Mise-en-scene #2

In my second blog on the recent songs of our film opening, I'm going to be discussing our setting and lighting. 

As mentioned in one of my previous blogs, we will be using the Treetops Park in Davie, Florida, as our setting. He wanted to use the treetops park because it has a lake trails, lots of trees and even a big treehouse however, after further discussion with our teacher, we decided that for the plot we are going to be working with we will not be needing any of that, however we are going to be utilizing a semi empty or empty parking lot and a trail or Woody area that leads to the parking lot. We're going to attempt to film this at dusk night time time of day because we want to give off that Yuri sense of her coming out of the woods at night and nobody is there. Under the circumstances, the Tree Tops Park is a public park. We do not know how many cars will be in the parking lot at the time we are trying to fill, which in all isn't a bad thing; however, if the parking lot is completely full. We might not be able to find an empty street light, which leads me to my next point about lighting.

I said in the previous paragraph that we wanted to be nighttime, or if the time of closing for the park doesn't permit it to be around dusk. However, to further portray this mysterious figure we are going to utilize backlit lighting, using a street light. I have illustrated pictures in my previous blog of examples of how we are going to use the streetlight, which I will also include at the bottom of the blog. But we want to utilize his back lighting to further convey the vagueness of our mysterious figure. 

Mise-en-scene

 As a part of my first of two mise-en-scene blogs, I'm going to talk about the mise-en-scene element of our character Claire's costume design. 

I said in my previous blog that Claire is going to have a very cute personality, and I want her costume designed to demonstrate her very sweet personality. After doing some research on the modern style of hiking currently for women, Jake and I have seen that there are today's trending styles. A very popular style for hiking is leggings and a tight jacket with a sports bra. however we feel it gives off a very modernized style, and that's not entirely what we're looking for to portray Claire's personality and character. Here are some images of the current trending hiking attire for women. 

Rather than changing the style itself because we still want to go for that modernized look within our film opening, we've decided that we want to focus more on the color scheme of her outfit. Using previous knowledge of color schemes and colors, Colors such as white, pink, orange, and yellow are all gray colors that we could utilize to help portray Claire's personality, with the color white even meaning innocence. We want everything to be cohesive since Claire has a very bubbly, cute personality. We want her outfits to feel very well put together and cohesive. Here are some more pictures that we found that could work in line with our color schemes and color ideas we are going for. 

Our Protagonist

 Meet The Main Character!!

HIIII BLOGG!! In this blog, I will be introducing the main character of our film's opening. As a part of most successful films, you need a character or have characters. As part of our opening, we chose to have a main character, a woman who is in her early 20s, maybe even late teens. Her name is Claire. We chose Claire because it felt like a cute name that would suit someone vulnerable, in our case, vulnerable to our mysterious figure. 

We want to build an image of Claire as a super sweet, naive, innocent girl. We don't want her to portray a mean girl personality, and that is something my partner Jake and I have wanted from the start. We don't really have a reason why; it's something that just felt right for both of us, so we agreed to make Claire have this sweet girl personality. We also would like our character to be an average woman's height, which is around 5 feet 2 inches, because to help convey that super, cute, sweet, innocent persona, we would like her to be shorter in height. In the next blog, I will be talking about the rise-en-scene elements used to further build Claire's character!!

Next Step!!

 Storyboarding!!!

As part of our next step in the project, after we have planned out the plot, is to create a storyboard! A storyboard is intended to be a basic visual representation of how the shots are laid out and explained, creating a template to aid during the filming process. A storyboard isn't meant to be perfect or exactly how the film is going to look. Think of it like a sketch of a drawing; it isn't the final product, but it's almost an outline or just an idea of what the final product is going to be. 

These are our storyboard drawings, and as you can see, they aren't very detailed; however, they build a general idea of what is going to happen or just a general structure of how we would like to film our opening. I do not have the greatest artistic abilities; however, I use this as an opportunity to do more in the descriptive part underneath the drawing itself. And that portion, I talked about what shot was used in what the character will be doing during that shot. Something I did not mention in the storyboard is that in the shots where the woman is looking up from her phone and during the extreme longshot of the figure, we are going to utilize panning to allow the audience to feel as if they are watching the scene happen in real time. Meaning, we will not be cutting in between her looking up from her phone and then a shot of the figure itself. It will be all one fluid shot. This also allows for the Thai back to the active audience theory because the audience will feel as if they are a part of the shot, as it will feel as if it is happening in real time. 

