Putting the pieces together

 To start this blog post I want to discuss what is going on in my production process. I have been struggling this week to continue with my production process because of timing. Unfortunately, my time has been restricted by another class requiring me to be at school 5-9 every night for 4 days. I signed up to take a theater tech class and my grade requires I be after school every day 3-6 for a week and a half, then be at the showtimes 5-9 for 4 days. Having this requirement for these past two weeks has limited my production process.

 I did have one day where I wasn't obligated after school and that is when I discussed my story with TJ and went location scouting. Before one of the showtimes also this week I was able to meet up with Sofia to talk to her about the story and planning days for availability. TJ has a practice schedule for tennis and also does work, like Sofia. With my own limited availability to shoot I am still planning for my production.

During last night's show, I was able to meet and talk with people. As a joke to one of our campus security guards, someone told him he should do voice-acting. He responded that he would love to branch into that field and then I asked him if he would be interested in doing voice-acting for the sins in my piece. He agreed and said let me know what you need. So, while I was struggling to further my production, I found a key facet to my production that I was struggling to find. 

Based on the timing of this month, spring break is soon to occur and availability from the two peers I am filming opens. This week was not in the books to film but by next week I see myself having the majority of my piece finished and I will get that final piece on the 24th when I can film with TJ and Sofia.

Beginning my social media page I am struggling to decide what my first post should be. I downloaded photoshop and illustrator off of the creative cloud and I am going to try to graphic design some images that fit my piece. I have one idea and I hope I can create it, but I just need to learn how to use the software and if my idea is even possible on those applications. 

My plan for my social media page is to keep the sin colors I chose previously and even tint regular photos to display this. My idea for my first graphic design post is almost a kaleidoscope figure of the three sin colors I chose. My description lacks detail but I hope I can create the design to do all of the descriptions for me.

stay tuned...

Getting more done

After filming with TJ at spots and putting together the story we have a good physical idea of production. 

Today I started my Instagram page and decided the name of my short film: Mindfull Mindset

I wanted to create an idea for the short film to establish either sin or mental issues occurring within the piece. The incorrect spelling of Mindfull is purposeful to say that TJ's character has his 'mind full.'

Right after creating my account, I set out to find connections with other short filmmakers.

Unfortunately, I can only search under hashtags to find any possible interests before my social media begins to create a cultivated feed for me. 

I have a few ideas on how I want to brand my feed and what decisions I will make about posting. While writing my piece, it was decided that only three sins so far would rapidly occur in ideas. Those sins include greed, pride, and envy/wrath. I want to decide the colors posted on my social media will consist of black, white, green, yellow, and red. Red- wrath/envy; Green- greed; Pride- Yellow

Another idea that occurred for my piece is deciding character names. I was thinking to go with the original names of my peers but I think I wanna search if there are any subliminal names I could use.

I looked through a lot of websites for names I could possibly use but most seemed to be over the top for a regular name. 

TJ- His name in real life is Antonio and gets nicknamed Anthony which I think I am going to name his character

Sofia- For her character, I was searching for a name but I haven't found one that I particularly like. My ideas for her so far were either Katherine or Veronica but they don't feel right. Later thinking and talking with Sofia we decided on Vee.

Luckily, I was able to meet up with Sophia and talk with her about the plan for shooting and the film premise. We were able to discuss what happened with location scouting on Tuesday. We made a plan for filming to happen on the 24th which is a Thursday after all of our work together. Sofia will only be included in one scene of the film so that time is the only real-time that all 3 of us need to be together to film. I am going to talk with TJ to figure out other dates we can film since he is the main character of the short film.

stay tuned...

Getting the pieces

 The past couple of days have been quite a lot of communication with my subjects and their availability to film. My male subject does have a complex schedule but we can work around it and he is more than happy to arrange moments to film. Today we utilized that we did not work and went around our town to location scout and put together the piece.

I gave him a rundown of the story and how it will be chronologically sequenced. We discussed the varieties of shots we will need and the shots we will need to create for an illusion because of legal limits. 

outside shot of the car

outside looking into car

front of car

beginning window shot idea

where the transition from the window to alarm creating light would take place.

an outlet where the AirPods would not be charging

transitioning outside of the bedroom

switch to other room for shot transition

the character himself

park gazebo where the female character can be coming from

bench for the conversation to occur

facial closeup for driving

driving perspective for speed increase

outside the house for beginning shots/where we start hearing multiple voices

driving on a street

Today was productive to physically visualize the piece and see if my ideas would work. Planning to film will happen in the next week. Thankfully, the availability of my male subject is more open than my female because I can film him more independently. I will most likely only need the female for one day of filming but I would like to tell her the premise beforehand and what is somewhat expected. 

stay tuned...

Coming together

 Okay so to begin I have my planned production and my main character. I know my main character actor is a very active person so I planned my idea around his day-to-day. He goes to the gym quite frequently so I am going to see if it is possible to film at that location. 

