Creative Critical Reflection

Here is my Creative critical reflection.

Thanks for tuning in,

   Jess 

SPECTRUM

Hello!!

I have now officially finished with my film opening of Spectrum!! Although it got pretty stressful at times, I am really happy about the experience and excited for anything else I get to learn from it !! 

Here it is !!! 

Thanks for tuning in!! 

   Jess 

link: https://youtu.be/BhJjUUNn_BQ

google drive link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2gyJxOfXYL7b1RnMkVETEhlckU/view

More sound and Final postings..

  Today during class, Isa and I showed our opening to a friend of ours in the class and she gave us some really good feedback. She told us how although she really liked the opening in general, she understood the idea of what the red world represented more than the blue world. We asked her why she thought that and what we could do to clear it up and she said that with the arguing in the red world plus the article it helped convey the message even more but with the blue world it was only the article and she couldn't really tell the difference. We didn't really know what to do other than change the idea of the article and reshoot that one shot. A different suggestion was given to us which was to make it a little easier on ourselves and instead of reshooting we could just add in a voice over in that one scene plus a different scene in the opening. We could use this to help explain what we are trying to say in a way that it isn't specifically telling you exactly what's happening, but giving more 'hints' to show you. My fear with the voiceover is that there's a chance that it can come out cheesy but there isn't anything else we can do other than try. I am not too stressed about it because I know we have mostly everything else done and we will eventually be okay! As this journey is coming to an end it feels bittersweet. Although it was stressful a lot of the time I feel like i've learned so much about the process and about myself. Over the next 2-3 days I'm going to be putting up my final thoughts and why we made some of our choices to change up our idea along with my CCR and final product. 

   Until next time,

      Jess 

Music and other things...

  After having finished most of the editing, we now had to think about the music and how we wanted to use it to set the tone. Isa told me she would start looking for the music on websites like Purple Planet and Bensound. After browsing through both of these websites, she found a track that established a sense of tension and mystery to put throughout the beginning on the clip. I thought it worked pretty well but when she first showed me it she showed it to me while it played throughout the whole video. I told her that I felt that if it played throughout the the whole opening then it wouldn't establish the difference of the two worlds. I then told her to try and see if theres any sound effects we could add to show the change between the worlds that didn't seem cheesy. I then came across the website freesound.org, where after looking around I found a sound effect that didn't sound as cheesy as many of the other ones and thought it was a perfect sound to show her transition into the blue world. I then sent it to Isa and told her if she could fade the audio from the music into the sound effect and then go in to complete silence to symbolize that isolationism.
  Until next time,
    Jess

Filming Day 3

   On Tuesday, my group and I got together to film our last scene. One of my group members, Isa, had study hall that day and finished editing the whole opening. After showing it to us, we realized that there were some shots that looked weird and that we thought we needed to reshoot in order for the whole thing to come together smoothly. Once we got together, we all sat down and watched the opening a couple of times to see what we wanted to reshoot and how we wanted it to come out. Once we figured it all out, we started filming and everything went as planned. The next day, Isa showed us the new footage and how it came out. Once we watched what she had edited, we told her more stuff that she should try to incorporate and how to better the flow of some of the shots in editing and our final result came out pretty good! Once we finished it, we realized we had more time than expected left, and decided we should do a credit scene. Laerke said how we could have our credits written on newspapers and drop them one after the other in front of  the camera. I thought this was such a cool idea and I really liked how it came out in our opening because it so clearly has to do with news which is the basis of our opening. Our next step is going to be the music choices and how we are going to use more sound to aid in telling the story!
   Until next time
     Jess

Filming Day 2

Hello again! 

    Yesterday was our second day of filming and as of right now we are one shot away from being done. We stayed filming much later than we had the first day trying to make sure we had a lot of shots from a lot of different angles. Although we think we are pretty much finished, I still feel like we are going to have to reshoot some small things once we start editing but I know its all going to work out. I do have to say though, that yesterdays filming was much more difficult than Friday's. We had to control the lighting outside as well as inside the house in a way that one didn't look stronger than the other. We went through the same process that we went through on Friday trying to figure out where the lights could go. Not only did this take us a pretty long time to figure out, it also stressed us out whenever we couldn't really see the main characters face. One of my group members Isa said how we could always try and lighten the shot in post production which could be one solution. If that doesn't look good, I think we should just look at it in the sense that in that moment you can't see her face which shows this disconnect from the world she's in and the one she's about to be in. 

