Plot Aspects

 Plot- Time To Get Down To It!

Alright! Time to delve into what I want to portray along the lines of my plot. I have previously stated that I wanted to do a thriller genre with an overlying theme of "be careful with strangers on the internet". But what else? What will the actual content of my film opening be? I haven't worked out every single kink yet, but I do have the general sentiment/synopsis down; 

                A 17-year-old girl meets a boy online and gets kidnapped; he plans on drugging her and taking pictures of her for his grotesque collection, for he is obsessed with capturing his subjects in a moment of desperation. 

That's basically the premise of it; kind of cool right? I think so too. A shot-by-shot analysis will come out next week when I draw my storyboard, but for now, here is a general summary of what the opening will entail: 

The opening will start with police car sirens, and transition to a news report of a missing person- our 17-year-old (I'll have the names picked out by tomorrow). The scene will then cut to her room to show that it is empty, and pan to show the open text conversation up on her computer with the boy she was planning on meeting. 

The scene will then cut to show the boy filling a syringe up with liquid. Meanwhile, it will show the girl duck-taped on the ground (or to a chair, I haven't decided). I will utilize a collection of different shots to show her and her helplessness. 

The final part will show a bookcase in the boy's studio with a variety of binders with different girl's names shown on the sides. Finally, a binder with our character's name shown on the spine, and the boy grabs it. He opens it up, and we can see that it is a photo album. The opening will end with the girl looking up at the boy with hopelessness in her eyes. The boy will look down upon her, camera in hand, and the camera will flash. 

As I was writing this, I realized it's kind of difficult to write exactly what I want to portray, but I tried my best. There are still some filming aspects I need to incorporate, like certain parts I might want to add or change, but this is the basic plot for now. My next posting will do an analysis of the characters and who is playing them, but for now, they are nameless. 

I'm hoping this idea will stick and work out because I really like it, and I'm hoping my teacher will like it as well and give me the green light, but for now, we're still at a sort of yellow. Let's hope it all goes to plan! 

Stay tuned to find out. <3

Time For Research! Part #2

    Hey hey! So I'm back with more research on the thriller genre. In the last posting, I dove into the content of the thriller genre and gave a specific example that gave me a lot of inspiration, a film titled "Megan is Missing". Today, I want to go deeper into the production process/techniques used to support a thriller film. Again, just a reminder that I'm not planning on portraying anything gory; doesn't mean it won't happen, but not only do I think that that isn't very appropriate for a school project but I also think it doesn't really belong in a film opening. Anyway, let's get into it. 

Production Techniques

    Certain production techniques take place in order to create that suspenseful and captivating theme the directors want the audience to experience. Much of this actually occurs in post-production. Certain sound techniques are incorporated within the film to create a sense of paranoia and stress. For starters, the music that is used in these films typically utilizes minor chords and unpleasant sounds to make the song sound...not so pleasurable to the ear. The chilling chords mixed with the gruesome visuals shown onscreen coalesce and create a piece together that gives the audience that apprehension and tension that directors want to achieve. 

    

    A certain set design in a thriller/horror can give the film that suspenseful or stressful theme, which the film wants to achieve. Dirty/filthy props are implemented in order to make the characters feel uncomfortable, thus giving that sense of being uncomfortable to the audience. Typically, scenes take place at night rather than the day, for the dark has a general public stigma of being viewed as scarier since daylight is no longer available. This gives the directors more opportunities for murderers, monsters, stalkers, etc. to "lurk" in the darkness, causing more build-up. 

Above is a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho- a famous scene where the main character is murdered by taking a shower. The music is utilized immensely in this scene; there are high pitch, sharp notes played when she is being murdered, and lower, minor chords being played when she is struggling to stay alive after the murderer leaves. This is a prime example of how the music can intensify the scene and make it just about 10x more horrific. 

Above is a picture from the film Scream. The setting serves that the main character is talking on the phone with a random number who keeps contacting her home phone, and a collection of POV shots insinuate that the stalker is outside her house. She cannot see him, however, since it is dark outside. The darkness helps to draw more fear from the audience and makes one even more scared for the main character. 

Sample

In the movie Unfriended, a group of teens are all talking together on an online video chatting website. A random user joins their call, but they pass it off as a technical glitch and keep talking, until one of the teens gets a text claiming that they are a classmate that killed themselves the previous year. It is revealed that the account is the spirit of the girl, and the movie continues with the spirit terrorizing the group where they all end up dying or getting injured. 

