Equipment

     There's another "leap" I'll be taking with this project. Playkill guys, if you're reading this, it's totally not a leap like the cat is really in the bag trust me but anyway

    Before this year, I've really only used my phone to film my own projects, as well as a wireless microphone I got from my uncle after my last portfolio project (very sweet of him shout out tio willie). However, having worked for a while now with students that have been in television and media programs at our school for longer than myself has allowed me to not only learn a lot about filmmaking, but also about where to find ~resources~ for filmmaking. 

    I'm now acquainted with a local TV station called shortcuts TV, which features films made by South Florida students.

     I've worked on projects with friends before in which they had borrowed out some professional equipment to use. Later on, I went to their station with another friend of mine to film a separate piece. Now, it's my turn to send over a DM and pick up some professional equipment for a project of my own.

    Wish me luck

shh

 

Demo and Initial Ideas

 sorry guys, this post contains top secret information

here's a teacher link (shared to broward email)

Calling the band

     On February 7th, I scheduled a phone call with the band members to get some preliminary ideas of what song they wanted to use and what type of music video they were looking for, among other things.

    Before the call started, I consulted last years media notes on music videos once more

I determined that the most important things for me to cover in this meeting would be:

1. the song (of course so I could get the vibe)

2. the type of video (whether they wanted to focus on promotion or something more artistic)

3. Major themes (in order to make sure any symbolism, mise en scene, etc. is cohesive)

4. Colors to be included/emphasized

5. Any ideas they already wanted for the video

6. Whether they want a CD or vinyl digipak

    I talked first to Alex one on one so that we were able to introduce ourselves and generally break the ice about our plans for this project and what might happen from there if it goes well.

    He informed me that they actually had a brand new album in production that was scheduled for release right around the due date for this project- perfect. He also talked to me about a song titled Home Time that they were considering using as the lead single, as well as a potential video idea based around staying home and messing around having harmless fun. 

    I waited for the rest of the band to be in attendance and for them to discuss their ideas privately before hopping back onto a joined call. This is what they told me:

    They set aside a budget of $700 towards production for any necessary props, location permits, etc. This was great because I was already taking on the project free of charge, knew where to access equipment, and was used to a budget of 0.00, so this was going to serve as a comfortable safety net and enable me to buy any sorts of cool props they wanted to use.

    The song they would be using was called "I Don't Wanna Wanna," and centered around toxic relationships. They wanted a video in which they were each in a scummy relationship that they wanted out of, which would switch between their three separate storylines. From this, I could deduce that we'd be focusing on concept with a promotional approach, and it likely wouldn't be abstract or artistic.

    The main idea they wanted to include was that by the end of the video, they would be performing completely disheveled and getting tomatoed by a crowd. I could work with this.

    Next up, we would have to create a story board, cast "girlfriends," get locations down, and develop a filming schedule from there.

    

Well, this is Awkward... [Retrospective]

Dear reader, 

     This is future Maya. I'm here to preface my blog by saying that I did not keep as up to date with my postings as I would have wanted. This comes as a result of the fact that I worked with a previously established band from my nearest big city on an upcoming project of theirs, and thus placed a lot of emphasis on making my media components as satisfactory as I possibly could in the given timeframe. This meant that I made the conscious sacrifice of a frequently updated, well written blog. It is unlikely that my project would look the way it does now without said sacrifice, but in hindsight, not being able to flesh out my creative process, research, and the very intentional choices and adjustments to challenges I made along the way is something I lament. If possible, I would like to create some retrospective postings (which will be distinguished as such) explaining as much of the process I can, but I find it important to note that my blog as a whole is not accurately representative of the timeline in which I completed the described tasks, save for those that actually mention dates.

- 4/10/22

Introducing my Portfolio Project!

     With all that said, from here on out, I'll be blogging about my A level portfolio project. 

    The first step was of course to choose which type of project I would do, which luckily came easily to me. I had so much fun with my music video project last year, and even incorporated music heavily into my portfolio piece, so it seemed only natural to choose the music video project as my final.

    My project from last year involved a leap of faith that ended up being an extremely encouraging opportunity for growth, so I wanted to take a similar leap with this project by asking to work with an established band from my nearest major city. However, I recognized that this outcome could jeopardize my entire project and leave me with less time than before if it happened to fall through, so I began researching my local music scene and planning to ask potential partners well before our class-determined planning time would start.

    I was already familiar with a few venues in my area that hosted shows from local bands. and followed a few local artists on Instagram. From there, discovering new artists within the scene became relatively easy. Namely, one way I became familiar with local bands and performers was through a Spotify playlist that was actually meant to showcase them.

