car.

    The reason I chose to use this movie as research for how to create a movie opening is that this is one of the most popular teenage romcoms. The target audience for this movie and my movie are the same so finding out what makes this one successful could help me in trying to create my opening. 

    The use of music to establish tone and character could certainly be implemented in my project.

    The final movie I decided to watch the opening of was To All The Boys I've Loved Before. I chose this film because it was an instant success among the target audience for my film, teenagers, almost as soon as it was released on Netflix.

    I also chose this movie because I remember being incredibly intrigued and drawn in by this movie while watching it like I couldn't look away. I want this quality for my own film opening so analyzing what makes this opening so good would be a perfect way to increase the appeal of my film.

    This film opens with a voiceover, dramatic music, and a storybook quality. This is immediately interrupted and shown as the character's inner thoughts as she reads a book. The opening after this works to establish a dynamic between the characters in the film, mainly the three sisters.

    I want to include character building in my opening by showing how my characters interact with the world and how they act while they're by themselves. I think that by doing something similar to To All The Boys I've Loved Before, I could engage audiences with the characters I've created.

Portfolio Project Idea

 My Absolutely Awesome Idea

    When beginning to brainstorm this project, it was important to me to first choose a genre I wanted to work within and then a story that compelled me.

    

    The first step was pretty easy for me. The romance and coming-of-age genres are my favorites of all time. This meant that I just had to come up with an idea that I knew I wanted to write and create.

  

    Since I love to read romance novels, my first course of action was to think of all of my favorite plots and tropes in romance novels and to specifically think about which ones I wanted to incorporate into my film. One of my first decisions was that I didn't want my romance to be straight. I felt like anything I did in my film with a straight couple had been done a million times over. 

    I ultimately decided to do a queer romance between two teenage girls.

    When I decided this, I also made one thing abundantly clear in my mind: this wouldn't be a coming-out story. It's been done to death in so many queer love stories, I wanted to keep that out of mine. This wouldn't be focused on the struggles of coming out, this would simply be a romance between two people who meet.

    Now onto the main point of this post: the idea.

    My film opening will begin with a shot of a girl walking down the sidewalk, she's wearing a backpack with embroidered flowers and small keychains decorating it. She's wearing light colors reminiscent of spring or summer, and her hair is loose around her shoulders and blows in the wind as she walks casually with a book in hand. Everything is calm when she is almost run over by a person riding a bike who speeds away quickly in the direction she is heading. 

    The girl makes it to where she was headed, the library, and a shot shows the same bike that had almost squashed her in the bike rack, but she doesn't notice this. She walks to the back of the library, finds a desk to sit at, and begins to do her homework, taking a book out of her backpack and setting it on the desk. 

    When she has all of her things laid out, she gets up, grabs her book, and walks over to the return bin, where she slides the book in and walks over to the shelves of books. She searches for a bit before she finds the book she was looking for and goes to grab it. She pulls on it slightly but it doesn't budge and then it's suddenly wrenched out of her hand and goes backward. She looks through the crack in the shelf and sees a pair of eyes looking back at her. The person had just taken the book. The girl complains and walks back to her table.

    After a bit of studying and doing homework, the girl gets up to go to the bathroom, and when she returns, the book that had been taken from her grasp earlier was sitting on the desk. She sat down and opened the cover to find a bright sticky note that had a phone number and a message on it that read, "Sorry for taking this out of your hands".

    The girl looks around confused, this is when the title of the movie appears. I still haven't thought of a title but I've always been bad at that. It'll come to me eventually.

    Once the title is gone, the girl closes the book and the screen goes black. Then the light of a screen being turned on in the dark is shown as the girl is laying in bed later that night, the number from the sticky note on the screen, waiting for a message to be sent.

Music Marketing Project

 Project Reflection

     My project began with the selection of genre. My group nominated me as the person to go up and draw our genre from the lot. We drew the rock genre. With this, we began the research phase of our project. We studied two music companies and four rock artists, two per company. Our research would be the foundation for the marketing strategies we would choose when we started building our brand, so it was crucial that our research was in-depth and representative of the rock genre as a whole.