The reason I thought this was a good sample to include was because it incorporated the theme that I want to include with the whole "be safe on the internet or you might die" kinda deal. With the inspiration from this and other thriller films, I'm actually quite excited to see what I come up with in terms of representation and creativity. I'm hoping to include the previously discussed production techniques in my opening as well. 

I guess you'll have to stay tuned to find out. 

Citations:

22, Noam Kroll September, et al. “3 Directing Tips For Adding Suspense To Your Thriller.” The Beat: A Blog by PremiumBeat, 22 Sept. 2015, www.premiumbeat.com/blog/3-directing-tips-adding-suspense-thriller/.

Dryan, Daniel, and About Daniel DryanAfter completing a BA in English Literature from the University of Leeds. “The Power Of Set Design In Horror.” Raindance, 3 Aug. 2018, www.raindance.org/the-power-of-set-design-in-horror/.

“Unfriended.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Feb. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfriended.

Time for Research! Part #1

 Alright! Week two! After mulling about around my house, I think I'm set on my decision to do a thriller genre. I already have a set idea for my plot/characters as well, but I'm saving that for a later posting ;). Anywho, today I'm going to be focusing on research of the thriller genre and show some specific examples of certain films that I have taken inspiration from in order to develop my plot and be creative with it at the same time. 

Content:

The thriller genre consists of plot that emits a suspenseful and engrossing theme throughout the film. They are filled with conflict and tension, as well as unexpected twists. Plots could vary from gory and physically sickening to psychologically twisted with deeper hidden meanings. Thrillers are never meant to be boring, and each scene has a purpose to further develop the plot and leave the audience on the edge of their seat. Content of such films can range from murders to kidnappings, to serial killers, etc. 

Above is an image of some popular films that are categorized under the thriller genre, including Psycho and Silence of the Lambs. 

One movie that matches with my aesthetic of what I'm trying to portray is a film released in 2011 called Megan Is Missing. This movie recently gained a ton of popularity over the everso growing social media app, TikTok. 

This movie has been one of my main inspirations for my film opening plot-wise. It is filmed uniquely in the sense that it is filmed in the "found-footage" style to make it seem like it is a true story, though it was based on several. The film is about a party-loving, popular high school student Megan and her closed-off, child-like best friend Amy (kind of creepy cause my best friend IRL is named Amy). Megan falls down a rabbit hole of drugs and addiction which leads her to meet a stranger named Josh on the internet, who never shows his face on camera because his "brother broke his webcam." Megan abruptly goes missing one day (shocker), and her best friend Amy sets an investigation in motion to figure out her whereabouts, for she doesn't believe she just "ran away", which is what the police concluded. She finds security footage of Megan being abducted along with sickening photos of her being mutilated that popped up on a dark web fetish website. Long story short, Amy gets abducted as well by, you guessed it, Josh, who had kidnapped Megan. Josh keeps Amy in a cell and when he tells her he is sorry and will let her go, he has told her to get inside a barrel he had so she wouldn't see where he lived. Upon opening the barrel, Megan's rotting corpse can be seen, and while Amy is screaming bloody murder, Josh shoves her into the barrel with Megan where he takes the barrel and buries Amy alive inside the barrel with her best friends rotting corpse. And that's the end :D.

Kind of gruesome, I know, and I'm not planning on showing any rotting corpses in my film opening, but I do want to use the theme of kidnapping as well as spread awareness of the dangers of trusting strangers online. Unfortunately, it's not like humanity will somehow shift and we all sing Kumbaya and eat cake; there's always going to be sickos who want to take advantage of people. So, I'm hoping that not only will my film opening be entertaining, but it will also spread awareness to not be dumb online. 

Hopefully, I'll be able to pull this off. 

Stay tuned to find out. 

The Beginning- Initial plans

After thinking about the topic/genre I wanted to go with, I have decided that I wanted to portray something horror/thriller-esque. Nothing gory per se, but something to have the audience on edge while watching. The horror selection I want to dive into is about the dangers of the internet and giving your trust in strangers online. I don't have the exact plot figured out as of yet, but I think that would be a cool concept to implement; something creative while also giving awareness to the dangers of the internet. 

My approach to this project will be pivotal in order to achieve success. I'm planning on having some of my friends outside of this class help me by being characters in my production. I'm thinking about writing a script and creating a storyboard to help visualize what I want my film opening to look like. I'm gonna take the upcoming week to try and perfect my story so I can start to discuss research and production techniques. 

Hopefully, things all go to plan! I guess you'll have to stick around to find out. 

