Day 14: Solid Plan

Hey Blog!

   This is my fourth week working on the blogs and I feel have made a lot of progress since when I first started blogging. Everything is truly coming together nicely. Although it has been a slow going process, we have been able to stay well enough on track to the point where we are in line with our class. We have worked out the kinks of our story line, finished finalizing the plot, and finally have a definitive plan of when we are going to actually begin filming. We still have the issue with casting hanging over our heads; we have three characters that still need to be casted! I asked again tonight among my friends to see if anybody knew of actors we could use, and the response was underwhelming.
     Since we are planning to begin filming this weekend, we need to have the others parts casted no later than this Friday. I have faith in our ability to find someone but it hasn't been easy, trust me.
Coming all this way, and entering into fourth quarter is putting into perspective for me how close the deadline is and it's approaching fast. Of course I am excited and expect to do well on the project overall, I'm just nervous.
       I can't wait to begin filming and actually get to do some hands on work with directing. I was looking through youtube to see if I could find any inspiration for the first part of our opening. I have envisioned a montage of pretty images that act as foreshadowing for the rest of the film. I found a great examples from music videos. We learned in class that there are different methods of music videos and one of which is storytelling. I plan to utilize elements of storytelling music videos in the beginning part of our scene. I want to blend music, with the images, and narration. A really great example I found was in the movie UP (2009). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2bk_9T482g . The flashback scene is almost exactly what I am envisioning just not animated and much shorter. I am Beyond excited to execute this aspect because I think if done right, it will be amazing.

until next time,
                   Kyleigh.

Day 13: Spring Break Blues

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    So, just as I predicted, spring break is getting in our way. It has been about a week since break started and my partner is currently on vacation somewhere so we haven't been in contact to discuss any plans. I don't blame him though because I obviously knew this was going to happen so I tried to make sure we weren't doing absolutely nothing. I've been revising the script a little bit and thinking more and more about the casting. I made a few changes to the script which made it a bit clearer of the conflict and the premise/ main idea of our film opening. As to the casting, we still have no parents or young Michael but we are not done looking. A good casting director doesn't stop until her cast list is done and as perfect as it can be. Below I'll attach the newest version of the script we have.

     In the next few days to come, as my partner returns from his vacation, we'll get in contact with each other and begin planning out when we are going to start filming and where we will shoot. Over all, we are not totally underwater with our progress or spring break stagnation. I just hope my other classmates aren't miles ahead of us when it comes to how far along on their projects they are. I will keep you updated on the next few days and where we stand.

Day 12: Casting

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    As you know, we recently wrote our rough draft for our script. This was a great step forward for us! The next thing on our plate is dealing with casting. Our film opening generally needs four actors for four characters: Mom, Dad, Michael, and young Michael. I asked around a group of my friends if anyone would be interested in helping me out with the project and I got some great responses from people who were interested. We decided to pick my friend Diego who has been in drama with me for years now. He is an amazing actor and was actually my first choice when we started casting.
   
   A problem we are running into is the casting of the boy and the parents. Finding a child who can act seems to be bigger of an issue than we initially predicted, as well as finding adults to play Michael's parents. Theoretically, we could use any set of adults; however, we wanted to stay realistic and find parents that look like they could actually be the parents of Diego (Michael). We are faced with the same predicament when searching for a child to play young Michael because we want him to resemble old Michael. We are still searching for our other three actors. I we end up not being able to find the right cast members, of course we will have to settle. I will send an update in a later blog of what we end up having to do with the casting. Below I'm going to attach a photo of Diego to show the model of what we are trying to cast around.

(left Diego)


Until next time,
                     Kyleigh.

Day 11: Into Writing

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   Today I was busied with the task of writing our script for our film opening. I was really excited for this aspect of our project because I am really into creative writing and it's something I used to do a lot when I was younger. When writing the script I was imagining everything as how I picture it to turn out; that's a great thing to be visual but it may cause issues in the future. The reason why I believe visualizing may cause issues is because sometimes high and specific expectations lead to disappointment or things not coming out exactly how you want them to. I am staying optimistic though!
     My experience in theater helped me a lot in creating the script because I am familiar with staging and direction and understanding the flow of a script and developing a story. I wanted to create a character that audiences could fall in love with from eh very start. If audiences connect with the characters, it will make the film much more impactful. One thing though that I did struggle with, though, was setting up the plot so that it would be clear what the movie would have continued to be about after our two minute film opening starts. The best way to do this, I realized, was to explicitly state the conflict and that would propel the rest of the story's plot forward. Below I'm going to attach my first rough draft of the script so far.

until next time,

                  Kyleigh. 

