Group Meeting 2

     Today in class we were put into random group meetings with others from my class again.  Honestly I think the first group meeting might've been more helpful.  

    We were all still in the pre-production phase so there was more room for peer critique on our ideas for stuff we can actually change before we do it.  But now that we are all in post-production, it feels like the only thing we can do in group meetings now is tell each other about what we've done and say "oh that's cool", because no one is really asking for or taking suggestions anymore.  

    Although, it is of some use because we started to get more comfortable in the discussion to ask for advice on elements within the project moving forward.  The group gave me some suggestions for a title since I expressed that I wasn't really sure what I was going to do about that.  I also gave some advice to the group about copyright free music and how to find music that fits the exact vibe you're going for.  My friend Michael produced an original song for my project, but at other points in the video I may end up wanting to use a different track and turn to copyright free music.  I suggested that the group search for specific genres and inspirations when looking for copyright free music because a lot of the general songs that first pop up after a search are too generic and over-used.

    So even though this meeting wasn't the most helpful for me personally, I still got to know about other people's projects and see their progress which is cool.

Fear and Loathing in Adobe Premiere Pro (2023)

     I am pleased to announce that I have begun the editing process!!!  During filming I was kind of scared to get to this stage because, again, I feared that I would realize that this project wasn't going to turn out the way I wanted it to.  But as I've began to edit, my faith in myself is starting to be restored and I'm remembering that I do know how to do this and it's going to be fine.

    I started off by just throwing a random closeup clip of Vincente on the timeline and playing around with effects to see how I could make this opening sequence more visually interesting.  I decided that obviously the raw clip wasn't doing enough for the surrealist tone I'm aiming for, so I threw on a lens distortion effect and turned the curvature all the way to -100 and was awarded with the image to the left.  I actually really like the way the effect looks with the colors and the closeup.  Oh speaking of colors, I took the clip and duplicated it and put on the RGB effect and turned up the greens, and then I threw that clip on top of the original and put it on an adding blend mode.  So now there are slight hints of green which is definitely a very subtle touch, but I love the way it gives the shot more dimension rather than just being flat blue.  So this gives me hope that I can make the other shots look just as cool in sequence (even if it'll only be up there for a split second).

    

    The other thing I started on was implementing the music.  I put down the track that Michael created at the very beginning, but I felt that it went on for too long before the beat drop, and I wanted the beat drop to happen basically immediately for the title graphic I plan to put.  I knew exactly what to do because I've had to do it before, but I just cut out the part that I didn't need and timed the cut with the beat as best as I could, and then I just added a constant power so the cut went a little more unnoticed.   I think it sounds good enough and I can definitely work with it.  

    So until the 29th I'm just going to grind editing.  Hopefully the rest goes smoothly!

Real Issues or Just Overthinking?

     As I've been on my break from both school and this project, I've had a lot of time to think about the logistics of my plot and how I want the audience to interpret it.  I've mentioned this before, but one of my biggest fears going into this project was actually making the plot understandable.  I want to make sure that I don't give away the actual twist of Amon only being a materialization of Vincente's subconscious this early, because after all this is only a film opening.  But at the same time, I want to make it understandable enough that the audience can tell that their is something off, without any of the techniques I use being too goofy and on the nose.  

    I already came to the conclusion that I was going to introduce Amon in strange ways, like them popping up in the scene without any explanation to stick to that surreal essence.  I'm just afraid that it's not going to come across the way that I want it to.  I think while editing, I might need to amp up the techniques that are going to work together to make this piece actually surreal, so that the viewer questions the entire piece, and not just Amon's strange appearances, so it feels like it has more of a point rather than a random technique that sticks out like a sore thumb.  

    I'm excited to start editing now that I think I've found a solution to this probably imaginary problem.  I think if I really play into the camp and avant-garde aspects I wanted to from the first place without fear, then I'll succeed in having this piece come out in the way I want.