    We each had a separate vision of how we thought each shot should come out. So we each took the camera and showed the vision we each had for the specific scene. I'm glad that we did this because we ended up with a lot of clips and things to work with when we start editing. One shot I did get very excited about was the shot where we got a close up of the main character stepping into the other world. I set the camera on the ground right where the door opened, and it got both colors perfectly inside the shot I thought it just looked so good and I'm really happy about how it looks!! 

  Until next time,

     Jess

Filming Day 1

    Today was our first day of filming, and I think it went pretty well. We got a lot of the red world filming done in the parts where she reads the news and sees the freedom of speech article. Obviously when you film, nothing is going to look exactly how you envisioned it, especially when you don't have the resources to do so. This was something we had to take into consideration. Despite the fact that it didn't look exactly like we envisioned it, I think that for it being the first time we work with lighting and trying to control it at night, we did a pretty good job. It took us a pretty long time to put the red lights where we wanted them so that we could still see the main character. We moved the red light literally everywhere so that it didn't look so intense but nothing was really working. So then we decided to add a white light and then that looked like it took too much away from the red. Then we decided to just put a towel on the white lights and see how it would look and it seemed to work out pretty well.

That was probably the main obstacle we had to face when trying to get things right while filming. Another minor obstacle is whenever we would start filming Isa (our main character) would start giggling for a while. This wasn't a big deal at all though because I understood that it was her first time acting in something and she obviously had to let it all out. Thankfully she got it together after a little and we filmed a lot and it worked out pretty well! 

    Until next time,

       Jess

Delving deeper

   After thinking about what we could do for our newspaper that represented real news vs fake news, I decided to do more research on fake news and the goals of spreading false information out to the public. Not only was I incredibly angry after reading through all these articles, I also understood what the end goal of spreading this information was. I came across the article "What's 'fake news' 60 minutes producers investigate" this article talks about how the producers sat down with people who have spread this fake news and why they did it. One of the men said he 'got a rush' from doing so to which one of the producers when talking about it said, "It's powerful, right?' Radutzky says. 'To create something out of whole cloth and have people believe that it's true." This made me think of why fake news is spread in the eyes of those who spread it. It creates a sense of power to them to know that people will actually believe it. Another article I came across talked about the relation of propaganda and fake news. The article "What is fake news? Its origins and how it grew in 2016" states "Propaganda and Internet fake news do, however, hold similarities: both are methods of distorting the truth for emotional persuasion, seeking to drive action." This article also gave me a better understanding of what the goal is in terms of how it affects those consuming it. Not only does it give those who write it power, it makes those consuming the fake news susceptible to whatever it is they are reading. Another article that explained the same idea was an article named "What's Propaganda Got To Do With It?" this article goes in depth about propaganda, saying:

"People are turning to propaganda as a media epithet because it helps to express discomfort with media - and the 'fake news' controversy is just one part of this discomfort. The epithet gets its sting, in part, from popular imaginings of propaganda as bombastic, deceptive mass communications from an overreaching or abusive state. But this cultural imaginary can also limit our perceptions of how power and meaning move through society." 

Reading this in the article really stuck with me specifically because of the last part, saying how it limits our perceptions and I felt that we could come up with something as an article that limits the people in the worlds perception and experience of life. After doing all this research on fake news, I realized that although real news vs fake news is good, its nearly impossible to establish this difference and add the difference of relationships between people in each world within 2 minutes. So we thought instead of thinking of real vs fake, why don't we make it where the information is fake in both worlds but it is fake with the end goal of "limiting our perceptions of how power and meaning move through society." So we thought why not use the red world to show this anger and hostility of the government trying to hold people back, and the blue world to show how they are trying to keep people apart. We thought for the red world it could be "Freedom of speech: detrimental to us as a society" and in the blue world it could be "Studies show human interaction to be harmful to the individual." One can show the anger of people in one world being limited and held back and the other shows 'scientific study' on how interaction between people can be harmful and cause a sense of dependency on others, therefore harming the individual. We thought this could be a good idea because we are introducing this character to be in one world that she knew and thought she understood, to then be presented to a different world that she doesn't understand at all. I'm excited that we have the final part we needed for filming because now we are ready to start. My group and I have talked and decided we would start Friday night and continue Saturday and Sunday if needed as well!
    Until next time!
        Jess