    It was through this playlist that I found lots of artists I came to enjoy, but now came the nerve-wracking part. After developing a list of my favorites, I did some quick research into each band to learn about their overall sound/vibe, audience, previous songs/videos if they had any, and upcoming tour dates that might conflict with my project timeline. In the end, I decided to contact Playkill.

    I used the contact box on their website to send a brief message about me and my proposal aaaaand

 it worked! 

    Boy, do I love leaps of faith

Distribution Project (Go)

     The most recent project we did in A level was a film distribution project. 

    I think this projects illustrates growth in my ability to work with others and at planning in a few ways, but before I get into that I want to talk about our research phase because I thought it was fun

    I was placed in a group of three and we were assigned a few stories from our teacher's creative students to choose from. We would create a distribution plan for whatever story we chose. After picking our story, we contacted our writer with a list of questions that weren't necessarily mentioned and likely wouldn't even appear in the trailer, but would help us understand the narrative universe and the choices the characters were making. 

    We also completed a research chart looking at two similar case studies within our genre, their distribution plans, trailers, etc. My favorite part about this chart was looking at the case studies' movie posters, as I ended up unexpectedly learning a lot about common tropes and what they mean, the history of movie posters, and even made connections to my past genre studies.

    Ok, now I want to note the ways we handled this project that I think specifically show how I improved after self reflecting on my documentary.

    The first problem we had to confront was that myself and another group member were quarantining after winter break before coming back to school, which took off some time before we were able to meet as a group for the first time. However, as soon as we did, we put a plan together to efficiently work for the remainder of the time we had, and we stuck to that plan! (this earns an exclamation point from me because I was used to always drawing up unrealistically long to-do lists/plans and not being able to follow through, but I took into account my limitations here)

An example of my planner while working on the project. 

Sneak Peek: you can see that I had started setting things 

up for my portfolio project at this time

    Then, we split the work for the project up evenly. Each of us had jurisdiction over our own sections, which made things efficient. It also took some stress off of our shoulders knowing that we had a concrete shared vision that we discussed upfront and then trusting each other to uphold that in each of our parts.

    For example, after some discussion of what we thought was best overall for the poster, Nicole had complete jurisdiction over editing it, and did an amazing job.

    Larissa researched our target audience and edited our trailer. Again, she did really well with her section.

    It was down to me to create the distribution strategy and edit the teaser. 

    I felt that creating this plan itself was another exercise in getting as creative as possible while accounting for limitation. This is because we operated on the assumption that this would be an independent film, likely with a small budget, but we thought a theatrical release would best suit a "revival" of the teen dystopia (for the nostalgia factor). 

    I recognized that taking on an indie film is perceived as more risky by traditional theaters, so I knew that garnering audience engagement prior to release would be an important part of the strategy in order to reassure potential partners. I looked into our target audience research to devise a plan that would capture their attention without breaking the bank. Ultimately, I decided to build up audience familiarity with a guerilla marketing technique, incorporating a direct mail campaign that would be cheap and would tie into our movie's story (which features a world where people receive mysterious letters detailing their time of death). On top of the letters from our movie mailed and otherwise distributed en masse, I looked back to one of our first lessons in the class on social media regulation before deciding to partner with a few nano-influencers, another not-too-expensive way to get communities of our target audience on platforms like tiktok and reddit trying to find the meaning of these mysterious letters. All of this would culminate into the discovery of a pre-release screening of our movie right where it was filmed. I loved the idea of a hyper realistic event that would completely immerse audience members into the film, especially with an audience so accustomed to post-modern media, but it would have been difficult to create that experience if we needed to build a set, have actors/performers, etc. Luckily, when your movie was filmed in your town's central plaza, and you know from experience that events like movie nights can be planned there, you can do that without having to build a theme-park level attraction. 

    Hopefully, this marketing strategy would drum up enough buzz about the movie for theaters to see the screening as less of a risk to them. I also planned for a release date of November 29th, 2024. I chose the weekend of thanksgiving break because it was still during the school year, a crucial time for out TA members to generate buzz amongst each other, but was also at a time that most members would be free, because really what do you do the weekend after thanksgiving? I went a few years into the future because I thought we might still have to make the movie which would probably take a while, but I chose the year 2024 for two specific reasons. Considering our target audience, I knew video game releases could potentially take away from out revenue. As of now, 2024 is only seeing the release of sequels and continuations of games that already exist, nothing too distracting. Secondly, 2024 is an election year, and November 29th would come quite close to the election. From my research, I knew that there was a considerable spike in dystopian and social commentary films after elections due to general political unrest, so I felt this an opportune time for the release of the film. 

Here's a link to our full presentation.

