Bad News, Sort Of

 

    Although we REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to include non-copyrighted music in our film opening and include music from some of our favorite artists such as Swans, Have a Nice Life, and death's dynamic shroud, none of them answered! 

    We thought reaching out through social media would be the fastest way to get a response, but it is more than likely that they do not manage their own social media and their managers probably do not spend a lot of time reading through DMs. 

    Since those three artists did not respond, we decided to try one last artist, and if we receive no response, we will have to sadly opt for non-copyrighted music. Fingers crossed that we get a response since we will begin filming next week!

Screenshot of my DM to the Duster official Instagram account 

Storyboard Sneak Peek

 

    My drawing skills may be subpar, but my brain was good enough to formulate a film opening! 

    In the first frame, Jack is introduced. He is seen alone yet surrounded by many at a party, the lights behind him are flashing and music is loudly playing. The emphasis of him being surrounded yet lonely contributes to his characterization as lonesome and troubled by depression and addiction. 

    In the second frame, we see a close-up of Jack's expressionless face, still surrounded by flashing lights, which leads into the third frame which goes back to a long shot of Jack but this time there are fewer people around him as the party is ending. 

    In the fourth frame, we see Jack with a drink in his hand and a slight hint of excitement on his face (not to say happiness because he truly is not and probably will never be). Due to his severe depression, he takes to drinking to feel the excitement and slip away from the numbness and repetitiveness of his daily life. 

    In the fifth frame, Jack has left the party and is walking alone again through the city. The contrast of the high rises and lights with his emotionless face furthers his characterization as depressed. This leads into the sixth frame where he lays looking to his ceiling, emotionless, as he prepares to sleep into the next repetitive day.

    In the seventh frame, the light leaks into the room signifying the next morning, it is 11:00 AM, as he blankly stares at himself in the mirror, not recognizing who he sees as his depression has led him to become detached. In the eighth frame, he begins drinking again, in fact, he drinks away the day in solitude as in the ninth frame it is once again night time signified by the darkness in the room and the empty glasses around him. 

    In the tenth frame, his location changes again as he goes in a walk through the city once again creating a parallel to earlier in the opening representing the repetitiveness of his life. 

    In the eleventh frame, he trips, and in the twelfth frame, he is seen laying unconscious on the sidewalk, presumably dead after hitting his head harshly. However, in the thirteenth frame, he jerks away back in his bed, the alarm clock reading 11:00 A.M., of the same day he had just experienced. 

    The final shot shows a black screen with the film's title "Another Chance", a phrase that encapsulates the entire film opening: Jack gets a chance to turn his life around and not die as a consequence of his addiction. 

The Storyline Has Been Completed!

 

    Coming up with an entirely new concept and trying to develop a film opening is completely new to me. It's been hard to come up with the storyline but, we did it! After brainstorming on a google doc and coming back to it, we finalized our idea. My partner and I have watched a lot of the same movies belonging to the drama genre and decided to go down a path we were familiar with. 

    Jack suffers from chronic depression  (I linked the DSM-5 criteria that we researched), and also struggles with alcoholism as a coping mechanism. Depression and addiction are often seen at the same time as a form of attempting to lift one's mood. However, seeking gratification from alcohol often ends up having the opposite effect and leading to addiction. Jack attempts to mask his chronic depression by partying and abusing alcohol, which leads him into a repeating cycle (foreshadowing of the film opening hehe) of going out, regretting his decisions, and sleeping the day away.

Here's a graphic detailing the extent of the comorbidity of depression and addiction. 

 

Naming our Character

 

    After careful deliberation, we decided the easiest way to come up with a name for our character would be to google "creepy names" and we got this as a result: https://www.babycenter.com/0_dark-evil-and-scary-baby-names_10392907.bc

    After looking through this list we landed on the name "Jack". Although a commonly used name, something about it has a sort of shielded darkness. Famous "Jacks" include Jack the Ripper, Jack Torrance, and Jack from "The House that Jack Built". The name has come to be associated with well-known horror movie characters and even real-life serial killers. In The Shining and The House that Jack Built, both of the main characters are named Jack and both represent the toll of mental illness, which is exactly what we are trying to create in our film opening. 

Jack Torrance 
    

    Since we currently do not plan to include dialogue in our film opening due to time constraints, the character's name won't be of immediate importance. However, having inspiration and research to back up our choice for Jack's name will continue to help us develop the storyboard and storyline for the film opening. 

