Components

 Social Media:

https://www.instagram.com/onebodyproblemshortfilm/

Postcard and Short Film:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13ZlUTTFPwLW_0ug7Fo8u3tYiohVWkXT1?usp=sharing

Critical Reflection

One Body Problem is a short film that follows a custodian, Bobert, as he navigates quite an eventful night.

Going into the development of One Body Problem, I had certainly been inspired by my recent viewings. Namely, Good Time served as a key inspiration. The visual grittiness and grain of Good Time is what visually immerses you into the gravity and reality of the film. In Premiere Pro, I was able to add a grain effect to my footage, hoping to create a similar effect on my audience adding to the overall realism of Bob's desperate attempts to free himself from the life-changing situation.

A shot of Bobert from One Body Problem

A shot of Connie from Good Time

Through further researching into Good Time, I had discovered that many key intense dialogues within the film were improvised off of a loose script. 

Fascinated by this discovery, I decided the dialogue sequence with fellow janitor Lewis as Bob persuades him not to use the bathroom would benefit from some due to the climactic nature of the scene. This ended up turning out really well, with Lewis referring to Bob by the wrong name and Bob eventually guilting Lewis into listening through his references to their level of respect in the workplace - "people respect you...no one listens to me."

The original scene - the final scene lasted over a minute!

In terms of short films I researched, as my piece is a dark comedy/thriller, 2 key comedic conventions I implemented were slapstick and comedic delivery. Stapler's  use of physical comedy to create absurd humor specifically inspired the jumpcut sequence where Bob drags the body out of the bathroom.

Likewise, Lie Detector's use of intentional comedic delivery in lines like "welcome to the firm" inspired the comedic delivery of our lines like "I think he's gone" when the teacher's wife comes by, combining to create an aspect of comedy which balances against the more thrilling elements. 

These thrilling elements were derived from my following of conventions, such as the jumpscare when the teacher's wife starts pounding on the school door, and challenging of others. One thriller convention in which it can be argued that I challenged is the intelligent protagonist vs the equally matched antagonist, as the whole plot twist of the wife's master plan comes about by a rather cliche Freudian slip, in which she calls Bob by his first name, despite them never meeting face to face, revealing her as a rather unmasterful villain.  

This challenging of certain conventions jeopardizes the degree in which I was able to engage my target audience. The primary target audience for my piece is thriller-comedy enthusiasts, primarily male, and aged from 18-35 years old, who tend to gravitate towards a very clear style through soundtrack and cinematography. One way in which I clearly illustrate a visual style is through the repeated use of canted angles, handheld shots, and close ups to maintain tension throughout the piece.

I also created an auditory style through my own creation of the gloomy composition heard at the start and end of OBP. I even created a video of me playing along to the composition of the song live on social media, further engaging the parts of my audience drawn to clear stylistic choices.

Further research into the Instagram pages of successful short films provided me with the framework to engage both the thriller-drawn and comedy-drawn aspects of my target audience. Perhaps most notably, my observation of @crashsiteshortfilms generation of 2 teasers, one comedic, and one more intense inspired me to do just the same, ensuring I am marketing my piece to these separate elements of my audience. A universal trend across the social media pages I researched here was behind the scenes shots, and thinking it to be the best way to bring the audience along the journey from start to finish, I elected to make 2 behind the scenes dumps alongside blooper reels. I furthered this emphasis on both targeting both audiences through blooper reels and a promotional video to further highlight comedic aspects, and critic responses highlighting the intense atmosphere as "Alejandro Navarro burns up the screen".

A frame from the promotional video

While I communicate it through all components of my project, the social media component is where my created brand is made most evident. Attempting to keep the same trend of appealing to comedy and tension, two key elements of our branding are the use of caution tape and toilet paper overlays.

The caution tape and toilet paper overlays are essential components of our branding, and I essentially placed them throughout the social media wherever I saw fit. They help tie each and every post to the caution sign, a key symbol within our production, as well as Bob's janitorial occupation, serving as a constant reminder of his status, a key theme within our production. The caution tape is also evident within the postcard. The front of the postcard features the most pivotal frame of the entire production, generates mystery, and features an important symbol to the larger story at hand. The back of the postcard features our film's logo, the body outline, which I also featured on as many Instagram posts as possible.

