Genre in Our Film Opening

 This post is dedicated to how our project fits within the conventions of the genre we chose.

First, I should remind you of our genre(s). Mainly, our film is fits between romance and drama, romantic drama if you will. However, it could also be considered somewhat of a coming-of-age film. We made our film fit into these genres in many many ways.

To fit into the romantic portion of the film, we emphasized the relationships between the characters. There is romance between Betty and James, even if it's more of a ghost of a romance after the breakup. Props are used to demonstrate this. Love letters and rose petals are shown in the bedroom scene, symbolizing love, but since they are wilted and ripped, it symbolizes the ending of love. This reinforces the idea of love being a central concern, thus relating the film back to the genre of romance. When Betty opens the door James holds roses for Betty. This is another symbol of love since it relates to James wanting to rekindle Betty's faded feelings for him. On top of props, dialogue is also used to fit our film into the conventions of romance. Betty references love in her voiceover, and James tells August directly that he still loves Betty. This helps fit our film into the romance genre even more.

Lady Bird (2017)

Let's move on to drama. Our film has drama written all over it. It's seen in the disappointed facial expressions of Betty and the pleading expressions of James, the mellow and mysterious lighting and hues, the dramatic piano background music, the mannerisms of the characters, and the dialogue that's full of conflict. After all, this is a love triangle. It would be weird to see happy characters considering Betty got cheated on. Betty, James, and August are all dealing with their individual struggles. The combination of all these elements create a tense-filled and dramatic atmosphere, and this is just what we wanted.

Lastly, there are the hints of coming-of-age in our film. With all three characters being teenagers, they are all in a period of their lives where there is much to learn. Nobody truly has life figured out at age 17. Everyone is still figuring out themselves. For example, James has to live with his decision to cheat on Betty, and he has to learn and figure out how to deal with this "mistake" and learn how to prevent this from happening again. Betty has to live with how much James hurt her, and she'll probably struggle with learning to love someone again. August is a teenager as well, and she probably has her own journey of maturation and grown to take on if the film were to be finished. These qualities are typical for the coming-of-age genre.

Favorite Part

 When reflecting on our film making journey, I definitely note the good and the not-so-good. Luckily, this post is dedicated to my favorite part of it all! Unfortunately, I was not able to be there for filming. Because of this, I don't have the experience of knowing if filming would have been my favorite part. I do love social connection, so I think this probably would have been it. But, what's done is done, so I'd say my favorite part of the process was the aesthetic of it all. 

To put it bluntly, I love pretty things. Whenever I view things as beautiful and exciting, it gets me super motivated and creative. That's exactly what happened here. When I was assigned to make my first moodboard, I ended up loving the process of scrolling through Pinterest to find the loveliest pictures and putting it all together made it even more enjoyable. I felt the same way with the second moodboard I made (the one that actually related to The Hope Of it All). I never thought I would enjoy making something like this, but I did. This process sort of taught me something new that I loved doing. For fun, I ended up editing pictures that had nothing to do with media studies in a collage manner. They turned into playlist covers, so I'm pretty satisfied with how that turned out.

Other aesthetically-pleasing moments came from when Tori sent me the video files. I saw how nice her camera quality was and was in awe. I thought the way everything was recorded was simply lovely. The colors, the angles, everything. It seemed like a genuine film. 

During the editing process, I tried my best to find ways to make the film even more aesthetically-pleasing. This included using a filter (raising the saturation), finding good music with the help of my group, and finding good fonts and transitions. I really love how it turned out!

Although it was hard to pick a favorite thing out of everything, I definitely enjoyed the aesthetics of the process throughout. That being said, I'd say that the aesthetics are my favorite part.

Color in our Opening Scene

 Color is something my group and I definitely considered when making this film opening. Color has the ability to convey emotions, states of minds, and personality without even using words. That being said, color is a powerful tool in film.  It wasn't the factor my group and I focused most on, but it definitely had an impact on certain choices we had to make.

For example, the blue tones in Betty's room conveys mellow and sad emotions despite nothing very sad actually happening. After all, Betty is simply waking up and getting ready for the day. On top of this, the blinds aren't open, preventing any yellow sunshine to counter these blue/indigo tones. This further enhances the mellow moods created. The purpose of these blue and indigo colors is to convey sadness, more specifically, the sadness of Betty due to her recent breakup. What makes this breakup especially hard is the fact that James cheated on her. Betty is feeling all sorts of negative emotions like betrayal, shock, and misery. Blue is probably the best color to symbolize this, so using this color in the lighting definitely helps enhance these feelings. 

