Week 2 Post 1: im researching some genres at the moment

 Alright guys, i bet youll never guess what genre im going for...

YEA ITS A COMEDY

this movie is gonna be so freaking funny. the cambridge guys will be like "oh golly this film is quite hilarious i nearly spilled my tea" and then be like "yea give this dude an A+" 

So i think for this i want elements of like triumph in this, like an underdog story, a really funny underdog story. 

this is genuinley how i feel rn

bro i dont know what else to write here cuz the example post goes on about what his thing is gonna be about. but guess what i did that 2 posts ago. Its so lonely at the top. So uhhhhhhhh i guess i could do it again.

Alright so we start out at a tiki bar where our guy is sitting at the bar with his buddy and hes talking about how he played football in highschool or whatever and then hes like, did you ever do sports as a kid? and then the main guy starts talking about how his father was the greatest tennis player ever and how he failed to live up to the expectations at a young age and how he gave up. And then he goes home and walks down the streets at night while the opening credits appear. The next day hes grilling some burgers or whatever at markham park with the radio on, and he hears that someone is pretending to be him, and has made a big name for himself in the tennis community and gotten like a lot of money. So then he drives out to the middle of nowhere to find a box with his father's gear, he looks back to the night sky and hears the voice of his father, telling him to win. Then he challenges the impersonator to a tennis match. and then idk yet he probably wins or whatever. 

okay I think the working title will be: Mikey McGillen Jr: The Triumphant Tale of a Tennis Star

and thats it, bobby out

Week 1 Post 2: Oh geez i gotta check my watch cuz its schedule o clock

Alright guys, a main takeaway from last year's portfolio project was that i poorly scheduled it, along with other things. So this year im gonna make the greatest schedule ever.

Week 1: make the idea and write some stuff in the blog also maybe think about writing the script but lets be real i wont

Week 2: actually start writing the script, start thinking about things like costuming and locations and actors and all that stuff, start planning social media

Week 3: Finish script, start storyboarding, get people on board with helping me, call locations and be like hey can i film here pretty please, continue planning social media

Week 4: FILM IT!!! also take pictures for the posters and postcards n stuff and social media

Week 5: Start editing and start working on pictures n stuff also social media

Week 6: keep editing and working on pictures and stuff and start writing CR also social media

Week 7: Finish everything and keep working on CR also social media

Week 8: make sure everything is perfect and goated and finish the CR also social media

Okay now i wanna talk about something i wanna do for the marketing. I wanna create an official roblox game for the movie. Its gonna be so freaking epic. literally everyone is gonna play it and be like "woah this game is pretty freaking epic"

Im also gonna watch paul blart mall cop this weekend because there might be something from that movie that i can apply to my project. bobby out

Week 1 Post 1: We're running it back

 whats up guys, im doin the short film. I've got a pretty awesome idea as well. Im still open to other ideas but the vibe I wanna go for is like a Will Ferrell comedy film, specifically something Ricky Bobby esque. I know Ms Stoklosa LOVES Ricky Bobby so shes gonna freak with this idea. So my idea is this guy whos like 40 or something (washed up unc) who used to pursue fame as a pro tennis player, but he failed miserably and messed up the whole course of his life. And for the past decade or so he's been living somewhere in the middle of nowhere. But then one night the ghost of his father wakes him up and tells him to pick up the racket. and his dad used to be a pro tennis player too and that's why he used to do tennis. And he wakes up the next morning and looks at the news and sees that someone has stolen his identity, posing as his father's son to garner fame and fortune in the tennis thing. So our guy trains a bunch and goes to challenge his impostor. And then there's a big tennis tournament scene and then something happens idk. 

I want the main dude to have a ricky bobby esque personality. I made a similar kind of thing one STN practice where we got to do whatever we want with the news package. HEY CLICK ON ME FOR A COOL VIDEO!!!! ( specifically the bit about the Marvin Supreme guy) I want him to live in markham park before he gets back in the game. The place where my dad plays tennis is pretty chill so I can probably get permission to film there pretty easily. The lady at the desk literally has a dog with her sometimes so I think anything is okay at this point. 

