Editing software

   I've come to the part in my project where I have to decide what editing software I have to use. Since I don't have a lot of money to waste, I can't afford any of the fancier options like Final Cut Pro. So I have to make do with the free and cheaper options available to me. However, I still want a decent editing software, at least as decent as my budget allows. Last year I used WeVideo, because that was a year long free trial plan that my class was all signed up for so of course I took advantage of that. That plan has now expired and I can't get the free trial on the same email I had the original one on. So that was no longer an option. I considered iMovie, as it is available already downloaded on my laptop and accessible. However it doesn't produce the type of quality that I'd like once I download the full project, and download speeds tend to be slow. Not to mention I have to upload the individual videos to my laptop which takes some time and storage, and then download the final product which further takes up storage on my laptop.

  It took me some searching to find something that was well recommended and I could both get for free and not have it take up so much storage that I'd have to sort through on my laptop. I found the app Cute CUT. What first appealed to me is that is only available on IOS, so that allows me to be able to edit all my shots together on my phone right there instead of uploading to my computer individually and editing on my laptop, which as I said takes up time and storage. With being able to edit on my phone, I can simply just upload the final product to my laptop in order to submit it. Cute CUT is user friendly and comes with features such as drag and drop that allows you to arrange media segments easily, it supports both portrait and landscape mode, supports various resolutions and aspect ratios including HD (16:9), SD (4:3), and square (1:1). You can also create a picture-in-picture edit, and can draw on the movie itself with over 30 brush styles. This seems like the perfect option, being both accessible and affordable with just the right amount of tools!

Casting update!

   I've finally figured out who I want to cast for my short film! Originally, I was planning on posting a casting role call onto my Instagram story and Twitter like I did last year for my project but it ended up working out in a way that I didn't even have to do either of those things. It especially works out, because I was able to get all three main actors that I needed for my short film, and may even be able to get additional background characters if needed. It especially helps that each have had some or continuous experience in acting. One of the actors I have already figured out will be personifying the mania aspect, as for the other two, I will figure out when I give them each their scripts.

  Speaking of the script, I plan on finishing it up and posting it sometime this week. My goal was to aim for this spring break but unfortunately I had a very busy spring break. It will definitely be finished by the end of next week. I am excited to really dive into this project soon!

Genre and target audience

  It's probably a little bit late into the project to cover this in a posting but I figured this was an important posting to make and it's better late than never! I've been trying to decide what genre I could categorize my project into. I've settled on a coming-of-age drama that takes the artistic approach rather than a completely narrative approach. When I was thinking of this I wasn't entirely sure if the title of drama would fit a piece like the one I plan on creating, but as the definition for drama (film) goes: "drama is a category of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone." Additionally the conventions of drama are typically that it exhibits real life situations with realistic characters, settings, and stories, portrays journey of character development, and it's purpose is to move the audience emotionally. These are all things the plot of my short film encompasses.

  Since this is also technically a coming of age, I want my target audience to mirror that. If I could give it a rating I would say PG-13, as my target audience would be adolescents and young adults. The reason it would be PG-13 and not rated R is because it is a piece about mental health that if I were to share outside of this project through other platforms, I would love for younger adolescents to have access too. Watching things like this would break down the stigma of the conversation around more serious mental health disorders, and could potentially help someone feel less alone if they recognize the patterns shown in the short film in themselves. It also wouldn't be rated R as I want to make sure the scenes shown in my piece are as school appropriate as I can make them with a topic such as this. Additionally, if I have the time at the end of my piece I would love to include resources for those in need of them that they can turn to in case they feel they have no other options. If it can help even just one person, then I have met my goal.

