Final Submission!

     Hi blog! I can't believe that is the last time I am ever going to say that! I want to say a few final things before this whole journey is over. I absolutely loved this project and feel so good about how it turned out. I really learned a lot about how to create a full production, but I learned even more about myself in the process. Working with Renn and Vicky was absolutely amazing and I couldn't have asked for a better team to make something that I am so passionate about. 

    Anyways, I hope you enjoy Sprouting, it was made with lots of love!

Link to Sprouting the short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAb2Npdo6ys&feature=youtu.be

if that doesn't work, try this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E6I2oagRdEbFADCT1iTek5ltmBkhkOrr/view?usp=sharing

Link to Postcard: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PCSZmuCKvgwF4G680jN5cKUcBT1J19pB

Link to Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/sproutingshortfilm?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

Link to video run-through of Social Media: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-MXfBbSRFB3dU2ARnOs_fafoCGw18Max/view?usp=sharing

My amazing cast and crew:)

Critical Reflection

    Our short film, Sprouting, highlights the complicated relationship between managing friendships and being a high-achieving teenager from the perspective of Dahlia, a Junior in High School. Sprouting explores how stress impacts teens for the worst, to the point where they push their loved ones away but invites the idea that hard times don’t mean you stopped growing.

    Sprouting is a coming-of-age film that pulled a lot of inspiration from Domee Shi’s Turning Red, a film with a similar message that teenage years can be extremely emotional, conflicting, and overwhelming. Much of our research prior to creating the production was focused on analyzing films of the same coming of age genre, specifically ones about the High School years of adolescence. Some of the films that gave us inspiration were Perks of Being a Wallflower, Bitchin’ (short film), and Lady Bird. Having done so much research both individually and as a group allowed us to create a clear vision for our own production. 

    While we did take a lot of inspiration from other films, Sprouting is unique in the sense that many coming of age films lean into naturalistic lighting, since the genre itself mimics reality. We chose to go a different route with the visuals of our project by having more colorful lighting both in Dahlia’s room and in the car scene. This not only appealed to the youthful energy of the entire film, but also shows Dahlia’s creative and chaotic, yet still organized mindset, as room designs are a very personal way to build character. 

    The coming-of-age genre as a whole tends to have a younger target audience, and Sprouting is no different. It is a short film made by teenagers, for teenagers, making our intended age range from 13-19. Vicky, Renn, and I thought the story that we could tell best would be the one that we relate to, so not only is it aimed towards teens, but specifically honors students who feel academic pressure to excel, since that experience may be common, but that doesn’t make it any less isolating, and seeing it highlighted in the media can make our audience feel understood. 

    The brand for Sprouting engages with our young audience since we connected the plant metaphor for growing to the overall brand. This was especially evident in our social media, as we kept a consistent color scheme of green, purple, and pink, and the individual posts had plant-themed graphics as well to further establish the branding in a cohesive way. Our social media posts and postcard were also physically branded with our personal logo, which gets the audience familiar with it while maintaining a professional front, even on more entertainment-based posts. 

    Having our social media page on Instagram makes it easy for our audience to engage with our posts and stories, since it is a very common platform for our age group. We also used Instagram’s features to our advantage, since the most common way for teens to discover new content is through Reels. We uploaded several, from ones with trendy sounds to behind-the-scenes clips.

    One aspect of our social media that I think was especially effective was the daily countdown to the release date of our film, which built anticipation while also providing an opportunity to give sneak peeks to our film’s visual style and added to the overall branding. We reposted the posts to our story and made highlights to categorize the posts based on the intention behind them, “Meet us”, “Teasers”, and “BTS”. The unique highlight covers and emojis throughout the page also were a fun way that we intentionally added to the branding. 

   For our postcard, the text and title graphic match the font that was used on our Instagram posts as well as in the short film itself to bring in cohesion with all 3 elements. On the cover of the postcard, we also included our tagline “everyone’s just growing up” which is also in our Instagram bio and a quote that is said in our short film. We included this line throughout our marketing since it captures the essence of our project as a whole, while connecting to the target audience. However, I do think we could have done a better job with teasing more about the plot than just the “aesthetic” and genre of the short film, since the academic burnout aspect was not necessarily highlighted on the Instagram or postcard, and that was a major plot point that could attract our target audience. 

    In addition to the target audience being academically motivated by teens, as I mentioned earlier, we also consider the experience of “girlhood” a major topic in our film. Melia and Dahlia’s friendship as two girls who motivate each other and share a deep connection was one of the themes that we thought was important to do well, since their relationship drives some of the more intense moments. 