Jack from The House that Jack Built

Brainstorming and Research Continues!

    Since we are developing a drama film opening, we began researching many drama film opening examples, such as the "Joker" opening scene. What we liked about it was the extreme close-ups on Arthur's face to highlight the mental struggles he faces. The eyes are the window to the soul and showing emotion through the eyes is a critical component of the drama genre and we plan on including it in our film opening. What we also liked about this opening was the establishing shots of the city, something we plan on doing since we would like to film in a city such as Ft. Lauderdale or Miami to break out of the plain surroundings of the suburbs to make our opening more substantial.      

                                                 

    Another film opening we analyzed was that of "Taxi Driver". Since our opening must include the film's title as well as credits to the director, editor, producer, actors, and sound, this opening exemplifies a way of presenting it in a way that is not overwhelming but rather helps introduce the setting. We would like to present our credits and title in a way that blends in with the surroundings to establish where the film will take place and introduce themes and create a tone. Choosing a font and color that matches the tone and setting is also imperative and "Taxi Driver" does a great job doing so. 

    

Change of Plans

     Although we initially thought we would go the horror route for our film opening, after further research, we decided making a drama film opening would be more viable given our resources. We decided to research various films belonging to the drama genre such as "Taxi Driver", "Melancholia", "No Country for Old Men", and more recently, "Licorice Pizza". 

    The most interesting aspect of the genre is the diversity it encapsulates. Drama is not as concise in its limitations such as other genres. They may span from crime to comedy to romance. This is why we chose to go the drama route rather than stick to horror conventions. With the drama genre, we would have more ambiguity to work with. In the film "Taxi Driver", the drama genre fuses with crime and creates a disturbed vietnam war veteran who struggles to reincoporate himself into society and goes on a self-righteous journey to "fix" New York City. The dark tone and unnerving score of the film contribute to establishing the plot and the main character (Travis Bickle) and his journey and transformation throughout.

God's Lonely Man (Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver")

    Inspired by "Taxi Driver", we want to incorporate musical elements into the film opening to convey the themes and establish tone within the two minutes we are allotted. We are currently continuing to reach out to different artists to get permission to utilize their music in our film opening. 

                

Here is one of the songs we hope to be able to include in our piece. 

Searching for a Song

     Last blog I mentioned we were reaching out to artists to attempt to get permission to utilize copyrighted music from a few artists, such as Swans and death's dynamic shroud. However, neither of them answered :(, so I decided to reach out to another one of my favorite artists, Have a Nice Life. Currently waiting on a response, if we don't receive one by next week when we need to start coming up with a concrete plan, I think we will have to find a non-copyright song that fits our theme. 

    

Here is the song we most wish to include in our film opening: "Bloodhail" by Have a Nice Life

Starting Off Strong

   Last class my partner and I began the first phase of our research and planning. Since I have never had to fully come up with a concept like this on my own having a second person’s opinions and views helps my creativity flow. We both decided we wanted to include music in our film opening, and we wanted that music to not be of the copyright free sort but rather by some of the artists we listen to. Therefore, I reached out via Instagram DMs and emails to two artists, Swans, and death’s dynamic shroud, and we are currently awaiting on responses on wether or not utilizing their music would be a viable option. If we do not receive responses within the week we will have to problem solve and decide wether or not the music will be a crucial element of the setting we decide to create. 

   As for the genre of our film opening, we are still researching different ones, however we mostly focused on horror and delved into some obscure films and different types of horror such as body horror, psychological horror, and slasher films. We hope to be able to include music in our film opening since one of the popular slasher films we researched, “Scream”, heavily relies on sound effects and music to create the thrill and suspense which pulls in the audience’s focus, and would essentially help us reach the goal of any film opening: capture the audience. 

Portfolio Time!

    It's finally time to begin working on my Cambridge portfolio project. After about five months of learning about the various aspects of media production and media convergence, it's finally time to put it all together and create my own film opening. After creating a soundscape, a film pitch, and even a music video, I have learned various techniques I had never been exposed to prior to this class. I learned how to use Adobe Premiere Pro for editing and enjoyed seeing my hard work develop into a fruitful end product. I'm excited to begin this process and see where my mind can take me in the production world. 

