A Level Media Studies Short Film Final

Progress has become hard to come by as I have hit a bottle neck. My thoughts are organized in the sense that I have my story board and script ready. However, I lack the timed coordination between my actors to . This has caused a large delay in my schedule.  As such I have realized that this may not be as bad as it seems. While i maybe awaiting the forthcoming of my equipment, this gives me more time to find a new editing software. The one used in the previous year had not been free like it advertised. Filmora actually charged me 75 dollars for the download of the film. While i wait for coordination and times to align, I can begin to look for software's that can generate the resources i needed for editing. I began to do research on editing software's that can aid me in post production. I further decided i would not use the software that i have used on past projects simply because of hidden costs. And so on my long and perilous search i return to where it all started; Microsoft C...

This went about just as smoothly as the previous year's. That is to say ridden with obstacles of course. I have had to overcome several obstacles so far, such as finances, location, and story board. These problems have caused several moments of ponderance and thinking over of how to continue my film. These three things all correlate to one another which means planning for them goes hand in hand. By giving these issues plenty of thought, I was able to make a solution for them. Finances were an important issue because I needed to understand the equipment i had at the cost for transportation to the locations. As a result, i came up with a list of costs. I the needed a budget to create perimeters for spending wisely and efficiently. This budget was then formed to be 300 dollars. Location was a problem that I was easily able to overcome. This was due to my family owning a piece of land that I knew I could utilize for my film. All the while I would create several settings. I would also b...

As previously mentioned the film will take place on the same lot as the previous year's film. The film will be done on location in Zephyrhills, Florida. I have full permission to use this location as my family owns the location. This is a 4,613.416 m²  piece of land with a mobile home that is over 30 years old. As a result, I will have plenty of space to film a variety of  shots. I will be using this one location due to its variety of structures and land types. There is plenty of foliage and under growth near the trees. There is also an area which is rocky and has a mixture of sand and dirt. Along with permission to enter the mobile home; there will be plenty of opportunities to film on a single location. The beaten and abandoned look helps with the poorer background of the protagonist and supports the protagonist's situation quite well. The times of day that will be used for this shot will be noon, afternoon, and evening. This will be used to depict an entire day's work fo...

So we have had our 4 part series before the storm.  And i know what your thinking, i thought we were prepared and going towards the storm. We are ready for the storm. The process for film production now begins! We have conducted a large amount of research on diegetic and nondiegetic sound. We have conducted ideas of lighting to use on our characters. We have researched camera work and clothing that should be done to prepare the characters for their power dynamics. We have complete so much research's and gained a valuable understanding of what we need to make our story work. We finalized and edited our story. As a quick summary it covers the life of a poor lonely protagonist with synesthesia who trusts the wrong people. These people send him to do crimes for them and he slowly notices how horrible it is the acts he is committing for these people. He eventually refuses a task offered by the main antagonist. In a fit of anger they fight and protagonist ends up winning forcing him to r...

 The final part of this four part series has come. It is the part covering lighting. Lighting is possibly one of the more important parts of filming. The use of it is so crucial to create emotions and ideas. It also can lead the audience to think about the film intently wondering what may happen next. I plan to use more lighting on the protagonist than antagonist. This is to show the innocence of the protagonist and make him seem more... heavenly; in a sense. It also gives the hint of good intentions and helps support his good intent nature. Lots of lighting supports  connotations of good which further supports the ideas of protagonist. I plan to use shadows on the protagonist than antagonist. This is to show the malice of the antagonist and make him seem more hellish. This in contrast with the protagonist supports the idea of the sides of good and evil between the characters. It also further supports the darker intentions of the characters. Shadows and dark lighting have evil...

 POWER DYNAMICS. How do we make a power dynamic more apparent? Well, thank you for asking my disciple, relationships between characters can be told through costuming, lighting, as well as camera work. Today we will be discussing camera work. Specifically, what kind of angles we will associate with each character. The antagonist is going to be the easiest with low angle shots that put him in a position of power. This will further emphasize how much power he has over the protagonist. The protagonist will be looked down on with high angle shots. This further supports the power dynamic idea. Additionally we may have the protagonist physically lower such as sitting down while antagonist looms over them Generally, there will be a large use of mid-shots as it will be surrounding one scene. The film may also use master shots to give a general idea of environment. We will use close ups to emphasize emotions as well. This is to fully exposure the two characters ideas as they change across th...

 Clothing! Materials! Oh so many factors to choose! Over the summer i have been thinking about clothing outfits and how bad my film was. Not to antagonize my previous self, but the effort put into the before film was abysmal. Which is why i come back this year with an improved fashion sense. As a result, for out protagonist I'm thinking that he wears a beige woolen coat with a white t-shirt with some stains on it. He will also have beige pants on and beaten up shoes. The point is to make him look like he has older clothing with a scheme that may hint so. Additionally, this may give the audience the impression of him being poorer which coincides with him working with "friends" who offer him strange jobs to get by. The antagonist will wear black pants, a white clean shirt, black pants, a black blazer. The point of this causal attire is to make him seem of higher wealth and social status than the protagonist. Additionally, this can make him seem like he has a lot more power ...

