Sprout the Plant

 Hi blog!

So, we have been having some trouble deciding what we wanted to do about the dilemma regarding how to show the plant growing when, unlike the short film, we do not have 100 days to wait for a seed to grow and record every few weeks. So, our solution was to use fake plants and cut them, however this would cause problems as well, since we would have to film in the complete opposite order. However, it would not be a huge deal, since we only need about one shot of the plant, since it isn't in every scene, it just gives us a marker for how much time has passed.

Anyways, Vicky was looking on Amazon for another option, and found a pack of fake plants that come in multiple different stages, which is perfect! Here is a photo of what they look like:

We are going to use real plant soil to make it look as realistic as possible, and we will have multiple of each plant to make sure that if anything goes wrong, we have multiple options.

Regarding the plant pots, it is a major plot point that Melia gifts Dahlia a pot for her birthday, and that is what we see sprout in for the majority of the short film, before in the end where she gets a bigger pot since it is growing too big. This is a metaphor for how once you outgrow certain aspects of your life, the next step is to find a new thing that works for you, don't confine yourself to what you know if it isn't fulfilling you anymore.                                                                                                                                                                               Today I went to the store and bought the smaller and larger pots, and I will decorate them later this week. I got 3 of the smaller ones, since it will be shown on camera multiple times, and if I mess up, I will have multiple tries. I will make a post with a picture of the final pots next week!

Citations:

Baost. (n.d.). Baost 10pcs artificial bean sprout fake vegetable plastic green plant flower arrangement home kitchen decor. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Baost-Artificial-Sprout-Plastic-Arrangement/dp/B087TB1P7F

Mise En Scene Bedroom Elements!

 Hi blog! Have I mentioned how excited I am to be in charge of the Mise en scene of our short film? I feel really creatively free and have so many ideas.

So, I am trying to put myself in Dahlia's mind to decide what this 16 year old girl would put in her room. While on call with Vicky and Renn (for 2+ hours btw), we made a list of a bunch of elements that are very Dahlia. We kept this list realistic to what we could actually attain for this project, so some of our ideas ended up getting scrapped, but here is what we ended up with:

- kennas headphones 

- hang paper cranes from the ceiling (making on production day)

- kennas color lamp 

- kennas posters/printed new ones

- kennas calendar 

- kennas playbills 

- vickys fairy lights 

- kennas trash can

- vickys/kenna squishmallows 

- kennas trophies and medals 

- kennas dried flowers

- renns plants

- vickys lego flowers 

- print out fake certificates

- yearly honor roll corner (need to design)

- printed photo of dahlia and melia (frame from kenna) (photo printed from vicky)

- kenna gets the pot (x2)

As you can tell, a lot of this stuff is mine, and I am more than willing to rearrange my life for the bedroom to look as good as possible, because since Vicky and Renn are doing most of the cinematogaphy and editing, I want my contribution to be super well executed. Here are some photos of the items that we are going to include.

  

You may be thinking, "Kenna, when are you going to put up all of this stuff in that bedroom, that will take hours". But don't worry, we made a plan for our official production days, we are going to spend Tuesday (the 24th) setting up the room and meeting with the cast and crew together to officially introduce the actors. Next on Thursday (the 26th) to start filming the party scene, Friday (the 27th) to film the nighttime moments and likely the final argument. And finally, our bulky filming day is going to be on Sunday (the 29th) to film everything else and if we need to reshoot anything from the previous days, we will do that as well. I am super happy we got this out of the way, so we have solid plans in place.

Finally, to give you an idea about what we are envisioning for the bedroom here is a mockup that I made on canva with the actual photo of the bedroom. Of course, we will adjust it to our needs, but it is a good baseline for now until we have actual access to the bedroom. I want the paper cranes to hang over the entrance as you see here, since they are highlight Dahlia's creative side, and the to do list is going to constantly be changing throughout the film to highlight her more structured academic side.

Title confirmed/Social Media Planning

     Hi blog! It is officially spring break, but that doesn't mean we are taking a break from working on the project! We have so much to do, so we all called and worked out what exactly we wanted to do about the concerns that I mentioned in a previous blog post. 

    We started by working together to develop our social media by coming up with solid branding through color schemes. Here's what we chose to do. The colors pink and purple represent our two main characters' individuality (Dahlia=Purple and Melia=Pink). So, we are going to include those colors when we make posts specifically about meeting the cast and their characters, but I will get more into that later. Anyways, the white represents adolescence and the innocence that the two characters have as young girls. But most importantly, our main color is going to be green to represent life and growth, since that is the main theme of our story. This also represents our third "character" Sprout (no longer named Tom). We are also going to make a post introducing Sprout as if it was a character, since a major theme of our production is personification of plants.