    Other notable areas of improvement for me this year were of course in my technical knowledge and access to better resources/equipment, but now I think you have a good idea of where I'm at.

Documentary Project (Set)

     The second important project I want to talk about is one that didn't go exactly as planned: creating a documentary. 

    I was assigned to a group with two other classmates of mine, and we got to planning as soon as possible. After brainstorming several possible topics, two things inspired a topic that we really jived with.

• Over the summer, I did an internship with my county library system that included guest speakers and interviews. One of these speakers, Greg Steiner, stuck with me specifically for his brutal honesty about supporting yourself in a creative career and how you'll have to take on streams of income that don't necessarily inspire you.
• Our state offers scholarships to graduating students who meet certain requirements. My group member Isa brought up recent talks that the scholarship program would change in coming years to only be awarded to students pursuing certain traditional majors, leaving the arts up in the air.

    With that, we decided that we wanted to make a documentary on the process of growing up as a creative person and navigating the school system, societal standards, and the choices people make as to whether to pursue their passions as careers or attempt to keep them in their lives alongside traditional affairs. It would be called "Don't Quit Your Day Job."

    We quickly became very passionate about the project and set up the following outline

    We also decided that the shots of the children would begin at a very wide angle, and the resulting negative space would be filled with doodles and animations, to emphasize the interviewees youth and imaginative possibilities. We'd keep this going, but make the angle tighter and animations less visible with each consequent age group. Additionally, the music used throughout the film would be exclusively from the musicians we interviewed and doodles would be from the artists themselves.

We had about 3 weeks to get this done. You might be sensing mistake #1

    Our next job was planning interviews. We came up with questions such as the following

    Even under such a time crunch, we successfully planned, scheduled, and conducted TEN interviews with various subjects of different ages, arts, and life choices within one week . We even researched new software systems to get higher quality remote interviews from subjects who lived out of state or overseas.

Then came the production process

    The recording process went fairly smoothly, save for some inconsistencies in the way we shot subjects. There were things that were difficult to avoid, like quality differences between our remote and in-person interviews, but there were also differences between out in-person interviews, like some subjects being centered and some being put on a third. I think we could have made things more consistent if we made sure we were all clear on certain guidelines before heading out to film.

    Moving on, the post-production process is what caused the most problems. The first thing we did was transcribe our interviews, highlight our favorite responses, and arrange and rearrange them to form a cohesive storyline. 

Our final intro sequence

    Most detrimentally, we suffered a lack of B-roll footage. This is because we were given the restriction at the beginning of the project that we were not allowed to use archive footage, as a way to strengthen out own camera skills. However, most of what we could film ourselves wasn't exactly relevant to, say, a Polish college student or senior Customs and Border Patrol officer (obviously). To make matters worse, we didn't have enough time to add in the animated graphics and doodles that would've added visual interest in lieu of that crucial B-roll (another real shocker..). Another guideline for the project was a 5 minute time limit, but with 9 interviewees, this resulted in us having to cut important context from our interviewees lives like more detailed discussion of medical conditions, economic drawbacks, and post-secondary education.

    Overall, I have a few gripes with the way I handled this project. Early on, I had a relatively large say in the creative direction and planning process, and although my peers said that they enjoyed the process, I don't think I should have taken such a dominant role in the production. I feel that I could have been a better communicator/teammate, being honest with myself. Secondly, I was clearly way too ambitious with my ideas. The archive footage restriction, time limit, and other guidelines were things we knew about from the day the project was assigned, but I got a bit too excited and planned with none of my limitations in mind. 

    I find this to be a really valuable learning experience because I shifted from the mindset I had with my AS final (just dream big and figure out a way to make it work), to being able to comprehensively plan out a piece while accounting for time and limitations. I realized that this didn't necessarily mean toning down my creativity or capping a piece's potential either, as I was able to critique my peers projects, who were able to do amazing things with what we were given. The overambition and lesson learned seem a little silly and obvious now, but hey, sometimes we learn from experience. Having come from an AS final where I worked alone, I also became motivated to learn more about working cohesively with a team and being a good leader.

    I've spoken a lot about the shortcomings of this documentary, but to be clear, I'm still very fond of what we were able to put together, as well as the big idea we had in the first place. If given the opportunity and the time, I would love to come back to this piece and incorporate everything we wanted to grow it into. For now though, I had to just take the learning experience and keep it rolling. In the next project I discuss, I think I was able to improve on the faults I identified here.

This is how it turned out

The Brand Prism (Ready and a half?)

 We used brand prisms to flesh out important aspects of our brands.

