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:

Filming Complications

 Hi blog!

Soooo we reached a little setback today. For our actors, Stephanie (Steph) and Estephania (Este) we wanted the first day of filming to be pretty light so that they could get to know each other and build a relationship, since they are supposed to be best friends in the short film. With that being said, we were planning to do our getting ready and gift giving scenes today.

We got the room all set up, introduced the actors, spent about an hour just bonding so that we all could get to know each other, etc. When we finally set up a great shot of Steph walking down the stairs (one of our first shots), the camera stopped working. To be more specific, we didn't have a battery for the camera. So, of course we tried to figure out what we could do so that the day was not a complete waste of time. 

Renn called his friend who is also in CBTV, Esther, and asked her if we could use her battery because she owns one of the cameras that we checked out from the school inventory. Renn drove over to Esther's house, got the new battery, set it up, and once again, it did not work. At this point we were really stressed because we had set aside about 3 hours to do this, meaning that we would need to spend all that time on Sunday, when we were planning to film the rest of the entire film.

We all just decided to go home and try to make it work, but Renn, Vicky, and I talked and decided to change the day to next Friday, so that we don't overwork ourselves in one day. 

Even though today did not go as well as we expected, good did still come from it because now we have a much better understanding of what needs to happen when we really film it. Also, we are all much more acquainted as a cast and crew now, which will make Sunday run even smoother than if he barely knew each other.

Here's a video of Renn explaining what went wrong:

World Building!

 Hi blog! 

    Today Renn, Vicky and I got together to build the set! It went super smoothly, and I am really happy with how it came out so far. Basically everything is there, but we have a few things that we need to add. For example, we didn't realize that we needed to move some of Renn's real plants into the room like we originally planned, so we will do that tomorrow before filming, since we are shooting the opening then. We also needed to make sure we had some more options for the fake plants, so I will also go get those.

    In the room we are filming, there is a huge whiteboard mounted to the wall, which worked great, so we are using it as an opportunity to highlight her busy life. We knew from the beginning that instead of working around that whiteboard, we wanted to use it in our film. On the left of it, we put a bunch of wall decor that is very evenly placed, since Dahlia as a character is very polished and "type A", so we imagined that her room would reflect that. In the beginning of the film at least, there is very little clutter, and the room as a whole is tidy and orderly. Of course, we are going to counter this as the film goes on.

  Around the white board, we put some hanging string lights because in the modern-day teenage girl's room, that is a must. It also helps draw attention to the board and adds a cool lighting aspect for our nighttime scenes in Dahlia's room. Speaking of the white board, we wrote down some stuff that your average junior in HS student would have to do. We wrote "study for math quiz", "extra credit (lang)", "Bio PSET", and "Buy the Great Gatspy for Lang". This list is pretty short in the beginning because she is pretty organized, so she is not yet overwhelmed. We all agreed that I should write on the board since I have pretty neat handwriting, and we didn't have Steph there to write it herself (she is acting as Dahlia).

    For the wall decor, I made a Pinterest board of things that her character would be interested in. I thought that it fit her character really well to be super interested in music, so we included little pins from Taylor Swift, The Beetles, Gracie Abrams, and Conan Gray. We also put several pictures of plants on there as well to match not only her color palate of green and purple, but also to match the icon of our film being a potted plant. We also put a calandar on that wall as well to assist in showing time passing throughout the film, since it is a major aspect that we need the audience to understand. On this wall as well, we put hanging dried roses, since it is something that Dahlia would definitely keep in her room, even though the plant is dead, she still cherishes it, since she is sentimental.

    I designed some honor roll certificates (thank you Canva), and we hung them up on the wall to highlight the aspect of Dahlia that is a high achiever and very academically focused. This also balances out the wall, because the majority of our decor was on the left of the whiteboard, so having that on the other side makes it look more intentional and pleasing to the eye. I am thinking of putting the medals right next to the honor roll stuff so that it acts as a visual of the duality of her life. On the left, there is the more creative, artistic, plant-loving side, and on the right, her awards and acknowledgments.

    I almost forgot to mention, we also hung paper cranes over the entryway from the door in her room. This little detail was super important to us, and we knew that we wanted to include this from the beginning because it shows a lot about a person. They were patient enough to make all of the individual cranes, and it was so important to them that they strung them on their ceiling. Every person I know that has stuff like this on their bedroom ceiling is a very creative person, so we were applying our own knowledge of how someone's room reflects their personality.

  In the corner of her room, there was an adorable little window seal, which we put a little seculent there that is thriving, to show that her interest in plants has been a thing, it is not a new obsession. We also put some trophies that cannot be mounted on the wall, but we thought were still important to include. Also, the trophies are different shapes, showing that she is well-rounded and has a variety of interests that she is good enough to win awards for.

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