    I also made a list of what posts I exactly want to have. I got heavy inspiration from the research that we did a few weeks ago on similar social media pages. Here are our ideas:

    Speaking of sprout, I forgot to tell you, Sprouting is the official title for our short film! We think that it is a super cute play on the adolescent stage of life and growing up while still being a play on plants. And we chose "Sprouting" over just "Sprout" because we all agreed that making it be more of a verb than a noun made sense, since the story itself is about the act of growing up, not just being young.

    I also officially made the account! The name is @Sproutingshortfilm on Instagram. We chose this social media site because it allows for us to do both reels and posts, and reach a teenage audience very easily. We also like Instagram because it is super user friendly, and we all have a bunch of experience with it personally aside from this project. Having this experience will allow us to create quality content and not worry too much about how to use the app. 

    The bio includes a quote directly from the end of our short film, "Everyone's just growing up" which is perfect because it gives the viewers an immediate understanding of what the theme of the film is. I also included a point that this is an AICE Media Studies project so we can potentially gain followers of people looking to support our project. Finally, I included some emojis that I think represent our story really well, the sprout emoji in our handle name and the succulent emoji to represent Sprout the character.

Filming Location Secured!

 Hi blog! We officially worked out all the details for where we are going to film! 

So, lucky for us, Renn's brother is currently in college, so his room is empty and being used as a guest room. The reason this is so amazing is because we can put up the room, leave it, and come back to it being the exact same without it having to function as a real bedroom and worry about external factors. This wil also ensure that all the little details that we put in stay consistent between filming days. 

However, on the less fortunate side, it may not look as lived-in, and appear too staged, which would cause a lot of issues when it comes to the flow and time skips in our film plan. Also, it is facing a window which could make filming difficult, with the natural lighting playing a big part into how the room is lit. We have very little control over how we can manipulate the lighting with light kits, so we may have to film out of order to maximize our shooting schedule time, and limit the amount of days that we spend on production. Overall, there will most certainly be a lot of challenges to face, but I have a good feeling about the location.

Since our film is going to involve many plants, we made sure we had access to some before we bit off more than we could chew. That being said, not only do i have several cacti in my room, but also Renn's mom has a bunch of plants in their house already, which makes moving it into the set super easy and effective. We are most likely going to use a pea plant for our main one, since they grow somewhat fast and we have access to several of them in different stages.

As for the party scene, we have the idea of filming at the Weston Hills Neighborhood Clubhouse, as it has a lot of space to film, and is close enough to a road that we could shoot a scene on the curb like we had planned. However, we also want to have strobe lights from the party in the background and we are not sure if that will get to happen or not, since it is a public space.

I believe that is all the info I have regarding our filming locations for now!

Critiques/Changes

Hi blog!

On Tuesday, Renn, Vicky, and I went up to Ms. Stoklosa to ask for some guidance regarding our plotline. We showed her our script (you can see it in a previous post that was dedicated to the creation of it), and she did think our storyline could have some cool different paths that we could go with it, so I am going to discuss some of those really quick.

Love Interest (Michael):

So, the main "conflict" of our film is that Dahlia has a crush on Michael and she feels like her best friend, Melia, is ruining that shot for her. When we were having our group discussion, Ms. Stoklosa was not a big fan of our conflict being based around a man, as it did not seem like a very creative way to go about having two very close friends fight. We 100% agreed with her, especially since all three of us are very passionate about what we create, and it seems like the easy way out. In the beginning, it felt like the best option, since we could focus more on the techniques and not worry so much about the plot, but we decided that it is more important to have a strong, unique plan for the plot, which may be more work, but having that on top of great technique, we will be that much prouder of our results at the end of the day.

Tom Clarity:

So, if you noticed, there is a "character" named tom that gets older throughout the film, and Tom's age sets an understanding of how much time has passed. Tom is the plant. In our discussion, it was brought up that who Tom is wasn't clear, so to combat this, we are going to take a sticker that says "Hi, my name is" and write tom on it, and put it on the pot of the plant. This also allows us to show Dahlia's handwriting, which allows the audience to further understand a more quirky side of the character while still making the Tom aspect more clear. Instead of buying multiple plants in different stages, we decided to buy a fully grown plant and cutting it when it needs to be smaller.

Argument:

This somewhat ties into the whole Michael dilemma, but it was also mentioned that the argument felt depthless, and a bit petty for two girls who are supposedly best friends. I did agree with this in a way, however I do think that the way it was written was really well done. Renn wrote most of the script while Vicky and I looked back over it and made several tweaks, but I thought the character was very clear, the conflict was the main concern among this comment. We also decided it would be a better idea to call it a confrontation instead of conflict, since we are getting rid of the whole Michael side plot, and made the main disagreement based on how Dahlia is always busy.

