LINK TO FINAL PRODUCT

https://youtu.be/uVJxjZ92-UU https://youtu.be/uVJxjZ92-UU

CCR Interview

 

CCR Infographic

CCR Prezi

 Prezi Link for your viewing pleasure:)

https://prezi.com/view/KDHEafA2ac5AJ3DP0lNf/

CCR Podcast

Link to my Podcast: Podcast Link

I chose to make a podcast for one of my Creative Critical Reflections. I made it because podcasts are something I listen to often. I was educated on how they usually go. One of my favorite Podcasts is Office Ladies so I kind of based it off of that. They also talk about the behind the scenes of filming. One thing I knew I had to include was the idea of having a "sponsor." I chose to use the company audible because it is a very popular sponsor in Podcasts I listen to. This makes the Podcast seem more authentic. I made a script for the podcast so I would have a general Idea of what I was going to say. However, I did riff and change things up a bit to make it more natural. I just acted like I was talking to a friend which made recording it less intimidating. 

 Here is the Script for my Podcast:  

Hello! Welcome to the official Kelly’s Keyboard Knowledge podcast. Before we begin let's take a minute to thank our sponsors: Audible. Audible is an online platform where you can listen to audio books. It is only $7 a month for hundreds of books at your fingertips. I'm currently listening to the book Catcher in the Rye. Use code KELLY for 1 month free!

Alright, let’s talk about how my new movie represents today’s society. In Going Awol we show a diverse group of high school friends that reflects friend groups today in Gen Z. Too often teenagers aren’t correctly represented in the media. In our film, teens are played by actual teens. We arent setting false and unachievable standards for looks. We still do play into teen movie tropes though. We have my character the girly girl, common in every chick flick. Along with that we have the punk, nerd, and mom friend. We thought playing into these rather than straying away from them added to the comedic aspect of the film.

We would engage with audiences through social media. The targeted audience for chick flicks is younger generations anyway. We would use twitter and interact with the fans. Posting on Tiktok especially is important in today’s day and age. If something blows up there, it can become famous in real life. Also with the context of the film, we would distribute it through Netflix. Netflix is the perfect place for it because millions of people use it that would be interested in the film. All age groups use streaming services. Also with the pandemic they wouldnt have to leave ther house if they are hesitant due to CoronaVirus. 

Throughout this project I learned A LOT about angles, lighting, and the amount of work that goes into making a movie. It definitely made me more interested in analyzing movies when I am watching them and seeing what I notice. 

We used technology like cameras, cell phones, and the online software IMovie. Technology played a very large role in our film. 

Focus Group

 Nick Ruspantini ( Gianna’s brother):

•Music is a very good selection for the theme

•The beginning montage sequence is very well shot and engaging to get the audience's attention

•Some of the cuts are abrupt and some dialogue is stuttered because of it

•Not much of a climax because there was no build-up 

•All the props were on point

•believable sets of the room 

Diane Gillan (my mom)

•Says we all look beautiful 

•Mia’s editing skills are very impressive 

•The costumes are perfect

•Says she would watch it in real life 

Cristian Escalona

•Good interesting angles 

•Likes the rearview mirror shot

•Unique variety of angles 

•Likes the diversity of having Matthew as the "hot guy"

Brooke Sause (my sister)

•Great music choice 

•Camera quality is “fire”

•Some acting could be improved 

•The scene walking in the mall is her favorite scene

•Wishes she could get more from the love interest 

Ryan Ugalde

“The intro looks pretty good. I’d fix the logistic problem like Matt’s noticeability and the pacing is a bit fast but other than that I think i’m definitely in for a romantic movie.”

Poster Ideas

 Posters are very important when it comes to marketing a film. I myself have a few movie posters hanging around my room. These posters all perfectly express the aesthetic and vibe of the film. One of my favorite posters I have is The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Whenever I look at it I instantly get flashbacks to watching the film. This poster is not only beautiful but highlights all of the characters and shows their personalities. This is the type of poster I would want for our film. 

The color scheme of our poster I believe should be pink, purple, and yellow. These are all very bright colors and fit the film. The pink will represent love & the girlish tendencies of my character. The purple represents the cheerful & whimsical energy the film has. The yellow represents the bright nature all of the characters have and the happiness the film possesses. We need to stray from any colors that seem dreary. I believe bright blue may also look nice but blue is so often associated with sad I do not want to give the wrong idea.