SCOREEEEE

 Wow I'm jumping for joy!!!  Ok like not really but I have some cool news.  My friend Michael Orlando has agreed to compose original music for my film opening!  I asked him a few weeks ago but my man has finally delivered with two tracks I can choose from.  I gave him a few songs that he could use for inspiration along with a few key words like "surreal" and "Gregg Araki-esque" and that he definitely did give me.  

He actually only specifically composed one track for me, that has a nice riser at the beginning so I plan to use that song to open the opening (lol) and put my title graphics over it. The other track is a track that he originally composed and is letting me use, but he didn’t originally make it for my project.  Both of them are really cool songs that fit the vibe of my project so well and I’m very glad he was able to help me out.  I would attach the songs here but I kind of don’t know how to do that so I guess you’ll just have to wait and hear. 

Ok so like what is my title gonna be

     Hi poops.  Spring Break just ended (unfortunately) and I've come back from all of my trips and its time to get back to work.  I took kind of a break for my TV trip to California (absolute nightmare btw), so it's time to get back to werq.  

    Something that I've been thinking about recently has been: what the h*ll is my title gonna be???  I haven't really put too much thought into it because I always just thought "oh it's ok I have time and it's not that important right now."  But then I realized this project is quite literally due in a Week so maybe I should start thinking about that.  

    Someone in my Media class asked me what my title was, and I didn't have an answer.  This kid was pretty helpful though, and suggested I call it "surreal" or something like that because it relates to the themes of my project.  I thought that it was a cool suggestion, but it was a bit more on the nose than I would like.  But that did kind of help get me started on thinking what else I could name it.  

    I started by literally looking up synonyms for surreal, which I kind of just did as a joke, but it actually gave me some good results.  It gave me words like "avant-garde" and "bizarre", but none of those felt right either.  I eventually did some more research and came across the term "hypnagogic" which I found intriguing.  I found out that the word refers to the transitional state between being awake and falling asleep.  While in a hypnagogic state, one can experience hallucinations, usually visual, due to the abnormal brain activity.  I felt like this was a really cool term and concept that perfectly fit with the plot of my project.  Vincente is constantly in an almost sleep state due to his self destructive behaviors, and also experiences hallucinations due to this.  

    I came to the conclusion that I am definitely going to use this term within my title.  I was thinking of something goofy like "Hypnopompic Hypnagogia" because it has a more fun sound to it and Hypnopompic refers to the transitional state between sleeping and waking up, similar to hypnagogia.  I was also thinking of something longer like "His Undivided Hypnagogic Attention" but I feel like that might be too much of a mouthful and a bit difficult to market to less of a niche audience.  I think I've decided that I am just going to go with "Hypnagogic."

Hypnagogia

Last mini-filming day

     I wrapped up filming on Friday with Joey.  It was a short day of shooting because all I needed were a few close-up shots of Vincente and a few wides of him walking to his hangout spot.  I made sure to get a wide variety of shots for this sequence so that I'm able to have a wide range of shots to choose from when editing to music.  I know I want this sequence to be sort of "montage-esque" so I need that shot variety.  This is also a sequence that will show some of the effects of the Vincente's self-destructive behaviors.  His slightly impaired walk and the constantly spacey look on his face show just how unattached he is from any semblance of his former and true self.  

    Although this will only be a miniscule part of my final project, it's a sequence that will be jam packed with overstimulating visuals (again, self-destructive behaviors that affect his world view) and implications about his every day life.

Filming continues ...

     Filming continued on Thursday where I filmed the bulk of my project.  I decided to film at this little spot I know in Markham park that could act as Vincente's hang out spot.  Originally when I was thinking of locations, I was thinking of filming in a shed or garage of some sort.  But I ended up deciding that it was more practical for me to film in this spot that I knew would be available when I needed it.

    We ended up filming the main dialogue scenes between Vincente and Amon this day.  It was much easier to set up for filming than it was on Wednesday because we were not filming indoors, and I decided to just natural lighting which worked out perfectly for me.  The only equipment I ended up really using was my camera and the boom mic.  The raw footage looks good enough to me, but I might have to do some serious color-grading in post so that the lighting doesn't come across as so bright and happy, since that isn't the tone I'm necessarily going for.

