Dance Genre Research

Finalizing Our Ideas

          When my group and I were coming up with pitches it was really tough. We had to think about the circumstances and limiting factors that would not allow us to film certain things. For example, the location has to be correct once we start filming. If there was an idea of having a horror film in the middle of the woods, it would be easy for us to meet at a park. However, establishing the plot as to why the characters would be in the woods was what we found difficult. We did not finalize certain pitches until we all agreed on the ideas and the sentences were written officially. While brainstorming, writing down the sentences made it easier to visualize what we could film. One of the three pitches involved using a pool as the setting for most of the scenes. However, the context of the movie did not really sit well with one of the members. It reminded them of another cheesy movie they have watched and preferred to do an idea that was a thriller or romance. Our first pitch is about a teenage girl who is ready for her night out with friends, and she decides to hitch a ride with a complete stranger who offered. The second pitch involved the idea of a love story between a boy and a girl and his only interest was to get good grades from working with her.

           I believe that the first pitch would be good for the assignment because we have already discussed how some scenes will be recorded. The final clip would be the victim being taken away by the stranger. This way, it would leave the audience wondering what will happen next. New shots will be incorporated into the film, for example, close-ups and a pov shot, possibly. Editing would also be much easier, for example, cross-cutting will be involved because it will display the characters getting ready for their day. The young girl will be doing what a regular teenager does before she goes out, while the stalker will be getting his items ready for his new victim. The viewers will have an idea of what is going to occur for the rest of the movie, after realizing the mistake the girl made when she got into a car with someone who she does not even know. The film will be edited to evoke tension in between scenes and have the audience want to watch the rest of the movie.

           The second pitch does not really work with this assignment because we cannot film on our school campus. Also, the beginning needs to establish who the characters are and where the film will remotely take place. The conventions with this type of genre explain the background of the main character, and how he/she meets their love interests at school. The love interests can also be presented as the sweet jock or the intelligent class president. It would be difficult to do this without the setting at school and not having more friends to make the person seem popular. The topic of love can also be a little awkward because my group and I are just sophomores, and do not really find interest in recording scenes that will not have cringe-worthy energy.

           The thriller seems like the pitch that we have chosen for the journey of creating the final task. We all agree with the idea of having similar shots and being able to build a plot from the opening scene in a movie. We look forward to working together on a new topic and seeing how much we can accomplish in the next few months.

Start of the Final Task

          Greetings again! My name is Rafael and I am a sophomore in Fort Lauderdale High School. I am enrolled into the Cambridge AICE program to help ensure my "Bright Future." After high school, I wish to attend a prestigious college (University of Florida) and the AICE program will help me do just that. And even more in the future, I want to major in Microbiology and eventually work in a hospital as a Microbiologist. My strong suits in academics are Math and Science. Some of my weak points, however, are English and Social Studies. By taking this course, I wish to broaden my strengths and learn about film and the film making process. Also, I just find films entertaining. I want to know how my favorite films are made and what it takes to do such a task. How does someone start when put to the task of making a film?

          I have already learned many things in the first semester of this course. I learned about a wide variety of camera angles and how they are used. I learned about a wide range of cuts and what each one means to the audience. I learned about different types of sounds and why they are put in. This is just a tidbit of what knowledge I gained in the past 5 months. But one of the main things I learned to do is edit. This is also what I am most excited to do for the Final Task. The final task is the beginning minutes of a movie and my group members pretty much have their roles. Emily will be the camerawoman, Mariapaula and Darwin will be the main actors, and I will be the main editor (with a little bit of acting). I can't wait to work my editing magic on the film.

          The start of any good film are good ideas. Pitches are sentences used to describe a film in 25 words or less. Here are some pitches that my group and I came up with:

First pitch: Group of friends hanging out by the pool and two of the friends has swapped bodies after recovering the phone that has been dropped.

Second pitch: The life of a stalker who wishes he was normal, except his mental disability makes it hard for him not to fall in love with anyone and kidnaps them.Third pitch: A teen love story between a boy and a girl where there is believed they have mutual feelings, but the boy is really just using her for her smarts.

Below are some pictures of my group and I brainstorming these pitches:

Editing the Music Video

          Just like the last project, I was mainly in charge of editing. Emily and Angelo don't have the level of knowledge that I have when it comes to editing. That is not a bad thing though. Emily is great at using the camera. Also, Angelo can get an Oscar with his acting. I'm ok with my main job being editing. Plus I have lots of fun editing. The first thing I did was dump all of the footage from my phone onto the laptop. Then I put the raw footage into the editing software. Since it was a music video, we didn't need any of the background sounds. So what I did was highlight all of my footage and ungrouped it all. By doing so, I could separate the audio tracks from the visual footage. I then deleted all of the audio tracks. After that, I downloaded the audio of our song off of YouTube. I had to download it in order to insert it into the editing software. I then cut down the song to a minute and ten seconds. We are not using the whole song for our music video so we do not need the rest. Afterward, I cut down each scene to fit with the lyrics they represent. Some scenes were too long so I had to trim them down. Other scenes were too short so I had to slow down the footage. This proved to be the most time-consuming part. Every time I would edit a single scene, it would desync all the scenes after it. I'm sure there was a more efficient way to handle that, but what's done is done. I also added a cool little transition for the bridge connecting two scenes. It made the end of the fire scene fade out while I made the start of the sun scene fade in. Then I overlapped the two scenes together to make a cool effect. The fading happens at the lyric, "We can burn brighter, than the sun!" I think the effect fits very well with the lyrics. I also added a fall-off effect to the song's ending. I made the volume at the end of the music video gradually get lower. I made it this way because it would be awkward for the song to just abruptly cut-off. 

