Elle Qui Pleure - A Retrospective on Self Love

 

    Hi aice, if you're reading this, I decided to keep my blog around to talk about my future endeavors. Feel free to read or not read; the rest of these posts will not be written as part of my exam material.

    To the rest, this post is about what I learned from acting in the short film "Elle Qui Pleure" directed by my wonderful friend Isa. Since I was working on this film at the same time as a good like 3 or 4 others, the lessons I learned here mostly bleed into the ones I'll go into more depth on in future posts. For example, I learned some real good time management when scheduling shoots (because I /had/ to), I generally upped my level of promptness and professionalism, and blah blah blah enough about me.

    I kind of lied to you. This post is actually about what I learned from watching *Isa* make her short film. In the beginning of the year, we had a brand identity project that I had written about in earlier posts. Isa's brand identity was sweet, with a focus on art and love. Through the creation of this short film I noticed not only the way this piece continued to authentically build her original brand identity, but also her growth as an artist.

    Okay, I really did lie to you. This is just an Isa appreciation post. In the beginning of the year, Isabella Coronel's brand was drawn around neutral colors, a welcoming ambience, and an appreciation for art. When asked to describe the purpose of her brand, she responded "to love." I think this project well encompasses that brand identity from multiple fronts. Aesthetically, the soft classical music and clean minimal design of the film and it's postcard carry forward the original brand. When it comes to subject matter, creating a story about a girl who learns self love through art hits the nail on the head of what she wanted her brand to be all about. These are both connections she made in a blog post of hers. Where her analysis falls short, however, is something I want to address myself. The film may have solidified the brand's theme of self love with it's story, but I also think that it's creation was able to solidify a bit of self acceptance within its creator herself. 

    When explaining her brand's relationship to an audience, Isa carried herself as a Friend, a Helper, and a Good Listener. In the beginning of the project, she would always mention how she liked to *help* me and some of our other friends with projects she thought were really cool. This time, though, the project was all her own. Through the production process, I could see when Isa was stressed about getting it done, when she was unsure of what to do on set, when she wasn't confident that her ideas were good or would come to fruition. By our last day of filming, though, I saw her quickly problem solving, asking for less advice, and giving me directions with more confidence. In the end, she planned and executed a film not only on time but to a level on par with the work of the peers she looked up to months prior. 

    We're all real proud of you, Isa. Don't doubt yourself for a second.

Final Project components

 The day has come.

Here is a link to the music video

Here are some pictures of my final digipak

[inside up]

[outside up]

Inside the "Lyrics" (inner left) panel is a pocket which will contain a folded copy of the love letter that Nik received in the music video:

And here is a link to a presentation showcasing my social media

(since the song is not officially released yet, I can't make the social media public)

Critical Reflection

           The music video for “I Don’t Wanna Wanna” by Playkill* works alongside its social media presence and limited CD digipak to create a light-hearted and humorous exploration of relationships gone sour.

The three components work to communicate one consistent brand both through stylistic and emotional means. For instance, the entire project uses the same font and colors throughout, and the image of tomatoes permeates the piece, whether through emojis, iconography, or the real thing. The content for every component was derived from the same shoot, so there is consistent reference to the same grassy field, costumes, and props. Moreover, the video and social media mirror each other in emotionally evoking the light-hearted theme. Where the video plays an upbeat track with saturated imagery, the social media content incorporates funny outtakes and popularly memed songs.

In creating a fun indie rock video, I utilized research into bands with similar audiences, within the same genre, and some that were local to the same area. Most notably, the music videos for “Shampoo Bottles” by Peach Pit and “Daddy Dookie Brown” by Mustard Service inspired the use of whimsical parallel storylines, colorful grading, and noticeably bad special effects within the piece. The approach to social media was not without its inspiration either, coming as a culmination of techniques and posting regimens that I gathered to be most successful from other local bands like Mustard Service, The Haunt, and Dirty Rivals. Conversational captioning, signature emojis, and upcoming show reminders were elements seen on band accounts across the board, but there were also some conventions I did not follow. For example, I chose to use hashtags as a means to reach a wider audience, even though many artists shy away from using them. At the sacrifice of a more consistent feed, I also placed show flyers up front in posts rather than in a carousel of pictures of the band members in order to ensure that they could be easily found by someone scrolling past. 

