Group Meeting #2

     Today, we just had another group meeting. In the beginning, no one really talked but a small conversation started to form. Throughout this group meeting we really didn't talk about much even though we should have. There were six of us at firs but one went home not even 5 minutes in. I didn't really talk about my project as I'm assuming my group are all friends. The girl who sat next to me had asked me a few questions and I answered. She didn't really seem interested though. I will try to describe everyone's project but it will be hard since I was sitting all the way at the end of the group and everyone was almost whispering. (P.S. I don't know anyone's name...)

First person

    This first person, the one who sat next to me, is doing a coming of age. It's about a girl who just came home from a graduation dinner and at home, everyone surprised her. She starts to get sad and goes to the bathroom. Her friend then sends her a collage of their high school memories. The main character calls her friend and says "Let's do this one more time." 

    I think this idea is fun and cute but I didn't tell her that. I was shy. As she was explaining the story, I thought it would be longer than two minutes. I still do. She isn't finished filming so there is no final results, but I'm thinking the film opening may be a little rushed. 

Second person

    I truly apologize. I could not hear a single word she said. To be fair, when everyone was explaining their project, it didn't seem as if they were explaining it to me, just the others closer to them. 

    All I know about this project is that there is this guy walking and he sees a "help wanted" sign. He goes to the place the flyer had said and the place is haunted. That is all I know... I do think this story is interesting and I can't wait to see it when I view everyone's project.

OH MY GOSH! So, I'm actually typing this blog post in class, AS we are in the group meeting (we finished) and I just asked this girl in my group about her project and she said "There's this 'help wanted sign'"... So, I actually mixed two projects together...

SO! The second person's project is about a haunted house.. and that's all I know.

Third person

    OKAY! Now this is the "help wanted sign" girl. So, I kind of got confused when she was talking. I swear it's not me, everyone talks so quiet. But, her story is a rom-com. Basically, this guy sees a "help wanted" sign 😓 and he goes to the location of the flyer and he sees this beautiful girl. Don't hate me but... that's all I know. 

    The whole film is about the guy and girl love journey?.?... I hope. But, I think it's cute... I just don't think that whole falling in love part would be in the first two minutes of a film.

Forth person.

    I have no clue. Thankfully, this person gave her blog post in the beginning, so now I can look over it and figure out what her idea was.

OH MY GOSH... So I actually don't have that persons' blog post and I don't know their name... Apparently the blog URL I had was the "Help wanted" sign idea. Maybe this is a sign that I need help...Well, I don't have a fourth person.. so I guess this is a goodbye.

Please help me.

CCR Question #1 Research

     Where did the time go... It's already March and we're talking about the final inclusions for the project. We have to create two creative critical reflections that reflect the project we made. I already know the first question I am going to answer. 

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

    I already knew that I wanted to create either a horror or a drama film before I even researched about them in my blog post. But the story my group and I came up with... isn't any of those genre, it's SCI-FI.

    I now get why it falls under this genre. It's a time loop. 

Out of 60 science fiction conventions, time loop is the 19th. I think this could be something I could mention in my CCR.

    For the second part of the question, my group and I already know that the social issue is mental health. This was our first idea and I'm glad that we stuck to it.

    The second part of the question asks how our chosen genre represent social issues. To answer this, the time loop builds on the characters mental health. Alice didn't want to be in therapy in the first place, but she ends up coming back involuntarily. It is only getting worse for her. After each time loop, she is filled with more rage but also confusion and sadness. She is stuck in one of the places she truly hates. 

    When filming my CCR, I will definitely go more in depth with this question and its subtopics (I think that's what it is called...) I know I already have a filming idea for the CCR but it is a reference to something that many will probably not understand😞. But anyway, I hope I fit these CCR's into my very non busy schedule, but the due date is hunting me down and it will catch up.

Resources

https://nofilmschool.com/science-fiction-genre

https://helpfulprofessor.com/social-issues-examples/

No Music This Time

     Who doesn’t love music. I mean there’s so many options to choose from, how could you not find something you like. I could listen to music 24/7. But maybe not in the film opening. 

