Brainstorming Our Challenges

As the week is ending, I have spent some time today reflecting on what needs to be talked about in class tomorrow, and what me and Eugenia need to focus on in order to be as efficient with our time as possible. Below, I attached the pictures of the story board that we have so far, only going up to the shot where mAddie realizes it's been a long time ever since Sarah had gone to get water, which is when she realizes that Sarah is missing. Getting to this shot, and thinking on what to put next, led us to our first big challenge: trying to figure out what shots/ way of editing to use in order to make it seem like a good ten minutes have passed, but making it look like that in only a matter of seconds, since we have a time limit and we already are not sure if our whole plot can fit into these two minutes. We will discuss this further in class, but so far the only idea we have come up with would be showing a close up of Maddie's watch and the time change, however we still don't know how to do this in a way in which it looks professional and believable.

Another challenge that we yet still face is trying to come up with our title for this movie. We don't want this to be basic, but we also don't want it to be too complex. We spent some time searching up kidnapping and mystery movie names, such as "Gone Girl", or "Kidnap", but none of these names have given us inspiration so far. In addition to challenges, we also need to look deeper into sound bridges, because we plan on doing on on the part in which the forest scene where Maddie looks for Sarah switches to the three years after, where she is talking to the Therapist. We agreed to film this weekend on Friday in Markham park, therefore we will probably focus on getting this part of the story board and script as perfected as possible so we can shoot our shots this weekend.

Choosing The Right Shots

 Today I worked on the story board myself for a little, coming up with some ideas I could show  Eugenia next class. Now that we have a finished script, it is way easier to know what will be in the shots, therefore I could have greater accuracy at choosing which type of shot will fit what's happening in the screen better. I only worked on the forest conversation between Maddie and Sarah. Personally, I thought I we should begin the first few shots as long shots, in order to introduce our audience to the surroundings and the sister's clothes, giving the audience a greater idea of who and what is around the two sisters. After this, most of the shots were middle shots. When the conversation between the two of them begins to turn more serious and they stop walking, I switched to over the shoulder shots in order to show the sister's expressions more accurately.

When they began walking once again, I went back to the two-shots. I thought these two shots are a perfect opportunity to truly show the characteristics of each of the sisters, how they contrast, and to establish their relationship. In these two shots, where Maddie and Sarah are both standing together, the audience will be able to note on the obvious height difference between the two, and the contrast of colors/style in their clothing. Doing single shots of each of the sisters would not have been as impactful, I though putting them both next to each other would establish their relationship better to the audience.

Our Script Begins :)

 Today was yet another day of productive work. We sat down and Eugenia shared with me some character mood boards she did by herself yesterday. She did one of Maddie and another of Sarah, and we both discussed their characters as a whole a little bit further. Her mood boards portrayed Maddie as the older, more intelligent, and reserved bug sister, while Sarah's colors were more vibrant and her character seemed more outgoing. These mood boards opened a small discussion four their backstory, which was nice to have in order to have a better idea of their relationship. After this, we stopped our story board because we thought doing our script first would be way easier, therefore we would be able to connect the specific shots in our storyboard to the dialogue in the script.

The script writing went smoothly. Both of us contributed with what we thought would be the best lines as I wrote it down in a shared google document. Writing this script also brought up what specific movements or facial expressions each of the sisters would be doing as they said these lines. This was great practice because I will be playing Maddie and Eugenia will be playing Sarah, so we could start discussing and knowing how exactly we would be saying the lines. We chose to cast me as Maddie because I am taller than her, and Eugenia as Sarah because she looks younger and we thought it matched well with our character portfolios. However, as we wrote the script, we did realize all the information and plot depth we wanted to fit into our opening might just be too much. We plan on prating it next week, bit considering all the other shots with no dialogue that we were planning on including, it seems like we will need to cut sever parts off, because it will surpass two minutes. We are still trying to figure this out though, because we feel like all of our elements to our plot are essential for the audience to know. I think we will have to make some adjustments to the plot line itself in order to make this opening shorter, but this will be further discussed next week.

Our Story Begins...