Next, I have an idea of who my female character could be. I wanted to choose someone who wasn't in my media studies class so it wouldn't break the immersion that could take place in the storyline. I know quite a few people who would be perfect to cast in my piece in my class but I feel like it would ruin the exposure. I have been thinking of all of the people I have met at my school and what person would be compatible with my main character. Two people have come to mind in the last 24 hours and I have asked one so far who could possibly work. The only impediment to my choosing is if the people I cast can act effectively for the switch of roles I need for the female character. 

There needs to appear a connection between the two characters that shows a semblance of an actual friendship. Putting two people on screen who don't know each other and trying to make them have a connection would most likely show in the filming. The characters do know each other in real life and I would say they get along quite well. I am lucky to have met both of these peers at a mutual workplace. I should know by later in the day if the female peer will want to participate in my production.

The only difficulty I think that might appear is scheduling conflicts. I know my male peer is more than eager to help in ways he can. I do know times over the weekend when both of these peers were able to hang out after work - so I can possibly plan a night shooting at this time. Planning to shoot at night was part of my plan and late in the night, there would be fewer distractions to appear in the background.

To create car sounds, many of my coworkers have ranging cars of loudness and I can record these noises to help create the needed sounds for the car crash scene and the speedings. 

I really think I can manipulate a shot at night to look like speeding by being inside the car. I can show a quick increase in speed of the car on the speedometer and when the car is off - the character is pushing the gas all the way down. Then I can have my character going at normal speed but at night you would only be able to tell the car is moving and not how fast. I add sound effects to support the idea of speeding.

Anyways, I am going to talk to my actors on days they can film. I will need to film the guy more than the girl anyways so I will work around his schedule more. Possibly by next weekend, I can get a lot of shooting done because we would have that nighttime opportunity. I do not know if the guy works next weekend but if not we can still utilize the empty parking lot to shoot in or behind the plaza we work in after the majority of the businesses close for the night. 

stay tuned...

Storyline Plan

 I want to put all of my ideas in order and this piece will be similar to my shot list ideas. I would like to chronological order and sequence with more information so I can get a better grasp of what I am going to shoot. 

• establishing shot showing nature or maybe a view outside a car window. I would like to ease the shot comfortable to the main character and nature. Or maybe for that matter, a bedroom window shot where the room is quite dark and then the next shot would be lightened by the alarm going off.
• I would then have the shot continue in the room but we hear the alarm and shift to the light protruding from the phone and see the main character waking up. (a note to myself is to have a light in the room to illuminate the setting enough, but not obviously light is seen. I saw this was a mistake made in many pieces I saw this year)
• within this shot, we'd see him wake up and maybe we hear a whisper of a sin voice appear but make it not too loud. He would react in an annoyed but calm manner and immediately set to the task to find AirPods to drown out the noise. 
• we shift the shot to where they would be charging and see the charge cord is not connected to the block so his AirPods are dead. "Shit I don't need this again today...  no no no" see him rambling to go find earbuds. ripping open drawers and looking everywhere. "dammit I don't want to deal with them today" then he rationalized with himself, "ok ok I can do this..."
• he begins to start walking and going about his morning routine, but we will just see him go into another room and cut to the next shot. 
• walking out of his house is what I am picturing and he does something where he either drops something or scrapes himself (depends on the location we decide on and what will look like it will look better in the shot) then the voices would begin to critique him again.
• "Only an idiot would do that" "don't make us look so weak" "walk smarter" - I can work on these lines to work better
• he would then grab his head reacting and maybe even hit his head "shut up will you"
• he throws his stuff in his car and the door shuts
• next shot he is driving his car and they begin yelling at him again. we see him tense his fists around the steering wheel then slowly begin accelerating the gas. I am thinking rapid cuts from speed to face closeups
• we could then hear a message goes off that distracts him. He breaks the annoyed concentration and begins to slow down. He gets to lights or gets to his destination and reads the message from his best friend, "how are you feeling today?" he can then go "I'll text them back later"
• he gets to the gym and sees people around him, greed "look take their wallet, they aren't looking" Pride, "go deadlift to show you're better than everyone" he ignores them, then envy "don't let those guys look better than you"
• he continues to ignore and plugs his AirPods into the wall and allows for them to charge while he works out. "you are too weak." "you'll never be good enough." "you'll never be strong enough" etc. 
• he slams himself and goes back over to where he left his bag and grabs the AirPods from charging and puts everything else in his bag.
• he goes to drive home but stops at a park. He puts his AirPods in and decides to go for a run. Music begins playing and we hear voices fade and we can see his anger dissipate. he goes to sit down after a bit on a bench and the shot opens from a closeup up to a midshot where a third opens up. We see someone join him but he has his music in and doesn't hear. After a bit, we hear her voice fade into his ears and the music stops with him pulling out the AirPods. 
• "Hey I was trying to get your attention but I guess you couldn't hear me." He responds, "yeah sorry I had these going but I saw your message - sorry I forgot to respond, I got distracted" she would respond, "no worries, do you want to talk about it?" he goes "Uh yeah there's quite a bit going on but I am surviving. there's a lot going on in my head but its feels like there is no escape"
• he says there isn't something right and goes into that they're going through something very abnormal.
• could then proceed with them somehow taking the AirPods when he divulges his feelings and is distracted. sets up where the character isn't able to block out the voices without the music.

