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!