Editing

My group and I sat down today and viewed all of our footage. We changed the ending of our film opening so we don't have that footage yet to edit, but we wanted to start somewhere so we started with what we had.  We are far from done and know we still have a lot more editing and cutting until our final film opening is ready. After going through all our footage, we started to edit our film opening together as a group. We had to cut shots, put our shots in order and use all different kinds of editing techniques we have learned throughout the year to better our film opening. Though we started editing today in class, we still have a lot more editing to do and we will continue editing it in class throughout the upcoming week. We also learned that when we started to edit some of our footage some of it didn't flow, since this is the case we have to get together outside of school and re-film some shots for our film opening.

Group Meetings

On Tuesday, once again we had the opportunity to meet with people in our class in little groups to share our ideas and how our film opening or magazine is going. I was able to share what my group and I have filmed and the idea we are going for. I got a few suggestions which helped. After meeting in those groups within class, I met with my own group and we discussed what ideas and suggestions we got. We decided to change the ending of our two minute opening. Since we already filmed our opening, we planned to meet again this weekend and film the ending over again with our new idea. Instead of ending the film opening with our main character learning to relive her life after getting into an accident we decided we will add in a flashback. We decided to make this change because if we end with her learning to relive her life, we are going into the plot of the film and we are getting to far into in just the opening two minutes. Having a flashback gives us the chance to add in our voice over that we planned on having while not getting too into the film. We realized that this will work out better, so this week in class we will edit what we have so far and re- record this weekend and edit the rest next week.

Filming

Today my group and I met outside of school and started to film our two minute opening. We had to work around a few things such as the weather and had to change the time we filmed. We planned to meet at one of our houses since our film opening took place in a house. Everything went as planned other than the few problems we faced like weather and fixing our storyboard. We also sat down and made a script since we are planning on doing a voice over in our film opening. A picture of the script we made is shown below. We made a few changes to the script, but overall this is the script we are using. Filming went really well and this week in class we will be editing and putting all our clips together. We can't wait to start editing and putting it all together! We are excited to see how our film opening is going to turn out. We will also be putting it all together and watching it continuously to see if we are going to have to make any changes or re-record any parts of the film opening.

Storyboard

Today as a group we created our storyboard. We included all the shots we plan to take when we film our two minute opening. Our storyboard is just a rough draft and guide for how we want our film to flow. When we started  filming we still  changed around a few shots that we thought would work out better. Our storyboard was a big help when we filmed, because it guided us and helped us be more productive when filming.

The other day in class we met in little group and discussed our ideas. I got to share with my peers what my group and I are planning on doing for our two minute opening. The constructive criticism and ideas they all gave me really helped. We got to bounce different ideas off of each other and then my group and I came together and discussed what we should change and keep. We decided that we are going to change our film opening idea completely. We are now going to do a day in the life of a high school senior, who gets into a car accident and realizes the simple life she though she had is completely turned upside down. We decided to have her get into an accident where the problem for the accident is texting and driving because that is a common things teens deal with today and is a problem that needs to be focused on. According to this link texting and driving accidents rose six percent in 2016 alone. The article also addressed how texting and driving is a serious thing occurring and teens are attached to there phones, where they feel as if they can't even go a car ride without checking them. Since we are all high school seniors we know this is an ongoing problem and think that we can address it and show it within our film opening. It is still going to be a drama. Our main character has her life set, she just gets accepted to the college of her dreams, she has her life planned out until something unexpected happens that could have easily been prevented. It took us a while but now that we have a message down and know exactly what we want to do we feel that we can portray this well in our two minute film opening.











Marshall, Aarian. "Texting and Driving Isn’t a Millennial Problem. It’s an Engineering Problem." Wired. Conde Nast, 16 Feb. 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.

My group and I decided that before we create our film we first have to map it out. In order to map it out we have to use a storyboard. A storyboard is a graphic organizer displayed in a sequence of how your film will progress. Before my group and I actually create our storyboard we did some research. I looked at this link to help me prepare my storyboard… since this is exactly what we are going off of when filming. 

In my first article I learned that there are many things that need to be taken into consideration when creating your storyboard.

• evaluate each shot
• break down your script ( if you have one)
• construct each panel how you want the film to flow
• create a shot list that you plan to use

All these steps are important for many reasons. I also looked up different storyboard to get an idea of how I would create mine in a way I would understand it and be able to use it it’s full use. 

