Group Discussion Day!

Yesterday in class we had our first group discussion meetings! These discussions were randomly assigned, and a group of six of us sat down explaining each other's projects and our challenges, as we all gave feedback. I found this group discussion extremely helpful. I was one of the last ones to go, therefore I had the opportunity to hear about other group's stories. I found out that most of our stories are all dealing with dark topics, such as mental breakdowns, a mystery murder, or an affair. It was nice to know that my group was not the only one doing a topic that was rather dark, and that other groups also chose to do mystery. Hearing their stories also made me think about aspects of my own, for example, one of the girl's problems was that she had a plot hole in her story. Together as a group, we thought about ways to fix this plot hole, one of them being just cutting out an extra part of the story to make it more simple. This reminded me of when Eugenia and I had to cut the dead father part out of our script, and made me feel more confident that other groups also had to make major changes to their plan in order to make their opening more simple and easy to understand.

I also found out that most of the people in my group were dealing with one specific issue- sound. Most of us had scenes in our openings that don't have a particular mood but cannot be shown without some kind of sound or background music because it looks awkward. While looking for sounds to help each of them I found some new websites, but one of them also suggested an option I had not considered before, which was looking for a natural background noise, and not necessarily a song. This opened my eyes, and made me realize that Eugenia and I closed our options without realizing it. I think this will be good noise to have under the Voice Over when they are hiking
before Sarah goes missing.

Draft of our Monologue

 We have finished placing all of our clips on the timeline, now we have a better picture on what to do with our new monologue. I opened our Google Doc and started writing some of my ideas, while I was doing this I realized that it would be helpful during the filming and editing process to leave some time marks, such as 0:15, or "at 0:24" in order to better show what lines are supposed to play over what exact footage. I continued to do this as I kept on watching and writing ideas of this monologue at the same time. After having a writer's block, I realized that we are emphasizing this opening on the relationship between these two sisters, therefore the opening line should be about how close they are, instead of the usual "it all started with" or the cliche "that day began..." types of opening lines. I plan to discuss this with Eugenia when we get to class

Additionally, a few days ago me and Eugenia discussed the possibility of maybe having a third person narrator, and shared examples such as "Jane the Virgin" or "Money Heist", shows that either use a 3rd person narrator or one of their own characters as voiceovers that tell the story and guide the audience. We thought we might give it a try, however, we soon realized that perhaps this would add a sense of light heartedness to what we want to seem as scary and anxious. Therefore, we decided against this idea and continue on foley lying on Maddie telling the story. Additionally, while doing this process, I also realized that the monologue should end once Maddie realizes that Sarah is missing, and that the background music should get louder as the only thing that can be heard is the video's original audio of Maddie screaming Sarahs name looking for her. I thought this would add a sense of being in the moment of realization and extreme anxiety Maddie felt when her sister went missing.

Editing Begins

Once we came back, the first thing we wanted to do was agree and finalize our new monologue for Maddie. However, once we sat down and tried to figure this out, we realized it would be hard to come to any conclusion of what the voice-over will sound like without first seeing how the clips will flow. Therefore, we uploaded all the videos to my computer, I downloaded Adobe Premiere, and we got to work. Putting these clips in the timeline was easy, the things we had to worry about were cutting the right amount of seconds at the Strat of each clip and at the end, to make sure these flow nicely and give the sense that the two sisters never stopped moving from clip to clip. This just took a few minutes, we got as far as when Maddie falls and this is when we started having some problems with the editing.

First, we realized that we got a shot of the two sisters (from the back) going up the hill, but it does not really clearly show Sarah going up first, and we only got a shot of Maddie going up from up the hill, with no sight of Sarah. We began to worry if this mistake could truly be fixed with editing because going to film it again would not really work due to the fact this was outdoors, and the climate/weather will for sure look different in the new clip we would film. However, we started mixing some clips and realized if we cut to Maddie halfway up the hill, this makes it seem more like Sarah was right in front of her the whole time. After we edited these few shots, my computer had an issue and all of the media went offline. We talked to our teacher and figured out that moving our clips from folder to folder made Adobe lose track of where they are and removed them off our timeline. We tried re-locating them but had no luck. We started a new project and had to put all of these cropped shots in the timeline once again, however, we learned to not do this next time.

Problems During First Filming Location

 After we finished with our biggest prop, we hopped on the car and drove to Markham park in order to film our forest scene. However, on the way there, while we were practicing our lines, we realized that we had a lot of dialogue and no microphones. This would not worry me if our scenes were inside a quiet room, but all of our talking scenes took place in the hiking trail. Once we got there, and my brother Hector who agreed to help us film some of the scenes, we realized we would not be able to do our original script, and the best choice was to go back to our original idea of the voice over. We looked at our storyboard, sat down, and brainstormed how we could transform our conversation into an inner dialogue inside Maddie's head, while still showing the element of shock when Sarah goes missing. We developed some ideas, then went right back to filming because we could not miss the sunset. We followed most of the shots in our original storyboard, except for the over the shoulder shots that were originally there to show the dialogue happening between the sisters. Therefore, the day resulted in major changes in both our script and story board. It felt a little unsettling knowing that so much we had planned was changing so quickly, however, I was already feeling this unsettlement over our dialogue, because I knew both of us were not that comfortable in front of the camera, so in that aspect of the project, I did feel relieved.