 Today was such a productive day in class. Me and Eugenia spent most of class time talking and figuring out the key details of our plot as we discussed every factor of our opening. At first we began just talking as we finished our ideas over specify events instead of the over all idea we had. We began by considering our setting of the tow sisters, and I had the idea of using the hiking trails inside Markham park, since I have been there before with my cross country team and we realized a forest would give the disappearance scene a more dramatic effect. We also figured out what exactly the sisters would be talking about, chose their names, and developed a back story to them. We decided that this initial hike would be a reconnecting experience for the two of them, since their dad passed away a year ago. We also decided on how the whole disappearance series of events would take place. Since our main point is that Maddie (the sister that does not go missing) is that she is in search for Sarah (the sister that goes missing), we decided that a small event that is Maddie's fault should be the reason for them separating for a few min, which later leads to Maddie not being able to see why Sarah disappears. We wanted to build. sense of guilt to Maddie's character, so we decided to have her this her ankle and have to stop for a few minutes while Sarah walks away to go get her water.

During these moments that she walks away is when Sarah disappears. We were having so many ideas on top of each other, that we decided to pull out a piece if paper and start writing sort of a planning, basilisks, sheet, so we don't forget any of our ideas. In this planning sheet we also briefly described our two main character's, the sisters, which we decided to make polar opposites. Sarah being the life-of-the-party type of girl, with Maddie being more uptight and introverted. We wanted to show h
ow close they were despite of their differences, and how differently each of them is dealing with their dad's passing. We mainly only got yo polish the details of the forest seven, not as much on the therapy scene, which I imagine we will do next class. We also began our story board! We only drew a few shots, mainly to have an idea on how we will establish the setting in the beginning of our opening and how we will include the main credits. Each of us also had individual meetings with our teacher, where we felt more confident because we were able to discuss our project so far and make sure that we are on the same track.

Trying out the Drone!!!

    Today I went with my brother to the beach where I asked him to bring his drone so I could see how he flew it, what kind of shots he took, and juts basics on how to fly it. I am really excited to used these type of shots in our project, I think that it will be a nice touch and it will make our opening look more professional. Before we went to the beach, I also sat down and tried to watch some drone shots on YouTube from other people to see how they did it. Right now I have two ideas on how our shots will look, however, this is something that I need to discuss with Eugenia in class before a final idea is reached. However, I personally have tow ideas.

    The first idea would take place when the main character starts realizing that her sister is missing. I would picture it starting coming back to where her sister was and the drone following her, the the shot would continue as a long single one, the drone following her path of view as she looks around from side to side and would show how the sister is no where to be seen. After this, the switching from side to side would be sped up in order to make the sequence seem more chaotic and show the sister's fear as she realizes her sister disappeared. Then, the drone will start leaving her as she keeps looking around, and do a high-angle shot as it gets further and further away and show the surroundings, making the sister look smaller and smaller as the drone gets away. I enjoyed being at the beach, I practiced filming my brother as he walked so I could see if I could do it well. It takes practice, so this definitely showed me I need to practice this more so when we film it, I am able to make it look as professional as possible.

Getting Feedback

    Today is Saturday night, and I decided to go meet with my aunt Dani to ask her for advice in our project. She is an actress, producer, and a voice over artist, therefore she has a lot of expertise and experience in film-making. She was really excited when I shared with her how we had to create a film opening for our portfolio project. I shared with her the idea me and Eugenia had decided. In detail, I told her that we wanted to have two sisters or friends, and open our movie with just a fun interacting between the two of them. We told her how we wanted to show no signs of this being a thriller/mystery in our opening. We wanted a normal, fun, interaction between two sisters maybe getting ice cream or walking in a park, and suddenly stopping the scene after about one full minute and show one of the sisters in a therapy room with a complete different facial expression, having a conversation with the therapist about her sister's disappearance three years ago. We talked about this mood switch together, and we had discussions on what editing techniques I could use in order to make this switch as shocking and effective one. Dani has used adobe premier before, and she agreed to sit down with me and show me many techniques.

    We talked about how difference in color coding could make this switch of our plot line a more audeince-hooking one. We both agreed that me and Eugenia should use yellow and bright tones on our first half of the opening, where the scene seems happy and energetic, and then use a sudden switch of grey and white tones once we switch over to the therapy part. We also talked a loooot about sound, something I hadn't given a lot thought to. We talked about the tools I should use when the sound of the happy memory fading away, and the introduction of the therapist's voice once the scenes switch, and what I should do to make this as professional as I could. She also agreed to play the part of the the therapist! I told her me and Eugenia just need to figure out our storyboard, ideas, and our script so we can sit down and do that scene. I'm really excited, overall this talk with her made me feel more confident and secure about our project, and gave me a lot of information that I can share with Eugenia once we see each other in school next week.