    Experiencing burnout to the point of pushing away those who are close to you was the experience that we highlighted over the 100-day period of our film. It is not a very common thing to see mentioned in the media, since high school is often romanticized, and the more emotionally conflicting part is less emphasized. Going to a school that is very academically focused, we relate to the theme that it is easy to lose yourself to seemingly endless math problems and book chapters. Our uplifting ending reminds the audience that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and even when you felt stuck, you were growing as a person, even when the stress made it hard to see it. 

    After spending weeks on this project and getting to see the final result, I am really proud of how all the different elements came together to tell our story. There are a few things that without a doubt could have been better executed, given we had more time to fully work out all the kinks, but for the resources we had, it does create the uplifting story that we wanted to tell, and effectively puts the high school experience in a new light. 

Editing/Postcard

    Hi blog! So I have been mostly writing about what I've been working on, I forgot to mention the stuff that Renn and Vicky have been up to. I of course have been there to be another opinion on if an edit makes sense or if the layout of our postcard fulfills the requirements, but my focus has been on the social media. Although I am super happy with how the socials are turning out, I also want to keep you updated on the other aspects.

    Renn has been doing a lot of the editing and they sent the first draft of it the other day. It was essentially the line edit along with the planned music. It was really cool how I got a little glimpse into how Renn's mind works because they put little comments on the screen saying stuff like "riser" or "foley for footsteps" so that they remembered what they needed to add on later.

     The first video looked really solid, the only thing that was a little hard to picture was the color grading, since a lot of the scenes were quite dark and had not yet been edited in post. Once Renn finishes color grading, it will be much easier to tell whats going on in the scene. In one of our scenes it started raining outside, and although it was not originally in our script, we loved the ambiance that it added to the intense confrontation scene, so we made sure that the somewhat dark lighting from the rain was clear, and we want to add more clear rain foley sounds as well. This is just one example of how we were constantly rolling with the punches. 

    I am not the most experienced person when it comes to editing, so I couldn't offer a lot of help in that area, but Renn is doing amazing and I am really excited to see how it all turned out. I have an idea for an Insragram post to put the first 30 seconds of our short film and then have it stop at a still shot with text saying "watch the rest on our YouTube, link in bio". I can't do that reel until the editing is done though, so I will include that reel in my next blog post, since I will probably be wrapping everything up in the next one.

 
  As for what Vicky has been working on, she just finished the post card yesterday, and I absolutely love how it turned out. We had a couple different variants before we landed on the final draft. The only thing that she also need to add is the film festival logo, which will happen super soon. Here's one of the drafts, I'll upload the final postcard when everything is done!

    She also let me know that she is going to create the graphics for the credits, so the actors as well as what the three of us each did. I am excited for that because it will likely be the last thing that is added to the short film before its completely done and I can submit it. Our short film will definitely be done by Friday, and I will write my Critical Reflection shortly after that.

Social Media

     Hi blog! So, I have actually been working on the social media for our short film for about 3 weeks now, but the brand didn't really show up until recently, since we finally have a bunch of posts. This aspect of the project was super important to me since it is a part that I am pulling a lot of the weight on as Vick makes the postcard and Renn edits the short film.

    To start off, we made a "Meet the cast/crew" post for each one of us, me, Vicky, Renn, Stephanie (Dahlia), and Estefania (Melia). As I mentioned in a past post, dahlia's color is purple, and Melias is pink, so we emphasized those colors on their posts, whereas for the crew, we leaned into green, since it is the main color of our short film. We included our names, roles, a photo of us, and a little caption that expresses why exactly we are involved and that we are looking forward to it. Here's an example of mine:)

    I also decided that it would be super cute to make one for Sprout since even though it technically isn't a character, it plays a big role in the story. The caption says "I am sprout" in a variety of ways to allude to "I am groot" from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, since our target audience is teens, and most of my friends are marvel fans or a the very least would get the Groot reference. It was a
cute and silly way to lean into our target audience with our social media.

    The next post that I made was a reel! I was super excited to make a reel because that is the main way that people find accounts nowadays. People don't ever doomscroll on their search area, they automatically go to reels. I had the idea to make a video that highlights some of our favorite shots in the short film. We chose one from the car scene, one from the montage, one from the getting ready sequence, and finally, one from when Dahlia names her new plant. I also thought this was a really cool way to introduce our filming style to the audience because we have a lot of cool color schemes going on with the lighting, leaning heavily into the purple undertone to match Dahlia's character. We of course had to make this reel after we filmed, but it was a great thing to post as our first reel.

    To lean more into the fact that we had filmed the majority of the short film, I made a behind the scenes post that highlights all 5 of us filming a variety of scenes. You get a clear understanding of what exactly everyone does to make the short film run effectively while also gaining a connection to the people that you recognize in the post from the "meet the cast and crew" posts.

