Davids project

Today I filmed and wow what a roller-coaster. The day started with my crush actress telling me the morning of filming that she could only film until 12:30 PM, we were starting filming at 11 AM. I can not express how stressed i was that I only had an hour to film with her (assuming setting up takes 30 min, which it did). The location I picked was perfect, but the owner of the house was out of the house until 11:30, so me and my actors couldn't get in. My crush actress didn't even show up at all. She texted me at 1:00 saying she for sure could not make it... How in the world could someone cancel on something they committed too two hours after they were supposed to show up? Either way I quickly called one of my best friends to fill in her place and she came as soon as possible but she couldn't wear what I originally wanted "sofia" to be wearing, so instead of white with a black jacket, she wore green with a black jacket. green is complementary to pink and it symboliz...

Okay so this week has been a hard one, on Wednesday I saw how unprepared I was and pushed filming back a few days to Saturday. But a lot has changed these past few days. To start all these changes I will talk about the story first. To condense my opening like I wanted too, I thought of the significance of the mother and daughter scene and if I truly needed it to show my characters development and relationship problems through this scene, and it wasn't necessary. But with the mother and daughter scene gone, there was no purpose to the "Amile" style opening narration, so I also took that out. too add to these changes I also made the time of year summer. Instead of the two characters in love meeting in school, I made the story all in one setting so that I dont have to rely on two areas to film. This change also supports the idea of Rowins whole world, or at least everything she finds extremely important in her life is all in her house, she has no reason to leave or sociali...

Yesterday I went to Goodwill! I had an amazing time with friends and even found some clothes I liked... but I found nothing  for my actors to use. Since I only have the father actor I only have his size, for the rest I was going to buy a medium or small and hope for the best. I know it seems dumb to buy clothes without knowing sizes but, I DIDN'T THINK OF THAT :) . Either way I think I should probably postpone filming because not only do I not have actors, but I barely even have a script. Me being a dumb lazy senior did not think it would be this difficult to gather actors and feel prepared for this project. This week I will SOLELY focus on finding actors and making a script, I need to get the necessities for filming done so I can worry about editing and details later. As for the music in my film, I took an executive decision (after noticing how hard garage-band is and how IMPOSSIBLE it is to make good music) to instead of make my music, find royalty free and copyright free music...

My opening is too long. I have reviewed it and got some help from peers and i believe too much is happening in my opening. This is a small rough draft i made during class. I didn't have a template so i decided to use regular paper and make boxes. (Im no artist, so please do not judge) I need to condense my opening, I have four major scenes. opening narration  mom and daughter  father and daughter  girl and her crush The opening is the narrator and the amile style opening with the narrator explaing the importance of this exact moment in time. Then it will go into the backstory of the protagonist abandonment issues and her mother problems when the mom leaves her and her father alone. It will go into the next scene with a graphic match of the daughter crying but this time she will be older and then the father will come into the scene, they will have a conversation then go to school, it will change into the crush scene, the girl will see her crush and have a small ...

Hey! Welcome back to the blog where I show you how i slowly become insane! We now have a set film day, march 29, I can not be more excited but also nervous at the same time. On the 25th I plan on going to goodwill to see if I can find the clothing for my actors. Im first going to ask to see their closet to see if I can save money by using their clothes. As I talked about in an earlier post, im going to color coordinate my characters and give them meaning in what they wear and how they present themselves. the filming date is closing in and im trying to make myself feel more prepared but it really is not helping one bit. As for the Opening credits, I had an idea to use items that have importance in the story to almost foreshadow the story. I give the audience a taste of what to lookout for without revealing its importance. I had the idea of putting a picture of the family on the piano but make it so the mother is not visible because of glare from sunlight. A small update on a...

Good news regarding the actual filming, WE GOT A LOCATION! My good friend Heather has the perfect house I had in mind. her house has a piano (that ties into the love story of the parents) and a stairwell that i wanted in some shots of the father and daughter getting ready for school A few updates on the story are that the day is going to be the first day of school. I still need to find an actress for my protagonist. To make matters slightly worse my "crush" actress dropped out because an unexpected family issue. I need to find a replacement as soon as possible. I have found an actor for the father of the protagonist which helps. I need an actress for the mom but I would like to find my protagonist first so i can base the "look" on the mother and show some type of relationship without saying anything. With the location out of the way I just need figure out the rest of the story (completely) and make an actual script for the opening. I am currently asking around f...