 Physique:                                                                         Personality:

I chose cool colors like purples and blues and         I wanted the personality of the brand to

a focus on animated styles to make the brand               be comforting, wise, and innovative.

feel dreamy and overall detached from reality; 

like a place outside of your typical world and 

worries. I also made the fonts and designs 

futuristic to appeal to the idea of innovation 

and optimism for the future. 

Relationship:                                                                       Culture:

The relationship between my brand and the                   The culture of the brand focuses on 

consumer is one that builds a feeling of                 quality of work, pride in good and well

community and belonging. The audience                   informed effort, and encouragement of

members should take a feeling of                            thinking outside the box. Above all 

inspiration and motivation away from the                  else, the community is inclusive and 

brand, and feel like it is a safe space for                                          accepting.

self expression and creativity.

Reflection:                                                                     Self Image:

audience members of the brand would be               Consumers would likely view themselves

creative young adults ages 13-25. They                as creative, unique, and driven to do

would likely enjoy media like video games,             something larger than themselves. I

alternative music, and foreign                       assume that since I'm the one creating

films/animation. This is in part because             the brand, those drawn to it would also 

the aesthetic of the brand lends itself to a         be similar to me in the sense that they

similar environment, and also to a tendency                have very high expectations for 

to reach out and explore new things, which           themselves that can tend to hold them

audiences of the aforementioned media                 back. This brand would be a resource

are likely to have already.                                     to alleviate that tension.

Communication:

I would communicate the brand through three main avenues

• A YouTube channel where all the finished projects would be posted, as well as reflections from time to time
• An Instagram page where frequent posts would show updates and thoughts on projects I'm currently working on, like this blog. I think consistently showing my process would help me learn, keep me accountable for getting work done often without thinking about it too hard, and hopefully encourage viewers to do the same. Additionally, consistent posts on a platform like Instagram may make my page more favorable to be promoted to new audience members.
• A website matching the aesthetic of the brand, made to be as immersive as possible with music and 3D design. The site would showcase my favorite projects and projects made by members of the community in a hyper realistic way (eg. film section would look like a movie theater, etc.). It would also have a "lounge" section that people could come to just to listen to music and leave messages on the site. All of the design elements would go towards reinforcing the feeling that the brand's website is like its own little world that community members can escape to.

     Further in the future, should I gain enough capital, I would open a physical location as well. It would be open for people to come in and hang out, collaborate with each other, etc. Funds would stay up with showings of local artist's work, local bands, and selling things like used books and drinks. One of those types of places, to be the physical manifestation of the space we created online.

    Even fuurther in the future (and this was not in the project I just thought of it now) it would be in line with the brand to supply resources at the physical location for people to use. For example, we could rent out instruments, have paints, etc. the way some local libraries do.

The Jumping off Point (Ready)

     Before I delve into my portfolio piece, I'd like to share a few projects from this year that I think illustrate the progress that I've made since my film opening, and establish the jumping off point from which I'll be developing even further with this next project.

    I want to begin with the first project we did this year: creating a personal brand.

    Coming up with this presentation was a great start to the year as it felt like I was finally putting out something I had always been afraid to dream about. The decisions I made in creating this brand pulled from my aspirations for the future and even more so from elements of my childhood that stuck with me as the beginnings of my urge to create.

    For instance, I chose the name hhaste out of frustration with myself for spending so much of my life trying to find the "perfect" name before I could even begin to do something. I picked haste and kept it rolling, which I think goes to reinforce the purpose of the brand itself. It has two H's in it because when I searched for a domain name, haste was unavailable. At that moment I refused to go on another 17 year search for just a title, made it hhaste and kept it rolling.

    The logo I created is meant to look both like a peace sign and a rabbit; A peace sign to symbolize being carefree and letting go of fear and perfectionism, and a rabbit as a nod to the character Swift Heart Rabbit from the care bears. 

As a kid, Swift Heart's episode was always my favorite. The story goes like this:

    I knew from the start that my brand's purpose wouldn't be to establish a product or persona, but rather a place. I wanted to represent a place where a community of people could come and grow and create everything they wanted to without fear of failure or a need to know everything before taking the first step; so, with this in mind, I set out to develop the rest of my brand in order to achieve this.

    So as to not make this post too lengthy, I'll be continuing on about my brand project in my next post.

Welcome to A Level!

     I am so proud of how far I was able to come in my last portfolio project. After completing my film opening, there was no doubt that I would go on another year. 

    Having gone through this year in A level, not only have my technical skills improved, but so has my confidence in myself and my work. I intend once more to use this portfolio as an opportunity to push my limits and make something I'm really proud of. 

    So, without further adieu, the posts from this point onward will focus on my process in creating my A level final. 

   

    Glad to be back,

Maya E.