 Hey! 

So recently, we as a class have been introduced to what seems to be a long and lengthy project. Although I'm not entirely sure what to expect, I'm excited to see where this project will take me through in regards to expanding my knowledge of film and its production. 

The introduction of this project brings many questions on my end. What genre do I want to make my film opening? What type of story do I want to portray? How can I implement editing techniques in my project? It may sound easy, but there are a lot of factors to consider. This project requires me to make many selections of what I would like to include- the possibilities are endless. There are many different genres to choose from, but I'm thinking something along the lines of either horror or coming of age. I'm hoping to create something that I will enjoy working on since this project will be a heavy time investment. 

I hope you enjoy the journey along with me! 

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

    

 Music Marketing Reflection

    Upon completing the music marketing presentation and project, I can for sure say that the process was lengthy but fun and educational as well. Not only did my team and I create a solid campaign for our artist, but we also used the marketing techniques learned in class to create a music video to promote our artist as well. Below, one can find the explanation of the full press involved in the creation of our artist, Chastity. 

    Our team researched the genre of rock extensively so that we could create a proper campaign for our star. We compiled a list of case studies, specifically those with an affiliation to the rock genre, and created a chart documenting certain distribution steps taken by such case studies. Bands such as Foo Fighters and 21 Pilots helped us create a visual on the type of style of social media we wanted, as well as what social media to use. 

                                                  

 

We then created a google document that connected all our team members so we could all brainstorm. In this document, we discussed what type of style for the website we wanted to have, as well as clothing, merchandise, and the specific shots we wanted to film for our music video. We also created a WhatsApp group chat in order to keep in touch and make sure everyone was keeping on task with what they were assigned to do.  We created a storyboard to help us plan our shots even better. A lot of our planning consisted of what to film for our music video. For our song, "Heather, Heather", we wanted to portray our artist struggling to get a grasp on the world outside the home of her mother. We wrote the plot of the story, which is about our artist leaving her mother and her home to go off to college, and how our artist is not handling this change in her life very well. We coordinated the outfits so that in scenes where the girl was happy, she is wearing bright colors, whereas when she was stressed and depressed, she was wearing all black with thick eyeliner. All of the filmings took place in my house or in my backyard, for I was the one who portrayed Chastity. The editing was then taken to two other group members where they incorporated cross-cutting to reflect on how the girl is feeling. In some clips, a black and white filter was used to represent that there is no color from the artist's world; it has all slipped away. Next came our presentation. We created a google slides that incorporated our social media, genre marketing, internet presence, target audience, and distribution plan to present our artist to the world. We included snippets of her performing concerts as well as our website/merchandise to distribute our song for listeners on all streaming platforms. 

From this project, I learned that sometimes I need to take a step back and take a deep breath. I normally do not work well with group projects, for I tend to take over and become quite bossy. This group project helped me put my trust in my group members. On an educational aspect, I learned about the many different ways digital distribution and marketing can come together to spread something massively using the internet and social media. Although it was fun, I have decided that for the Cambridge Portfolio I will probably end up working by myself. 

 

Music Marketing Blog Post #1

     As we embark upon music marketing, it is essential to maintain a well-kept, organized schedule in order to keep on track. My group and I have researched our musical genre, rock, in order to understand the marketing strategies, distribution strategies, target audience, and more. Upon doing said research, my group has pre-planned the scenes for our music video, as well as plan to create our artist's social media accounts. Whilst making said marketing tactics, we have taken into consideration the target audience for our artist (teens-young adults) in order to appeal to them the most. I believe we are on the right track to having a successful musical pitch. 

    Though fun, some challenges throughout this project have already been brought to the attention of the group. First and foremost, the challenges of distanced learning and communication already makes group dynamics more strenuous, for we can't necessarily meet with each other at the drop of a hat. The trials and tribulations of remote learning and the coronavirus have been felt through many different aspects, but the restriction of in-person interaction has definitely been a hardship. Another challenge is that my group members and I are not very familiar with the rock genre. None of us listen to rock, so it does require more energy to fully delve into the rock music genre. 

The next steps for our group are to create the social media platforms for our artist, who we named "Chastity", as well as form our storyboard to know exactly what scenes we want to film in our music video. We already have brainstormed the general theme we want to portray, but once we have all the details, we will begin filming as well. Below, our brainstorming document shows the inspiration we want to use for our artist, including her clothing, style, social media account, and more. 

Our group is excited to see where this project will take our creative sides and we are excited to see what we will produce.