    Grace had finished editing the main parts of the project and…. I wasn’t a fan. You can probably guess what I didn’t like. Well, it was the music. Grace put, I think, violin music/ sounds and I just didn’t think it fit right in this scenario. From my perspective, it sounded more like a film trailer, rather than a film opening. I wasn’t going to let it go, so I told Grace. She didn’t mind removing it, but Max did. He really liked the music in the background. 

    Of course there were other things I commented on, like the sound effects and the black screen at the end, but my group seemed to agree. But back to the sound, we didn’t know what to do. Keep the music, or get rid of it. This is mainly it for the music disagreement, but I think we will talk more about it. But I’m not done. 

    For this project, I am in charge of lighting. Like mentioned previously, I have no clue on how to do this. I found this video on YouTube that talks a little bit about some lighting techniques. 

https://youtu.be/pdjNBAMaA0c?si=jJ-qGOmBQej_9q3P

There isn’t much of it so it will keep looking.

    Okay, I found two videos but I realized that they were from the same creator so I will link his page so that I could keep going back to him.

https://youtube.com/@adobemadesimple?si=9YdGuLKv1reksory

    His account is names “Adobe Made Simple, so IT BETTER BE SIMPLE. I can’t wait to start editing so hopefully Max and Grace finish in time. 

    I know this blog post is short so I will copy Grace and add a quote from a movie. Now, I told her that she should put this quote but she didn’t want to, so I will be putting it into mine.

“Just because my dreams are different than yours, doesn’t mean they’re unimportant.”  - Meg March, Little Woman (2019)

That’s a wrap!

     Okay, now that filming is over, it is time for editing. My group and I already decided what each person is contributing to the project. Grace is in charge of putting each clip together, that means in the right order and making sure the timing is right. Rachel is in charge of sound, Max is putting in all of the credits, and I am in charge of lighting.

    I have no idea how to do lighting. I did not tell my group that but I WILL NOW fail them. I will do my research to create the best lighting you have ever seen. 

    Grace has already started editing the clips together and I’m so excited. I’m also kind of embarrassed as I’m mainly going to see my face. I already saw one clip and I look U.G.L.Y. Hopefully no one pauses the video on my face😊. Back to the point, Grace had majority of the editing done. She showed a Timelapse of her editing and oh my gosh , my group and I were dying laughing. Some of the faces she made were so funny (NOT BULLING, she also thought it was funny.) We had her send those videos to us so we could include them in the blog posting and you will see them later in this post. 

    Even though I’m editing the lighting, and that’s the last of our edits, I decided to help Max out and look for some fonts that we could maybe try out for the credits. Nothing was perfect. I looked and looked but nothing stood out. I gave up. I found one but I’m not sure if Max is going to use it. I’ll leave it up to him… 

My group and I sometimes (a lot of times) get off topic and start yapping about random things. For example, Stranger Things (the best show ever created), Five Nights at Freddy’s, and so much more. But this time, we were talking about the CCR. I will talk more about that in another blog post but all I wanted to say was that Max came up with the craziest ideas ever and we couldn’t stop laughing. I hope he follows along with it though so I can have a good laugh.

Timelapse of editing

OOTD (Outfit of the Day)

 I know this blog post is a little late to talk about the outfit choices of the characters seen in the two- minute film opening but I will be talking about it anyway. 

T. Jacob’s 

Chill guy

The first idea that we had for this project, T.Jacobs was never even a character… so I never put him in my character post. But, since all of our planning and filming is done, his character is final. In my group and I’s WhatsApp chat, Max, who plays T .Jacob’s, has this “chill guy” character as his profile picture. So, as a joke, I said “you should dress like chill guy.” And he did… so that was the inspiration for T. Jacob’s. Since this character isn’t really a big part of the plot, we felt that we could make the character a “chill guy.” That’s why his outfit is so casual.

T. Jacob’s outfit

Dr. Shultz

Dr. Shultz outfit

I previously talked about how this character, Dr. Shultz, was going to dress during production and I think Rachel, who plays this character, did a good job. Although her shoes could’ve been more professional, the white top was exactly what I had in mind. To get the more professional look, we wanted Dr. Shultz to wear glasses. The day of filming, Rachel put on Grace’s glasses but since they were a prescription, we decided to have Rachel wear the glasses on her head. Additionally, we had Rachel put her hair in a claw clip as it added to the professional look we envisioned. I’m glad this look was well put together. Although a few changes could have been, I think in the future, professional looks will include some comfortability😭. 