I have worked on the actual plot and now opening dialogue for a while now. I constantly have this battle between making progress and getting stuck to end up finding something else on the project that i need to figure out completely. I wrote out the plan i wanted to pursue. My idea is heavily based on the Amilie film opening. My film starts with a black screen, the music starts off low and builds up to a constant background sound. The narrator will state the date, time, and even second, then will list things happening at that exact moment, then end with "a girl asks her mother a very important question" and then my protagonist, as a young girl (5-10 years old) will ask her mother "how did you know you were in love with dad?" and a close up of the mother responding with an anecdote about how the two met and fell in love, this is supposed to leave you with a happy warm feeling but then quickly turn the feeling around when the mother abruptly dismisses her own story...

On both of these subjects, I draw a blank. I have spent hours questioning what my opening scene music will sound like and I cant think of anything that I really love for my film. The only song I think I like enough to base my opening music on would be inspired by "married Life" from the animated film UP . The beginning of the music is what hooks me into falling in love with this song. Its the perfect mix of upbeat with old-timey to paint a picture of a happy life and happy couple going about their life and content until it starts to slow down. I would have a small 30 second music piece that would combine upbeat fun sounds with almost a romantic feeling by adding violin and piano beautifully.... now here is the hard part. I don't know how to use any music or instrument application AT ALL! To solve this gigantic road bump in the music process im going to ask my good friend Daniel (who did this project last year ) how to use garage band and make musical piece for my f...

Color is one of the first things I try to look out for in a film, it gives a sense of past, present, and future of the character or scene. Over the last few days I have been looking at color and the tone/ mood I want to set for my film. the film is comical but also about a high school relationship. To compliment the love aspect i decided warm colors once the protagonist meets her crush, and faded bland colors before. but as for color correction it will be warm and give off almost like a foreign film vibe. But what i cant seem to get down are the colors im assigning to each character. I read and saw a video essay about Edgar Wright (I know i keep bringing him up but he has influenced how i see comedy a lot over the years) and it explained how he assigns colors to his characters.  Link to video essay   I felt that the main character should be red, from dark red before the crush and almost a pink after the crush to show passion. The father should be grey to symbolize his gloomy e...

After beating myself up about finding a genre i felt that going with the subject i know best would be the most beneficial way to think up a story and start my opening! me being the lovable funny teen i am, i decided a comedy would be the best route but not as influenced by Edgar Wright as i first expected. i did research on his style of comedy and how he shows it and i didnt think i could love his work any more then i already did but i saw a video a fan made about his style of comedy and how he shows it and i was blown away.this is a link to the video-   Edgar Wright comedy choices Once i decided on a comedy i did research on the conventions of the genre. From what I've seen a lot of the modern day comedies that show in theaters are mostly cookie cutter comedy films that all follow the same style and practically the same characters played by different actors and given a different name. If i can not find anything that fits the comedy genre and Isn't a copy of other films, ...

While i was brain storming and researching i felt that i needed to set deadlines for myself to give a small nudge toward finding out what i want my film opening to be about. I decided to follow a guide I saw on a previous students blog and try to keep up with the deadlines and keep myself focused on the task at hand. This is what his schedule looked like. Instead of splitting story and movie research i decided to put the two together and make that the first two weeks of my project. i still do not know anything about my short film, i keep looking at movie openings and previous students film openings for inspiration but i could not find anything that felt right. Edgar Wright keeps appearing in the back of my head telling me to do a comedy but i want to try making comedy my second genre and not my main focus. Hopefully i find the genre soon so i can start planning.

Trying to formulate ideas about my film opening is a lot harder then i expected. i was told about this project the first week of school. back then i had many ideas about my film opening and how i wanted it to look. When i first enrolled in this class i knew very little about all the details and love that a film needs in order to thrive, but throughout the year i have gained a new appreciation for all media. As i sit in my room thinking about all my "amazing" ideas i had in the begging of the year, i feel as if my past ideas are not what present me wants to make. At first i wanted to follow one of my favorite directors (Edgar Wright) style and play off of his key stylistic choices he shows in most of his films. but then after researching his style and how he shows his message i decided i wanted to go a different route. Even if i decide not to go with his comedic style i still feel like my film opening is going to be influenced by his work greatly. one of my favorite movies ...