One thing I would change about our brand in hindsight is the overall consistency. While we attempted to remain as consistent as possible, certain posts just did not fit in the brand I was attempting to establish, such as the 2 posts below for example.

While these posts are funny and may still engage the audience through interactive prompts like the poll, they are missing the overlays and color to fit within my overall brand. More cohesive color and visuals throughout my whole page in combination with this balance of comedy and tension would definitely take the overall brand I created to the next level.

The brand I created allows me to reinforce key themes within my production, providing commentary that extends far beyond a school. As OBP follows Bob, a working class man, it reinforces the notion that these workers are widely overlooked. Almost immediately, I was able to illustrate Bob's invisibility through a teacher's complete ignoring of him.

Straight up ignored

Because of how Bob is targeted as the scapegoat for the wife's plan to kill her husband and frame Bob (in her words "who would people believe, the innocent...wife, or Bob the janitor?") due to his lack of significance and credibility, OBP reflects extrapolated implications of societal attitudes towards essential blue collar worker.

However, the narrative challenges these societal attitudes through this brief, yet important shot. 

Bobert's son set as his wallpaper provides logical and relatable motivation for the extreme lengths he goes to hide the teacher's body and reenforces his humanity. Through humanizing Bob for the audience, the narrative challenges tendencies to overlook blue collar workers. In hindsight however, a clearer demonstration of this image would have made this element a lot easier to understand, such as a printed photograph to ensure this them could be easily picked up on.

A further issue I am able to commentate on in One Body Problem is workplace hierarchy.Bob was chosen because no one would "believe" him and I reinforce that through janitor Lewis's condescending dialogue with Bob, and how he wants to use Bob's bathroom as opposed to one he is assigned to clean. The implications of this one employee being treated with more regard than another are obviously extrapolated, but still carry the message of dissent towards workplace inequalities.

The key symbol of one body problem, the yellow body outline, serves to capture the crux of the implications of One Body Problem. The figure is lying motionless on the ground, surrounded by pitch black with nowhere to go. Beyond literally depicting a body, this serves as a visual depiction of all the emotions Robert must have felt when confronted with the realization that no one truly respected him, enough to the point where he could literally be framed for murder and people would side against him. 

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The yellow hue ties into the caution wet floor sign, featured in the final shot, symbolizing the fact that the consequences of the unfair treatment and neglect Bob experienced has finally caught up to him for the worst, and he has been faced with it and was forced to make matters into his own hands.

Overall, this project was loads of hard work but also loads of fun. I certainly had no idea going into this whole project I would make anything remotely close to what I have finished, but I'm glad I did. I learned a lot about my skills, my vision, and my work ethic and am glad to have finished something I can be proud of.

My Final Thoughts...

Welp...That's a wrap. After 8 weeks of procrastinating, stressing, proactively working, procrastinating, and then stressing again, and an incredibly long time on Adobe Premiere Pro, One Body Problem is essentially done. This has undoubtedly been the most demanding, laborious, and fun thing I've ever had to do related to school, and I would do it over again 5 times if given the option. But not 6. 

From the silly and sarcastic character inflections, to the emotional story at its core, to the flaws here and there, I can confidently say One Body Problem is a production that represents who I am at this stage of my life. However, as someone who is definitely artistically inclined, specifically within the music realm, but often finds themselves hesitating to put stuff out there for all to see, forcing myself to do so through creating a public Instagram page served as a fun way to go outside of my comfort zone, step back and think about how I really wanted to present this story to others. 

I remember picking AICE Media Studies AS as a backup class at the end of 9th grade, no technical skills or prior experience whatsoever. Looking back now, if I hadn't been given this class as a remedy for scheduling conflicts, I'd likely be at a very different stage - suffocated in other Physics lab assignments and English readings, not being encouraged by really anyone to express myself in a way that felt true to who I truly am. 

Overall, AICE Media Studies has been pretty cool I guess.

Below is a metaphor in basketball terms for my transformation as an AICE media studies student.

CR Research Continued

With the whole project due - when is it - oh NEXT FRIDAY, I've still got to get started writing my CR, but just as I did last week, instead of jumping in blind like I did last year and essentially winging my whole script, I've elected to take a step back and brainstorm how I could approach and blend together each of the questions, so today I'll be doing so for final 2 out of the 4.