Title ideas

 This is going to be a blog posting that's on the shorter side, because I am coming up with title names for my short film and it's definitely something I'm a little stuck on, so I'm trying out different things and testing them out and I want to take you with me through my mental process for each one. My idea is to make the title small, about 1-3 words if possible, and try to incorporate a word about twos. So far, my first idea and my main idea that I may be sticking with the most is Seeing Double, because of the two sides to the disorder I will be showing, as well as the fact that the disorder can be one that is incredibly disorienting. The second idea is Reaching Equilibrium, as the main character tries to navigate life with a disorder she is just beginning to treat and is and is attempting to reach stability. My third idea is a bit of a work in progress and is definitely on the longer side, extending past my preferred limit and it is There are Two Devils on the Shoulder in this one. Probably will not be doing this one, but I also wanted to get across the idea of the devil and angel on the shoulder that is the inspiration for my piece when personifying the disorder. So far these are my only ideas, I will create another blog post if I come up with any other ideas or fully decide on a title!

Character background

   Hello again! I wanted to talk a little about my planning process for the main character of my short film. I decided to plan the character out and make my idea of them more well rounded in the hopes that I will further be able to develop the plot for my piece, which I discussed briefly in my last posting. Making characters is the fun part! So I am excited to share my character with you.

  My main character's name is Evelyn, but she goes by Eve for short. She is 18 years old and a senior in high school, getting ready to graduate soon and move on to college. Senioritis is hitting her just as hard as any other senior in high school, so that is relatively normal. However, Eve has bipolar disorder that she was only recently diagnosed with and prescribed medication and other treatment plans. So she is trying to navigate the end of an era but the beginning of recovery and the rest of her life that she has no idea what she wants to do with. So you can imagine that senioritis is hitting her twice as hard. 

  She lives with her single mother, who is a nurse, and isn't always there physically but is a great mom who shows up for her daughter emotionally whenever she has time off work to take care of her. She also has a sister two years younger than her and who she considers her best friend, they're very close and thats partly to do with the fact that she doesn't have very many close friends so she hangs out with her sister most of the time whenever she's not alone, but for now this doesn't bother her too much.

  I've decided to go with no physical description because I want to be flexible in my casting of actors for this character's role, as well as for the actors playing the personification of her bipolar disorder.

Group meeting and inspirations

   Yesterday during class I had a group meeting with some of my peers to discuss our projects, bounce ideas off of each other and get some help on things we may be stuck on in the planning process. It went really well! Some areas I mentioned that I have been stuck on mainly throughout this whole thing so far is coming up with the main plot so that I can thoroughly plan out filming dates, locations, as well as draw out a storyboard of my shot ideas and write up a script. I got a few good ideas that I think I plan on sticking with.

  One of my peers mentioned something that I didn't even think of. It was that if I'm casting three people, instead of having the third represent either a mixed episode/stable period/transition between manic and depressive episodes, I could instead have that be the person experiencing bipolar disorder, and have one of the other two people act as a personification of the manic episode, and the other person act as the personification of the depressive episode. 

  This immediately made me think of something similar in the Netflix show Haunting of Bly Manor (spoilers ahead, sort of.) This show is the second season of the show Haunting of Hill House, they both have a different plot entirely with different characters but they are played by almost entirely the same actors. Both are horror/psychological thrillers that basically take the concept of trauma and mental illness and make it abstract using these genres, because they are both very abstract things to deal with. In the show Haunting of Bly Manor, it's about a young American woman who moves to England and gets a job as a nanny for two wealthy children who recently lost their parents. They have an uncle who hired this woman, and this is important to know in just a second. This uncle was having an affair with the mother of these children for a while up until they had both died. Just before they died, his brother, the father, found out about this affair (and also found out that his youngest child, the daughter, wasn't actually his child but was his brothers) and forbade the two from ever seeing each other, meaning he could never step foot onto Bly Manor again. He calls him a monster with a, and this is quoted from the episode where he finds out, "with a shit eating grin." Right after this, the parents leave on a trip to India where an accident happens and they die.