Citations:

News, CBS. "What's "fake news"? 60 Minutes producers investigate." CBS News. CBS Interactive, 27 Mar. 2017. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.
Carson, James. "What is fake news? Its origins and how it grew in 2016." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 08 Feb. 2017. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.
Jack, Caroline. "What's Propaganda Got To Do With It?" Data & Society: Points. Data & Society: Points, 05 Jan. 2017. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.

Spectrum is back on!

Hello!

     Yesterday I spoke to my group, explaining all the beliefs I had in our projects old idea. I presented it almost like a PowerPoint presentation showing them the storyboard I made and explaining what we could do with sound, lighting, visuals, and anything else that might've been a doubt when we initially started working on the idea. After presenting all of this to them, they both agreed that they liked it and that we should go back to the original idea. I was really excited not just because we get to go back to the other idea, but also for the personal reason of challenging myself to create this storyboard and try to convince my group members that we could still use a creative unique idea but also show an equal amount of technique.
     Our next struggle was coming up with two news articles. These two articles had to be, at the time, a representation of real news vs fake news. The same problem that we've had with most our ideas happened again with this idea, we had to figure out how we can show the difference of news and how it affects the worlds in just 2 minutes. In class, we came up with the name of our newspapers in each world. For the blue world it would be the Neptune Chronicles, and the red world would be Mars Times. I really liked the name Mars Times because one of my group members Laerke explain how mars is the god of war and was often angry and violent, which also goes along with the whole idea of the red world. When we met in groups, we came up with the idea of having a blatant lie like California banning gay marriage and then the blue world represent how people instead come together and celebrate in Pride. At first I thought it was a good idea because it represented the fake news aspect of it, but once class was over and I put more thought into it the idea and realized that although it does convey the fake news aspect of the red world, it goes against the lack of human relationships we are trying to convey in the blue world. I realized there really wasn't a way to convey that with the idea of pride so we have to come up with a new idea for the news articles. I know eventually we will figure it out so I'm not too stressed about it, and when we do we will be 100% ready to film.
     Until next time,
        Jess

Not giving up just yet

Hello Again!!

   After putting a lot of thought into what my group and I had talked about, I know the new idea is not a bad idea. What I also know, is that our old idea was definitely not a bad idea either. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, I either was going with what my group said or was going to try to persuade them to continue to try with our old idea. After having some guidance from a variety of different people, I decided I wanted to try and give our old idea one last shot. I spent literally all day today planning and story boarding our old idea, incorporating the feedback and advice I got from everyone I had spoken to about it. I realized in doing this why I hate giving up on things in the first place. I love to challenge myself because it forces me to be more creative and that's my end goal with everything, to be more creative and in the end create something I really believe in. I wanted at first to start off the opening with a flashback to give insight into the main characters life when she was young. I'm thinking that when I show this option to the group we can come up with something else because I feel that in a way it takes up time that could be used in developing other aspects of our plot. here are some of the things I storyboarded in my notes throughout the day today:

I'm sure some aspects of the story board are going to change if my group agrees to give the old idea another shot. If they still decide that it seems too difficult and doesn't really convey the meaning that we are going for, then i'm going to put all my effort into the other idea and how we are going to convey it. At least when in giving the old idea another shot, I would know that I did everything that I could possibly do to convince them of it and I wouldn't feel like I gave up on it.

    Until next time,

        Jess

New Everything..