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

My biggest concern by far when attempting to create my project's brand was finding a way to communicate the more humorous and more comedic tones within our film equally. My first and most direct effort at doing so was through this logo, which intentionally resembles the outline of a figure on caution wet floor signs, emphasizing the overall unlikeliness of such strange events within our film happening to our janitor, but it also works to symbolize the isolation and powerlessness caused by workplace hierarchy as I previously discussed.

The figure is lying motionless on the ground, surrounded by pitch black with nowhere to go. This serves as a visual depiction of all the emotions Robert must have felt when confronted with the realization that the fact that no one truly respected him, enough to the point where he could literally be framed for murder and people would side against him. Clearly this logo is a key element that fosters the branding of humor and more intense, serious tones.

I further embodied this dichotomy through the visual style of my social media.

On all of my posts in this meet the team format, I relied on a typewriter like format to enforce the grittiness of our visual style, as well with the school like setting. My color scheme enforced neutral tones mixed with the hazardous yellow of the wet floor sign. We also re-enforced the comedic elements through incorporating toilet paper and caution tape as overlays, once again capturing the overall absurdity of the plot.

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

Even prior to conducting my research, I knew that a major influence in my final product would be Good Time, as I was a huge fan of the way the Safdies created and held tension throughout the whole piece. The way they rely on improvisation between actors which has the potential to elevate a scene's level of immersion is something I definitely took inspiration from, especially in the confrontation between Lewis and Bob. These 2 characters were played by Ale and I, and since we both had a clear image of what the scene was supposed to represent, improvisation worked really well here.

A convention in which it can be argued that I challenged is the thriller convention of intelligent antagonists that are aware of their target's weaknesses and situation, as while the teacher's wife had a whole plan as to how she would perfecty frame Bob, the freudian slip of calling him by his name, despite them never meeting face to face, reveals her as a relatively unmasterful villain, which challenges the fortitudinous villains typically associated with the genre.

Additionally, a key element of social media research I took advantage of was the use of teasers which work to separately illustrate comedic tones and serious tones from @crashsiteshortfilm on Instagram.

 

Sketchy Sound Design

 As I draw closer and closer to the end of post-production, I've just now realized I'm missing 2 pretty important sound effects, the guttural scream of the husband that Bob hears from the bathroom, and the sound of Bob throwing the teacher's phone after hanging up on his wife, so today I'll be taking care of these 2 sound effects.

I ultimately decided Ale must be the one to take care of the scream after searching YouTube and PixaBay for screams that fit, so I sent him a text, and he sent me the sound. I had originally envisioned it being a sort of terrified guttural scream, but Ale debated saying it wouldn't make sense as someone wouldn't scream if they were to trip and fall, it would be more like a "woahhhhhh", and so that's what he did. I also added on top of it the sound of a "body thud", which I did find online, but I opted not to add a slip because I figured it would sound too comical.

Additionally, for the sound of Bob throwing the phone, after some toying around with simple object clattering sounds like this:

I ultimately decided that they didn't have enough gravity and thought not only would it be more comical, but also add a whole other beat to add on top of the awful night Bob was already having ifhe threw the phone too hard and it shattered, so I elected to layer the sound of plastic clattering with glass shattering to create this sound:

With these 2 sound effects done, that essentially marks the end of my sound design process and all I have left to do are last minute tweaks and revisions. The end is nigh

Group Meeting #2

Hello blog viewers. This past week we were given the second and final opportunity to confer with our classmates regarding our progress in developing our portfolio projects. I've previously posted about our first group meeting, and this occurred just as we begun developing our project ideas, whereas this group meeting occurred just a little over a week out from the due date, so we all definitely had a significantly clearer vision as to what exactly are end results would be and had more tangible elements to show.

 David - Producing a short film involving a coin that has the ability to teleport the protagonist around the world. He explained how the idea was conveniently planned as he traveled to Europe over spring break and therefore got most of his filming done in these abroad locations. He showed us some footage, some social media progress, and a rough draft of his postcard, all of which looked solid. Since he hadn't really started the editing process yet, we weren't able to provide as much guidance as a whole, but our confirmation as a group that he was doing good work must have stood for something? Obviously I wish we were able to do more but since we didn't have enough to go off of we weren't able to contribute as much as I would have liked.