Discussing our Genre

 Today was a very productive day! This was supposed to be our first research/planning day for the project. Unfortunately, I had an emergency and today I was not able to go to school. However, I texted Eugenia and told her we could go on a call or communicate through a google doc and we decided to do the google doc option. Once the class time started, I logged into the google doc and I shared all of my research with her. I copy pasted a link to the video from last post, and told her it was very helpful. I also wrote two mini paragraphs on my two ideas, once with the coming of age genre and the other with the mystery genre. After about 15 to 20 min of reading each other's ideas and researches, we agreed that these two genres were our top choices, however, neither of us could come to the conclusion of which one we liked the most.

This is when we decided to divide and conquer. Through our texts, we decided that it would be good to see some opening scenes from famous movies from the two genres and get some more inspiration and ideas. We decided each of us will find 2-3 opening scenes and copy paste the links in the google doc. I was in charge of the mystery ones, and she was going to find the coming of age ones. After a few couple minutes of research, I ended up finding the opening scenes for the movies of the mystery/thriller genre, therefore I decided to share with her "Gone Girl", "You", and "Split". Watching these gave me sooooo many ideas and got me so excited, especially the opening scene for "Split", I had never watched this movie before, but this scene made me want to go find it somewhere and watch it, which is a feeling I definitely wan our audience to feel when they watch our project. The use of the happy scene at first, and showing through only the mirror how the dad was suddenly killed was such a brilliant way to shock the audience and introduce the psychotic main character. After she also shared the opening scene from the edge of seventeen, we began exchanging back and forth sentences in the google doc and agreed on the main plot of our story. We want to do a story of two sisters, one who suddenly disappeared and has been gone for three years, and the sister is still to this day trying to find her even though she is forced to go to therapy to try to forget her and move on with her life.

Beginning the Journey!

 This is the first week of our portfolio project. I have been thinking about my idea for this project ever since I chose to take the course last year, and thought I would have a clear view of what I wanted to do by the time we start, but the picture in my mind fo what my project will be is not as clear as I wanted it to be. Even though I am excited, I'm also anxious to find a good idea and be able to produce a film opening that has professional techniques and is an overall good project. Towards the genre, I am between two very distinctive and different choices- I was thinking of either doing a coming-of-age film opening, with an either getting ready sequence or a cooking sequence- or doing a mystery/horror film opening. These two ideas couldn't be more different, but I have small ideas that I think could go well with either, so tomorrow I will discuss them with my partner in class and agree on a genre and a basis for our story. 

Me and Eugenia decided to work together last class, since both of us had worked on previous projects together and we liked our dynamic. Neither of us are too excited about acting or being in front of the camera, but we have done it before so I don't think this will be an issue for us. While I wait for tomorrow, I have decided to start some research on some film openings themselves, not just a specific genre. I have watched several of the student's samples both on my teacher's website and some posted on YouTube, but I tried not to watch too many in order to let let them influence me as much. I did watch a fourteen minute video called the "Art of the Opening Scene" by StudioBinder, and found this video extremely helpful. It helped me realize how important this scene is to a movie, and gave me exampled of other ways to start an opening scene that I hadn't thought of before. For example, I hadn't thought of doing a flashbacks opening scene, opening with a character's memory. I also really liked the idea of having a plot twist, making the audience believe something will go a way, and suddenly taking it the other day- hooking attention. This gave me. a lot of ideas that I am excited to discuss with Eugenia tomorrow.

Link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw_ysaoVlt4

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

Music Marketing Project: Charlie Jay

Background Research

    When our project first began, we learned that our genre was Rap/R&B, which are two genres that are heavily associated and later found out in our research that they are considered by some as branches of each other. However, when considering a song, we were able to realize it will always most likely lean to one of either of the two sides of the spectrum between a fast-paced rap song and a slower, soulful vocally styled R&B song. Therefore, since out of our four choices, we picked the one mostly leaning with the R&B style, which was "C'mon Talk" by Bernhoft, we focused most of our research on this.

    While doing our research chart, we still made sure to touch on information for famous, well-known rap artists, such as DaBaby. However, the two artists that we relied most on during our research were two R&B successful women, which were Adele and Beyonce. During most of our research, we learned that this music style is enjoyed by a fairly young audience, however, more towards the young adult years. Therefore, this music usually deals with more mature topics than the usual pop culture. We found out it is mostly focused on songs about relationship (mostly romantic), social movements, and is likely to have explicit words. 

    We found out about two specific tactics that these artists use in their marketing styles, which are the tow tactics we decided to apply during our Charlie Jay project. The first one was maintaining an extremely close relationship with the artists' fans, witch actions such as social media interaction, private concerts, fan account management, physical interactions, giveaways, and etc... The second tactic we saw thaw e also decided to use in our project was going radio silent for a period of time and then suddenly releasing huge news out of the blue. We saw while researching Adele's new album after six years of silence, and Beyonce's success with her "Lemonade" album and tour after going silent for some months and dropping the news during her 2016 Superbowl performance. After concussing our background research, we made the decision that once we start our project, we focus on promoting to a young, yet mature, audience, and imply these tactics.

Music Video Production

    As our first step, we mad ether executive decision that developing an idea, filming, and having a clear idea of our music video was the best thing to do in order to have a clearer image of which way we want our project to go. This step was perhaps one of the most challenging ones during the production of our project. None of us were too eager to appear in front of the camera, and we struggled in deciding if we should simply lip-sync to the song or if we should tell a story. Since we thought it would be more interesting to tell a story, we decided to go with the second option. We also made this decision because of the fast-nature of the song we chose, and we chose not to lip-sync due to the possibility of our video looking less professional. After choosing to tell a story, since it was about a struggling romantic relationship from a boy's point of view, we all agreed to make Joseph take the role of our made up artist, Charlie Jay, as the main star of the video.

    The lyrics of the song were a little bit to understand, therefore we decided to keep the story simple and easy to understand- a guy wanting to talk to his girlfriend after a fight they had, and her repeatedly ignoring him. Coming to this conclusion took us about a class and a half, therefore, once we all agreed on one idea, we decided to divide the work and try to quicken our pace. As Joseph, Jessie, and Rafaela went outside to take pictures of Joseph for our artist logo, I stayed back in class doing our storyboard. The storyboard was a lengthy process, therefore, as I continued to work on it, the three of my group members began setting up our google slides, picking the theme, and labeling our slides. Once I finished with our story board, we went right into filming. Since I was the one who came up with the shots and the story, I was the one that was in charge of directing our whole video. Most of our shots consisted of Joseph (who acted as Charlie Jay) and Raffaella (the love interest), only about four of them contained Jessie. Therefore, while me, Joseph, and Rafaela spent two class times filming, we decided Jessie would stay back and work on the power point.

    We also agreed that we should discuss our editing aim all together, but let Joseph edit the video. We decided this because he has experience with adobe premiere, he volunteered, and we thought we would be able to be more productive and effective as a team if the three of us made sure to advance in other aspects of our project as Joseph focused on finishing our final video. As a group, we decided on the idea of glitches for our main theme. We though that this would enhance the fast nature of our song, and tell the story of there relationship in an aesthetically pleasing way that looked professional. We also wanted our music video theme and image to be equal to the theme of our artists logo. We collectively decided to take a side profile picture of Joseph because we thought this gave the artists of Charlie Jay a professional appearance, we also used inspiration from Charlie Puth's and Jason Derulo's comeback logos, since they are known from some R&B and slow pop songs. After this, we decided to apply the glitch effect that was also applied to the music video. After all of this brainstorming, Joseph was in charge on applying these edits to our logo and music video, while the rest of the three of us got to work with the power point.

Jason Derulo's "Everything is 4" cover

Charlie Puth's "Nine Track Mind" Cover

 Charlie Jay Cover

Power Point Presentation/ External Media Production

    When we first began our power point, we struggled with what exactly to put in it. Therefore, we decided to create a google doc where we would put our ideas for the over all plan of our marketing and what we wanted to put in our slides. I decided to copy-paste some of the specific key words and and instructions form the assignment in canvas in order to lead us with our brainstorming and make sure we can stay on focus with our ideas. 

