Week 5 day 2 post!

  Cambridge Portfolio Project

Hello again people, It is time for yet another blog post, this will be highlighting some details about my production process! (and so will the next 2) 

This blog post will be centered around the location used, and some workarounds I needed to do.

So as I specified in one of my previous blogposts (GO LOOK PLEASE), I was planning on filming at my friend's house (BTW I will not be namedropping or showing his face since he wants privacy, so I'll just refer to him as my friend), and that I did. 

BUT

AS ALWAYS

SOMETHING HAD TO GO WRONG

(Dont worry, I still filmed a little bit of stuff, just really limited on what i could do.)

so originally, I had planned to film on thursday (yesterday), but THAT got delayed (Friend unexpectedly became busy) so now it had to be moved to today (Good thing or I wouldnt be able to make this blog post in time). Despite this issue, and the fact that im currently on a foreign computer as we speak, Im making this post.

When I got to my friend's house, I ran into a few issues that I knew I would run into.

Here you can see behind the blinding
light a portion of my friend's
collectibles n stuff.

#1. Friend's room has many MANY collectibles, figures etc. (I only have one bad picture I was gonna use to talk about lighting in the next blog post with, but since the idea of taking a picture to demonstrate skimmed over my head, it will have to do)

The issue is I dont want any of these in my film, since yeah colorless lifeless yeah yeah tell it to the judge type stuff.

The workaround for this was pretty simple tho! Make it dark as hell (not really) and try to push stuff out of frame or into an area too dark to see.

You may be asking "Well, wouldnt that affect your recording?"

yes.

It will.

But its minimal, it will be just fineeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Issue numero dos!

People

My friends house has a lot of people roaming at once (not really his familys just really active idk) which was slightly annoying

the only real fix I had was to wait until a later time do try and film this stuff, it was simple but effective.

anyways, the location itself was fine, once again following my stupidity, I forgot to actually take a picture of the room, nonetheless, I still have an image of his bed, which is where some of the shots are going to take place, also idk if a full image of friend's room woudlve been something he'd agree to.

ok buh bye!

Week 5 day 1 post !

 Cambridge Portfolio Project

New title format I totally didn't steal from metallicaisbetter.blogspot.com 

anyways...

This post will be dedicated to... Costume Design!

I HATE THESE
SO MUCH
GRUHHIFHNJRHF

OPTION 1: Black and Red PJs / sweatpants:
Despite it being against my liking, due to time crunch I will have to use red plaid pjs (I HATE RED PLAID PJS ODISJOKSMCOK).

On the other hand, I have a little bit of creative freedom with shirts, but I mostly want the shirt to follow a more black than red color (since originally the pants were supposed to be more black than red but 😔)

I do have SOME designs in mind, which will definitely show up in a later blog post (PLEASE BE PATIENT IM TIREDDD AND THERES SO MANY ROADBLOCKS PLEASESESAE)

Now, why might I be sticking to this color scheme religiously?

The answer to that is....!

OK SO I CANT FIND ANY GOOD EXAMPLES 
BECAUSE OF SCHOOL INTERNET AND STUFF
SO THIS IS SIMILAR I GUESS, BUT THE
GRAPHIC WILL BE DIFFERENT

Black is a color that can either represent power or rebellious energy!
Oh and reds there too....
Only joking, red somewhat symbolizes courage

which... kind of... represents my protagonist....

ANYWAYS!

I was also thinking of maybe tossing that idea and choosing a gray jumpsuit to like correlate the outfit with dystopia, but then I remembered thats super boring and I'd rather have my character be atleast somewhat colored.

yeah

Cambridge Portfolio Project - Audio elements !

 Hello people !

This time I'm going over a few audio elements I wish to incorporate into my film opening, most of these are going to be to emphasize aspects of the film (obviously), but some are going to be more passive as well.

Onto the more passive side, I don't know if I want to incorporate music, I want the opening to feel slow and weighted? If I do incorporate a song into the film, It will probably be something simple and quiet, something lazy and/or tense.

Onto the more important stuff,

Foley !
If yall don't know what Foley sound-work is, then go search it up, it's really cool. For those too lazy to do so, essentially Foley sound-work is the process of creating sounds that mimic the usual sounds of another item using random items at your disposal (that's a really bad definition but picture someone sliding a book across their floor whilst recording audio in an attempt to mimic the sound clothes makes when you move against something. [Giving examples is always easier])

For my project, following the storyboard I can already come up with a few uses for Foley in mind

some of the sounds I need to recreate may be:

fabric moving (multiple instances, but mostly for when our protagonist leaves bed)
door handle opening and closing (I could be lazy and just use an online sound, but its better to personalize a bit!)
walking noises! (self explanatory)
(maybe) lamp button flicking?

That (I think) is all, though obviously as I work the list could change.

Now! My beloved readers (aka Robbie and like no body besides my teacher [Hi btw]), I also have to decide on general sounds needed! 