Hello again

    Over the long weekend my group and I met up a couple of times to figure out how we were going to make clear that these are two different worlds and how we were going to get that idea across with the visuals. Unfortunately, when we spoke about the idea my group members were talking about how the idea was getting really difficult to convey because of limited resources and things like that. So they proposed that we thought of another idea. The thought of having to give up on something just because it seems difficult is something that makes me incredibly frustrated because it's something i've never been used to doing. Since I'm doing this project with a group my opinion alone about the idea isn't what matters most because its supposed to be a group effort kind of thing and I alone don't make every single decision, we all do together. If I'm being honest, I'm saddened by the fact that I'm not going to get the chance to create something that I truly believed was different, but I decided I'm just going to make it a separate project for myself and see how it goes, but for now I'm going to try and put as much effort and energy into the new idea. 

    Our new idea has to do with technology and not really how it affects peoples normal life, but how it just is their life. We talked about how they can be shown never looking at each other and just always looking at their phones. We were talking about how they are so involved in everything that had to do with technology and what was presented to them so easily because of it. This includes the violence that happens around the world. We talked about showing how desensitized people had become to watching violence over the years because they had it at their disposal every second of every day. We were thinking about possibly starting the opening off with the credit scene showing different shots of people talking to each other in different languages but still never looking away from their phones or talking about anything that showed any type of connection. The opening would then progress cutting to a scene of the main character walking with a group of friends towards her backyard. Then as they sit down it would show how connected they are to their phones. Then the group would get a notification saying that someone was just beaten to death and they could either watch it or snooze it. Then we would show the main characters reaction, being the only one that looks up from her phone, to imply that this is someone she may have known or something that affected her. She would look up breaking off the connection from her phone and then we would show everyone else never look away all pressing 'Watch Now' and then it would cut off. Although personally i feel this idea is like something thats been done before, both my other group members like it and feel it is a good idea to get our message clearly across. I think it's a good idea that can intrigue the audience while also letting us show technique throughout the opening without having to deal with other influences that could in a way make it more difficult. 

   Until next time 

       Jess 

Character biography

Violet 

     Our main character Violet is a 19 year old girl who lives alone in both these worlds. When she was 10 years old, her parents died in a massive car accident that was primarily caused by the beginning of outside acts of violence. When they died she didn't really have anyone other than her close family friends. They agreed to take her in and raise her for as long as she needed. One of these family friends was Jade, she was around 17 years old and someone that Violet looked up to very much. Because of Jade, Violet continued to grow up very strong minded, kind, optimistic, and responsible, all qualities that Jade embodied as well. When Jade was 21, her and her parents were brutally killed during an act of hatred and violence that were becoming more common in the red world. When this happened, it changed Violet making her feel completely alone because Jade was basically the only person who was her friend and that mentored her after her parents had passed away. Ever since she was young, Jade was the only person that knew she could go between both worlds and because of this Violet always had a sense of trust and safety when she was with Jade so when she passed Violet was left feeling like she was really alone and like there was no one she could trust. 

    Doing a character biography really helped fill in the gaps within the story that we had and helped us progress a little bit more with how we wanted to tell the beginning of our story. 

   Until next time 

      Jess 

Group Meetings

Hello!

   This past week has been probably some of the most stressful and anxious weeks of my life! I think I reached a new level of stress over this project then I ever thought was physically possible. The stress of these past couple of days started when I spoke to a friend of mine over a our groups idea. Don't get me wrong I love getting feedback over what I have so far and if it makes sense or not because it only encourages me to change things in order to make it better. When I spoke to my friend about my idea, she started asking me a variety of questions about how and why I was going to do the things I had planned and I had answers for only half of them. I started to look at the whole picture of my project and I realized how many gaps I had in my story and how I didn't know how I was going  to convey the message of fake news and I wanted to cry. My biggest struggle with every project I do is that I put too much pressure on myself when I don't really have to because I have people working with me. After talking to her that day I kind of just shut down and got ridiculously down on myself and on any ideas that came into my mind. I talked to my friends about it they told me to just take a breather and chill out and continue the thoughts on my project the next day. 