  The uncle is grieving and filled with guilt, so he doesn't take care of the children because his daughter who believes she is his niece is a reminder of her mother and the events that took place, and refuses to go to Bly Manor (taking his brother's words quite literally.) So he hires a nanny to take his place. He becomes an alcoholic who uses alcohol and work to keep himself occupied, spending most of his time in his office where we are introduced to another character that appears to him only at night. Except he is identical to him, because he's another version of him. He is all of the guilt and the traits he doesn't like about himself packed into one person. He taunts him at night by making him insecure and makes him have flashbacks to traumatic memories he doesn't want to remember, and he does it all with a horrible grin on his face. He's meant to be the part of the character that is the "monster with a shit eating grin".

  So when one of my peers brought up that idea, it was kind of like the whole angel on one shoulder and the devil on another type of thing except both are the devil in this case. But I immediately thought of that concept that is used in Haunting of Bly Manor. I may not be able to find two people who look exactly alike and I don't have the tools to be able to just make that happen with one actor but that kind of concept is what I want to go for.

  Other ideas my peers brought up were for shot types just to help get some ideas flowing for me and it definitely worked. They mentioned how for the depression scenes I could do different shots showing the state of the room. Also to portray the thought patterns of someone with the disorder and still personify the episodes I can do close ups of them whispering in the person with the disorder's ear. Then, as for general plot of the short film, I can make it someone who suffers with the disorder going about a regular day that for people without the disorder would find something so simple and easy to do. The person would go about the same day but the way the day went would depend on what symptoms they are experiencing. I plan on drawing up a storyboard soon which I will share in a future blog post.

Costume and makeup design (Pt.2)

   For this blog posting, I'm focusing on the costume and makeup design of the character that represents mania. Since a high rise in creativity is just one of many symptoms of this, the artistic and whimsical route is the way I want to go. Due to this, I have plenty more inspiration than in the last so I will get straight into sharing the outfit and makeup inspirations!

Costume and makeup inspiration (Part 1)

   Depicting the tone of a scene doesn't just rely on lighting, editing, or color theory. It also relies on costume and makeup design. It is going to be especially important in mine when communicating the emotions and feelings of the characters and what they represent. I used an app called Combyne to piece together the outfits, and drew inspiration from makeup looks on Pinterest. For this blog posting, I'm focusing on the representation through costume and makeup of depression.

Not much effort will go into the outfit choices of this character, and will be designed along the lines of this. This is because depression often times leaves a person unable to take care of themselves, depending on the severity. Sometimes it'll leave you in the same clothes for days at a time because they are comfortable and there is no energy to leave the bed, shower, change clothes, or do basic hygiene and self care things like leaving your room to eat or putting away dirty dishes in your room because you managed to get up and eat but not bring the dishes back to clean them and put them away. For this look makeup wise, there will be little to no makeup. Any makeup that may be there will be slightly messy and smudged, some areas gone entirely, due to being unable to properly take care of themselves. But for the most part, will probably have no makeup.

Camera lenses

  I've been thinking more and more about the physical production of my piece and how I really want to make this look as good as I possibly can. I can't afford a fancy camera with all these cool lenses, but I recently remembered that you can order different lenses to attach to your phone's camera to get similar effects to that of a professional camera! So I decided to do research into the different types of lenses I can get. I am looking at their function and the effect they have on footage, the quality of the product, and how much each one costs.

The first one that immediately caught my attention was the Criacr Phone Camera Lens Kit for $20 on Amazon. Three different lenses come with the kit, and they're all clip on so you don't need a special phone case, or any phone case at all. The lenses are a fish eye lens, a wide-angle, and a macro 10x lens. This would be perfect for a beginner in using different types of lens for filming other than just the standard phone camera, as well as perfect for a student's project as I don't need anything fancy, and it's perfect for my budget!

  The next to catch my attention was the Godefa Cell Phone Camera Lens with Tripod and Shutter Remote. This one goes for $29 on Amazon but you get a lot more for less than just ten dollars more than the other kit shown above. Each lens is also clip on and accessible with or without a phone case so there is no need to invest in an additional phone case. The lenses that come with the kit are a 18x telephoto zoom lens, 0.63x wide angle lens, 15x macro lens, 198 degree fish eye lens, six different kaleidoscope lenses,  a CPL filter lens, and an additional tripod and Bluetooth camera shutter that can be used for both snapping pictures and recording videos. This one has even more options than the last one and fits my budget really really well, and can still give that professional look to a student's project. This one is definitely winning so far.

  Another one on the more pricey side of my budget is the Hitcase Truelux Lens Bundle. It goes for $100 directly at Hitcase and comes with three lenses, superwide, wide, and macro, so it's all the basics I would need. The higher price probably produces a higher quality that I would be willing to invest in, the only downside to this is it doesn't come with a clip for the lenses as it is something that has to be ordered separately for an additional $15 also at Hitcase.

  Many of the other phone lenses I researched were very pricey for my range or may not have included everything I was looking for, these were the best kits I could find for reasonable prices. I think my best option is definitely the second one listed. It comes with a lot more and can give a really professional look to short film shot on an iPhone. It is also adaptable to almost any smartphone so it is something I can keep for a long time and use for future projects. It's a good investment for a starters kit.

Scheduling (Part 1)

   As it is coming up to about a month until this project is due, I need to start thinking about when and where I am going to film and also planning other aspects of the project. This is a little bit tricky because I have a very busy schedule despite not going out much. I am obviously a student with other classes to attend to, not to mention having an after school club I attend meetings for every Monday and Wednesday, as well as being an officer for a club that meets every Thursday after school. I also have a job and work a regular schedule of every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday night from 6:00 - 10:30 pm. Additionally, I am learning how to drive in order to hopefully get my drivers license by the end of the year and to also be a confident driver so that I can take myself to work and eventually college next year. So I am planning on taking professional driving lessons at least once a week starting next week, which was already difficult to schedule since I have a limited amount of space in the week to do so.

  Before I can create a good filming schedule, I still need to figure out the whole casting situation. Since I will be working with multiple people, I will need to figure out the dates and times that are good with them as well as making sure that they all line up well with each other. Even further though, in order to do that I need to cast people for the roles to begin with so that I can actually come up with a good start date for filming to begin with. I'm aware that even when I do figure all these things out and create a calendar for filming that it isn't going to be precisely followed, but it will serve as a rough outline and a plan to stay on track with as best as I possibly can. I'm hoping to get at least one or two days of filming per week leading up to the due date so that I don't have to spend long hours of filming last minute. I'll be making a second posting about scheduling once all of these things are settled, and I plan on casting people very very soon which I will also post about on this blog. Stay tuned!

Taking a look at movie posters

   As mentioned in my previous post, this week my blog postings have focused a lot on the visual aspects of my short film. For this post, I wanted to take a look at movie posters to garner some inspiration in the creation of the movie poster cards I have to make for this project! This post is just as much for me as it is for you, as this is mainly the research I have been doing to give myself ideas and I thought I should write out my thought processes here.

  Immediately when I was thinking about the visual aspects of the movie poster and short film in general that I wanted to achieve, I thought of the poster for the film Moonlight (2016) directed by Barry Jenkins. Everything down to the color scheme and this idea of threes are a similar concept to what my project will be presenting. Firstly, my color scheme is somewhat similar in the idea of blues and purples. What's also noticeable is that the image of the man is split into three parts, each part having a different color. In each part the man is a different age. In the first segment, it is a deep blue, and it is clearly a young boy. In the middle, a slightly older boy about early teens, is seen in a pink kind of purple. Finally in the last segment, an older man is shown in a more calm kind of blue.

  This shows what the movie is about in essence without even giving you the synopsis. It is coming of age movie about a Black boy becoming a man. The three different age ranges in the poster are also present in the film, and the poster highlights this by making each segment where the man is a different age, a different color. From the get go the poster already gives the audience an idea of what the film is about, and is such an artistically beautiful picture that draws them in and makes them curious to see what it's about even more. Additionally, this color scheme not only draws attention to the split image showing the three different phases of this man's life, but it shows the kind of color scheme that is consistent with the color scheme in the film. It matches well and that is also highly important.

  There were quite a few different posters for this film but I managed to find one with similar themes to Moonlight's poster. Even down to the font we see this theme of bold fonts and neon colors within them, which is something I'm now considering for my own posters because it really draws attention to both posters and goes well with the colors scheme. Again, it shows a portion of the main character's face with the blonde hair as in the title of the movie, and she has a serious expression so it communicates the idea to the audience that this is an action movie. 

  The title is also a play on words, atomic bomb with atomic blonde (another hint.) The color scheme in this poster, like Moonlight, is consistent with the color schemes in the movie. There is a consistent use of neon lights, and the colors blue, pink, purple, and some red. I'm not sure if this was intended, but throughout the film we see some bisexuality within the main character and in these scenes this color scheme of blue, pink, and purple are present. These also happen to be the colors of the bisexual pride flag. Regardless, the poster shares similar themes to that of Moonlight and both capture the visual themes that inspire the visual themes of my own. Both have heavy color symbolism and are consistent with the use of color in both the poster and the film itself.

Moodboards!!

   Hello! This blog post was especially fun to make because I wanted to dedicate it to moodboards. I really wanted to visually capture what kind of mood, aesthetic, tone, and even ideas for shots. So I made three individual mood boards to capture the three individual representations that will be taking place throughout my short film (previously mentioned in past blogs.) You'll notice that capturing the visual aspect and sharing them will be a common theme among these weeks blog postings. Since this posting is including moodboards, it will be a relatively short posting. I had a lot of fun making these and put careful thought into the kind of colors and images for each to fit perfectly together and to really capture what I envision!

Casting - My ideas for the characters

  Hello and welcome back to my blog! I've been thinking a lot about how many characters I want in my short film, and how to structure the cast so that it makes sense. Originally I was thinking of making one main character and any other characters that appear would just be background characters, or people that the main character only briefly interacts with throughout the short film. I'm still holding onto this idea, but then my teacher gave me another cool idea on how to go about this.

  Since I am personifying the symptoms and effects of a complicated mood disorder, it isn't going to be particularly easy. These symptoms aren't tangible objects you can describe, they are a set of thoughts, feelings, and emotions that deviate from the norm and drive certain behaviors that also deviate from the norm. So you can probably imagine that this is nothing like Disney's Inside Out, and my target audience isn't children. Not only that, but every individual with bipolar disorder experiences it differently, not to mention that there is more than one type of bipolar as it exists on a spectrum of sorts. Therefore it is important that I maintain as much accuracy as possible, but understand that while one may relate entirely, another might not relate much at all. My goal though is to mainly personify the basics about the disorder in a way that no matter how much somebody relates to it, they feel seen. This is where it might be hard to personify the disorder through just one person. This is where my teacher's idea comes into play.

  Instead of using one person for the one disorder, she suggested that I  could have different actors represent different parts of the disorder by having them all interact with the same events in the short film, but obviously their interactions would be different. This idea really inspired me with a multitude of ideas of how to go about this. I would have two, maybe three characters represent the different aspects of the disorder. Those main aspects being depression and mania, however the third may represent a mixed episode, a stable period, or a transitioning period between the episodes of depression and mania (I still haven't figured out which of those options the potential third person might represent, they may represent more than one.)

  One of the ways I could represent this ties directly to one of my previous blogs about color theory where I explain the colors I would use to convey the different episodes. I would achieve this through LED lighting as well as filters through the editing process. Another way is definitely through costume and makeup, which I will make an entirely separate blog posting about dedicated strictly to that topic in an upcoming blog posting!