Mystery/Musical Genre Research

The first genre that we are researching is musicals. In common musicals, to show actors dancing, pan movement and tracking shot is used to keep up with the dancing. By using eye-angle, audiences can experience the actors dancing like front-row seats. The lighting is generally bright (high-key lighting) to create a bright mood. Also, cinematic lighting is used to show drama between actors. Bounce lighting is used to reflect soft light onto an actor. Wide shots are often used to show locations especially to show where actors are singing. In pop-themed musicals, subtle props such as flowers are used. In action-themed musicals, props such as swords and shields are used. In most musicals, costumes are used to match the mood of the scene and role of the actor. Sound elements typically used are ballad and live music. I don't like musicals where every scene actors sing. However, I do like the lighting used. It creates a happy atmosphere. With all these facts, this is why we chose this genre.
One additional genre we're researching is Mystery. The mystery genre is typically when a mystery is being solved. The usual Camera shots in a mystery movie is wide shots to show the background. While camera angles have a large range. Some camera angles are an Ariel shot which establishes their location and close ups which exaggerate the close object. Movements in a mystery thriller usually have a tracking shot to show the moving of a person. Usually costumes range from detective outfits to everyday casual clothing. The lightening in mysteries are typically dark dim lightening or sometimes bright if it's being solved during the day. The actors are all a different type of people. Props usually used knifes, guns, ski mask, and other killing objects or even just plain note pads. The setting is typically woods, dark areas, or even just everyday places. One of the most important editing tactics is jump cuts from scene to scene to emphasize the correlation between the two. The sound is typically dark scary music to make the audience feel inside the movie. I love how this genre keeps me on the edge of my seat, it is so interesting. However, I don’t like how it tends to have the same plot twist. All in all, I hope we go with this because this is one of my favorite genres.

Beginning of Genre Research

At the beginning of the school year, we were assigned a genre to research. The genre that we were assigned was crime. We looked at the common lighting, angles, movements, mis-en-scene, and sound. When we conducted enough information, we created a PowerPoint to present our findings. My group members and I worked diligently to design the PowerPoint. To enhance our PowerPoint we used pictures and videos. The project was interesting because we learned more about the characteristics of the genre.

The Battle Of The Pitches

It was very hard to narrow down to two pitches. We tried merging them together and unfortunately it didn't work until we looked at other trailers . Once we looked at other trailers and looked at other Aice media examples we decided to go with these two pitches .The first pitch is He met this girl thinking he was going to fall in love , the whole time she was plotting something sinister, something he might not survive.While the second pitch is Someone follows three teenage girls while getting ready to have fun at their first college party. One goes missing and now they can’t find her. Both of this pitches were great plus the incorporated all of what interested them . Out of the 3 pitch ideas these two was our favorites.

We narrowed down the three pitches into two. The first of those two pitches is, He met this girl thinking he was in love, the whole time she was plotting something sinister. Something he might not survive. We chose this pitch because we have a whole plan formulating on what we want to do. We want to have one of the female group members to trick someone, me, into falling in love with them while she plots with the other members to set me up. This is also a very rational choice as well. We did not want to do something too complicated that we can not finish within the allotted time. It is also the more rational idea because we can do this with the group members that we have. We also looked at other factor such as the props, costumes, make up and places where we were going to do the pitch. Looking at these factors and more we all decided that this was one of the top contenders.

The second pitch that we chose to do is, Someone who follows three teenage girls while getting ready to have fun at their first college party. One goes missing and now they can't find her. This was a very great pitch that we chose because it was a good one that we all agreed on. We combined our first round of pitches in order to make this one. We have a very solid plan that we have come up with and that we have decided is a very rational plan. We already have a location picked out, costumes picked out, and have the people we want in the film picked out as well. We have the ways we want to film mapped out and we know exactly where we want to go with the story. Knowing this makes it easier for us to make an opening scene to the film because we know what we want to do after the scene. This makes this one of the best pitch ideas that we can choose from.