Then I am going to end it somehow where my character gets too overwhelmed and crashes his car. The female would get a notification that another subject died, "I had hope he would last longer"

This plan seems like it will work but I just need to location scout and still find my female character. I am looking for this person but I haven't found any subjects that would get the aura I want yet. 

music happenings

The next phase is to find music I can use to support my piece. I need music that is diegetic with the character and background music. https://tunetank.com/themes/  has a lot of resources for copyright free content and I plan on finding multiple soundtracks from it. On this website as well were options for sound effects and I feel I can refer back to this website in the future.

• https://tunetank.com/t/61hf/5688-time-to-breathe
• this is one of the songs I envisioned the main character to play to drown out on the run to which he gets interrupted
• https://tunetank.com/sound/101537-vibration-from-turbulence
  
• I can use this for the sound behind the car drives I am planning
• Music from Tunetank.com Finval - Stasis (Copyright Free Music) Download free: https://tunetank.com/t/61hf/3802-stasis
  
• this is a good atmosphere sound I could utilize if I need simple support with a mysterious atmosphere
• Music from Tunetank.com Rage Sound - The End Of Humanity (Copyright Free Music) Download free: https://tunetank.com/t/61hf/3832-the-end-of-humanity
  
• This song is good support for the ideas I have for the mental breakdown and deterioration and mental health

Finding music was needed for my piece and I hope to find other pieces later because I know I want audio support heavily on this piece. Meeting with my actor will be needed and we can location scout for effective film production. 

For my previous post on ideas of shots- car driving popped up quite a bit, so I need to either research sounds on characters driving at extremely fast speeds or figure out how I can produce that sound by my own means. 

The sound bridges with dialogue to the natural world will be very cool transitions if I can edit it properly. I need to work out who my best friend character could be to get the malicious chill I need for them to produce. Thankfully, my main character actor that I planned for happily accepted my offer to be in my short film. They were quite happy to be offered and ready to shoot whenever I get everything together. 

stay tuned...

Ideas Ideas Ideas

 I have a person who I think I want to make my character for the project. I would like to meet with him and see what he does normally day-to-day and if that can inspire settings. I wanna see if I can make a sorta shot list, so here we go:

• a waking upshot with aggression that he forgot to charge his AirPods and has to go through the day without them and cannot find any other earbuds
• With my shots, I am already envisioning close-up shots that are doing almost 360 moving upwards until the voices get too loud that we see a physical reaction. 
• gradually progression of mental wellbeing being documented
• prompted shots for the sins to have a voice come out to, for example:
• greed- take their wallet to a person walking in front 
• you should be ahead in your classes
• why aren't you doing enough
• wrath - don't let others walk into you, do something about it
• tell them what's really on your mind
• envy- don't go easy on them, take the win
• take everything for yourself
• pride- you shouldn't be talking to that low life
• don't waste your breath on that person
• a closeup transitioned to a very wide depth of field to where the voices are no longer heard and the character yelling at them echos 
• putting charged AirPods in a gym bag and going into his car
• speeding in the car when voices gradually begin
• a gym shot where the voices are pushing him harder and harder - he then remembers to get his AirPods
• talking with self in a medium shot why this is happening to him in a cool down
• heads home and parks and the voices start again so he decides to go for a run
• a running shot where the character puts AirPods in where the music drowns out the voice
• then would progress that the AirPods die and the friend character appears saying, "Hey I was trying to get your attention but I guess you couldn't hear me."
• they sit down and he proceeds to go on his mental list of how a lot is going on in his head and there's no escape
• he could divulge that there isn't something right and the character is going through something very abnormal.
• could then proceed with them somehow taking the AirPods when he divulges his feelings and is distracted
• sets up where the character isn't able to block out the voices without the music.
• the Airpod necessity drowns out and the character is just aggressive and upset why it doesn't stop
• "I can't live like this anymore"
• This is where the postmodern twist can occur
• The guy can be driven to the breaking point in which he drives his car until it crashes
• The best friend character can just get a notification that subject 10467 ended his life
• she could give a response, "awe I thought he would live a little longer than the last."

So, in making this idea/shot list my previous ideas didn't present as much as I originally intended. The more technical aspects are lacking and it seems I didn't really need them. I could see how I can still include them but it isn't necessary for the script. I want to keep the piece dark in the composition of lighting to get my darker themes emphasized. I do not want too much light and plan to have the majority of my scenes in the late afternoon to nighttime so there isn't too much exposure. 

stay tuned...