As for what should be on the poster, I think we should try to highlight all of the characters. Using a still from the film may be a good idea. I am thinking a still from us first walking into the mall. I do not want a simplistic poster because that is typically not the type of posters chick flicks have. We could show the love interest and me on the poster because we are the main characters but I do not thing that is the right thing to do. I believe that chick flicks are a celebration of femininity and that is what the poster needs to express. We also need to be careful that we don’t try to put too many things on the poster and it becomes cluttered. It needs to be easy to see form afar as well, that is very important. 

Next week, I will begin the editing process with my group and hopefully have our final poster!  

Lighting

 Lighting plays a crucial role in this film. We knew we need to use high key lighting. High key lighting refers to less contrast between dark tones and brighter areas. This includes brightly lit subjects, soft shadows. Fill light to increase the amount of ambient light to reduce contrasting. The larger the light source, the softer the shadows will look. The smaller the light source, the opposite will occur. 

The use of high key lighting is perfect for our film. As a Chick Flick we needed to to be very bright. I used the movie Mean Girls as inspiration for the lighting, especially for the mall scene. The scene where the plastics walk into the mall is exactly what I imagined for us. 

https://youtu.be/eKUlOEHu7Uc

For this film I wanted to stray away from low key lighting. Even though my character wakes up at 6, we ended up filming that scene around 12ish. That way we can ensure there is no darkness from the morning dusk and we had full sunlight streaming through the windows. 

Low key lighting is a great contrast between dark and light areas with majority of scene in shadow. This results in darker shadows, few amounts of whites and mid-tones. Creates a dramatic feeling, and draws audience eye towards part of composition. Mysterious moods can be observed from this. There is nothing mysterious and dark about our film. 

Although most films use a lighting prop, we did not use one. All of our scenes outside turned out beautiful regardless. In fact, I think the natural light makes it more authentic. I’m very proud how the lighting in our film turned out.

Change of Plans

 This film gave us a reality check to how things do not always go as planned. While this can be stressful, it is realistic to how real films are made. But like what good directors do, we all adjusted. Everything in our film still turned out wonderful and I am very grateful that I worked with such a quick thinking group of people. The problems we faced dealt with time constraints, actors, costumes, our schedule, and hair. Even with these changes, I couldn't imagine it any other way.

The biggest issue we faced was the change of actors. We held audit6ions a few weeks ago and decided on my friend Max Penn to play the role of "Hot Guy." Out of all of the actors that auditioned we found that he was best for the role. I was friends with him so we already had a connection and he has experience in theater. We had hopes that he would be prepared and ready to take on this role. However, something happened last minute. He texted our group chat we used to talk about the film and bared the bad news. He was sick and unable to plan on the day we filmed. We pondered changing the date we planned to film on, but we were already borrowing a camera from our teacher for that day. We decided to look back at the auditions we held and looked to find the next best choice. That is when we landed on Matthew Gordon. He had a great audition too. We are also all friends or at least familiar with him. While he has no acting experience, we believed that he could take on the role. While this was a big change, he ended up doing great. We are all very pleased with his performance. Thank you Matthew for stepping up and I hope Max feels better!

Another thing that changed is we had to cut a scene from the film. We had planned a scene in the beginning of the film with my character and their parent. We had Britney (me) running out of the house while her parent is trying to get her to eat breakfast. We added this scene because we noticed something funny as a common theme in chick-flicks. Characters will always have a full-breakfast ready for them at the table and they will leave it untouched without eating it. We decided to play off of this and do a scene similar. I filmed a scene with Mia's dad and I thought it went great. However, we ended up having to cut it for time because we only have 2 minutes for the film. Another scene we had to cut was us trying on clothes at the mall. This we did not film because by that point in production, we figured that there was no time for it based on how things were going. 

Another thing that did not go as planned was hair and makeup. I planned to straighten my hair for the filming date. I ended up being at my fathers house where I do not own a straightener. I had to work with my curly hair. Another thing that did not go as planned was the use of rhinestones. They ended up being difficult to put on and didn't look the way we planned. We decided we were better off without. 