    Next, just as a more simple post to build hype, we made a post that shows the before and after of our room design. This was a really fun post because the set was such an important aspect since it was one of the three sets that we filmed at, and happened to be the one that hosts the most scenes. I am very proud of how the room turned out, so getting to highlight that was a really fun post.

    Next, I made our second reel that has a trending sound with it to help it gain more traction with the algorithm. It is a Sabrina Carpenter sound that you do a bunch of different poses to, and we played on how when I was being gaffer for the short film, I was in a lot of awkward, random positions to hold the tube light, so we used the photos from that day and made a reel all together.

    Finally, up to what we have so far, I made a post about being excited that our short film drops this week, because we made sure to leave the release date very vague for a while to keep people coming back to check in. I plan on making a post tomorrow that starts a countdown for exactly how many days there are left until the drop. 

    I also made a post that I pinned on the profile that says the name of our production, "Sprouting" and "Coming soon". I did this so that right off the bat, people are familiar with the title so we can use it to promote. Speaking of, our username is also the title, @sproutingshortfilm. I did this so that if people look up short film, it will come up as well as it will include our title.

    I already spoke a bit abou the bio, highlights, and pfp in another post, but overall, the posts are coming along really well and I plan to have nearly double the amount by the end of the project.

10 Hour Film Day

 Hi blog! So the other day all 5 of us met up to film. We got there at 10am and left by 8pm so it was a very very long day. Would you believe me though if I said we still didn't finish? It doesn't really matter that we didn't completely finish EVERYTHING because we planned an extra day for reshoots and finishing up before we took down the set. 

    We started off the day with just Steph because I would say about 60% of the film only includes her, and Melia is included in about the other 40%. That being said, Este met up with us at around 4:30. When we were only filming Steph, it was a little slow at first because we all needed to get warmed up. Steph was of course acting and going over her lines between filming. We printed out physical scripts for both actors as well as for the production team so that we could write on them, mark any last minute changes, check off when stuff is done, highlight lines, etc. It was really helpful and probably one of the best things that we possibly could've done, since it also can help Renn when we get to editing, so they remember the order that we filmed in as well as any minor tweaks.

    Speaking of, Renn was the one behind the camera for most of the day because they wrote the script and helped Vick with the shotlist, so they had a clear vision of what they wanted to happen. Vicky was directing, calling "action", "cut", etc. It was really helpful because it made my job even easier, which was basically everything else. 

    
I was being gaffer, aka dealing with the lighting, designing and creating props, giving small notes to the actors, helping them get into character, getting content for the insta, picking out Dahlia's wardrobe from what Steph brought, rearranging the room as time passed in the plot, writing on the white board, etc. Of course, I was not doing this alone by any means, Renn and Vicly helped me out a ton, but I was essentially doing all of the stuff that affected the things that the viewer sees on screen from lighting to props. I will say, I absolutely loved the whole thing. It was such a blast and we all worked really well together the whole day.

    When Este got to the set, I think the part that took the longest to film would be the argument scene. I do think we should have asked the actors to be more rehearsed before they arrived, because when they got there, they didn't really have the scene memorized whatsoever. It all ended up working out, but we burned a solid hour and a half on that one 30 second long confrontation. I am really excited to see how it turned out thought because although our two actors never met prior to this project, their chemistry on camera is undeniable. While that whole scene was going on, I was painting the final pot that is shown at the end of our film.

    Since we are already on the topic, I will mention that the ending is the main part that we didn't end up getting to film on this long day, which was in a way great because it meant that Renn could start editing the beginning and middle before we met up again.

    This day was insanely long, but absolutely SO worth it. Not only did I learn so much about lighting from working with it first hand, but also I got to witness how a real production happens, because this years was so much more professional and well-thought-out than last year's, no offense to younger me. I also had a blast because everyone is so talented and I didn't have to stress about anything else that I wasn't responsible for, since we all played our roles really well.

    Filming was very productive, and I will talk a bit more in depth about what went right and wrong in my CCR later next week.

CCR Research 2

 Hi blog! I'm gonna jump right back into where I left off regarding research for my CCR.

Question 3: How does the elements of your production create a sense of branding?

    So this question I need to focus a lot on, because I did a practice CCR for my midterm on my winterguard documentary, but since that was only one component, we didn't worry about this question yet. Anyways, I am definitely going to have to focus this question on my social media page, which is pretty exciting since I am in charge of the social media. I am going to make a whole post dedicated to explaining what each social media post effectively does.

    We started planning for our social media by establishing a color palette that will stay consistent throughout every post, Pink, Purple, Green and White. I think we have done a pretty good job of branding the social media so far if I do say so myself. We also included our "RVK Studios" logo on the corner of almost every post that we have made besides reels. RVK Studios was the name that we chose to brand our short film production company as because it takes the first initial of all three of the creators. We also put this name in the bio of our instagram to bring home that idea that we are an established company. The branding of the logo is also connected because it depicts a flower, which ties into our plant theme that we have going on throughout the whole page.

