Group Meeting #1

 Today in class we held our group meetings. Basically, we were broken up into groups and had meetings where we discussed our portfolio projects in their current state, and offered constructive criticism, opinions, or even ideas in terms of plot development and branding for certain projects. First, I'll talk about my group members' projects, and then talk about what was said about my production.

Renn

-Making a short film about a girl who gets over her overwhelming school experience mirrored by a flower growing. It is super mise-en-scene heavy and relies upon match cuts of the flower prop to represent how no matter how much goes on in her life, she's still just an extension of the same person she always was. It seemed like Renn had a super clear idea of the story they were going to illustrate, certainly more than I do. The only real issue she faced was coming up with a name for the short film, but they said they would prefer until they get farther into the production to settle on a name.

Joaquin

-Making a short film about a girl whose tired of being powerless, and joins a satanist cult and goes on a satanist crusade, killing and tormenting different people. He illustrated the story as a dark comedy through its commentary on our desire for approval and gratification. We helped Joaquin work through different ways to carry out his vision, and he told us about his desire to blend illustration with real footage, creating a unique, stylized look. He also talked about certain costuming/mise-en-scene aspects he wished to include, one of them being one of these hats. 

Once he got more into the intricacies of the plot, we all pretty much unanimously told him that it seemed too dense, long, and hard to follow, and to which he acknowledged, but claimed it would make a lot more sense upon actually viewing the film.

Robert

-Robert is making a funny short film about a failed tennis player who is the son of a tennis legend. Upon turning on the radio one day, he hears of someone entering competitions, pretending to be himself. He then starts training relentlessly until he eventually finds himself one on one against his doppelganger in the final round of a tournament. We helped Robbie work out his vision to have the reveal of the main character be funnier, as its essentially a sports comedy, such as having the doppelganger look absolutely nothing like the main character, and Robbie claimed he had a friend in mind who would tower over the protagonist, making the reveal even funnier. The only real issue Robert was facing was how he would plan to end the short film. After deliberating with us for a while, he settled on a more lighthearted ending that added a comedic twist - the doppelganger apologizes and admits he only did it because he doesn't know his dad and has always looked up to the protagonist's father.

Zach

Zach is also making a short film, but his approach is vastly different from anyone else from our discussion. He doesn't exactly have a plot narrowed down yet, so our discussions with him were more of brainstorming and exchanging ideas, but he did have one key idea in mind. The entire short film would be a POV shot from the point of view of an actual camera, which was involved in a sort of love triangle with 2 human beings. It's a really cool and original idea, but right now, his group just lacks direction and a complete understanding of what story they want to tell. We offered ideas like how the film could be a commentary on our obsession with perfecting simulated depictions of ourselves, a sort of postmodern commentary, and Zach liked this idea, but once again didn't really know the story he would attach this to. Most of the conversations went like this:

"So like in this world is it normal for cameras to have sentience? Is this camera even sentient or is just an inanimate object?"

"I don't know"

"How are you going to make it clear we are looking from a camera's POV?"

"I don't know"

So yea unfortunately we weren't able to help with this one as much as we would have liked, but Zack has some cool ideas in his head and just needs to finish a story to implement them into.

Samara

-Documentary about hispanic culture bringing people together, where each episode highlights different aspects of the culture. We talked about how this approach would make the documentary feel too much like listing different cultures, and Samara talked about how she could fix this by deep diving into the topic of the episode, incorporating various indirect interviews from one culture sliced together to give a more complete story. However, beyond this, we even discussed changing the approach from focusing on one country at a time, and then the next, to treating each episode like a story, seeing how one aspect of culture was introduced in one country and how this created a ripple effect and how it stands in hispanic culture today, such as how mambo and cha-cha-cha turned into salsa at some point. We also discussed the availability for really creative branding because of the awesome flags made available by looking at hispanic flags.

I mean look

But yeah we talked about how she could use these flags in the doc intro like some kind of spin the wheel with different flags on it and aspects of culture, and this could be how each episode would start.

RYAN
Because I am so humble and everything I actually ended up going last in group discussions, which unfortunately meant I only had about 7 minutes to discuss my project with everyone, but the information I got was actually pretty valuable. After pitching my idea, they asked how I planned on shooting in the dark, and not being a filmmaking expert I said "I don't know", but Zach did. In his words I need to get a "Large Ass Blue Light" and a "small white light" in order to make the subject as clear as possible. They also gave me some funny slapstick ideas like the teacher waking up once Bob thinks he's dead, and Bob's first reaction being to slap the teacher across the face, actually killing him.

Renn also told me about this short film they researched called brothergirls which they felt aligned with the tone I was going for as it centers around 3 girls breaking into an exes house to retrieve a belonging. Unfortunately, this all we were really able to cover, but I got some valuable information I can definitely make use of once I finish my script this weekend.

Gaby

-Gaby is doing the music project, and decided to do it centering around pop singer Abby LeMasters. Unfortunately, a pretty big obstacle of hers is the fact that Abby lives in Nashville, so its not very possible to do a promotional music video. But, she worked around this by opting to do a storytelling music video. She told us one of her biggest issues with this is figuring out how to keep the music video engaging, to avoid feeling repetitive when each chorus comes around. We offered the solution of cutting to lyrics on screen in a stylized font, over a different setting each time so that the story never felt too repetitive, especially since there were no promotional aspects to balance out the story. Gaby also talked about how she's able to work around not being able to physically meet up with the artist, as she can send her a photo example, something she would like to post on social media or use as the album cover, and have Abby recreate the photo as she sent it.

I really enjoyed meeting up with everyone in groups to discuss our project. Last year in AS level, the conversations felt kind of forced and the feedback wasn't super quality, but this year it feels like we all really want to help each other, and therefore the feedback I gave others, and what they gave me, helped us all clear some things up and give us important info to keep in mind going forwards.

I'm the one with the thumbs up