Color also affected the wardrobe choices of each of the characters. To show Betty's delicacy, innocence, and femininity, she wears a pink shirt. I think the color of Betty's shirt reinforces her personality in an accurate way, so I think this wardrobe choice works well. 

With James, he wears a red sweater to emphasize common emotions associated with the color red. Although red can mean anger, I think the emotions we hoped to convey with James sweatshirt are those of love, passion, and a bit of warning (like a stop sign or emergency signal). Love, for the feelings he still has for Betty. Passion, for the affair with August. And Warning, for showing that it is probably a dangerous decision for Betty to get back with James since this could potentially break her heart again.

Color and conveying personality could also be seen with August's wardrobe choice. Not as much as with Betty and James, though. August wears a white tank top with a green dragon. White typically is associated with purity and flawlessness, but it can also be associated with emptiness. August can definitely be perceived as flawless as she is a popular girl who lives a "perfect" life from the outside. However, because she willingly wants James to cheat on Betty with her, she is likely empty on the inside and starving for attention. The green can represent the envy she feels for Betty since James still loves her.

Lighting in Our Opening Scene

To be honest, when my group was filming our opening scene, lighting was not our biggest concern. I think we focused more on using mise en scene, framing, and color to convey meaning more than using lighting. I also didn't edit any lighting post-production because I thought it was fine the way it was. If this was a horror film, I probably would have darkened the shots to create a more eerie mood, but this was just a drama so I saw no need to. However, viewers can still feel emotions from the lighting we used even if it wasn't necessarily intended.

Starting with the first few shots in Betty's bedroom, the darker and blue-toned lighting can definitely be noticed. Although the time is in the morning since Betty is just waking up, there are more cool tones present than the typical warm yellow tones expected in the morning time. Because of the lack of happier warm tones, the lighting here can create mellow feelings in the audience. The soft and sad piano music works well with this cool and dark lighting, causing a generally sad mood to be present even without words

Once this half of the opening scene is over, Betty opens the door. This allows the natural sunlight to finally get in, resulting in a much warmer and brighter lighting. At the same time, James appears! This could mean that James has optimism for Betty forgiving him. However, this doesn't happen. Betty closes the door and the bright lighting is gone. Once Betty's done with her sitting, the bright lighting stays consistent with James for the rest of the opening scene since it all takes place outside, and this is good since it reinforces the idea that this all takes place in the morning. Luckily, the weather was nice and sunny (thanks Florida!) so the lighting was as bright as possible rather than being cloudy which could have confused the audience on the time of day.

Group Dynamics

 Starting this course, I truly had barely any knowledge of the true art of film and media, and here I am putting my finishing touches on a film opening that my three friends and I created from scratch. Working together was definitely a great decision, even despite the challenges that occurred because of it. It definitely would have been a hassle to do this all on my own, so I'm extremely grateful for Daniel, Tori, and Hannah for working with me on this project. In this post, I will be discussing the group dynamics between me and the rest of my group mates. 

Tori

All hail the main character!!! Seriously though, without Tori, our opening scene would be very incomplete. Fortunately, she was able to get permission to film with Daniel and Hannah over the weekend despite having rather strict parents like mine. Not only did she do filming that weekend, but she also had her mother film her for the bedroom scene. I could not be more proud of how she made it all work out. Also, we used her camera which had much better quality than even the latest iPhone, and this enhanced our quality even more. Yay for dedication!

Daniel

Daniel was also a massive help in the making of this opening scene. After all, he played the crucial James who was basically the backbone of this love triangle. He was the one who brought up the idea of having a love triangle at all, and this idea can still be seen in the final product. He had a vision, and it sure was executed! Tori and I did have some hesitations regarding time constraints, but we adapted and Daniel was sure we would be alright (which we were).

Hannah

Hannah, the last of my group mates,  also definitely carried her weight throughout the process of making this film opening. After all, she was essentially the director. Although I was not there for the filming process, there was nothing but praise for how she did her job. With a keen attention to detail, she double checked every shot before moving forward with filming the next shots. Since she was the one behind the camera most of the time, most of our wonderful shots are thanks to her! 

Ashley

 Of course, this post could not be complete without Ashley. Although she isn't even in this class, she took the time out of her busy schedule to come film and play August. I am extremely grateful for her decision to volunteer, especially since she didn't have to. Despite the few challenges that arose, she remained cooperative and understanding and continued to persist. A huge thanks to you, Ashley!