Ending:

The ending will most certainly be up for interpretation, as we all agreed we wanted to leave the audience to sit with a clear feeling. Our problem was that we had so many potential connections, and we didn't know which one we wanted to convey the most, so how can we expect the audience to walk away from the short film feeling a certain way when we don't set what we especially wanted it to be.

We are so grateful to have gotten these figured out, and we feel much more confident going into production based on the notes. Here is a photo that Vicky sent us, as she wrote down the notes on her phone during the group conversation.

Postcard Research

 Hi blog!

Since we chose the short film, the print aspect that we are required to design is the short film post card. It is important to remember that the purpose of the post cards is to advertise the short short film as well as how to get in contact with the creators (instgram handle, email, phone number, etc) so that they can receive feedback. It is also very important that there is a clear brand on both the front and the back, the layout is easy to understand, and the date, location, and time of the short film are all included so that it can be best marketed.

This one for the film "Mulberry Child" is somewhat strong. The key art definitely gets your attention, and you can sort of tell the genre from the font, which is a good thing to keep in mind when noting the audience. They also included the line "Will the past haunt your future" which gives us a better idea that the girl and old woman in the postcard are the same person. Also, they included their film festival logo which is very smart, however they did not say where it was streaming or when, which can be confusing for viewers. Overall, I  am not obsessed with the layout, but there are many key elements present.

This is the one that I included in a recent post. I really strongly enjoy the layout of this one, it is neat and has just enough space for both the photo, credits, title, showing info, and contacts. The font is very eye catching, and it immediately gets your attention. However, you do not know much about the short film from the post card whatsoever, which could lead to it being forgetable and blend with other short films shown at the film festival that day. The contact for facebook was really well done, and the idea of including a Q&A was really creative. Overall, this one was very nice looking, well organized, and had all the right information.

For this one, I will give it the benefit of the doubt and say there most likely is a back that has more information (hopefully), but this is a great example of what not to do. There is the title, and beautiful keyart, however the only other thing on there is the creator and the film festivals, no socials, no location, and no extra fun ideas. I do think that you can tell the story will be eerie and a bit odd from the post card, so the branding is strong, but overall compared to the others, this one is lacking in many areas.

Citations:

kavyamediastudiesa2. (2017, February 20). Postcard advertisements. A2 Media – Short Film. https://kavyamediastudiesa2.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/postcard-advertisements-research/

Tupling, A. (n.d.). Postcard ad. MEDIA BLOG – Alastair Tupling. https://alastairwt.weebly.com/postcard-ad1.html

Plot Explained/Script Written!

 Hi blog! We officially decided on the plot that we want so here is me describing it to you as well as including our script so that you can look at what we have!

So, our protagonist's name is going to be "Dahlia" and her best friend is "Melia". They have opposite personalities, Dahlia is very quiet, yet driven, and when she is with Melia and she is comfortable, she gets more outgoing, as all close friends do. Melia is an outgoing person on her own though, however she can also be very confrontational and social anxiety fears HER. Anyways, their friendship is the basis of our whole short film, since we want it to capture where we are right now in our lives, and in High School, friendship is everything. 

The two of them are getting ready for Dahlia's birthday party, however the party is the least important part of the day, since Dahlia has to take a breather at her own party before getting comforted by her best friend, only we find out later that Melia was the reason she needed to calm down. Dahlia was talking to Michael, her crush, and Melia was being "annoying" and getting between the two of them. When Dahlia is outside, she finds a seed, which she later plants in her room in a pot that Melia made her.

After the birthday, we have a montage of Dahlia slowly getting more messy as she pushes her friend away, which of course leads to her feeling like her life is falling apart. This montage will include the technique we had planned to go back to the same shot multiple times. In this frame, there is a counter on her white board for how many days old "frank" (her plant) is, which helps us keep track of time during the montage.

To end the montage, there is a scene of Dahlia working in her bedroom on her laptop, before Melia walks in and tries to talk to her friend, who seems very uninterested in having a conversation. They get in an argument about who is in the wrong and Melia ends up storming out of the room from frustration. This scene is then followed by Dahlia feeling very guilty, but also angry about how her friend could not see where she was coming from.

The following day, when frank turns 91 days old, Dahlia calls Melia and apologizes, and they agree that they handled the situation poorly and mutually forgive the other. Melia ends the short film by saying "We are all just growing up", which is what we plan on the title being.

I am super confident in this story and the underlying meaning of how important friendship is during our adolescent years.

Link to the script!