Day 10: Moving Forward

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     As you know, spring has sprung! We are finally on spring break, which means a whole week and a half of break. In order to curb some of the stagnation that is bound to occur over break, I started doing some more research on the topic of our film opening. The more research I did about disorders that require service dogs, I found that I was starting to stray a little from our original idea, which was to create a family friendly/ children movie. I wonder if the subject matter would be too much for that specific audience to handle. We may have to change our target audience because of our topic.
      The research I did showed that panic disorders were the most general ailment that could have a service dog so that is what we chose to add to our character. I went a little deeper into panic disorder research with this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_disorder . The more research we do the better so that we'll be able to make our character believable. THAT'S ALL FOR TODAY:)


until next time,
                   Kyleigh.

Day 9: A Stand Still

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     With our crazy schedules for the past few weeks, the mix SAT testing and a bunch off extra curricular activities, Grant and I haven't moved forward at all with our project. We have our basic idea mapped out, as well as a plan for what we intend to do with our project. However, we have yet to execute any of those plans. Our slow-going process leaves me with a bit of apprehension. I am worried that the nature of our progress so far (or lack there of) is an indication of what the rest of our project's process is going to resemble.
     After this week is spring break and I fear that the amount of relaxation time, family trips, or even just wanting to take a deserved break from school work will set us even further back on our project deadline. I know that we have quite a bit of time left until the deadline comes, but it already seems like I blinked, and three weeks have gone by. I have faith in my partner's and my own ability to execute seamlessly at the last minute (being that we are notorious for this as I mentioned in previous posts), but I just don't want this project to come together last minute. The most essential thing for us to do at this point is to make our shooting schedule and stick to it!! Spring break is going to be a make it or break it time for our project. There are two possibilities: 1) We take advantage of all the time we'll have on our hands and make great progress or 2) Get completely preoccupied and do little to no work.
         Obviously the second option is the less desirable but it's still highly conceivable. I am PRAYING that this week the line of communication opens up between my partner and I. If we can start talking more and really focusing after the busy weeks we've both been having, then I think we'll be on a good path to start making some real progress with the film opening.


Finger crossed and until next time,
                                                Kyleigh.

Day 8: Digging Deeper

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    If you can recall, last blog I talked about how some students in my class had given me feedback on my film opening. Their suggestion of giving more depth to the plot by introducing a deeper conflict got me thinking. They brought up the possibility of adding a disability to the protagonist character's conflict, and that got me thinking. I started digging a little deeper into this idea and did a little bit of research.
    I found a bunch of great websites that gave me info on different types of disabilities and which ones could require a service dog. This website in particular lists numerous disabilities that require service dogs. It even gave some information about the necessary accommodations people with service dogs need. https://www.officialservicedogregistry.com/register-your-dog/other-important-information/list-of-disabilities/ This type of information is good for us to have because it can aid us in having a better understanding of our plot, which will in turn give audiences a better understanding. Plus, knowing about accommodations service dogs and people with disabilities need gives us ideas of elements we can add to the mise en scene elements of our film opening, creating more believability and authenticity.
        <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aqidwbGKEWE" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
        ^^This was an excellent example of a service dog in action!! Definitely a perfect example of what a service dogs responsibilities are and source we should reference when creating our film opening or even the script. My main concern with implementing the idea of a service dog into our film opening is the size of our 'actors'. The dogs we're planning to use are fairly small in size and have never had any type of service dog training. It could potentially pose a bit of a problem for us when it comes to believability due to the size of the dogs and lack of training. A possible solution to that issue may be instead of using the term 'service dog', which typically entails animals of a bigger size and extensive training, we use the term 'emotional support animal'. That way there is more of a broad range of responsibilities and smaller list of commonalities or requirements to follow when creating the film opening. I am very much looking forward to the challenges this idea holds. I hope that we'll be able to pull of this idea because I am starting to fall in love with it!! I'll keep you posted.

Until Next Time,
                   Kyleigh

Day 7: First Feedback

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    Today we had a group session during class where we got together in student groups to give each other feedback about our blog posts and our project ideas. In my group there were five other students who were doing either the film opening and the two page spread. My group members made some helpful suggestions about my blog formatting. They said that I should change my template to a type that does not utilize the "read more" feature. They suggested that using this type of template will make my blog less appealing and harder to follow. They also provided me with some helpful tips on how to use the blogging website. I was introduced to a few more features that would make my blog nicer, such as changing the dates of my blog posts and changing the title font of my posts. All of these tips were very useful to me; i think my blog's quality will significantly increase after this group feedback session.
    When I introduced my film opening topic to my 'focus group' the reactions were very underwhelming. My group didn't seem very compelled by the concept of our opening. As you know, our film opening idea involves a boy and a dog who will grow up together and have a horrible twist in the middle of the opening, leaving the audience on a cliff hanger. My group suggested that the idea may be lacking in depth or ability to incite interest. One member of my group brought up the idea of us creating more conflict within the boy and the dog's relationship. One possible way of doing this may be by creating some sort of disability that requires the boy to have a dog, that way there is a better likelihood of the audience forming a connection to the characters and inevitably making the story more successful and having a greater impact on the audience. Without a doubt, it is essential that our story tugs on the heart strings of audiences. We want to make a heartfelt family movie that has a serious impact on our viewers. We will continue to develop our characters and story lines and hopefully build up on the basic foundation that we have. Our next challenge will be finding a way to make our story more interesting!!

Until next time,
                    Kyleigh.

Day 6: On Schedule?

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        One thing that our teacher emphasized in class was the importance of keeping track of our time and making sure that things get turned in and finished on time. As I mentioned in previous blog posts, my partner and I do not have the best time management skills when working together. So, like we do with everything else, we took to the internet to find some answers and advice about how to curb that. We wanted to find out was the most effective way to create a shooting schedule for our film and came across this website https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/how-to-plan-an-effective-shooting-schedule/ . This source clearly laid out exactly what steps to take in order to have an effective film schedule. And one might think to themselves, "how hard can it be to make a schedule?", but the truth is, anyone can SAY they're going to do something on a certain date or time, but planning it out and implementing it seemed to have more of an effect. So, with that, we followed the instructions of the website and tried to create our shooting schedule.
         Another source opened our eyes when it came to planning out our timing schedule. It brought to our attention the inevitability of conflict and possible unavailability and how to work around it. http://howtofilmschool.com/checklist-for-creating-a-schedule/ . This site was specifically aimed towards young audiences and students in film schools which is just like us, so we took on the advice it offered full force. It emphasized the benefits of creating a check list for all the things that are necessary to have completed by certain times and on certain days. A lot of factors and confounding variables are present in our schedule which is why it was important to us that our schedule remain fairly flexible. Being that Grant and I are both active in other activities and have very busy lives as is, we wanted to be sure not to over indulge ourselves, while still staying on task.

Below I will attach a copy of the schedule that we intend to follow throughout our filming process.


Until next time,
                    Kyleigh.

Day 5: Story Telling Cont.

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     As we continue to plan out our story line with reference to our inspiration from other films, we discovered that the story practically wrote itself. We obviously haven't completed an entire script, but we did come up with the basic back bone for our plot. Finally doing this was an exciting step for us in our process because it felt like something that we actually accomplished that will have us one our way to making more progress!

       One technique Grant and I thought would be a good way to completely solidify our exact vision for our opening was to jot down any ideas we had and create outlines for them. Any idea we had, whether it was silly or not, we wrote down and tried to create a story based off of it. This was something that we found to be super helpful because it allowed us to get out all of our ideas and create some really intricate details that we loved. We basically took a bunch of different ideas and meshed them with one another to make a very interesting story. Obviously we didn't use every idea. That's also why doing this was so beneficial, because it allowed us to get out all of our not so great ideas that may have been clouding our creative head space. 

       Later on I'll attach a pdf of the outlines that we created that didn't work and then the final one that we came up with. Creating the outlines was a pretty easy part of the process. This week was a huge contrast from last blog that we were overwhelmed with the amount of work we thought we had ahead of us. We have a long way to go, but it's coming along nicely. 