 SO IT SEEMS ALL IS WELL RIGHT?!  You would be correct... for now. At the moment we have our idea of our protagonist in isolation fighting against manipulated bullying. However, that is about all we have. So as this post is so cleverly named, we must prepare for the coming of the storm. The storm being production period.  So one of the most important parts of production is a location. Now i have a couple of thoughts running through my head. And it comes back to one place. You guessed it, the previous filming location as for the previous film. Now you may be wondering as to why? Well in my story board (release coming soon), it depicts the use of  the character walking through areas near rubble or not very well cleaned. It just so happens that there is a gas station with road construction next to it near the location we previously used. I also would like the use of a dingy run down building for filming inside of to be the home of the protagonist. Well my family owns on...

 Drama revolves around several themes. Some of the most popular being, rags to riches, tragedy, and a long quest with challenges. These themes are used or can be found in plenty of the modern day drama films and shows. They are depicted in theater and plays alike. They are even mixed with other themes to give an engaging, rich depth of story to follow. Rags to riches gives the general idea of a person who starts in the drama as struggling and goes to life of no struggle. They usually have to do with the main character beginning in poor circumstances both in economic and idealistic situations. As the drama continues protagonist succeeds in exploring a path to a life of no struggle. This is commonly used in drama and in consistently referred to and relevant to modern day arts. Tragedy as a theme originates from the first days of genre, and usually shows loss, abuse, and even depression. Tragedy is a theme not only correlated with dramas but also action and science fiction films along...

 When i think about a story playing out i just think of images, the actions and the movements of characters. All of this without sound. Often, i end up having to think about those images and what i want them to say or add sound to their actions. And often i forget what sound i have just added. To better engage myself with the world of sounds. With a trivial problem at hand and an ever growing headache, I decided to conduct some research towards how i should create sound for and around my protagonist. Diegetic sound is sound that originates from the world of the video or film. Diegetic sound can originate from either onscreen or offscreen. These sounds occur in real time which is why diegetic sound is also called actual sound. Diegetic sound includes the characters voices or sounds made by objects in the story space. Non-diegetic sound is sound that does not come from the world of the video or film. Non-diegetic sound can originate from either onscreen or offscreen. Non-diegetic sou...

 Every genre has character types in them. Whether those character types be as common as the tertiary characters or as rare as a stock character. Most notably, protagonists, antagonists, and deuteragonists are used quite often in dramas. This is because they often play an essential role in influencing the plot of the film or theater. Generally the main character is usually the protagonist of the story. The protagonist champions the most screen time and lines as they are the character that the audience focuses on. The plot and story board focuses on the fate of the protagonist as they are central to the drama. The protagonist often displays deep emotion. The antagonist is the opposite of the protagonist as the antagonist maybe either hostile or in opposition to the goals of the protagonist. In most scenarios, the antagonist is better known as evil or the bad guy. The antagonist has the goals of opposing the main character and acting as an obstacle between the protagonist and their go...

 So last night i was thinking about the film. I was thinking over and contemplating everything i had written. I came to a conclusion that perhaps the story is all wrong. When thinking about it originally, i envisioned representation of these groups however i instead made this representation have a negative context which is opposite the idea of spreading awareness and positivity of it. As a result, I am making a revision to the film's original idea. People with synesthesia in the film will currently be represented as antagonists which doesn't make much sense in terms of representation of minorities groups. They will be the antagonist in which the protagonist gets hurt and affected by. Additionally, it would be harder to make a film that connects with such audiences if the ones dealing the damage were of the group were trying to represent. So i decided to make a change to this and make the idea have the protagonist the only one with synesthesia. This will create more oppression i...

We return with the third and final post for this 3 part film explanation series! For a quick recap on the previous posts, we discussed the ideas and how they represent audiences and groups. In this post we will be discussing how this idea will look like in actual story form and what a rough overview of it maybe! The idea is that the film is following a teenage boy who is close to young adult age. This boy is seen by himself as he is one of the extremely rare people without synesthesia. The rest of the world as such sees him as an outcast as he doesn't fit in. This leads him to be in isolation. As such he no place would hire him or want anything to do with him. As such he is quite eager when the antagonist another boy close to his age offered him a job. The boy would offer him jobs in the past that commit crimes like theft and more recently robberies. This time the boy comes by again and will give him the task to kill someone. I think that at this point in time we will have a flashb...

 Hello! This is part two of the three part film explanation. In this film, we use two ideas, synesthesia and isolation. In the previous post, we discussed a deep description of what these two ideas are. In this post we will discuss how we will utilize these two ideas to create representation for the short film. For a brief summary, Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which people experience sensations through unrelated senses such as tasting words (yes this does actually happen with some people). This neurological condition is heavily under represented in media as a whole which excludes a group of people. Further more, by shedding light on this condition it will lead to an increased awareness of it. Additionally as this content is under represented, it will give me plenty of material to explore and utilize as this is very much a relatively new field in media. Isolation is a common theme throughout today's society. Many of today's youth is depressed or alone. They feel di...