Makeup

 For my makeup, we wanted it to be girly and 'showy' as possible. We are thinking pink sparkly eyeshadow to make my eyes and skirt pop out to the viewers. Maybe a light brown as well to make my green eyes pop. It is important to make me stand out from the rest of the characters. We also wanted to use rhinestones. This use of rhinestones is inspired from the TV show Euphoria. They use makeup to express the characters inner thoughts and feelings and we wanted to do the same. Makeup is important in film because it helps establish characters. For example, my character is a “girly girl” and cares strongly about her appearance. That is why I will be wearing more makeup than the rest of the characters. It is important that i stand out to support the trope of a “girly girl.” 

https://youtu.be/PzPtTPtW-qg

Gianna will definitely not be overdoing the makeup as she is the more nerdier character. She will have 'light' makeup on and perhaps lip gloss. Nothing too crazy. Her glasses would block any possible eye makeup anyways.

Barbara will be wearing light makeup as well. Something a teenager would wear to a typical day in school, nothing extravagant.

Mia's makeup is going to have to be more darker in style because of her aesthetic. Either black eyeliner or just no eyeshadow and just mascara. Her character doesn’t necessarily care about her appearance but still wants to be different from the others. 

Lip gloss should be on apart of all our characters makeup just because lip gloss is very girly, and always reapplied by girls. It also was very common in the early 2000s which out film is inspired by. 

Choosing the production company name

 To make deciding the production name fair, we all decided to make a google survey. We all had the task to send it to friends & family. Because this could create bias, I didn’t tell them which one was mine. We had the form up for voting for about an hour. Then, we closed it and were able to determine who the winner was amongst the people.

Picking production company names that people can easily remember and associate with your films is a must. That is why I was anxious to see who the winner was. Other than mine, my favorite name created by my friends was Mia’s “Flight Existence.” Her name was associated with the fact that when you watch a movie you are taken out of reality and into another world. This is something the audience will relate to and it is also a catchy name. It was important that the name made sense and also seemed professional.

Mia's sentimental production name ended up winning. Although, Gianna and Barbara both believe her dad, Tito, fudged the numbers in order for this name to win. I do not and think it deserved the win. Congratulations Mia and the new name 'Flight Existence'. The poll numbers were 30.3% for Flight Existence, 27.3% for both RisingShine Films and Promiscuous Pictures. Last place was 15.2% for B25. 

Now that we have our final production name, it will be featured in the opening of our AICE Media Studies film project that we will begin filming this Saturday. We are ecstatic to begin the filming process and plan on borrowing a camera for this production. We are narrowing down a checklist to ensure our filming day is as smooth as possible, and successful.

Production Company Name

 Every production needs a production name. Our group individually came up with our own idea of a company name and hope to finalize the one next time we meet. We hope to all agree on one, and if it doesn't work out then maybe we will combine our top two choices.

Film is something that is very special to me and brings me comfort in dark times. Some of my favorite movies are Lady Bird,  Eighth Grade, The Farewell, The Florida Project, 20th Century Women, and Room. The one thing that all of the movies have in common is that they are all made by the company A24. I decided that whatever name i decided on should be paying an homage to it. 

I tried to put together film names that made sense as a production name. Some ideas I had were:

-Ladybird Productions

-Room full of women

-Farewell Films

-Eighth Grade Project

I then realized that the answer was right under my nose: B25 Films. It has the same cool ring to it that A24 has and means something to me. We will be voting on the Production Company name next class. I hope I win! 

Filming Checklist

 We all didn’t have professional cameras and we thought that was the best option to film. We asked our teacher if we can borrow her professional camera to film Saturday and she said yes and that we were the first to ask. We need to bring everything that there is a possibility we will need. To keep organized we created a checklist since we are filming this Saturday. It is better to have more than what we need than to be missing something. We went and looked back at all of our blog posts to ensure we had everything we talked about. 

-Mia: Metallica shirt, blue hair streak 

-Gianna: Rhinestones, planned outfit 

-Kelly: pink skirt, white top, pink purse, pink heels. straighten hair

-Barbara: (extra black skirt for mia), my white tank, cardigan, daisy skirt, heels

-Extra makeup for touch ups (concealer, blush, lipgloss)

-Camera pick up friday

-Car

-Mia’s Room

-License

-Maybe money for lunch ($20) 

-phone charger 

-printed copies of the script

-lines memorized