Group Meeting

 1st Group Meeting 

Hello blog!! To start off the 3rd week of working on our portfolio project, in class, we did our first Group Meeting. First off, I want to tell you about the group I was in. It was me and 7 other classmates: Trisha, Samuel, Christian, Avery, Ethan, Meliyah, and Sonakshi. They were probably one of the best groups I could've had to start off my first group meeting of working on this project. Everyone was so kind, helpful, and attentive. 

To begin the group meeting, we all went around telling eachother their genre they are trying to demonstrate and what their initial ideas are. Samuel is working with a group of 2 other peers, where he stated they are trying to demonstrate a hospital operation while a robbery is taking place. We all agreed his idea could work really well if filmed correctly and made well, where we also suggested to him some shots and angles he could utilize for this plot. Christian went next, where he talked about his group and his film idea of beginning the scene with a group of friends in a car when they spot a mysterious bag in the road, and when they open the bag, they get sent into a trance. Because Christian had more of his plot already thought out, it was much easier to provide him with more feedback and help. I gave christian and idea for when to cut off the opening to make it cliffhanging. I suggested he cut it off while the camera is at a low angle of the group of teens looking into the bag, so it builds a sense of wonder in the audience of "what is in the bag", and then that's where it cuts. He was very appreciative of all our suggestions to further improve his opening, and that's another thing I loved about my group, we were all very open to people's opinions, honest criticum and help! 

However, of course everyones plot and ideas were great, but one person's plot that really stood out to me was Trisha's. Trisha's plot is that she wants to base her plot on a more modern or futuristic technological paranormal story about a woman or girl who has many different types of technology within her house. This includes her TV, her iPhone, an Alexa, and anything else technology-wise that she can program to do what she needs to build her plot. Her main idea is for everything to start malfunctioning against her; however, it is settle and makes her second-guess whether her technology is really trying to ruin her. I told her I think her idea is very smart and creative because of the world we are living in currently, with everyone being digital natives and the world being centered around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technology. Her idea reminded me of an episode of the show 9-1-1, during which a woman is spying on her ex-boyfriend through all of his surveillance cameras and AI devices all throughout his entire house. However, while he goes to shower, she begins messing with the temperature through the app that's connected to that device in his house. However, because she keeps messing with it, it begins to malfunction, and the temperature keeps rising, and he begins to burn in the shower, meaning it kinda worked against him, like what Trisha is trying to portray in her opening. I recommended she watch that scene of the episode to allow her to kinda see a different perspective on a plot she is similarly trying to create. Overall, we all praised her for her super creative idea for her opening and provided her with loads of feedback. 

Now, for my ideas, as my turn came around during our circle. I told my group that my partner and I don't entirely have a concrete idea of what we are going to do, but we do have a small idea. I told my circle group all about how we want to utilize the Tree Tops to create a thriller or horror opening. I admit that we were leaning a little bit more towards horror because that is something Jake and I both love and have seen many films in that genre, making it easier for us to have an understanding of what we can do to pull this off, even though our teacher stated to kinda stay away from horror because it is very commonly used. I also told them some of the idea of a girl running through the woods and trying to figure out whether to start it off as she is running from something or she is just running because she likes to run, but there is something there she doesn't know about. They thought our idea of using the Tree Tops is smart espically because of how it looks at night, and would be a great way to portray that darkness in relation to horror. Ethan also suggested we research more horror openings and see if we can find more inspiration because he believed that the idea of running from something may be commonly used, but the idea of using the setting of the forest was a great idea. So I am very open to researching a little more, but tomorrow when I am in class discussing with my partner, we then hope to have a concrete idea so we can get up to pace and make sure we don't fall behind espicallt when the time for filmimg come, we need to be ready.