After debating on which pitch was the best, we finally came to an agreement. The pitch that we agreed on was pitch number 3. The third pitch was, Someone follows three teenage girls while getting ready to have fun at their first college party. One goes missing and now they can’t find her. While deliberating, we found that pitch number three had the best ideas. We also felt confident with the pitch and the plans we had for the film. This made it a perfect pitch for us. It fit our needs and addressed all of the concerns we had. 

Starting the Final Task

Hello, my name is Chad and I am in the 11th grade. I go to Fort Lauderdale Highschool and I am in the Cambridge program. I am still 16 years old and will not turn 17 until June 21st. I have been progressing a lot in AICE Media since the beginning of the year. My film skills and knowledge have grown from nothing to a vast array of different terms such as a high angle, low angle, god's eye, and a pan shot. These things have enhanced the way I see most TV shows and movies now because I always point them out when watching something. My production skills have increased immensely from the beginning of the year as well because of the different projects that we have been doing. I've learned how to create different angles while filming such as making high angles by standing high over the object of filming and to create low angles by filming below the object. I am working with my group mates before named Shania, Kerin, and Kaliyah. These are the group mates I am the most comfortable working with and I know that we will do an amazing job.
In the last two projects I have learned so much. This ranges from my production skills to my editing skills. It also boosted my planning skills as well. My production skills have increased tremendously because I have done it twice now. The first time I was not there for much of it, but the second time I learned how to use the camera in order to make certain shots and angles that I wanted. These shots helped enhance the way the film looked and progressed as well. I also believe the previous experience will help me when it comes to filming different shots for this film as well. My editing skills have also increased. I now know how to speed up and slow down a film, I know how to zoom into the film, I know how to add music and turn off the sound, and etc. I am more excited for this film because I can put all of the new knowledge I learned from the other projects in order to make the film even better than the last ones. I am more excited for the filming and editing portion of this film because I believe that I can film the film much better than the other ones and we have a more solid plan than the other ones. I'm excited for the editing because I want to test new ideas that we have for the titles and for the film itself. We want to test some music and also some new transitions.
Pitch is a Hollywood term used to describe an idea where a film is encapsulated in 25 words or less. It is usually done within one sentence.
Pitch Idea #1: Micheal and Naomi fell in love on their first date. The love was short lived once Naomi fell for Steven. Micheal wanted Steven dead.
Pitch Idea #2: He met this girl thinking he was going to fall in love, the whole time she was plotting something sinister... Something he might not survive.
Pitch Idea #3: Someone follows three teenage girls while getting ready to have fun at their first college party. One goes missing and now they can't find her.

Editing Blog

The editing process went smoother than last time. Last time we were editing the computer software was down and we had to push the project back. Not only did that happen, but I was not there in order to help my group. I was there for some of the shots, but I did not get to play my part in the editing process. This time we will all have a chance to play a part in the editing process. For the editing process we have decided to insert some transitions. We did this to make it seem like it just switched to the next scene. It blends the scenes together and makes it look like an actual music video. This is because many other music videos include switching from scene to scene. This also means that we are going along with one of the editing conventions for music videos. 

    We had to cut some of the videos. We did this because some of them were too long and it would make the video past the time limit. Another reason we cut some of them was to cut out the unnecessary parts in the shots that we were taking. Such as me saying start before us filming or us discussing the details while the camera was still rolling. Another thing we did was try to make sure the shots matched the part of the song that would be playing. We did this by playing the music on our phones while filming and this helped us know which part of the song goes where. Since we recorded this on our phones we could just mute the sound on the laptop and listen to which part of the song goes to which shot on our phones. This makes the process easier because we don’t have to keep taking sound off the shot and putting it back on to make sure that it is the right shot for the music. This makes the music video look well rehearsed. This makes our video look like a real music video. 

    We had to download the music through an MP3. We did this so that we can save the music on the computer just in case anything happens to the audio. We also downloaded the clean version. We did this because our teacher told us it had to be school appropriate. Even though the song Skywalker is school appropriate, it has some parts that are not. This means that we have to download the clean version, so there is no profanity or inappropriate speech. We put all of the shots and music on a flash drive for the safety reason as well. We sped some of the shots up to make the video look like an actual music video. In normal music videos they have some shots that are slowed down. This shows that we go against the music video convention in the sense of speeding the video up. However, we are trying to find some shots that will be slowed down to match that convention as well. All of this will make our music video look like a real video. 