Something technology-esque for the mirror (might use a text to speech for that because it would be funny)
Recurring motif 
mumbling or dialogue audio (probably just mumbling, I don't really want my protagonist speaking too much, or at all)
door swinging audio because I dont know how to replicate that squeakyness :3

some techniques I may use (if not already mentioned)

Sound bridges
Sound perspective
Both non diegetic and diegetic sound (obviously)
Motif
Synchronous sound (obviously)
Sting (maybe)
Music (maybe)

thanks for reading!

yeah

Cambridge Portfolio Project - Setting !

 Hello yall!

Today I'm gonna go over a few possible filming locations (2 filming locations that I've pondered)

Before that though, I wanna give you guys my thought process for what makes a good set that will match the lighting, character, and more.

So for the set, Originally I wanted little color as to represent the bland world our character lives in, but then I started thinking "Would this protagonist really like to live in a house with NO color?" and now I'm conflicted with this aspect, as removing color would be more of a "ooh the government controls everything !" type of vibe, but really in my story, they don't completely control absolutely every little aspect. on the other hand, color would highlight my protagonist's personality, but also it would make it seem like my character's above the governments control, which (kind of) isn't true? But it also is true at the same time, but that's later in the story and not in the intro... Though I do have 2 locations in mind regarding these factors.

The lighting does affect this color scheme issue I'm having, if the set is too colorful, It will be very hard to achieve the cold lighting I originally wanted for the setting, If the set is too bland, lighting will be more clear, but the character wont be represented too well.

Looking in the protagonist's direction, Color will represent our protagonist well, but it would interfere with lighting, lack of color could be a workaround to represent something else whilst making lighting more possible, but the character would be left in the dust.

Anyways, onto my two possible filming locations, 

Location 1!
My own house

Pros:
Can access anytime
Complete control over movement of stuff

Middle ground:
Smallish sized (could be a good thing or a bad thing)
Colorful

Cons:
Have to work around family
Lighting might be hard

Location 2!
My friends house 

Pros: 
Likely chance my friend will help me
Not far away

Middle ground:
A lot less colorful
Larger sized

Cons:
Limited visiting time
Have to get permission to be there (most likely a yes though) and have to get permission to move stuff around if necessary(essentially there's limitations)

Overall, I still have to think about what I'm going to do, but as of right now I am slightly leaning on the idea of filming at my friend's house.

Cambridge Portfolio Project - Lighting !

 Hello again !

The lighting for my opening is going to be really straightforward, I want the whole scene to look cold (aka dull colors with light blue ish lighting or something similar, basically the house that I want to film in is going to look downright depressing.

On the other hand, anything representing the protagonist's character (for example the sketchbooks that I mentioned in my previous post [If you havent read it, read it now.]) is going to have warm colors around them, most likely accented, or something similar. I plan to do this with whatever light sources I can easily achieve (Though I do want to keep that minimal as that may lead to inconsistencies) Since I dont have any professional lighting equipment.

On top of that, the character themselves will have the occasional highlight of warm light (Like during the first scene where said character's eyes are shown in an extreme close up, or maybe also during the mirror scene, where Bob [read last post if you dont get this] discovers his hint left by himself [Maybe it could have a way of representing a feeling of familiarity]).

I do love the Idea of a lack of color, but this may be hard to pull off since my own house is far too colorful (though I could try asking a friend to film at his house)

anyways that is all for now !

Cambridge Portfolio Project - Storyboard

 Hello guys,

I've been working on my story a bit and now I'm creating its storyboard, I have some experience creating these before from previous projects in this class, so here we go!
I had some slight changes to my original interpretation, but I'm pretty set on what I'm doing.

I had to do this on IBISpaintX (phone drawing app) which is unfortunate, I hate how pixelated the images are, but they're legible enough so...

yeah

Cambridge portfolio project - Character development

 Hello!

Originally, I was going to dedicate this post to 2 specific things, my protagonist's name, and stuff representing them / stuff in the opening representing them, but unfortunately, I cannot find a non cheesy symbolic name that works with a dystopia about memory and oppresion, so I will be solely focusing on the second element I intended on looking over.

Onto the actual details...

My character is meant to be an unordinary charcater, driven  by creation that is limited tremendously by the central government's laws.

Some ways I want to represent this (as previously mentioned) is with items. A great example of a general item I can use is books, not just books, but stuff like journals, sketchbooks, music compositions, art supplies, all of these fall under that category and can be shown during the 2 minute opening as a form of character building. Also, certain lighting (like orange, warm lighting) can be used to create an emphasis on creativity, so can general colorfulness, but I will go over that more in a specific post about mise-en-scene later.

Our beloved unnamed character (who I will be referring to as Bob until I select a name for them) is also somewhat rebellious by nature, although I found this a bit harder to implement compared to the last element. The proposed way of including this specific element into my opening is to focus on disorganization and a disorganized form of living (this can also go somewhat hand in hand with the book items relating to the last element, as some of those can be used to give a feel of disorganization.).

On top of that, semi long hair (especially around younger individuals) can sometimes be seen as a sign of rebellious energy / nature, so that can also be implemented-ish ( since I myself may be acting, and my hair is sort of long )