     Then came Tuesday, where we met in separate groups in class to talk about our idea. These groups were helpful in so many ways because it helped get different peoples opinions on our project idea and ways to improve it. The amount of weight lifted off my shoulders on Tuesday was incredible. Meeting in groups helped a lot with getting new ideas that would aid in telling the story in a way that made sense to the audience. Something I realized when listening in on other presentations, was that a huge aspect of how we're going to tell our story if its a character introduction is obviously the character. Although we had an idea of who and what we wanted our character to be like, we didn't really give her a story which is obviously the biggest mistake ever. I feel like personally, I was so much more focused on what the symbolic aspects of the opening were going to be and how I was going to show them instead of focusing on the most important aspect: the main character.  As I talked in these groups they challenged my ideas but also helped me come up with ways to face these challenges equally as much. They not only made me feel better about our groups idea and how creative they thought it was, they also helped us come up with better ways to tie it all together in a more effective way. One thing we talked about was how instead of having the blue world represent the absence of news, it would represent truthful news but the absence of this human interaction and relationship. I feel like this was such a good idea because it gave the blue world a sense of truth but equally as much took away from it with the lack of human relationships making it dull and lonely - thus causing our protagonist Violet's struggle. Ultimately these group meetings were so beneficial and made me feel a lot better about our idea and how we were going to tell our story.
     After meeting with them, in my next class I decided to google "what to think about when creating a character biography" and came across an article named "How to Write a Character Biography" and decided why not try to make one now. The amount of gaps doing this filled made me feel like the dumbest person ever for not doing it earlier. In my next post, I will be writing about our main character Violet explaining her backstory and the people that influenced her.
 
    Until next time!
       Jess










"Forums." Show your mood with a gif. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2017.
Grant, Rob. "How to Write a Character Biography." ROB GRANT. N.p., 26 Oct. 2015. Web. 22 Mar. 2017.

A Struggle with Time

 Hello again!!

  Today I talked to Isa one of our group members that didn't get to go to school on Friday, and explained to her the storyboard Laerke and I made for the opening credits.  As I explained it to her, towards the end she felt a little confused but ultimately said that even though it was a good idea to tell part of our story through the credit scene, we would have to do it in a way that engaged the audience and she felt that it came off as a little boring. To me this is the best part about working in a group, since we are all so different from each other it helps us give different viewpoints on one idea and how people can react to what they see. Although it's great that we now know we have some things to change, it also is getting a little stressful because we have to start that part again from scratch which is going to take up a lot of our time if we really want to get it right. We wanted the credits to start off representing the red world as we followed the protagonist through the house. In doing this, the credits would show up on objects where news is distributed like tvs, phones etc. Then we would get a POV shot of the protagonist blinking and moving as if she can't control the change of worlds she's going through and then it would cut to a shot of her in different lighting (different world) and then we would show different objects with more credits and then move on to tell more of the story. Another option we thought of was having the protagonist stay in the one world throughout the credit scene and then the rest of the opening show her changing into the other.

Here are some of the pictures of what we drew out in class:

 I see where it could be seen as boring because it also doesn't really tell the story as much as we'd like it to. Now we just have to figure out a way to actually get the idea of the two worlds across to the audience in a more clear cut way so they are not too confused to the point where nothing else in the opening makes sense. Although these really aren't what we are going for anymore, they can be a small guide to help us branch out into new ideas that helps us tell our story in the best way possible.
 
   Until next time,
      Jess

Research research and more research

  After doing a good amount of research on our genre, the next part of the research I did was finding and watching a bunch of examples of character introduction openings.  One of the first ones I looked at was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir. by Michel Gondry). This film began with a voiceover of the protagonist and throughout the beginning the audience is given insight on his life and his mindset and then find out he is writing his thoughts in a journal. When I watched this scene I liked the way it showed who the character was but also set a tone to make it known that he wasn't really the happiest of guys. As I watched this opening it really inspired the tone that I thought we could set with ours. Our protagonist is clearly struggling with the idea that she has to deal with these two worlds that really don't do much for her, and I think that other than showing that with as much dialogue as the voiceover requires, we could show that with some dialogue but mostly with visuals.

   Another opening I watched was Mad Max: Fury Road (dir. by George Miller). Although its remarkably different from our idea, I thought it was incredible and one of my favorite openings i've ever seen! I think the use of the voiceovers was so effective in the sense that not only was it not cheesy, it also informed the audience of the main conflict as well as giving them a piece of who he was before the conflict arose. I feel like the way Max (Tom Hardy) speaks is a really good example of what a voiceover should represent when it comes to having a character introduce him or herself. I feel like what can also be taken away from the opening scene is the effect of the mise en scene elements to show the atmosphere the all the characters lives in. The tilt down to the two headed lizard and showing how dry the surroundings are implies to the audience that something with where they are living is seriously wrong. Also, the costumes show the characters are very dirty and unkept showing that they don't care much about their appearance and much more about survival. I feel like although our idea is completely different from the Mad Max film, elements like these inspire how we can try and really tell our story through the visuals of representing each of our two worlds.

As of right now those are two of the opening scenes that i've watched at home that have in some way impacted how I want us to begin to tell our story in our opening and when I find more ill be sure to post them here!


  Until next time!
      Jess




Citations:
"Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (the beginning scene)." YouTube. N.p., 14 Feb. 2009. Web. 18 Mar. 2017.
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Trailer." YouTube. N.p., 12 Sept. 2012. Web. 18 Mar. 2017.
"Mad Max: Fury Road - Opening Scene." YouTube. N.p., 26 Aug. 2015. Web. 18 Mar. 2017.
"Mad Max: Fury Road - Official Main Trailer [HD]." YouTube. N.p., 31 Mar. 2015. Web. 18 Mar. 2017.

Quick Updates and The Genre Talk

   Hellooooo!! 

   Before I start talking on and on about our genre, I want to give a quick update on our progress as a group as well as my personal progress. Over the past couple of days my mind has been going in a million different directions at every second of every day. As a group I feel we have been working really well together, listening to each others ideas and trying as best as we can to incorporate them in order make our idea more unique. One struggle I've faced with myself is just how this idea can be portrayed. I started thinking about how difficult it's going to be because we clearly don't have the resources we wish we had. This type of thinking has had me constantly doubting because we want to do something unique and different but also so difficult to do. Then I had a self talk moment and just told myself that even though it is gonna be difficult, I won't be as proud as I could be of something if I didn't work as hard as possible on it. So as i've said before, one step at a time. Another thing we have struggled with a bit is finding the lights we want to use while filming as one way to show the different worlds. I had said I would prefer it to be more of like a light that we can just plug in and move wherever we'd like in order to make the shot come out with the undertone we want it to. We went literally everywhere. We started at Home Depot where they only sold light bulbs, then went to BrandsMart and Target where they didn't sell what we were looking for either,  and finally we went to Best Buy which wasn't any better because whatever they had cost more than my life. We decided to just wait until I got to speak to one of my friends who spends a lot of time taking photographs and ask her where she got her lights from. I spoke to her today and she told me that the lights she had were the LED light bulbs from Home Depot and they worked just as good. Although its not ideally what we had hoped for we know we can eventually try and make it work. So thats pretty much it for the not so quick update!

   Moving on to the genre talk, over the past few days I dove straight into everything that has to do with our genre Scifi/Drama. We decided to make it part Drama because of the issues the protagonist is going to have to face on her own showing her journey/development. Another Drama genre convention we are incorporating is how to emotionally attach the audience to the character in order to move them with the reality of her life which is either surrounded by constant lies or oblivion. 

   When people think of Scifi movies, they usually associate it with aliens or space movies etc. Although all this is true, there was so much more to the Scifi genre that I didn't even know about. When looking up the definition of a Scifi film, a Wikipedia article says "Science fiction film (or sci-fi) is a genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception and time travel, along with futurist elements such as spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, interstellar travel or other technologies." This is a genre convention that most people would expect when watching a Scifi movie, what many people don't expect is the deeper topics that these films can actually be trying to talk about. As I continued to read the article, it stated 

"Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition."