    With our behind the scenes posts such as the bedroom comparison, we put little graphics of flowers and plants that also fit our color scheme to once again, add to the branding. The profile picture ties in our logo graphic for our short film, the same one that will appear as the title card in the official short film. I also made sure that the cover photos of the reels on our instagram somewhat match the tone and colors of the rest of the posts. I am planning to do more reels, and I will make sure to do the even better for those as well.

    For the postcard, Vicky is making it with Renn and I's help of course, and she included the same text as our title card and put a photo of Dahlia with the plant vertical on the cover to highlight both subjects. Dahlia's relationship to the plant is what makes it so interesting, so we made sure that on filming day, we took a photo of her in the same outfit that she has the heated argument in, since it is a turning point in the story and has Dahlia's representative color.

Question 4: How do your products represent social groups or issues?

    This is the question about representation! I loved learning about it last year, and I have a pretty solid grasp on the concept. This question leans into more than just racial representation, it also is asking about what makes our story worth telling? What will make this story connect with people?

    When I properly answer this question, I will be sure to mention that it explores the experience that MANY teenagers have where they overwhelm themselves, whether it be classes, family drama, unreliable friends, etc. In our story, Dahlia gets so overwhelmed to the point that she pushes away basically everyone near her, including her BEST friend, Melia. This will resonate with many teens because its very common to get in your head and forget to think about other people in intense moments like those.

    We also represent Dahlia's birthday party and made sure the characters are dressed the way that you would for a 17th birthday. To do this, we asked the actors to bring some dresses that they personally would wear and we selected the one we wanted from those. It was really effective and also ended up looking great on camera.

    I'll discuss how I think we could have been more successful when it comes to making Dahlia nerdier, like we planned, but our actress did not automatically have that feel, and we would rather adjust the character to the actor than vice versa, since she is amazing at acting, she just naturally leans more to the preppy side of a person. But besides that, I think we were pretty solid when it came to representation.

    Alright, that's all for now!

CCR Research

Hi blog! Today we did some research on the CCR, so here is some stuff that I noted.

This year's questions are slightly different from last years, but lucky we are freed from the SHACKLES that was having to make the videos to answer the questions. Instead, we are writing a 1000 word essay, which in my opinion isn't enough words, because I could talk about what we did to bring our short film to life for thousands and thousands of words.

I honestly have not been super focused on what exactly I am going to write regarding the CCR yet because I have been spending most of my free time working on the social media or filming with my group, so I am glad that it is finally time to tackle this portion of the project. When I think about last year's, I think that 2 weeks was more than enough time for me to figure out what I was going to say, so especially now that it is in essay format, it will be even better than having to memorize a script and decide how to make it both creative and informative.

Anyways, Today I am going to focus on two of the questions and next week I will focus on how I am gonna tackle the other two.

Question 1: How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

So, for this one, I am going to have to break down the question into two parts, the research, and the challenging of conventions. For the research part of the question, I think it is best to approach it with mentioning specific productions that we watched that inspired our story or techniques. I will mention how we made some blog posts regarding the movies and short films that we watched to gain inspiration as well as the social media research of other short film makers accounts and finally, the postcard research. 

I am also going to mention certain techniques that we used, such as the montage all being from the same point of view, which ended up running very smoothly, but I will mention that more in a later post. This question also requires me to mention the genre, since thats what it means by "conventions". Since we chose to do a short film with the coming of age genre, I will lean into how we showed the passage of time and mention the target audience a little, but more-so in another question. Our actors are also clearly in a growing stage of their life, so I will emphasize that as well. 

I will tie all of the information together by mentioning our choices with bringing it all back to how we chose to make our short film DIFFERENT from what we researched, because yes, inspo is important, but individuality and unique choices are what will truly make us stand out.

Question 2: How do your products engage with the audience?

For this question, we are going to focus more on the target audience that we briefly mentioned in the previous question. Target audience would actually be a great way to transition between questions now that I think about it, because the structure of the essay is almost as important as the actual words themselves. 

This is also the question that we will talk more about what decisions we made regarding our social media and how it engages with our followers. For example, we will mention our "meet the cast and crew" posts and our reels that allow for the audience to feel more connected to our production and us as a team. We will show behind the scenes of the postcard so that if someone was to see it, they would feel special to have gotten one themself or would want one if they didn't. I also think it is important for us to mention here some things we wish that we could have done better.

Finally, for this question, we will mention some feedback that we got from peers and how we implimented that into the final product to make it connect to the audience better based on genuine outside opinions. I think this question is way more straightforward, and I have a clear vision of what I want this question to discuss. 

Here are some photos of the notes that I took regarding the questions: