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

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.