     The four case studies we did were Kaleo, John Harvie, Bon Jovi, and Imagine Dragons. My group and I felt that these artists represented many of the facets of rock music. Our research focused heavily on how these artists promote their music and grow their brands. We learned that there is an emphasis on social media promotion, especially among young, up-and-coming artists, as this is a cheap and effective way to reach a large audience and potentially go viral and garner instant success.

     Once we had completed our research, it was time to decide what we wanted our brand to be. After deliberating, we decided that our best choice was to create a young solo artist, just breaking into the music industry. We wanted to focus on social media and growing the brand in organic ways that would build a connection with fans. 

    At this stage we had a basic idea of our artist, we chose our song, Mother Mother by Tracy Bonham, and began the planning process for our music video. The first step was to decide what type of video we wanted to create. Whatever we chose had to capture our brand and the song the best, therefore we chose a mix of a promotional and storytelling music video. Our next step was to storyboard the music video. Since we had a storytelling aspect to the video, this step was crucial to getting everyone on the same page and making filming days as flawless and efficient as possible. We wrote out the basic story we wanted to tell and planned the music video frame by frame, creating a visual map of what our video would look like once completed. Not only would this storyboard come in handy while filming, but it would make editing the video much faster and easier, so this was probably one of the most important steps in the entire creation of our project.

    Now that we had the research and the storyboard done, we set two days for filming outside of school and allocated all in-class time to work on our presentation. We designated a Thursday after school and that Sunday to film the entire project. When Thursday rolled around, everyone met at our cinematographer, Male's, house to film a lot of the storytelling aspect. In this portion of the project, it was my job to act in the music video as the mom. We spent the day collecting shot after shot of Nati, our star, running out of the house, running down the street, packing her bag, and fighting with me. Once we wrapped shooting for the day, Male edited everything we had so far according to the storyboard and had a rough visual of what the video would look like. This is when we knew we were a great team and had begun creating something we could be proud to show the class.

    

    While filming on Sunday brought issues such as a lack of extras and timing conflicts, we managed to meet up at Weston Town Center and film everything associated with the storytelling portion of our video and drive over to Male's house once again to film the promotional part of our video. Once this was completed, we would be done filming and all that was left was editing and the presentation. Male got the editing done by Monday and we finally had that side of the project completed.

    The last thing to do was to work on the presentation. I made the decision to use Canva for this as, in my experience, it makes the highest quality presentations and we wanted to put our best foot forward in this project. We took our research and every detail we had about our artist and put it all into slides. The most difficult part of creating the presentation was creating the samples. I was in charge of the website and it took me a few hours to get it just the way I wanted, but in the end, I was happy with my final product.

    We began the presentation with a background on the rock genre. This brought our research and case studies into the presentation as that was the main factor that went into choosing the marketing techniques we did. Next, we talked about our artist and gave a basic introduction to her and what she does. We introduced our artist, Violet Hart, an afro-Hispanic-American teenager who releases rock music to inspire her audience to follow their dreams and not let anything stop them. 

    We followed this up with a slide we called the "3 Steps to Become Famous", giving an overview of our marketing strategy and our plan to build a successful brand from the ground up. This led to the slide where we talked about our target audience, as they are the other main reason why we chose the marketing steps we did. Our artist's target audience is males and females between the ages of 14 and 25, with a middle and high-class socioeconomic status. 

    We then detailed the social media platforms we would be using to promote Violet and that she would be most active on, including samples of posts to capture the overall theme of our brand. These samples helped create a clear picture of our overall brand image, where Violet tries to stay close and connected to her fans at all times.

    Violet's website is also a main way in which she keeps her audience up to date. Tour dates, links to her storefront, merchandise, CDs, and music videos are all featured on the website. 

    Ultimately, this project was very successful because of my group's diligence and hard work. While there were bumps in the road to creating our final pieces, we got there in the end with good communication and dedication. One thing I learned from this project is to have a good schedule when working on such a large project and to have great communication. Communicating with each other allowed us to meet after school and coordinate everything we needed to get done and when it had to be done in an efficient way. If there was anything I take away from this project that I would use in future projects, it would be to always plan out in detail what it is you plan to do and break large endeavors up into smaller, more manageable chunks. This helps me with grasping the scale of a project and complete it within a set time frame. Overall, this project really helped me with communication and working on large-scale projects.