"Avatar" dir. by James Cameron 

Once I read that sentence I was instantly fascinated with the idea that Scifi films could create what could be a very important message in an incredibly unique way. So I dove into even more research to see what films have taken that route. One film that does this is "Avatar" (dir. by James Cameron). This film was mentioned on the article "7 Best Sci-Fi Films With Social Commentary" stating how the film is not only an action packed film with Scifi elements like extraterrestrial lifeforms and futuristic technologies, but it also offers strong social commentary. In the artcile it states how The Los Angeles Times spoke to director James Cameron about the film and its social commentary. He goes on to state, "This movie reflects that we are living through war. There are boots on the ground, troops who I personally believe were sent there under false pretenses, so I hope this will be part of opening our eyes." The film also touches on the environment and its resources and showing how we can destroy our own planet. Another film that touches on social issues is "Her" (dir. by Spike Jonze). The article states how one should leave it to director Spike Jonze to express social issues in a scifi film. In the article it states, 

"Her" dir. by Spike Jonze

"It's more of a notification to society one sent specifically via a smart device. Samantha, the operating system to which the main character, Theodore Twombly, becomes desperately attached, is an obvious nod to Siri (the voice of Apples iOS). The relationship and the dependence between the Twombly and Samantha show both our reliance on technology for everyday tasks, as well as communication. Perhaps the saddest bit of commentary is about the inauthentic interactions that result."

I feel these films have offered me a lot of insight into the vision these directors had when telling these stories with these social issues and adding these elements of fantasy mixed with reality. In doing this research I feel so much more inspired and prepared to challenge myself and I couldn't be more excited!

Until next time!
  Jess

Citations:

"The Home Depot." The Home Depot. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.
"BrandsMart USA | TVs, Kitchen Appliances, Washers, Dryers and more." BrandsMart U.S.A. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.
"Target : Expect More. Pay Less." Target : Expect More. Pay Less. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.
"Best Buy: Expert Service. Unbeatable Price." Best Buy: Expert Service. Unbeatable Price. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.
"Science fiction film." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Mar. 2017. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.
"Avatar | Official Trailer (HD) | 20th Century FOX." YouTube. N.p., 09 Nov. 2009. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.
"Her - Official Trailer (HD) Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams." YouTube. N.p., 07 Aug. 2013. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.
Young, Miles. "7 Best Sci-Fi Films With Social Commentary." WhatCulture.com. N.p., 25 Mar. 2014. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.
FarjanaTahmin Follow. "Conventions of Drama Films." LinkedIn SlideShare. N.p., 22 Oct. 2011. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.
"Her movie gif." Tumblr. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.
Read-Dominguez, Jennifer. "Here's your first look at Disney's Avatar theme park." Digital Spy. N.p., 14 Mar. 2017. Web. 16 Mar. 2017. Avatar gif

Spectrum?

   The Whole Gist of Things 

   After our time of doubt and confusion, I think my group and I have finally figured out most of what we want to do. We decided on the genre Scifi/Drama because we were fascinated with the idea of connecting aspects of fantasy with (social) concepts of reality. As we had talked about previously, we knew we wanted to do something with color but we hadn't really solidified that idea. On Pinterest, we found this image that explains The Psychology of Color in Film and it helped spark new ideas inside us. Because of this, I feel everything is coming together and making more sense and I feel pretty good! We know that we want to make our opening introduce a character. As of right now, the basis of our opening is the separation of the two worlds. One world will be represented by a red hue and the other by a blue hue. We decided to utilize color psychology to symbolize the aura of each of these worlds and hopefully help set a tone. The red world is the world with all this fake news, red is also a color that symbolizes anger. Being able to use this color psychology to help convey an even deeper meaning is ultimately what helped us fill in the gaps in our idea. On the other hand we have the blue world, which is a world void of any sort of news at all. This color also symbolizes passivity and isolationism which is exactly what the people living in it are representing. These people are isolated from any form of truth so they are acting as if nothing is wrong. The story would revolve around the main protagonist who has the ability to experience both these worlds and does not know how to handle that. It would show her journey through being in these two worlds where she could never be truly honest with herself or with others because one world was untruthful and hateful and the other was oblivious and sheltered. I'm really excited to start playing with all these elements of color and see what new things come to mind as I do!
 