I also looked through a link that displayed a bunch of storyboard from 15 different films. I came across one that really struck my eye. There was a storyboard for the film Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock. Since we were shown an excerpt from the film Psycho I really got to see how the storyboard showed exactly how the film is showed just in drawings. This storyboard helped me picture how I am going to plan out and draw my own storyboard for my film opening.

Bailey, Jason. "Awesome Storyboards from 15 of Your Favorite Films." Flavorwire. Saul Bass, 29 Nov. 2012. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

Stoller, Bryan Michael. "Storyboarding Your Film." Dummies. Brian Michael Stroller, n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

Planning, planning, and more planning

My group and I discussed ways that we would represent our scenario in our two minute film opening. We had to decide who would be chosen as actors, where the setting would be, what days we would record and edit, etc. In order to start our rough draft process we first had to research and then we came up with ideas. We thought of many ideas, but many of those ideas didn't work out. We finally came to a conclusion on what our two minute opening would be. We would represent a young girl who is going out of the country to visit her best friend who was deported. This idea can be show through many ways. The friend of the main character was deported therefore she has to be hispanic. This can be represent through the actor we choose for her character and also in her body language. Another thing that came to mind when we were planning was where we would film. Choosing where we film is very important.

This link helped me learn more about how to choose the right filming location. Here is some helpful tips that I learned from the article that I will use when filming...
-  filming is the most important aspect of the film
- depending on where you are filming you may or may not need permission
- a film is more believable if it is filmed in a natural environment
- the actors and location add emotional feedback to the viewers

While researching about where to film our opening I came across another article. This article also gave me tips to use when filming.
- make sure your filming location is convenient
- always select a location that has something to do with what the movie is talking about in the script
- don't be rushed, make sure it is the right location before you film the whole thing






Hoffman, Sandy. "Choosing the Right Film Location | AIDY Reviews..." AIDY REVIEWS. Sandy Hoffman, 03 June 2016. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.
Resources, FMF. "For Filmmakers: Keep In Mind These Six Things Before Choosing A Film Location." Filmmakers Fans. FMF Resources, 18 Aug. 2015. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

Changes and decision making

My group and I brainstormed over and over again to come up with a good film opening idea that would engage our target audience and fit perfectly with our genre. I took a while to do this so we first had to do a little research as shown in my below posts of types of dramas and then target audiences. We came up with an idea, but then after thinking of how we would make that idea come to life and be shown in a film opening we soon realized that wouldn't be a good idea. After brainstorming different ideas and bouncing different ideas off of each other we thought of a film opening idea and planned out how we would show this in a two minute film opening.

Mixing Drama and Comedy...

When making our film we also thought about adding comedy in to change the movie up a little it. Comedy is shown through characters when they act in a comic and ridiculous way. In our two minute film opening we can show comedy through our main character, while ending the film opening with an unanswered question to add in the drama aspect. This way our movie can shown dramatic events in a playful manner that gets everyone laughing. Some movies that fall under this category that could help us with ideas are Life as We Know It, The Edge Of Seventeen and The Fault in Our Stars.

Finding our target audience

To make a drama film, we also had to decide on a target audience to reach out to draw them into our film.  To better see what target audience usually watched drama films I turned to this link. 

• Drama films tend to have a large target audience because they go into topics within the film that many people can respond to.
• The target audience is very large and the age, ethnicity, gender, all depend on what the films plot is going to be. 
• Our target audience is directed towards teens and adults. Another way our group is reaching out to our target audience is through our characters. Our main character will be represented by a latino actor, following him our second main character will be represented as a middle class white man. 
• We haven’t picked who our actors will be, but my group and I decided that this is the route we want to take with our characters.  
• Sometimes the main characters can represent the target audience... so by choosing these two characters we hope that some of our target audience can relate to them.

Where to start? Discovering the genre

Within my group we discussed possible genres for our movie opening and decided to work with drama. To further understand how we could make our film opening fit in the drama category I researched and turned to this article on Film Bug. 

• Drama movies are movies that depend on character interaction and development, and theme that draws in the audiences emotions. 

• All drama films include a dramatic element and focus on that throughout the whole film. When choosing drama for our film opening, we had to look at all the elements we would need to fulfill for the drama genre; plot, characters, etc. 
• To get a better look at drama films, the website even gives movies that fall into that specific genre that can help me and my group, when we start filming and give us more ideas to add to our opening.