Costumes

 Each character in the film will be an homage to tropes commonly used in early 2000s chick flicks. My character for example will be a play on the girly-girl character. I will be wearing a pink plaid skirt and a white halter top. I will also wear a pair of pink heels along with a pink purse. While you don't have to just wear pink to be a "girly-girl," this will make it clear to the audience the role my character is playing. The pink represents love and femininity.

The next costume to go over is Gianna's. She will be playing the "nerd." She is wearing darker colors to represent her studious nature. She is also wearing a plaid skirt to show that while we are different in personalities, we are ultimately all still going through the same teenage struggles. She will also have her hair back in a headband to show that she does not care about appearance. She will also be wearing glasses to play into the stereotype. 

Barbara is playing the responsible mom friend. Her role in this film is to be the "driver." We wanted her to have a more mature look. We also wanted to make sure we stuck with the skirt pattern among us. She is wearing a floral skirt to represent her friendliness and a cardigan to represent how she is the mom friend as that is a common accessory with moms. She also has heels. 

Typography

 An opening title is very important. Especially if it is one of the first things the audience sees in the film. Choosing the typography for this film was something we knew had to be taken very seriously. It sets the overall tone for the film.

 The vibe we were going for was girly and Y2K. It also needed to be authentic. However, we also wanted make sure it was easy to read. We played with a few cursive options but then decided it may be difficult for the audience to read. The looping of the fonts while appealing to the eye, are not realistic in the long run. Then we tried a type-writer font. Barbara and Gianna liked this one. Mia and I did not because we thought it was basic and we have seen that font in other films before. We needed something that was original, fit the vibe, and visually appealing. Mia and I then chose another font that we felt worked. Since we had a tie, we asked our teacher to pick the winner. She ended up picking the font Mia and me liked best. 

The Opening title is... Drumroll please...

Going Awol

Location Scouting

 While this film will be short, we still have a fairly big amount of locations. This is due to the plot and the character'a choices and motivations. 

First up we have Mia's house. Due to her lack of pets (only one dog) and a spacious room, we landed on using her room. This is used in the opening scene where my character is waking up for school.

Then we have the car. This is used multiple times in the film. It is first seen when she pulls up to "my" house. We decided to use Barbara's car because we can out the top down which will fit the aesthetic of a chick-flick. We can blast music and get scenic shots from using it.

 Ramble Wood Drive and our school parking lot is next up on the list. These locations will be less used in the film. They will only be used for short amounts of time

Finally we have the mall. We decided to use Coral Square mall. This mall is closest to all of us location wise. It will also be decently empty due to some popular stores closing. The last few times I have been it has been not as popular as it used to be. This was we can film it without the stress of it being crowded. We can take multiple takes and not feel stressed. 

Music

I never thought having a sister that makes music would come in handy, but it did today. For this film we were stuck on the notion that we had to use royalty-free music. We felt that this limited what we had to use and would impact the film negatively. Music is very important to film and this factor was not something that we were taking lightly. We knew that it could make or break the chick flick. 

Then, I had an epiphany. As a hobby outside of school, my sister Brooke Sause makes music. It isn't your average teenage garage band music. She flies out to New York and works with a renowned producer. She has a song in her repertoire that gives off the perfect early 2000s vibes that we are trying to achieve. Her song Dream Boy is upbeat, centers around romance, and would bring the film to a whole other level. While she is my sister, nothing is guaranteed so of course I asked her manager... which is my other sister. Once we were given permission I knew we had found the perfect soundtrack. 

Timeline

 Timeline 

February 3rd - Audition Date

February 4th - Cast List Released

February 7th - Location Scouting

February 7-11 Figure out staging

February 14-18 Figure out soundtrack

February 19-20, 26-27 Filming

If need more footage, March 5-6

March 1-27 Editing 

Film finished by March 27th, a week before the initial due date in case of any failures occur April 3

Holding Auditions

 With a character name like “hot guy”, whoever plays the character will have a lot to live up to. Looks weren’t necessarily the most important part. It was necessary that whoever played this role should have charisma and confidence. 

Barbara, Gianna, Mia, and I all understood how important it was to cast this role correctly. Especially because it was the only role that would not be played by one of us. This is why we decided to hold auditions. We limited the casting pool to guys in our school that we were acquainted with. We wrote down a list of guys we think would fit the part. That was definitely the hardest part. We pulled them out of class one by one (with permission from their teachers of course) and brought them to the school’s main lobby for the audition. The audition was fairly simple, they just had to look at the camera and smile. This surprisingly was difficult for some which definitely resulted in a few giggles.

At the end of the day we decided to give the role to junior Max Penn. There are many reasons for this decision. First of all, he has theatre experience and has played my love interest in a past school production. This way we knew we were already comfortable working together. Also, he seemed very excited to be auditioning and possibly get the role. Finally, we knew we could count on him to show up when we needed to film which is of course very important.

With the casting complete, I am very excited to see how this chick-flick turns out. 

https://youtu.be/lGKSWZDWW6c