Until next time!
  Jess









  N.d. Pinterest. Web. 15 Mar. 2017. The Psychology of Color in Film

Decisions Decisions

 After lots of bouncing back and forth, my group and I have finally had a discussion of what we each want and where we see this idea going. To start off, after discussing what I had said in the last post, we got one step closer to figuring out what we want to do and how we want to do it. We decided that going with a character introduction can be a better route so that we can focus more on how the character lives within these two worlds. We decided that the genre is more sci-fi/drama than mystery because the idea that she is living in these two worlds separated by two different hues isn't really possible. We also discussed how we were going to plan the next week ahead and our main goal is to sort out all these unanswered questions we may have with each other and then story board and plan where it is we want to film. Something we do know for sure is that we do not want to film outdoors because then it becomes very difficult for us to control the lighting and how we want the shots to look. We also know we are planning to film on an actual camera instead of our phones so the quality comes out as best as possible. During the course of the next few days, I am going to download the app SketchBookX to start storyboarding and posting some of our sketches!

Until next time!
  Jess


Autodesk. "SketchBook Express for iPad on the App Store." App Store. N.p., 08 Apr. 2014. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

Overthinking is my specialty

  Hello again !!
The past few days have consisted of me constantly stressing over things that haven't happened yet, then again whats new? I already know my first struggle in this project will most definitely be believing in myself and any ideas that I have. This time is no different. Although I am excited for this project I feel my first mistake is that I have invested most of my time doubting my ideas then actually throwing them out there to see what my group thinks and that is something I am definitely going to try and work on. From what my group and I have spoken about, our genre is leaning towards a drama/mystery. At first we wanted to establish a background story using a voiceover. Although the voiceover seemed like a good idea at first, we also took into consideration the risks it would bring to do one because it can sound cheesy. Another route I thought could be a possibility would be the idea of a character introduction. We could introduce a character who has the ability to move in between these two worlds that are symbolized by these two different hues, where we can have shots of the protagonist telling her own story. I was thinking this could be told with cutaways to the life she had lived. It could also be told in present tense where she is experiencing these two worlds and most of the intro could be told more with the visuals instead of using so much dialogue. These are all ideas that have been briefly discussed within my group and hopefully when I actually bring it up it could be something to consider. Whatever happens I will just remind myself to take things one step at a time!

Until next time,
  Jess

And So It Begins...

 Hello and Welcome!!

"Moonlight" (dir. by Barry Jenkins)

Today is officially the first day of what I know is going to be an essential learning and growing experience that is our final AICE media studies portfolio project. I knew this day was coming but now that its finally here, I feel overwhelmed but also very excited. The idea of being able to take part in a process where we get to make something that we truly believe in excites me to no end. First we started with what genre we wanted our film to have. The difficulty with choosing a genre, is there are so many to choose from therefor so many possibilities! What I do know, is ever since watching movies like  "Moonlight" (dir. by Barry Jenkins) I was so inspired by its cinematography and the way they used color psychology in order to create a deeper meaning.  Another film that has also inspired me is "Her" (dir. by Spike Jonze). I love the way the use of color sets a tone in the film. In the article "Lonely Palette: The Economy of Color in Spike Jonze's Her" Durga Chew-Bose states,

"Her" (dir. by Spike Jonze)

"Though clean by design, Her’s visual vocabulary never feels overly tailored. It's colours and imagery are deliberate, but rather than lapse into bludgeoning metaphor, they prop up a world based on comfort—both the appreciation of and the longing for." 

Both the aesthetics, although very different, have in many ways left me in awe and artistically I knew it was something I wanted to try with my group. As of right now we are still in the planning process and how we want to incorporate aspects of color psychology into our film opening to possibly create a deeper and more insightful meaning. I am beyond excited to challenge myself to think in ways I would not usually think in order to grow more in this process. During the course of the next few weeks I'm going to be posting about our journey while we create our two minute film opening!

Until next time!
  Jess



Citations:
"Lonely Palette: The Economy of Colour in Spike Jonze's Her." Hazlitt. N.p., 08 Aug. 2014. Web. 08 Mar.        2017.
N.d. Google. Web. 8 Mar. 2017. 'Her' image
N.d. Tumblr. Web. 8 Mar. 2017. Moonlight gif