FIRST DAY OF FILMING WOOOOO

     Hello blog.  I am happy to announce that this past Wednesday I finally began filming for my project.  This was an extremely tiring and painful (my back hurt) process, but it's all worth it for like 10 seconds of my final video!!  On this day we filmed the opening scene in which Vincente is seen getting done with what is implied to be sex work so that the audience can get a feel for what kind of lifestyle he lives.  I lit this scene in kind of a gross yellow-green color to reflect the "not-so-welcoming and nice" environment.  

   I filmed in an empty room in my house and decorated it with blankets and pillows on the floor to make it look like a sort of unstable or temporary living situation, again to reflect his lifestyle.  The scene took quite a while to set up.  Bringing all the props down, organizing them, setting up all the equipment, getting the costumes ready, making sure the actors knew what to do, etc., took a bit.  

But in the end I got all the shots that I need for that day, including a couple different close-ups using a couple different color lights for the opening sequence.  All in all this was a really good day of shooting, and I love the way the shots turned out (but you will have to wait till later to see that).

EQUIPMENT (complications, scheduling, and equipment haul) !!!

     This is the week where things for this project are picking up at a pretty fast pace.  I've finally finished my script and most pre-production things and I've started to film.  And in order to film, I need equipment.  I have my own camera and tripod but I wanted to go all out for this project, so I rented out equipment from this really cool place called BECON-TV.

    BECON is a TV station where a lot of different things go on, and one of those things is a show called Shortcuts that consists of student-submitted short films and other video types.  Shortcuts is ran by Jim Guarasci, and one of the cool things he does is allow any South Florida student to DM him and ask to borrow from a wide variety of really good equipment for a few days.  I actually used to work at BECON with Jim as my boss, so I was able to ask for the equipment only 3 days in advance hehe.  I got a whole lot of equipment that Jim helped me pick out specifically for what I wanted to do within the film.  So thank you Jim <3

    The only issue here is that I was planning on returning the equipment on the 14th, because on the 15th I leave for a TV competition in California, and I wanted to maximize my filming time according to my schedule.  But unfortunately, Jim is also going to the competition but he's leaving on the 14th in the morning, so it would be impossible to return it then.  My only other option was to return it the 13th, which would give me a bit less time to film, especially since I couldn't film this past Monday.  So I just decided to cope and use all the time to film this week to film I can.  We filmed yesterday, and plan to use today and Friday to finish, since my actors aren't available over the weekend.  My only worry is that we won't be able to get everything within these three days.  but worst case scenario, I use my own equipment during next week to get any shots that I'm missing on any day that my actors would be available.

    So now that that's out of the way, let me show you the equipment I checked out!

    First up is the camera.  I decided to check out the Sony a7iii because I've used it before, and it might be my favorite camera to work with.  The image is always automatically beautiful, and I love how the controls give me full manual access to the camera.  

    To go with the camera, I checked out a variety of Rokinon lenses, that are very nice and very expensive, so I have to be extra careful with them (not them I'm not careful with other equipment but you know what I me
an).  These are prime lenses with mean that they don't zoom, which is why there are several of them so you can use a wider or more telephoto lens.  The lens Jim lent me include a 14 mm, 35 mm, 50 mm, and 85 mm.

    I also checked out a boom microphone and a pole to hold it.  This just helps me get the best audio quality possible.

    The last thing I checked out was a light kit.  Jim had light kits that I was used to from using them in school as well, but I decided to check out different ones referred to as Cobb lights for their RGB settings and for some reason I just like them better.  These lights will help me achieve a lot of the different strangely-lit shots I want to incorporate into my project.

The "long-awaited" script

     I finally managed to finish my script!  There's some things about it that may still need Tweaking but for the most part it's pretty set.  I feel like my biggest struggle with this was definitely writing the dialogue and trying to make sure it fit the characters and also explained what was going on in the story clearly since this idea is kind of a lot.  I hope to get some of my friends to peer review my script and hopefully give some suggestions on how to make it better.  I just want to make sure that someone who is not me can understand what's going on in the script.  I wanted to make the characters have more weird and goofy to show that this is supposed to be fun and enjoyable, but also deals with very heavy and dark subject matter.  Many people use humor as a coping mechanism so I wanted to reflect that trait of Vincente's within the script.  I'm also just not the best at writing dialogue, so I'm also kind of making fun of that fact within the script so the dialogue is purposefully kind of stupid and whimsical.