Alice

Alice’s outfit

I think I captured Alice’s style pretty well. I mean I didn’t have an option when it came to picking an outfit as Alice’s style isn’t similar to mine but I made it work. Mentioned in a previous post, I decided to cut the neck line of the long sleeve shirt to give it the grunge style. Now that I’m thinking about it, I looked at my peers blog posting on Alice’s clothing style and I think I went in a slightly different route. Mine was more “punk” while theirs were more “cute grunge” but like I said, I didn’t really have an option. No one said anything negative about my outfit so I think it was good but I wish I could have done a little more. Fortunately, I hadn’t gotten my nails done in weeks, so they were grown out, and I had bitten some off. I used this towards Alice’s character as it is seen in the first clip where she is bitting her nails. Unfortunately, I recently got my nails done in a whole different color… so if we need to reshoot… Grace will have to edit my nails. For my hair, I already knew I wanted to have a messy bun (and not like those cute ones.) While filming, I kept thinking that my hair was going to be different in every shot, but I haven’t noticed it yet. I just hope my choice of clothing was able to capture Alice’s personality and character.

Some Change

 In this blog post, I will be talking about some of the changes that were made before filming took place.

Living room

So, my group and I filmed at Grace’s house so she did all of the work with the setting before the day we filmed took place. (But it turned out amazing.) Grace had rearranged her living room, as that’s where we were going to film, and made it look like a therapy room. I’m not sure what her living room looked like before but oh my gosh, she had the exact furniture we needed. 

Outfit

After I was done putting on the outfit that I decided Alice would wear, I was staring in the mirror and I felt that it was off. I don’t wear baggy long sleeve shirts but I always see other people wearing them on social media so I tried to pose how they did in the shirt. It still looked off… I remembered that tucking in half of your shirt to make it look like one side was cropped and the other side wasn’t was trending and so I tried it… Of course, not everything you see on social media is going to look like real life. Or maybe it was just me who had no idea how to make the tucking shirt idea work. The only solution I had left… was to cut off the neckline of the shirt. Not going to lie, I had no hesitation in doing this. I mean, I never wore the shirt since…2022, so I felt as if it wasn’t a big deal. After you finish cutting the neckline, you slightly pull the part where you cut away from each other. So, I did this… and I stretched it too much. BUT I had no other shirt to wear so I just had to go with it.

Phone wallpaper 

This one was short and simple. Right before we were going to film one of the scene where Alice gets a mysterious call, i realized that my phone wallpaper may be visible. My original wallpaper has me on it (and one of my favorite actress, Maya Hawke, who I met at a meet and greet😁) and I was wearing my non baggy and non loose-fitting outfit. Something Alice wouldn’t wear. I simply went on Pinterest and looked up “emo phone wallpaper” (maybe that wasn’t the right choice of word😅) but hey! I found a wall paper that somewhat suited the character. It was black and off white and it was a spiral. The reason that me group and I named the character “Alice” was because of Alice and Wonderland (trust me when I say this... my group and I though of the name before we saw the blog sample post that had the same character name for the same exact reason.) To be honest, the picture I used for the wallpaper was one of the first pictures that popped up and since I didn’t want to spend so much time on finding a wallpaper, I just decided to pick that one.

Mysterious caller

Okay…this one, my group and I were really disappointed. Days before filming, we had contacted Willem Dafoe through some sort of website and… no response. (I had a slight feeling it wasn’t going to work but I wanted to keep my hopes up high) It’s not a situation we’re stressed or struggling on, but we just wanted something to add that only a few people would think of. So we’re back to plan A… we’re going to use Grace’s voice as the mysterious caller. I do wish that whatever website I contacted responded (Although it literally said it would take around four hours for a response) but since my group had originally thought of having Grace as the caller, it wouldn’t be as if it were our last option. (I’ve been trying to get the picture to be clear but no matter how many times, it’s still blurry. However, it is a screenshot of the message I had sent to the website. This picture was previously shown in the different blog posting of mine)