Intro to Music Video -Research Blog

We finished filming and editing the commercial and are now starting the music video. For the commercial the story board process did not go so well for us because we kept changing the story later on. This time we are going to follow the story board directly. We know what we want to do and have agreed to stick on this path. The editing process went good for us by us knowing what we wanted to edit and being able to do it in a timely manner. We did not do a good job of making sure we had our materials and our time management skills were not good. This time we are already getting our materials so that the same thing does not happen again. For our time management skills we are planning everything ahead of time to make sure that there are no set backs. We have even picked places to record the video and a day to record the video. We are trying to make sure that none of the mistakes that happened last time is going to happen again.

The song that we are using is Sky Walker by Miguel. We are using this song because this is a very chill song that you can vibe to and that is what we were looking for. We can all relate to this song and we love the energy that it gives off. We like the chillness and we believe that we can really connect with this song. Not only can we connect with this song, but we also have a good story to go with the song. We instantly had ideas when we heard this song and that made us want to do this song even more. We all agree that this song is the best choice for us.

CLAMPS:

1. Costume: Casual clothing, party attire, formal attire

2. Lighting: Dim, low lighting. high lighting

3. Acting: Dancing, conversations, choreography

4. Makeup: Every women had on makeup

5. Props: Glasses, cash, shopping bag

6. Setting: Car, beach, house

We are going to use different types of sound for this music video. The sounds that we will use are: score, ambient sound, and no sound. For the editing process we have decided on using different transitions.The transitions that we will use are going to be: flash pan, cut away, dissolve, and fade in. We are going to use different types of camera angles and movements. We will use a shot-reverse shot, eye-line match, and a reaction shot. We will also use a long shot, medium long shot, close up, two shot, aerial shot, over-the-shoulder shot, tracking shot, and hand-held shot. These different shots will help us make our music video more efficient. 

Filming Blog #2

     My group and I went filming on thanksgiving weekend. One of my group mates, Kaliyah, picked me up from work. She picked me up at 2:30 and then our group mates, Shania and Kerin, met us at Galleria mall where we commenced making our video. Kerin was a little late so we had to use the boy Kaliyah was baby sitting to replace her for the first shot. For that first shot we will have to remake it because it did not have the effect that we wanted it to have. We have plans on remaking it on Tuesday after school. We will wear the same clothes that we had on that weekend in order to keep the costumes part of the scene right. The scene was us in the car vibing out to the song. We want to make it seem like a vlog and then the song starts playing and we start jamming to it. This gives the scene the surreal look of a group of friends hanging out while listening to some chill music.

     After we did that shot we did the shot on the escalator. We did a shot of us going up the escalator and then did one going down the escalator. We then went inside of the mall to Holister and I filmed them shopping for different clothes. We went back inside of Macy’s and filmed everyone coming out of the bathroom with different clothes on to show that we were going out. The next shot would be at the beach. Kaliyah, Kerin and myself went to the beach in one car while Shania went with her sister. In the car we played the music on the radio and acted like we were doing a vlog on our phones. This made it seem like we were just taking a video to show that we were together. I took a video of the scenery while Kaliyah was driving to establish the change of scenery. We found a place to park after about 10 minutes and Shania met us there. 

     When Shania met us there we went on to the beach and filmed a couple different shots. We filmed us with a speaker drinking water and dancing to the music. Me and Shania ran on the sand towards the water for another shot. This was to show that we were having fun at the beach. I filmed Shania and Kaliyah throwing up sand and talking to each other, while Kerin set up the music. I then filmed all of them together while the music was playing, incorporating the music portion into the video. After doing all of these things we took another vlog of us saying goodbye to one another and then we all went home after that. We made sure to send each other the videos in the group chat that we have and then send it to our emails. We had to do it this way because Kaliyah forgot that the camera needed to be charged. This caused her to start charging it an hour before we had to meet and the camera only had 6 minutes of battery life. The battery life did not lost because the camera was kept open the entire time we were driving. We all just made the decision to record it on our phones, send it to our emails, and then insert it into the computer to edit it that way.