I wanna film the beginning of the movie at this tiki bar that me n my family sometimes go to. Its a cool place and the people seem chill enough to let me film there if i ask nicely

Its also the next day and I have a better outline:

So theres this guy whos dad used to be a pro tennis player, and as a child he tried and tried and could never be good enough, so he decided to be homeless and live at markham park. But then, one day he looks at the news and sees that someone is pretending to be him and getting all this fame and fortune from being a pro tennis player. also his dad is dead. So the guy trains to be pretty freaking good at tennis and he challenges the impostor to reclaim his title

Group Documentary - Critical Reflection

 Midterm Posts

Critical Reflection

It's time for some critical reflection. Me and Nikita chose a topic that affected almost everyone, addressing an environmental issue. When we were interviewing Cooper we wanted to talk about how thrifting can be the only way to get affordable clothes for people in certain financial situations, and how more poor quality fast fashion clothes makes it harder for them to get high quality clothes. We touched on that aspect but there were some parts that didn't make the final cut. We approached the environmental aspect of the doc from an informational standpoint, giving facts and statistics from credible sources. But for the fast fashion part of it, we took a stance, stating how it negatively affects the environment. 

We first engaged audiences by asking a rhetorical question for the audience that the interviewees on screen were answering, and then giving the audience the true answer. We didn't want the informational segment to be boooooring, so Nikita made animations that correlated to some of the statistics. Then in the interview segment, we engage the audience by making a more "news segment esque" part, presenting a relatable subject who was knowledgeable regarding the topic at hand. Then, at the end, we engaged the audience by presenting them with a reminder. I wouldn't call it a call to action cuz its not as actiony. We didn't want to have a gloomy tone, since the subject matter was already gloomy if you thought about it enough. So we went with a more friendly reminder, before nikita vanished from the screen and the credits rolled. We ended the piece with Nikita interviewing a gorilla statue, asking the same question as the question asked in the beginning. We included this to leave our audience with a smile on their faces, and a reminder that despite how bad things are, there are still silly and fun aspects of our world.

Our research was heavily relied on during the first segment in our documentary, since it was the informational bit. We didn't want to stray too far from the conventions of documentaries and news segments, since it was a familiar thing to the both of us. Me and Nikita are both well versed in the CBTV style of storytelling. One big leap we took was that green screen segment. Neither of us had ever done something like that, and I think it came out alright for a first attempt at that kind of thing. Another convention we challenged was the previously mentioned gloominess of documentaries of similar premises. As a filmmaker, my main goal is to make people happy with my work. Even if every other aspect misses the mark, a laugh from the crowd can be fulfilling. And I think we found a good balance between funny positive and locked in and informative. 

The End

Group Documentary - Post Production

 Midterm Posts

Post Production

So the way post production went was first, Nikita edited together his stand up segment, which involved putting himself behind a green screen background, editing the lines together, and animating graphics and adding pictures. We should have been more collaborative when it came to doing this part, because I felt hesitant to ask for anything to be changed since he had already exported it. If we had sat down together we could have gotten our ideas done well. One thing I wish we had done was put nikita behind a moving background, rather than a still color. Even just a tiny animation would have been visually engaging. 

I don't have much to say about my segments. They were very CBTV esque and weren't very difficult. For a majority of the editing phase I had been working with the camera audio from Cooper's interview. I had forgotten that we recorded audio separately. I didn't notice it until very late because the audio quality was surprisingly good for a camera, but the mic was so much better. Im very glad I noticed it. I found it challenging to find archived footage that didn't have graphics over them already, which led to some archived videos not being great.  As Im writing this I wonder if there is a website where you can find good archived footage. I found this website ------>pond5, which didn't have footage that I could've used for this, but it does boast an impressive library, which could be useful for future projects. 

uhhh what else is there. i think thats it byee!!!!

also elf is a good christmas movie idc

Group Documentary - Production

 Midterm Posts

Production

DAY 1: 

wow pretty sky

It was the first day of filming. I started my day by doing some watercolor painting and it was very relaxing. Then around one o'clock I drove over to nikita's house, picked him up, and then went to cooper's house, and then left for the thrift store. The sky was very pretty that day. In terms of equipment, we brought 2 cameras (one belonging to nikita, and one belonging to CBTV) a light kit, (which we ended up not using, more on that later) a tripod, and a clip-on mic. 