Mariana- She showed us some of her social media progress but explained that her group has had some difficulty filming their short film as they felt the need to rewrite the script. As of now, this is their biggest obstacle but in terms of developing their branding on social media, the fonts and color schemes and overall style is super consistent and they seem to have a plan.

Me (RYAN) - I honestly feel that I gained a lot of valuable insight from this group meeting. I think part of what made this meeting so helpful was because I had worked on a lot of ideas but wasn't exactly married to any of them. There were 2 things the group provided me that were super helpful, the first being my postcard formatting. 

(This is probably a bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea)

They basically said:

"Bro Ryan this is the worst formatting I've ever seen for a postcard what were you even thinking"

"I'm sorry guys i-i don't know it was just an attempt I'm open to change it"

"Never touch Canva again bro"

"What were you even thinking" 

"My dog could design a better postcard"

Ok I'm joking they were actually a lot nicer and helped me rearrange the back into something more presentable, so as of now this is the postcard situation:

I also got some advice on my creation of the jumpscare. I showed it to them, but they perceived it to be to zoomed out to create the tension I was going for, so I zoomed in and I think that may have solved my problems.

Zoomed in

Lauren - She also had a very clear idea of what she was going for and had made a lot of progress on social media. Her branding was very consistent, but she was only struggling with fitting the font on one of her movie posters (she was creating the movie promo package). I suggested she try switching the layout of one of her posters to landscape instead of portrait for both to see if it made a difference.

Nicholas- He showed us some  of his groups social media posts, and they are definitely the most advanced in terms of branding by far. Not only the posts individually but everything on their page fits together really well through the harmonious color scheme. This was more of a progress check than us providing any guidance because his group's footage and social media progress seems really well developed, they just need to start developing a postcard. 

Andrew- I met with someone else in his group previously and form the footage I saw, things are definitely looking quite satanic. He showed us part of his social media they definitely have a clear image of what they are going for and not afraid to communicate the satanic elements to their film. They are doing exceptionally well at incorporating behind the scenes looks into their process, definitely something that would engage their target audience really well.

Unfortunately, I don't have a group picture but I did my best effort at creating a detailed replica of what all 6 of us looked like sitting at the table.

Filming Wrapped

 Aside from one shot, the POV urinal shot to show Bob's expression when he hears the screaming and collapsing from outside the bathroom, we've officially finished filming! On Monday after school we all went back to the school for what would be a short, hour-long wrap up - or so I thought. Unfortunately a few mishaps and unfortunate occurrences were involved that dragged everything out made us rush a little bit in the last few minutes of filming, one of them being that Alejandro's girlfriend, the wife actor, started feeling pretty sick that day and we had to rush to get a back up, but luckily our classmate Nina came in clutch. This meant that we had to refilm some of the teacher's wifes line which we had already recorded, but we only got about 3 lines in and it only cost us about 10 minutes

I also got some quick shots from the outside of the school building to use as either cutaways or some extra shots for exposition or the creation of a teaser later on. This flickering light would serve particularly well in creating a  sort of eerie and foreboding tone so I made sure to get about 15 seconds of footage.

Also, once I begun editing, I hadn't really planned on doing this while it is a key convention of thrillers, but the scene where the wife confronts Bob seemed it like it was screaming for a jumpscare like "RYAN RYAN PLEASE MAKE THIS A JUMPSCARE" so I added a very sharp sting in addition with loud pounding knocks which I found on Pixabay in order to create this:

                                

Additonally, we opted to create the effect of the body having woken up by Alejandro operating the camera, and me standing behind the cart in which the body bag was placed and shaking it aggresively. I also added some muffles to add to the overall comedic effect.

And finally, something I can admit was definitely my fault, but going into filming, I honestly could not for the life of me figure how I wanted to end the piece. Whether it be the tone, or action, I just couldn't figure it out and was hoping once I saw everything there I would decide in the heat of the moment. This is pretty much what happened, and because of how emotional Alejandro's acting was when the teacher passed away for real for real, I decided ending it on a more gloomy note would be best. I decided to recreate this by having him walk back out into the hall, what one can assume is a few days later, and slowly, almost painfully, place the wet floor sign in the middle of the floor. I added my song to it as well and I think it matches together quite well honestly:

Overall, now that I've gotten a rough edit of most of my piece and finished filming, I feel I now have a pretty clear vision of the brand I'm aiming to develop and how I envision my piece turning out in the end.