Filming the Music Video Second Attempt

         On Tuesday 11/25, I went out to film for my music video again. Like I explained in my last blog, my first attempt at filming went... poorly. One of our members was a no show. We didn't film everything that we needed. And all of the footage that we did shoot was deemed useless because of its android quality. Thankfully, Tuesday went by much better. At the end of school that day, we meet up at a designated location. We then all carpooled in Mariapaula's dad's car and went to her house. Just like the first time we filmed, we got there a little early. We were able to record one shot of the sunset, but that was pretty much it. We had to wait for the sun to come down to begin recording. So while we waited, we decided to help Mariapaula with one of her shots for her music video. When the sun was pretty much down we reshot the bathroom scene. I was the one who recorded it since Emily couldn't get the framing of the shot down. It took like twenty takes because Mariapaula couldn't drop the cup in her hand convincingly. I found it to be hilarious but she was getting pretty annoyed. When the sun was finally all the way down, we filmed the rest of our shots. We made many changes to the music video from the first time we filmed. Since we had Angelo with us that day we had more freedom. Also, we decided to make Angelo the main character of the music video. I became the guy with sunglasses. It makes sense why we made that decision. I'm more of the type to be behind the cameras instead of in front. Also, Angelo is way better at acting than me. I'm more attracted to editing than acting anyways. To get back on topic, we had many two shots and over the shoulder shots. Our music video has lots of "dialogue" of the characters talking. We plan on doing shot/reverse shots for most of the conversations. Also, the first shot of the music video is a tracking shot of Angelo walking into the "bar." Overall, my group and I had a much better time filming on Tuesday than Saturday.

Filming the Music Video First Attempt

      I filmed portions of the music video on Saturday 11/23. Things did not go exactly according to plan and the end result was a bit of a mess. Like I stated before, I was planning to film the music video with my group at a friend's house (Mariapaula) who was not a part of the group. I had Emily pick me up at 11 am and carpool our way to Mariapaula's house.  When we arrived at her house, our third group member Angelo, unfortunately, said he couldn't make it. He told us that an emergency happened with one of his close friends and he would not be able to arrive. This was a shock to both me and Emily. This put us into a bit of a bind. Angelo was going to be one of our main actors. Because of this forlorn event, we had to improvise on the spot with what we had. 

     We decided early to film our scenes at night because of the original music video and lyrics referencing a bar at night. Since we got there well before sundown, we decided to help Mariapaula and her group with her music video. It took almost the whole time the sun was up for them to finish. Since Angelo was not able to make it, we decided to borrow a male from the other group to help us film our music video. However, when it was our turn to film, he had to leave for church. We needed two males for the music video. The characters in the music video are the man, the lover, and the guy in the sunglasses. We only had me, Emily, and Mariapaula left. We decided that Mariapaula can pull off a semi-convincing tough-guy act so we went with that. She dressed up in a hoodie, sunglasses, and pulled her hair over her head. 

          When we finally started filming, it wasn't dark outside yet. Because of this, we decided to film the inside scenes first. The first scene we filmed was a bathroom scene. I popped a confetti popper in Mariapaula's backyard. I shot it into a plastic bag so that we could carefully scatter it in the bathroom to not make that big of a mess. That plan failed, like many other things during that day, because the confetti popper blew a hole into the bag and made a mess all over her backyard floor. Anyways after the sun came down and darkness fell upon the Mariapaula household we finally filmed all of our shots. I was pretty happy with our takes, even though they were just a bit rushed. However, when we got into class and finally looked at our footage, it was horrible. There was a very bad grainy effect on all of the shots. It looked like it was recorded on a potato. We are returning to Mariapaula's house on Tuesday to reshoot, hopefully, we have a better time than Saturday.

Storyboard for Music Video

My group and I are filming our music video on the song “We Are Young” by Fun. We wanted to relate the lyrics of the song to our video. The costumes our characters will be using are generally dark colors such as black, dark blue, etc. Our costumes are completely dependent on our setting which is at a bar. The apparel matches the location and time of the day. We will use both bright and dark lights to focus on our characters, but to also give off the feeling of a bar. Additionally, we’re using natural lighting because we plan on having an area for a fire in our music video. The actors will be strangers and suddenly stumble upon each other. They start off good but quickly the cookie crumbles. Our characters won’t be using makeup for the most part except the girl. She might wear minimal makeup, but this is still not guaranteed. Some of the props we will be using are sunglasses, shot glasses, and bar stools. The setting we will be filming at is for the most part at the bar, but we will also film certain scenes in the bathroom, and outside where the fire is. Our set is the biggest factor in our film because it affects so many of the aspects we need to cover. For instance, it affects our apparel, lighting, acting, and camera shots.

The equipment we are using to record is fairly standard. We are using a camera, tripod, etc. that is provided by the school. We are going to use a variety of angles to get the perfect scene. Examples of the angles we will be using are high angle and low angle. My group and I are also trying to incorporate a multitude of different camera movements. The main movements we would like to use are tilt, pan, and zoom. We think the different movements will help elevate our video to the next level. We will also capture various different shots. Our video will consist of close-ups, long, medium, and wide shots. These are the main ones we utilize, but we will incorporate more.

The editing will be similar to my group's last project. I am the best with computers and programs so I will lead us in editing. We will assist with what he needs help with like sounds, cutting the film, and choosing scenes. Although the main sound will be the song, we are going to attempt to include other sound effects to enhance our video. We plan to finish this project efficiently and as a team. We are working together everyday and learning new techniques and skills to help us become better filmmakers.