Week 4 - Post 1

 Hellllloooo!!!

    Today I finally wrote out exactly what I want to do, I will post it here so you can read what I have in mind.

    This isn't EXACTLY what will be recorded in my project but its a general outline that absolutely will be used as a guideline while recording. I will also show this to Cesar asap. I am also concerned about the 2 minute time constraint as I am realizing this is ALOT to fit into 2 minutes so I may need to cut out some of the recordings I take. Its hard to make a lot of time pass in two minutes. We will see when the time comes.

Signing off,

    

    Nico, Monday 2/27/2023

Week 3 - Post 7

 HELLO!

    I spoke to Cesar at his store (I FORGOT TO TAKE PICTURES OF THE LOCATION I WILL NEXT TIME) and I spoke to him about some of the details of what he would be recording. Talking to him about it made me feel so much better about my project and I'm very much looking forward to filming with him. He told me that he wasn't very good at conveying dialogue but the positive thing is that my character doesn't speak very much, and I don't think he will speak at all during the 2-minute segment. He is a very emotive individual and I think that he will sell the character he is playing perfectly, and he seems excited to perform. I think we will record either this week or the week after.

(360 of my friend Cesar)

    Very much looking forward to working with him. Tomorrow I intend to finally write the screenplay for the 2-minute segment.

Signing off,

    

    Nico, Sunday 2/26/2023

Week 3 - Post 6

 Hi!!!!!!

    Today I worked on a mood board for my character and I am posting it here; 

    

    Basically, I want my character to be very dull on the surface and show many signs of depression, I want it to be clear that his current lifestyle is taking a toll on him and that he is clearly going through some things internally. But at the same time, I want this character to struggle to find the motivation to escape his situation. He doesn't have a car so he needs to walk home during the night and he slouches when he walks, he's lonely and because of this he often times has a lot to think about. He plays computer games (even at work) and spends most of his free time sleeping and playing computer games. He doesn't take care of himself much and is ill shaved. And he is always wearing headphones. He usually wears all grey so as to not really stand out. His room is messy because he is too lazy to clean it and has no reason to. He often buys a bottle before going home. 

    This is the general outline of his character and I'm going to convey these things to my actor Cesar, until then.

Signing off, 

    Nico, Sunday 2/26/2023

Week 3 - Post 5

 Heyyya!!!

    Yesterday we had a group meeting in our class to discuss, each other's film ideas, and it was very inciteful and fun! I heard a lot of good ideas and the suggestions. The main thing I learned from the whole meeting was what I would do with my project music-wise. Initially, I had the idea of incorporating the diegetic sound of loudspeakers playing in the background to sell the repetition of living a life like my characters. This idea was inspired by my own job working at Publix, they have this Publix playlist that is EXTREMELY repetitive and a little obnoxious that plays early 2000s hits on a loop every single day. I wanted to sell this idea in my film because the music gets to be horrific.

(My Group From Santis POV)

    In my group, one member reminded me of this idea by mentioning that I should incorporate it and perhaps edit some diegetic sound of the liquor store playing a song on the loudspeakers every day that my character notices. The only problem is that in order for this to work my intro scene would have to be devoid of music, and I REALLY didn't want that since many of my favorite movies use non-diegetic music to amplify the emotions you feel in their film and sometimes completely consume the audio. I want my music to be playing over all the loops and truly crescendo as I reach the end of the 2-minute segment. I want it to be specifically Tailored to the film, so when someone in my group mentioned that they produce music, I was filled with excitement and joy, when I do my research on what music id like to use. I think I will strongly consider using my new peer and collaborator Santi Rios.

Signing off,

    Nico, Friday 2/24/2023

Week 3 - Post 4

 Hiiiiii!

    Today I made a rough outline of what I wanted to accomplish each week to help me keep a tight schedule and not fall behind on this very important project, I'm posting it here!

WEEK 3

• Create screenplay-esque draft of the project detailing exactly what I plan to include in the two minutes of my film (likely Thursday in class.)
• Present the screenplay to Cesar so he has a better understanding of what he needs to perform
• Visit filming locations
• Find other cast members
• Browse tripods
• Jot down technical elements that I would like to include in the film
• Finalize the character's personality

WEEK 4

    The goal for the week: Finish all planning so that I can film in the following weeks

• Check with Cesar's work schedule so we can check when he works (we will be filming while he is working)
• Buy any necessary props (we will likely not need many)
• Figure out where we will shoot certain shots
• Figure out the lighting of the crucial final shot
• Possibly Record

WEEK 5

The goal for the week: Record everything necessary

• Set everything up and film
• Possibly make initial edit

Week 6 

The goal for the week: Edit

• Edit the piece
• Finalize it
• Ideally, start CCR (video form)

Week 7

The goal for the week: Finalize CCR

• Film and edit CCR

    I hope this will help me stay on task and get everything done within the allotted time. I also hope to work on it in advance and complete things before the week says I should.

Signing off, 

    Nico, Wednesday 2/22/2023

Week 3 - Post 3 (Catching up with the process so far final)

 Heyyyyy!