As a genre, indie rock is known to be more progressive than many others due to its nature as an alternative for less conventionally advantaged people. However, every woman in this music video fits under the stereotypical “psycho girlfriend” trope, which is more reductive than is conventional. Due to the scenarios occurring within the imaginations of cishet men, the female characters serve more as elements of the environment that the band members must navigate than as characters themselves. This idea of male the fantasy of women is further reinforced by the fact that male friends of the band members were costumed in order to portray their own interpretation of women rather than actually having women in the roles.

For this reason, the target audience of the video is limited to being predominantly men. It also closes itself off to potential queer viewership in the way that it reinforces gender binaries by assigning certain clothing as expressions of womanhood. In any case where humor is combined with cisgender men dressing in traditionally feminine clothing for any reason other than earnest gender expression, there lies the silent implication that failure to engage in traditional masculinity is humiliating and comedic, an idea that queer youth have heard all too often against them. Aside from those limiting factors, the video shares its target audience with that of indie rock and local music enthusiasts. People ages 16-22 who might be avid consumers of alternative media and fashion, and who likely enjoy supporting local and sustainable pursuits. 

This target audience is engaged through the social media page, as Instagram is the second most common form of social media for generation Z, behind only YouTube, which is where the music video will be posted. Within the instagram content, hashtags with small post counts are used to target a specific audience, and songs currently on trend within our genre and on tiktok are used to boost visibility. Posting reels was also a strategic choice knowing that Instagram pushes them out to compete with TikTok, the fastest growing platform among generation Z. We also held a raffle for the digipak that would simultaneously generate shares and give feedback as to what content our followers like best.

The digipak serves as a physical representation of the video and overall ambience created in idww. In the postmodern era, this physical consumable thing representative of one’s tastes is of high sign exchange value, especially to a target audience that has grown up entirely within consumerism. Furthermore, since it is a one of one copy, the target audience for this particular genre would be especially enticed to participate in the competition, knowing how much the indie genre values that which is individual and unique. Therefore, the raffle accomplishes goals for both the band and the audience.

Overall, I am proud of how my project components turned out and the skills I was able to acquire along the way, but I lament that I couldn’t fully realize my ambitions within the timeframe or communicate the extent to which I researched and made thoughtful decisions within my blog. Since this project was my first experience working with a client, and one more established than myself at that, I prioritized making my media components the best that I could. As a result, my blog, something I had a lot of fun with in AS level, suffered immensely. Coordinating filming dates with a group of seven that live an hour away was something that I didn’t give much thought to at the inception of the project, and proved difficult. This resulted in much less time allocated to editing than I had initially planned, leaving some elements like timing and color grading to lack consistency from one scene to the next and fail to establish an overall aesthetic akin to my inspirations. I do, however, plan to continue making tweaks after receiving a second round of feedback from the band in order to create the best iteration of the video as possible for their scheduled april 29th release date. 

Timing, Timing, Timing

 

    Back in the beginning of this project, our teacher showed us this example music video project from a past year. One of the things she made sure to mention was that audio-syncing for music videos would be a real pain to do accurately. Luckily, I thought to myself, my video includes mostly scenes without the band members singing along, which would save me some struggle.

    This did not save me some struggle.

    While I did have to sync the band members singing for a few scenes, this proved not to be too difficult since we recorded with a speaker playing the song and they kept pretty consistently with time. All I had to do was match up the very first part of the clip and let it go from there. 

     What really brought some struggle, though, was the overall pacing of the piece. I needed to fit certain scenes into a designated portion of the song, and also wanted to do my best to have any important movement fall properly on a beat. I also sifted through a lot of footage of different takes and angles for every shot to try and include the best combination of shots that would be consistent between each other and provide some visual intrigue, making sure that switches in angle would occur on reasonable beats and content in frame would align with the cut.

     This meant a good amount of slowing down, speeding up, (both of which irked me for fear of messing with the frame rate, by the way, but that's a conflict for a later post) and shifting around multiple layers sometimes by a single frame. But hey, what can I say

     It be like that

Filming "Under Construction"

  Here's another project I haven't mentioned:

       Today after school, I filmed with my friend Sabrina for her short, "Under Construction." 

    Filming ran a bit later than I expected, so I fell totally asleep as soon as I got home without making some progress on my own social media content first, but that's okay. At this point, I expect it to always happen and plan accordingly.

    Although at times it's stressful to think that I've involved myself in so many projects when I really didn't have to, I know mine and my friends projects will all turn out great in the end. Honestly, I like to appreciate any opportunity I get to soak up as much experience in different fields as I can, and working on other people's projects still lets me learn new things about the production process.

    For example, when filming with Sabrina today, we used a boom mic to record the necessary audio. I've never done that before. I also like to work with others to see what their thought process is like when producing a scene, because everyone has their own methods that are effective for them, or thinks to incorporate/consider certain things that I wouldn't have thought of. My friend Isa Chiappini, for instance, would always think about getting certain alternate or extra shots while on set whereas my mind would be very by-the-book.. or I guess by-the-checklist. 

    Truthfully, I'm not very stressed about working on other projects. It's been grounding to know that once this deadline passes, there will be an arsenal of creative projects that I will be really proud of.  

    As for the other projects I still haven't mentioned, maybe I'll talk about them some more in later posts. Or maybe you'll happen to be grading them and think "oh hey that's that girl."

    That'd be pretty cool.

Filming Elle qui Pleure

 Hi, 

     in all my havoc I've neglected to tell you about some other aice media work I've been doing. I never really mentioned it until now since I didn't think it was relevant to my own project, but I've noticed that my friends sometimes post about collaboration between each other, so I thought I'd let you know.

     Aside from my own music video, I have main roles in three of my friends projects, and an appearance in a fourth.

     Why would I accept all of those commitments, you may ask?

     That's a really good question.

     Anyway, today was the last day of filming for my friend Isabella's short, "Elle Qui Pleure"

    

[me, covered in paint]

    I also did a lot of work on my social media and editing today that I'll go more in depth on in a later post.

Ethan's Highlight

 

Click on the image to view my google slide about Ethan's Highlight (the video is too large to add on blogger)

Shmayshmill shmusic

      As of now, my plan for the social media aspect of the project is to create a private Instagram account by the name of shmayshmillshmusic (instead of playkill) that will serve as a mock-up of the bands actual account. This way, I will be able to post about the upcoming single and video release without spoiling it too early for the actual public audience. Later, closer to the actual release date for the single, playkill may use the posts I've created on their actual account.

     

Equipment part 3 - Rigging and Lights

     After last years struggle with camera movement, although funny to look back on, I was hyped to be able to work with an actual gimbal and not have to worry about stabilizing in post. 

    Jim taught me how to balance the camera and pair the gimbal up with a bluetooth app for testing. I became familiar with the pre-set modes in the app as well. One that follows pans and tilts, one that only follows panning, and one that works "chickenhead" style. I took mental note of which functions would be best for certain shots, For example, I knew the chickenhead option would be best for my tracking shot where Alex walks past Nik.

    After practicing my ninja walk a bit, we moved on to the tripod.

    The tripod was not a foreign beast to be, although this one was much larger than I was used to. To be honest, the "tripod" I use right now with my phone is just the combination of a chuck e cheese selfie stick from ages ago screwed on to the base of a telescope from a kid's science kit, also from ages ago. I did, however, pick up the habit of testing that everything is locked in place before adding the camera or letting it go.

    The last piece of equipment I loaned out was lighting. I chose not to take out rgb lights because I knew none of my shots required any artistic or colorful lighting. I also chose to take out some batteries rather than rely on plugging the lights in because I knew I wouldn't always have a wall accessible to me while shooting. The way these worked was that one dial on the back adjusted the temperature of the light according to the Kelvin scale, while another dial adjusted the intensity.

Equipment part 2- the DSLR

     Asking for equipment from shortcuts worked out, so I went to pick up everything I needed after school.

    It was a lotta stuff.

    While there, the man who loans out all of the student equipment, Jim, explained to me his camera settings and how to change anything if needed, as well as how to use the other equipment I checked out.

    Some of these things, I already had a pretty good idea about after having learned the filmic pro app inside out last year. That meant it was more so an experience of learning how to manipulate these settings on an actual DSLR.

    The first thing we talked about was frame rate. Just as I never thought about strategically choosing lenses to fit my purpose, I wasn't used to really thinking about frame rate either. I was used to just going with 24fps because that was the film-y option (I learned today that that came from the fact that it was cheaper to do back in the days of physical film rolls), but after thinking about my specific needs for this project, I thought I'd change that. I figured I should shoot in 30fps, because I knew there would be some slow-motion shots. This way, I could film the slow-mo sections in 60fps, slow them down in post, and still have a consistent frame rate throughout the entire piece.

    He also explained shutter speed. I was familiar with the concept and we generally went by the rule of thumb that it should be set to twice the frame rate.

    Aperture was another thing we discussed. He gave me a tip h described as not fully accurate, but easy to remember: the smatter the f-number, the more shallow my depth of field would seem.

    We went over ISO briefly as well. Without going into very much detail, it was described as the final element of brightening/darkening the image. I also read this article to learn that it's best practice to shoot at the lowest ISO possible to reduce noise, and only to bring it up when you can't properly brighten the image by adjusting the aperture, shutter speed, and extra lighting equipment.

    Focus was what I was most familiar with doing manually, and it worked quite similar in-camera to how it did with my app. A turning dial that moves the focus closer and farther. There were also ways to turn on guides for the focus and zebra stripes for exposure just like in my app.

Hardware

     Since I was opting to use more professional equipment for this project, I had a few things to learn.

    A friend of mine shared with me a slideshow she created about DSLRs and lenses for her underclassman TV students, and it helped me understand cameras more than I did before.

    She explained to me how different lenses will affect the field of view of a shot, and how that would consequently affect how the image is distorted.

    Certain types of distortion I was already familiar with. Logically, I already knew that wider fields of view created more horizontally compressed images in order to compensate for a static screen size. I was also familiar with the fact that closer proximity to the lens itself exaggerates the noticeability of the distortion. However, there was one thing she mentioned that I had never thought about, which is how different focal lengths can make objects appear closer or farther from each other.

    An example she showed me of this was with the two photos above. She explained to me that she purposely chose a wide angle lens for the photo on the right because it made the two subjects look much farther apart than they really were. In reality, they were like two feet away from each other, which came as a surprise to me.

    In contrast, she showed me two photos taken on a telephoto lens. In both, she reminded me that the trees in the background look a lot closer to the subjects than they truly were. This made me think a lot about how choosing a specific lens could be done with purpose to create meaning or to tackle certain hindrances of a shoot.

    The comparison here is what really opened my eyes (figuratively and literally because I was actually pretty shocked). On the left is a wide angle, while on the right is telephoto.

    See, the way I had thought about it before was that if this was a wide focal length:

    a photo taken with a telephoto lens would just look like...

that. Practically just a zoom in.

    However, the difference between these two becomes quite noticeable when you notice how far away the children look from each other depending on the lens used. 

 

   I guess that my previous thought process just aligns with the way you would refer to shots compositionally, where the terms wide shot, mid shot, and close up really just refer to how much of the scene is in frame at the moment. 

Notes on shots and angles

    Basically I thought lenses just did that, without taking into account how their distortion might change the look/feel of a particular shot. From here on, though, I will be able to choose lenses strategically to best suit each scenario I'm shooting.

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.