    Most of our ideas originated with the social media area, therefore we decided to begin our presentation with these slides and begin creating them. For organizational purposes, we decided it ovule be better to separate each of our social medias into separate slides, in order to allow us to give specific and detailed exampled of Charlie Jays' media usage in each platform. While me and Rafaela did these slides, Jessie was the one that took charge of our website. We decided that while Joseph edited and me and Rafaela did our power point, Jessie was designing our website from scratch. We made this decision because she had previously done entire websites before and her experience allowed her to do this easier. While me an Rafaela did the slides and the speaker notes- which were lengthy since they contained most of the information about our plan- Jessie would show us what she would be doing and we would give her feedback. We decided that in the website we should have a tour, shop, bookings, and a lisent sections which are basic sections in artists websites that we researched. She also was the one that designed the merchandise in this website.

Collaboration with a Brand/ Signature Piece

    While doing our merchandise, we decided to have the main items: hoodies, a mug, and a poster. This is where the idea of a collaboration with a brand came to mind. We though that such a collaboration would put our artists name out there, and by picking the right one, it would also hit our targeted audience. We discussed among many, and agreed that the brand Off White is one that targeted young adults, was fashionable, and was able to develop and aesthetic and make our plan more effective. We also saw this in other artists that had success, therefore we came to the conclusion of adding this to our plan. Since Jessie had created our merchandise and knew how to implement our artists logo, she edited an Off White product and added Charlie Jay's signature to it. This is also when we came up with the idea of using one of the merch hoodies as a signature piece for our brand. We decided to use the black hoodie since it's a color that is widely used, and hoodies are generally wore by every gender. We thought this was a good idea because it would make our brand more recognizable and had seen artists do this before.

Social Media Management

When creating these accounts, we decided to make actual Charlie Jay accounts that we created and add fake posts to them, so that we could show them in our presentation as examples. Rafaela was in charge of doing these. She created a YouTube Channel account, a Twitter, and Instagram account, and a TikTok. While she did this, we brainstormed together and I wrote down on the power point what our marketing plan would be for each account. Later, Jessie edited these by giving them a blue checkmark that official, verified accounts hold in order to make our evidence seem more professional. While developing our social medias, we also came up with the idea of developing an official fandom account. We thought about other artists that have done this before and how successful it turned out to be, for example, I brought up Taylor Swift and her Taylor's Nation account. We thought that this would be a way to connect Charlie Jay to his fans, and develop a closer bond and relationship with them- one of our main goals when we began our plan.

Finalizations Before Presenting

    As we were finishing our presentation, we made sure to keep most of our information in the speaker notes and try to keep our slides as plain and word-less as possible. When we got towards the end of our slides, Joseph was done editing our music video, therefore he showed it to us, we agreed that it achieved what we wanted it to achieve, and added it to our powerpoint. after this, all of us together worked on our final two slides, which discussed the tactics in which our music video hit our targeted audience, and our final sell points of our plan over all. After this, we distributed our slides for the presentation, and each of us picked the section that we were most comfortable for. We practiced as a group and by our selves, making sure we times ourselves so that we didn't go over the fifteen minute limit.

Reflection

    As a whole, this project was extremely helpful to me in understanding all the different areas and tactics that goes into making an artist/brand, and all the different measures one should take as the managing team in order to make them successful. This project showed me how such a brand or artist can't be managed by one individual, in order to be truly successful, there must be different individual focusing on specific areas in order to make the marketing process as successful as possible. Each area needs to be throughly studied and make sure they all strive towards the same goal. For example, we as a group understood that we had to divide in order to conquer, and while still communicating with each other making sure we have the same goals and ideas. Jessie was in charge of the website and merchandise production, Rafaela did the social medias and helped with the power point, Joseph starred and edited the whole music video, and I did the story board, directed, and worked on our presentation. These were all different areas which were each key to our final product. I learned a lot about the genre R&B itself, especially about its targeted audience, which I thought to be older but is actually listed to by younger people. I was able to identify some actions and the way things are announced in the music industry aren't just out of the blue, they are managed to be done to achieve a purpose and make the artists more successful. This problem really helped me with my Cambridge portfolio, because it was a long term project that really required me to think throughly every aspect of it, and communicate these ideas with a group around me.