    So there are two other movies that my movie will be drawing inspiration from, these two movies (both of which are, I think, incredible movies and serve as great examples of ways to make your movie revolutionary and different) are Taxi Driver and Clerks.

    I'll start with Taxi Driver, this movie worries me a bit because it is a psychological thriller with a relatively similar concept and themes as my movie. Taxi Driver is about a man who works a very menial job as - you guessed it - a taxi driver and his life begins to spin out of control as he struggles to find love or any escape from his cyclical lifestyle. I think it's important to point out the differences in our movies because I do not want my movie to be too similar. One important difference is that in taxi driver the film is very grounded in reality and instead uses Robert De Niro's incredible performance to sell the characters spiraling mental health, I will instead use this supernatural element to make a more formalist film. But the main thing I hope to somehow incorporate is its EXCELLENT use of music. It has its iconic theme that is played over and over again and is used in its intro. It's brilliant and really does sell that melancholy feeling the movie is going for. The difference will of course be the era my movie takes place in, I want it to be set in the present and so my music will need to be more fitting. I want it to be the same music my character listens to (but I haven't decided yet) perhaps later this week I will look more into the music.

(Taxi Driver Theme)

    The other movie I had in mind when thinking about films on that I would base my films techniques is Clerks. A low-budget movie about two Clerks working at their corresponding stores while a compilation of seemly unrelated funny moments occur. I love the movie but the main thing I will be taking from the movie is the very simple and down-to-earth camera techniques, the camera is very stable and just cuts in and out of scenes in order to thread them together. The important factor is placing the camera in the perfect spots to ensure characters can move in and out of the shots while the camera does not move and is uninterrupted. I feel that these still shots are perfect for the tone of repetition that I am going for.

    

    I'm likely going to have more cuts in between each shot but I intend to use the lack of movement in my movie the same way it is used here (minus the zoom-out).

Signing off,

    Nico, Tuesday 2/21/2023

Week 3 - Post 2 (Catching up with the process so far)

 Hello!!!!

    I finally spoke to Cesar! Honestly this was one of my biggest concerns about the project was him telling me he didn't think he could work on this project with me. Thankfully he seemed down to do it and it helped that he has a LOT of spare time because of his job. Now I need to coordinate a schedule with him and when he works. I'm a little worried about filming the shots of him waking up in the morning because they need to actually be in the morning and being consistent when it comes to the time of day and lighting is tricky. I intend to go see him again and take pictures of the inside of the store so I can post it and also further discuss with him what he will need to do in the project. I want to finish the outline of my project before I see him.

    I think his liquor store will truly be perfect for what I'm going for, he is a close friend of mine so I see him at his store frequently and I always see him on his gaming computer completely bored out of his mind because the store doesn't get many visitors.

(a sneak peek inside through a google search)

here's a link to their Facebook page (I have no idea why they have a Facebook page).

https://www.facebook.com/people/Northlake-Wine-Liquor/100072453348161/

    Now that I have my character casted I intend to go for a very Safdie brothers approach where they cast their actors and find real people that go through the conflicts in their movies and then shape their characters around their actors.

    I intend on making a mood board for my character later and describing him more in detail.

Signing off,

    Nico, Thursday 2/21/2023

Week 3 - Post 1 (catching up with the process so far)

Hi!!!

    I have a lot to talk about. I finalized what I want to do so I will dedicate this post to describing the plot to my movie which I will be making the intro to.

    Basically my movie is about a man who is stuck working a dead end job who is not contempt at all with his life. He is working a menial job at a liquor store. I want my movie to be about the horrors of having a cyclical life and not being able to escape that life. I want it to be a psychological thriller with some supernatural concepts. I want some entity to be living inside his house and I want that entity to be a metaphor for some sort of trauma or other life situation that is making him unable to escape his current lifestyle. 

    The idea of being trapped in a cyclical life is one that I am truly disturbed by and I think that it can drive anyone to insanity. I mentioned that I would use a Liquor store as my location but my first immediate thought was to actually use my job at Publix and film it there. I decided against this because of all the technical problems with actually getting permission to film a film sort of portraying working there as a nightmare while also wearing the uniform. I doubt Publix will support my idea (Never mind let me film there)

(Publix)

    In the next post I will describe my conversation with Cesar and finally be able to know whether or not I can rely on him for my film. 

Until then signing off,

    Nico, Thursday 2/21/2023

Week 2 - Post 1

    My first weekend after the project began was pretty straightforward, I got everything I wanted to get done minus one thing. I could not get in touch with my friend Cesar, whom I want to ask to be the leading actor in my film. That was my biggest disappointment so far, I hope to see him on Thursday instead (Tomorrow). I also watched a few of my friend's projects from previous years. I loved Alex's project and my other friend's project; Martina's. They mainly showed me that at the beginning of your film, your audience should have a good idea of what your movie is about and the characteristics of your genre should be present and clear. 

    

    So since I wanted to do a psychological thriller I wanted to revisit some of my favorite psychological thriller movies and rewatch their openings. I created a list of my favorite ones;

Donnie Darko

American Psycho

Taxi Driver

Black Swan

Joker

Memento

Shutter island

I will update this list as more come to mind.