I said in the final few shots, the characters of the woman and the park ranger will be conversing; however, we have yet to come up with the final script for what they will be saying to each other. We do have a general idea that the Ranger will startle her by placing his hand on her shoulder and will ask her what she's been doing here so late all by herself, especially with this mysterious figure that has been seen within the park. Another thing we would like to do is have the Ranger offer to walk her out. This could help build that suspense because at this point, the figure would be gone, and now it's just the woman in the Ranger.

Our Final Idea!!!

 Thought, after Thought

After being able to talk with Mrs. Stoklosa after many nights of brainstorming and butting heads with Jake about different ideas, we finally have a concrete idea. We agreed that we were leaning towards the genre of horror, and in our opening, it consists of paranoia. However, this is a film OPENING, not a full film, so we have chosen to cut/end the opening at a part during the scene that keeps the audience thinking, but they will never know. 

To open our scene, we are going to have a woman coming out of the forest, where it then cuts to a close-up of her phone as she receives a bunch of messages implying that she just got out of a hike within the forest and now has service. These messages will consist of her friends and family asking her if she is okay because there has been sight of a mysterious person or figure within the park she was hiking in. She responds, saying she is okay, but she is asking questions about who this person is or what this person is doing in the park. As she is waiting for a response, the camera will pan to a mysterious figure underneath the street light to create that backlit effect to make the figure's face unknown. The camera will continue panning between the woman and the figure to demonstrate that this is all happening within real time. As the woman calls out to the figure and gets no response, she gives up and believes it's just in her head when, all of a sudden, a park ranger approaches her. The park Ranger asked who she was calling out to, but when she went to tell him about the figure, the figure was gone. The park Ranger begins to tell her how it is late, and they're having sightings of a mysterious person within the park, and he believes she should head home. The woman agrees and begins to leave. However, my partner and I are stuck on where to end the opening. Option one is to end the opening right there after talking to the park Ranger and she was on her way out, or option two, where we show the figure still there, but it's a very quick shot of the figure and then cuts. I am leaning towards option two because I feel as if ending it with the short shot of the figure rebuild that builds suspense and paranoia. My partner is leaning towards option one so once we figure out which ending we choose to do, or if we come up with a completely different ending, it will be documented in one of my later blogs!!

Media Theory!

 Theories of Media 

HI BLOG!! As part of our media context essay, we are instructed to incorporate Media Theories in relation to our case studies.  We were given a paper listing various Media Theories and theorists. When developing our film case study, as part of the sections to research, we were asked to research a Media Theory that relates to the film and explain how it relates. For our film opening, we are tasked with selecting a media theory we'd like to incorporate and explaining why we have chosen it for our intended purpose. 

After further thought and research, my partner Jake and I agreed that the best Media Theory to include is the Active Audience Theory. The Active Audience Theory by Stuart Hall claims audiences are not passive recipients of media content but actively engage with, interpret, and create meaning from it. This theory emphasizes the role of audience members in shaping their media experiences, highlighting their ability to select, negotiate, and resist messages based on their own backgrounds and contexts. In other words, audiences are more likely to want to consume media where they feel as if they can interpret what comes next or feel engaged. We are going incorporate this with our plot idea with the idea of this mysterious figure. You may be asking yourself how a mysterious figure is going to make the audience feel as if they can interpret the scene, well heres how! During this part of the scene, a woman is going to see a figure in the distance of the parking lot, but it will be backlit, so you will not be able to see the face, only the silhouette. This builds that eerie suspense, with the woman being all by herself in an empty parking lot with a creepy figure under the street light, which will allow the audience to start thinking about what could possibly happen next. Will the figure attack her? Will it start creeping closer? Is it someone she knows playing a prank? This is an example of Active Audience Theory, which is getting the reader to feel engaged in the film, well, in our case, the opening. 

Here are some images of what we are trying to acheieve of this figure that is meant to get the audience engaged. 

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.