    I have previous experience in coming up with film ideas through the film pitch project we did earlier on and I plan on following a similar route for this project. My team and I researched the conventions of the genre we wanted to utilize to develop our story. However, this time around, I will have more individual creative input since it's my own project so I am pretty excited to put my own mind at work to develop an interesting and authentic film opening that catches the audience's attention and brings them into the story all within 2 minutes.

    Since the project was just introduced this week, I am just beginning the research stage and deciphering my approach to the project. I plan on working either alone or with up to one other person as I believe the more people working on the project will only make it more difficult and disorderly due to clashing opinions. I also intend on beginning in-depth research this upcoming week and detailing any conventions I plan on sticking to or stretching to produce a fresh film opening that doesn't strictly adhere to cliches. Bottom line, I am excited to start working on this project and developing an idea of my own from start to finish and see it flourish. 

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

    The most important aspect of the music marketing project was the research and planning to ensure our artist had a well-thought-out and cohesive theme that projected well over different aspects of branding. In the research phase, my team and I looked through the websites of different record labels to find out how they market their artists. We took inspiration from several artists' social media presence techniques to plan how we were going to present our artist. 

    Our main source of inspiration for media marketing was SZA. Her interaction with fans through social media allows her to reach her target audience easily and test how possible music releases will do if fans like demos. SZA allows her fans to give her input on song snippets and even ask them to give her possible song names. Tiktok is the main social media she utilizes to achieve this technique as the easy upload of short videos and pushing them out with the algorithm increases her audience. We decided to create a TikTok for our artist because of this as well as an Instagram and Twitter. 

    After creating the social media profiles, we continued our research on how else to better market our artist. We concluded that creating merch and a cohesive logo would help establish the artist's brand. We created a 90s style logo that would match our overall "Bring 90s Back" campaign and branding for our hip-hop artist, The Vanquisher. We based our logo on a 90s art style of popping colors and caricature-like characters, such as Rugrats. 

Our logo for The Vanquisher

The 90s animated series Rugrats character

    Upon creating our logo, we created merchandise utilizing it and made it our profile picture on all of The Vanquisher's social media. Since The Vanquisher is an up-and-coming artist, we decided to make our merchandise in two limited styles to maximize profit without potentially experiencing monetary loss if the extended merchandise line does not sell well. We also advertised our merch drops on Instagram to appeal to the audience. We also made hoodies with a still from the music video for our debut single Dangerous. Vanquisher's website is where fans can purchase his merch and it is linked under all his social media to reach the most audiences possible. 

    The hardest aspect of the music marketing project was the planning and collective shooting for the music video. The song we received was fast-paced and therefore needed an engaging storyline. To come up with ideas, we listened to the song repeatedly to develop a music video that matched and made sense. We agreed on making a storyline and promo-style video so the entire rap did not need to be rapped. The promo aspects showcased The Vanquisher's personal style and rapping while the storyline adhered to the theme of the song and proved his personality as he was portrayed during the presentation. 

    Once we developed the storyline of a criminal committing "dangerous" acts (hence the song name) we drew the storyboard with varied angles and shots to match the rhythm of the song. We designed the costumes for the vanquisher and the criminal to resemble 90s-esque fashion (bandanas, jeans, puffer jackets, big sunglasses). To best match the aesthetic we were trying to achieve, we decided we needed to film during late afternoon. The lighting was dark and matched the "dangerous" vibe we were trying to get across. Filming and getting our angles the way we wanted them was fairly easy since we only needed one location just in different places. Filming took around two hours but we were glad with how our shots turned out. Post production took place on Adobe Premier and was probably the most time-consuming part of the entire project. 

    Creating our powerpoint for the presentation proved to be fairly easy since we just had to pile on our research in summarized points in a 90s themed slide template. We utilized the bright colors of the presentation to call attention to our merchandise and social media profile screenshots. We worked on memorizing our research so that we could fully face the audience during the presentation and avoid looking right at the powerpoint. 

    Ultimately, this project taught me the importance of taking the full time alotted to and utilizing it properly to avoid leaving production to the last minute. Dividing up tasks for different due dates was helpful and it helped my team and I not procrastinate and properly divide the tasks between us. This project also taught me the importance of post production and how editing can make or break an entire project and I will be sure to implement everything I learned during the post production of this project for my Cambridge portfolio project.