    I also LOVE the beginning of Joel Schumacher's Falling Down 

    I think this intro is an amazing example of using atmosphere in order to truly inspire a feeling from the audience, it instills an uncomfortable feeling of being stuck in traffic with the irritating sounds, overstimulating environment, and most importantly the OVERWHELMING heat that you feel while watching this intro, you feel the discomfort of the main character. All the while posing questions that keep you engaged in the movie (why does he need to go home so desperately?). It does all of this while also using nearly no dialogue just using visuals. I also adore the way it rises to a climax.

I will draw some heavy inspiration from this intro. On Thursday I intend on finalizing the idea I want to actually film and writing the first initial opening so that I have an idea of how it's going to go.

    All this talk has got me very excited to finally be able to film and edit it, I genuinely think I will like the final product. I intend to update my blog tomorrow,

Signing off, 

    Nico, Wednesday 2/15/2023

Starting Off - Week 1

     Hi, my name is Nicolas Lede, A few days ago I got the general outline of what would be the longest film-based project I have ever worked on. This meant that beginning now I would have eight weeks to complete the film opening for 50% of the final grade of my project. Needless to say, this is quite a daunting task but, my peers had told me about this before and I knew what I was in for when I started this class. I was excited and looked forward to working on this project. My friends had shown me some of their films but now that I'm starting the project for myself the first thing I plan on doing is looking at much more examples, I want to ask some other friends that took it last year for theirs and I want to view the ones provided by my teacher. I hope that this will give me some more inspiration for my project.

    Since I knew what was coming I have been thinking about what to do with my project for a while, so I have a general idea of something that interests me. I work a decent amount at Publix (a local supermarket chain) and I think about things a lot at work. The job is very simple and repetitive and often I feel time passes much quicker because of my job.  Since my teacher, Mrs. Stocklosa suggested strongly that you should do what you know, I feel like a film about the nature of how menial jobs can be very draining, especially when it's a dead-end job and you have nowhere to go.

    I don't fully know what the theme or moral will be but I feel that this is a relatable subject that has not been overdone. When it comes to the genre of this all I want to do is something related to supernatural or horror elements. Maybe specifically more psychological thriller since I believe that working a job like this and being in a situation where you are stuck working one of these jobs can be very harmful to someone's psyche.

    I also have an idea of someone that would be a good actor and a good location, a close friend of mine that works at a liquor store.

    I just have so many ideas and possibilities running through my head I need to begin organizing and executing certain things to figure out if my ideas are feasible.

I plan on seeing my friend Cesar on  Monday to pitch him my idea,

Until then signing off,

    Nico, Sunday 2/11/2023

Music Marketing Production and Presentation

     After finishing our planning we began production, our plan was to film all of our promo character segments (Atlas) at school during class and then film the rest of the production on Saturday at our groupmate Taylor's aunt's house (which we called the farm). I was assigned to be Atlas as I was the only guy in our group and I owned a guitar. 

    Our first problem came when on Thursday when we were meant to film in class, one of our groupmates was absent because they were sick and so we had to take care of an assignment they were in charge of and that significantly reduced the amount of time we had to film. We filmed as much as we could and got some great shots but we realized how hard lipsynching would be and how long it might take. We would finish the rest at Taylor's farm. 

    When the day of filming came around we had to delay filming slightly and we only had from around 11-4 to film ALL of the remaining footage. We decided to do all of the children's footage then move on to the two older kids and then finish all of the Atlas scenes, this means that our footage would not be recorded in chronological order according to the song but this wasn't as much of a bother as I thought it might be. Working with the young kids was a little frustrating as it was difficult to get them to convey what you had in mind for your film but with a little improvisation we got the job done pretty efficiently, it was also hard to gauge if we were gathering enough footage. We moved on the do the shots with the older kids and that went by very quickly and we did it with SO much time to spare. The shots with me as Atlas were more difficult to do because of the lipsynch but they were still done with relative ease.

(Here is an example of how we needed to work around using the kids in our film)

    Our other difficulty was distributing the rest of the work, we still needed to edit the video and make the entire presentation with only 4 days left, our entire group was busy for most of the days leading up to the presentation so it was hard to coordinate and work together on the rest of the material, especially when it came to the editing of the actual music video itself. Sending files to each other was out of the question on this time constraint. So I volunteered to edit the music video (because I like editing) and have the rest of my group do the presentation.

    After school on Wednesday, I edited most of it, it was relatively easy apart from the lipsynching and also the guitar timing, it was slightly irritating to find each clip in the order they were supposed to go in. It took me approximately two and a half hours to do my first complete edit and I re-edited it later in the day to add the final touch-ups and some features that my group thought it was missing (which ended up being a very good idea.

    I didn't have much time to study the PowerPoint they had made but I actually knew nearly all of the material through working on the entire project. So I was able to briefly look at my slides and know all of what I had to say.

   

    I was extremely pleased with the whole presentation and was happy when I saw all the critiques most of them were extremely valid and were things we could've fixed with more time on our hands.

    Overall I feel that this project was a great learning experience and greatly helped me understand the work that goes into working on a group project like this.