Until next time,

                    Kyleigh.

Day 4: Story Telling

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       As we continue on our course of creating our film opening, there seem to be more and more task we have to do. Grant and I haven't run into any real problems yet, so I am thankful for that. However our process does seem a little slow-going. I initially wasn't expecting this project to involve as much planning as it is. I suppose maybe I was so excited to begin filming and creating that I did't realize the amount of preparation involved. As we slowly continue to plan out our film opening and try to hone in on a specific and solid idea, we are continuing to discover challenges with our time managing skills. For example, both Grant and myself are diligent workers separately, but put us together, and its procrastination city. That is something that I hope we get over as soon as possible because that trait could pose as a huge hindrance for us in the future. 

      Anyway, what we have been working on, even though it isn't much, is still good stuff. We've begun creating a story line and plot for our film opening. One thing that we found was beneficial to us was to plan the film in it's entirety, that way we would know how to end the film opening in a way that it would properly set up the context for the rest of the film if there were to be one. One youtube had an excellent tutorial post about the best ways to create a story board. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cWVdK5xyTs He talked about the best techniques in sequencing and variations of shots and angles that would make for an interesting picture. One thing we hope to do with our film opening is utilize a large variation in camera shots and angles to create a very intriguing opening. 

        Our storyboard is underway and coming along slowly but we also were stumped by creating a story board for a story we truly hadn't't created yet; so that was our next step. We went to google to find out what was the best way to get started writing a script and actually creating a story. both of us having limited experience in story writing for the screen, we needed a lot of help. I asked some kids in my drama class if they had any script writing advice and they referred me to this great source https://www.writersstore.com/how-to-write-a-screenplay-a-guide-to-scriptwriting/ . This source ended up just way to detailed and much more in depth than we needed to go, but it did end up being helpful for the aspects of formatting a script and exactly HOW to write a script. It emphasized more about presentation and creation with formatting a script more so than content- so ultimately it ended up being a not so useful source for us specifically, but still a great source overall. 

        Next class we plan to continue to put our story board together and solidify our story line so that we can plan our filming schedule and the preliminary tasks. 

until next time, 

                    Kyleigh. 

Day 3: Falling Into Place

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It is finally day three and things are continuing to move along smoothly. Grant and I recently talked about what we have planned for our plot and theme of our film opening. If you can remember in my last bog, I referenced two movies that we planned to use as inspiration . Those movies are Old Yeller (1961) and Where the Red Fern Grows (1974). The reason we are using these two movies (and others too) as part of our inspirational is because they are two classic family films that have have dogs in them! We chose to use dogs sort of as our theme. When trying to think about children/family movies that we'd seen before, we instantly thought of a bunch of movies that all had one thing in common: dogs!

         We wanted to do something that was a classic idea where we have a main character protagonist and a dog, just like Old Yeller. Dogs in feature films as main characters has been a thing since the dawn of time, and it seemed only fair that we carry on the tradition. One thing that we know is going to be an epic challenge is training a dog to be a star of a movie (even if it is only two minutes long). training dogs is neither of our fortes so we just decided to look it up, and this website gave us some tips http://www.hollywoodpaws.com/faq.htm . It stated that dogs only need to know simple commands in order to be film stars, and that was perfect for my dogs! 

           Our overall plan is to create a film opening that displays a passing of time over a span of years. I have two dogs that are the same breed but different ages, so we thought the best way to show passing of time without using any kind of special effects was just to have two actors. Then with the human actors we planned to do the same thing- use two actors different in age. Other famous films have used this technique too! Some very reputable instances are in The Notebook (2004) and Star Wars (1977). Both films utilized the technique of having the same character portrayed by two actors at different ages. One source gave examples of this technique being used in feature films and we read these accounts carefully so that we would know what to do in our own film opening (http://www.mtv.com/news/2769341/young-old-actor-same-character/ ). One excerpt from the source emphasized the importance of keeping the same mannerisms, speech patterns, and body language in the character throughout the whole film while still managing to be true to the age of the character at the time. I am so excited for this aspect of creating our film opening just because I know it is going to take a keen sense of direction and a knack for character development by whomever we choose to cast which will most certainly be a feat!

These are the two dogs we will be using as actors!!

Until next time,
                     Kyleigh.