Once we got there we spoke with the people working there, and then started the interview with Cooper. The music in the store was VERY loud so we decided to shoot it outside. But the walls were glass windows so the clothing was still visible. The interview went well, the footage was a bit blue but I got it looking alright in post.  We then went inside to get b-roll. It was mostly Cooper looking through racks of clothes. There were a lot of little trinkets around the store so we were able to get some cool footage. 

Once we finished shooting I found a cool dragon ball z shirt and i bought it. Then as we were driving home, I took a wrong turn. But we found a Raising Canes so we ate lunch there. It was packed! I got the 3 finger combo with a sweet tea. The meal was good but the sweet tea wasn't great. My favorite sweet tea is the publix one 😋😋😋. Then we dropped off Nikita and me and Cooper went to my friend Jaime's birthday party which was super fun!

DAY 2:

This day was my birthday!!! Me and Nikita had to get the street interviews for the first part of the doc. We went to Weston Town Center and got a good amount of interviews. It was kind of chilly out. The wind was a bit audible in the footage, but I think it added to the "street-ness" of it, if that makes sense. Then we went back to Nikita's house to film the intended ending of the doc. It didn't end up working out because we had intended to go to goodwill to film the second half of it, but it was too far. away to fit in with our schedules. I recently realized we could have filmed it in front of those donation bins that are around 😵‍💫. But whatever, the one we did instead wasn't too bad. Nikita filmed that one on his own, so if you wanna hear about that, you gotta read his blog. 

DAY 3:

This was the last day of filming (with both me and Nikita working together). We got permission with Mr Cummings the TV teacher to record stuff in the studio where they film the morning show. There was a green screen there we used. My inspiration for this segment was a Neil Degrasse Tyson video where he talks about time travel and the speed of light, but I cannot find it. But the thing I liked about it was how he would gesture to an area of the screen and a thingy would pop up. That was something that Nikita did on his own, so go read his blog. 

And that's it for filming!!!👍

Group Documentary: Pre-Production

 Midterm Posts

Pre-Production

So, the date was sometime last month, and me and Nikita (my fellow documentarian) were brainstorming what to do for our documentary. I was kinda hungry so my first thought was to make it about food, specifically the struggling mom n pop shops in America. But after some research we determined it would be difficult to do. We then thought of what current issues there were, and we eventually landed on fast fashion. We decided our premise should be about how thrifting can combat fast fashion's negative effects on our planet. We then whipped together a crude planning sheet (which we later fixed after some constructive criticism from Ms. Stoklosa) 

LINK TO THE THINGY HERE!!!!

We looked at various thrift stores around and eventually landed on SYZN Thrift for various reasons:

-it wasn't too far

-the store was very colorful (as opposed to goodwill, which is very grey)

-it seemed like we'd have better chances of getting permission to film cuz i'd been there before and the people were pretty laid back

-they have cool stuff

-there's a raising canes nearby😋

Then I contacted a couple of my friends who are big thrifters asking if they wanted to come and do an interview. My good friend Cooper said yes and we planned to film on a saturday. In the meantime, Nikita and I solidified our plan, wrote questions for Cooper, and worked on getting the structure of the documentary down. We divided it into 3 segments: The Beginning: Introducing the topic, Middle: Explaining the problem, and the End: offering a solution (thrifting). We also established what each of us was gonna do in terms of post production. Nikita was going to make the green screen stand up segment, and I was going to put all the stuff together.