(I'm not sure why the text is so blurry but you will have to cope with these pictures until I figure out how to make them ... not blurry)

Costuming for Amon (Red Galore)

     Since I want Amon to be the materialization of Vincente's subconscious, and Vincente is struggling with self-identity and knowing who he truly is, I want Amon's style to kind of contrast his.  This represents how far gone Vincente is and how disconnected he is from who he really is.

    So because Vincente dresses in mainly neutrals such as black and has an angsty and edgy aesthetic to him, I want Amon's look to be kind of the opposite of this.  I plan on dressing the character in much more vibrant colors to execute this.  My only question is, which color?  Because Amon is probably going to stand out so much due to the vibrance of their clothes, I want to make sure that I choose the perfect color palette for them to wear.  

    At first I thought I would stray away from red since I wanted Amon to really contrast Vincente and I thought the red and his style would represent too many of the same things.  But after refreshing my memory and reading up on some of the things that red represents, I think it's a possible contender.  See, I want Amon not only to represent Vincente's subconscious, but also who he really is.  And at heart he might be a driven and ambitious person (all things that red represents), that just got a little lost along the way, which is the whole point.  As for the aesthetic issue, I think I trust my styling abilities enough to figure out the perfect amount of red to put in Amon's outfit along with the perfect shades of red to include.  This way there will be enough contrast between the two characters without it being too overbearing.

    I think my final decision will be red, it just kind of spoke to me for some reason.  I think it'll work out better than having too pastel or light of a color because I think I still should aim to keep some semblance of Vincente's identity in Amon since at the end of the film he probably ends up finding it.  It's a way for Vincente's true self to pop out and say, "hey, I'm not really dead."

Source: https://tradeshowbestpractices.com/2017/08/03/color-psychology-meaning-colors-traits/

Costuming for Vincente

     Now that I've figured out who my characters actually are, I think now would be the best time to decide what I want to do in terms of mise-en-scene elements such as costuming.  Costuming is going to be a very important for my film opening because of just how much you can tell about a character just from the way they present themselves alone.  I'm excited to get creative with the characters' looks and hopefully come up with something super cool that reflects the character's personality using clothes that I (or my friends) already have.

    So first I want to style Vincente's outfit.  Not only because he's the "main" character, but because I already have such a vivid image in my head of what he looks like.  I want him to be very obviously "grungy" and edgy because it would definitely match his personality.  He's a pretty careless, hedonistic, and troubled young man, and unfortunately, this style is usually used as a sort of stereotype to reflect people of that nature.  But on the bright side this should be easy to style since I basically already dress exactly how I imagine him to.  I also want to add details such as jewelry or body modifications like piercings for the same reason.  And since I want it to be known that this character is LGBTQ without making it his whole personality, I can represent this by styling him with accessories and clothes that are very common amongst gay youths in the 80s/90s (my film opening purposefully has this ambiguous time period as it matches its themes of uncertainty/ambiguity).  

    To start off, I was thinking about having Vincente wear a looser fitting crop-top.  During my film's time period, crop-tops for men were all the rage, specifically for straight men (you might be thinking: "wait Vincente isn't straight?  That is true, stay with me for a second).  The crop-top first emerged as the straight man's attempt to flex their athleticism and physique.  This was the case for a while, until popular artists such as Prince and popular brands such as Calvin Klein began to rock the garment in a more suggestive, effeminate and even sometimes homoerotic manner.  Fragile masculinity did a number on straight men when crop-tops began this re-branding process, and did almost a complete 180 on their view of it.  As Tom George of i-D put it, "The men’s crop top, now less about athleticism and more about fashion, sex and androgyny, started to embody all the things masculinity wanted to distance itself from: camp, queerness and effeminacy."  But straight men turning on crop-tops obviously couldn't have happened overnight.  The fact that there was a switch-up on the crop-top's reputation could imply that there was a period of time where there was almost a grey area or overlap of opinions on it.  Some men starting to turn on it, some men starting to adopt it, and some men who simply were not in the loop with trends and didn't know this controversy was happening until later, allowing them to continue rocking the shirt in blissful ignorance.