Even though these were quick, major changes, I am starting to believe that these were actually for the better. We continued on filming, and took advantage every time there wasn't anyone else in the camera's shot. Since there would be no over the shoulder shots due to no dialogue, we did several shots of just us walking in order to be sure to have enough film to show while the voice over played. The most difficult scene for me to film was the one where I, Maddie, supposedly falls and twists her ankle. I had not given this scene much thought, and realized it was not as easy as I though to fake an accidental fall. We had to re-shoot it about five times, but I was satisfied with the last shot. I was also very proud of how our final shot ended up, which consisted of the camera consistently moving around Maddie as she starts to show fear for the worse, which is Sarah disappearing. I thought with the right editing, this scene can be as chaotic as we imagined it. We wrapped up our filming, and Eugenia and I agreed to get on working on the new script and music as soon as go back to class.

First Filming Day/ Building Our Major Prop

 Today was our first day of production!!! Today was an extremely eventful day, we got to film our forest scene and our final scene, which is when Maddie comes home to the searching board with Sarah. However, we did run into several challenges, and major changes, especially to our script. We began with Eugenia coming over and getting to work with our major prop: the searching board. We sat down for a dew minutes and shared a google doc with images of inspirations, taken from TV shows like Criminal Minds, or Movies where a person has a searching board for someone they are looking for. We ended up printing a two maps, one of Markham Park and another of the area identifying criminal offenders. We also printed and used several pictures of "Sarah" (Eugenia), including selfies she took with friends. We thought this would be a nice touch to kind of develop a "suspect" list Maddie had arranged. We also did a section of Eugenia's selfie with a boy and a picture of that boy and another roe as well. We got both of these guys' permission to do this, they are both her friends, and we thought this would be a way to show a "live triangle" and another two suspects in Maddie's mind.

We also made a missing person's flier! I found this template online, and made sure to fill with with details according to our story. I printed this one big and made sure it was visible. We thought this made our board seem more realistic. Around all of these pictures, we also kept adding different color post it's with several information, such as imitating Maddie's thoughts and frustrations, and also using them as captions for some of the pictures. We also decided to make it seem as if Maddie was following the trail of other cases of other criminals in the area., therefore I found a site with fake cases of kidnappings ,and printed a list of registered offenders that e also pasted to the board. After we pasted these, we realized we should have some newspaper articles. Since neither of us had newspaper, we went online and found two extremely old articles from local newspapers about a missing gurl, and decided to add the headlines to the board. Making this board took way longer than what we had imagined, and filming Maddie entering to the room/house, showing the board from her POV was a challenge. 

Brand New Storyboard/ Figuring out our Shooting Day

   Changing our script of course led to the change in our storyboard. Since such a massive and key part of the sister's conversation was removed from the script, we decided to develop a brand new storyboard to follow this weekend. This time, we used the storyboard format papers where eight shots can be drawn in one page rather than just drawing ourselves where one six fit. These shots mainly consisted of over the shoulder shots, mid-shots, and two-shots to establish the relationship between the two sisters. This also made me realize that we will probably need microphones, or some sort of device so that our dialogue can be heard professionally and properly. I plan on asking Eugenia if she has some next class, or maybe asking my aunt if we could borrow some.

Additionally, we finally agreed on our plan to film. We decided that out of all the days, Sunday would best fit our schedules. Since our forest scene takes place with the sisters trying to see the sunset, we knew we had to go towards the late afternoon, but not too late that we might loose the sun for our shots, therefore we will go to our location, Markham Park, at around 4:30pm to 5:00 pm. We also agreed to meet up before at around noon in my house, so we can work together Ron our massive prop: the research board that is revealed in Maddie's house after she comes back from the therapist's office

Major Change in Our Scripts

    Yesterday in class me and Eugenia made major changes to our script, thus making us change several shots and aspects of our storyboard and plot over all. As the shooting date comes sooner and we kept going over our script, and challenge that it might be too long, we decided to act on it. We were scared on changing our plot, because we thought that the more we kept adding/removing form it, the less clear our image will be and our project will feel more disorganized. However, we felt this change was truly necessary in order to have a good video. Basically, we completely removed the aspect of the plot that deals with the sister's father's death, or the fact that it was Maddie's idea to fo on a hike. Instead, we are simply showing two sisters with opposing personalities going on a hike together. 

   Above, you can see all the lines we put a strike on top of. We decided to leave the cut lines there and put a line on top of them rather than completely deleting them completely from the document. We thought this was a better idea in the case we might get confused with our structure or wonder why something we wrote looks the way it does, so we will be able to see what lines used to be around it. Regardless, we edited the lines around them to make the lines flow smoothly, this was just a precaution we took. Without the dead father part of the plot, I'm feeling more relieved because I had started to become worried our plot was simply too complex and big for a film opening, and that it was starting to look more like a trailer rather than an opening. I also feel like these lines will be way easier to act, considering neither me or Eugenia are experienced or good actresses.