Overall, I would say my decision to do go through this entire process as a group has been extremely rewarding. Not only did it save me lots of time and effort from a film-making perspective, but I managed to grow as a person as well. I learned valuable skills like speaking up for my ideas, compromising, and listening to other viewpoints. Although there were some obvious setbacks that were out of our control (I'm talking to you, COVID), I believe this group effort turned out much better than anything I could have done on my own. Because of this, I think our group dynamic was great :)

A

Font Updates

 So I had a little trouble using the fonts that my group originally agreed on using.

The fonts Quita and Kinuta were too much of a hassle to download and apply, so I had to limit my fonts to those found on Dafont.com 

Because of this, I ended up offering other options to my group, and we eventually decided on the fonts called Sylfaen and Pretty Shine:

Sylfaen

Pretty Shine

We chose these fonts since they are pretty similar to the previous fonts we chose. That being said, the effects of these fonts are pretty much identical to those fonts. We wanted an easy-to-read yet elegant vibe for the credits, and we wanted a more extravagant cursive styled font for the title. Overall I am pretty satisfied with these fonts, and I think it provides for a much more cinematic experience than the simple iMovie font. Because of this, I would definitely say that the struggles of figuring out fonts are worth it.

Almost Completed: A Reflection

 We've reached a point in time where I'm able to look back and see how far we've come. Through the difficulties and the challenges, we've pulled through and are very close to finishing. And it feels scary since I didn't think we'd get here so quickly. Time really does pass by quick, so hear me out as I reflect on our journey.

Starting this course, we all knew that COVID-19 was going to impact how we were going to approach this project. We wanted to take careful precautions and keep everyone safe, but at the end of the day, we still needed this film opening to be made. COVID actually affected the location of filming. We were going to film in Amber's bedroom, but her parents didn't want anyone entering their house since they wanted to stay safe. This is understandable, but it meant that we had to adjust our plans. So, what ended up happening was Tori self-filming and having her mother film her for the bedroom waking-up scene. Not gonna lie, I was pretty scared that the quality may turn somewhat bad since the director (Hannah) wasn't there to give filming tips. But, my doubts were quickly proven wrong since I love the way these shots turned out. I think Tori's camera truly made it seem like an actual movie. Through this experience, I learned that even though things may not go completely according to plan, things can still turn out amazing. Also, by working with other people, I learned to trust others more when changes do change. Go Tori!

Another thing we had to change was the plot and therefore the screenplay. Daniel's idea of a fourth character, Inez, was scrapped because of time constraints. Inez would have been the gossipy friend that told Betty that James was cheating on her. Before we decided on scrapping her, Daniel had already written a script that included Inez's lines in it. Of course, we had to then change the script to exclude Inez and her lines. Also, we changed the tilt to the sky. It was supposed to be shot from outside the car facing the front of August and James, but because of visual and auditory problems, this ended up getting switched to being shot from behind August and James in the backseat. The pan to the sky still happened, though. We just had to open the sunroof.

My three friends and I have our own tastes and ideas, and the four of us individually impacted the project because of this. I added the idea of using props to highlight the breakup, and my friends added the idea of a POV shot and the pan to the sky. Tori and I were both concerned about the length of August and James' conversation since we were afraid that this would take up too much time. We had to communicate this with the rest of the group. The combination of all of our ideas created the end result, and it would not be the same should any of us be missing. Another impact of working with others was the fact that we had to constantly keep COVID in mind. In order to stay safe, my family wouldn't let me go to the filming site at all. I would have definitely been allowed to work in person with my group if there weren't a pandemic. But, even Daniel, Tori, and Hannah had to take precaution while filming together. Daniel and Tori considered filming at their respective houses, but this did not work, so they did the best to take precautions while filming mask-less near each other. 

There are a few things that I would do differently if I was able to do this all over again. I would, of course, love to have been there during filming. I could have offered different filming opinions and shots, and could have possibly made the outside-the-car shot of the August and James argument work with recording a separate audio for the dialogue. I also would have liked to have had more, longer shots. This would allow for greater flexibility with editing since I can just crop videos and test a variety of sequences rather than being forced to work with the limited shots we do have. 

Further changes we can make can really only be done with editing at this point. I'm working on the title sequence at the moment, and I will soon work on adding filters so the film opening looks pretty. One of the last things I'll be doing is adding in Betty's voiceover once Tori sends me that audio file. Other than that, I think we should be good :)