    I want Vincente to use this grey area as a kind of advantage to represent who his character is.  He is in fact part of the LGBTQ community although it's never fully disclosed how he specifically identifies.  It is also implied in the opening that he is a sex worker, but doesn't cater towards any one gender in this setting.  So the crop-top can be used not only to reflect Vincente's queer identity, but also a small attempt at fitting in with masculine and heteronormative trends.  Not only to hide his true identity when needed, but also to appeal to female "customers" that are attracted to the "masculine" trend.

    I will be using this black T-shirt that I cut the sleeves off of to dress Vincente.  It is a regular size shirt so I would have to cut it to the length I want later on when my actor Joey is wearing it so I can get the proportions correct.  When I crop the shirt I am going to leave the hem raw to emphasize that edgy and disheveled nature of Vincente's personality.  I, of course, had to choose a shirt that was the color black to highlight the same points previously mentioned.

    As for the bottom half, I will be dressing Vincente with raw-hem denim knee-length shorts.  The use of denim reflects the grunge style that he is going for, as the subculture considered worn-out denim an outfit staple.  I chose to go for a shorter length as opposed to a normal, longer length to reflect his involvement in sex work to show more skin, and his queerness as straight men stereotypically don't show as much skin out of fear of being perceived as effeminate (not that wearing shorts is effeminate, but showing a lot of skin in this context might be perceived
 as such).

    I also plan to have him wear black combat boots.  And if that doesn't work out, beat up skater shoes will work (because unfortunately me and Joey probably do not share the same shoe size so I can't let him wear my boots).  For accessories, I wanted to see if I could get a fake ear piercing or perhaps some other facial piercing to, once again, represent his angst.  Along with this, he will wearing bracelets like a leather cuff.  I also hope to fashion him with a certain type of necklace that was popular with the LGBTQ community during this time period.  What is referred to as a "cock ring necklace" was a queer fashion statement for gays to recognize each other in public without straight people realizing.  Earrings and pierced ears also acted as a way for gays to recognize each other, although that method quickly became more mainstream.  So fashioning my character with this accessory is just another way of subtly representing his sexuality.

Sources: i-D (in text)

timalderman

Group Meeting?

     Hi blog, the other day in class we met up in random groups with about 5 classmates and we each took turns discussing our project and the progress we've made so far.  At first I was kind of skeptical of this meeting because I thought it wouldn't be that beneficial.  I also thought that people wouldn't really like or understand my idea, so I wasn't very excited going into it.  But then me and my group got to talking and it actually went pretty well!  It was very easy to present my ideas to them and we were all very open to provide feedback for each other and supporting each other's ideas.

    We started out by just kind of talking about where each of us are in our project, and it made me realize how everyone's creative process is so different, and I shouldn't compare my progress to other's just because I work at a different pace.  Some people had already written a whole script but hadn't done much other planning, some people did much more pre-production besides writing, and some people were even already starting to film soon.  It felt good to know that I'm not actually that behind, I just kind of work at a different pace.  As long as I follow the schedule I created for myself, I'll be okay.

    It was enjoyable to hear everyone's ideas for their project.  All of them were so different and reflected who each of these people were in their own "quirky" way.  When someone would present their ideas, they were always open to critique and potential suggestions that they genuinely took note of.  When I explained my idea, I asked the group what they thought I could do to make it more clear to the audience that the character Ammon isn't really real.  They suggested that I do it in more subtle ways like having the character pop up in scenes randomly with no explanation, as to provoke the audience into thinking that something is strange, but they can't figure out just quite what it is.  I really liked this idea and found it very helpful.

    Overall I thought the group meeting was very beneficial and I'm glad I got this opportunity to share ideas with others and potentially help them.