Week 5 pt2

She's here ladies and gentlemen...

Drum roll,,,, ladies and gentlemen I can't believe I am finally writing this blog. For the past 3 weeks I have been working on getting this script done and finalized and I can officially say that I have came up with a script that I am completely happy and satisfied with. Upon getting our storyboard completed, it really gave me a lot of incentive, motivation, and inspiration to finish the script. Of course, after speaking with Isa and putting together some ideas, we definitely made some changes and arrangements, but I truly believe that what we came up with truly represents our visions and ideas. So, without further ado, our script...

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Week 5 pt.1

This is going by fast...

Wow week 5... It feels like just yesterday I was just starting this project struggling to come up with ideas and being confused by everything I had to do. To be completely candid, I really did not think that we, or should I say I, weren’t going to ever reach then end of this project because of how overwhelmed I we were with everything. This is just the right post to get all emotional and nostalgic because not only can I officially say that there are only 3 more weeks left of this project, but I can finally show you tangible evidence of our work! This is really exciting as I feel like for the past couple of blogs I wasn’t able to truly show you guys what we have been working on, but these next few posts are going to be all about that. It is very important that the readers of this blog get to visualize what we are trying to create and sometimes that can get a little complicated if  I'm just ranting and trying to explain what something is going to look like. What better way to do that than to show you guys what our storyboard looks like. So ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, here is our storyboard!

 I am really happy and proud of the work that Isa and I have done so far. I hope you guys like and kind of see what we are trying to do with this project. If you would like, take some time to read though each shot and maybe try to better visualize our ideas. Hopefully you guys like what we have come up with! This is going to be it for now, but i won't leave you hanging for too long as I will be back tomorrow to FINALY post our final final script! For now be safe out there and take care pf yourself.

Week 4 pt4

Butterfly Fly Away...

THERE'S NO NEED TO PANIC! uh yeah said nobody ever, there is definitely a need to panic and that moment is right now. Ok let me explain, so a couple weeks ago I got on here and I wrote about the fact that we had gotten in communication with Disney asking them for permission to use their song "Butterfly Fly Away". What I failed to mention, however, was that when we wrote that email we were warned that it might take up to 6 weeks to even get a response from them and as you can tell by obnoxious use of capital letters to express my panic, WE HAVE'NT HEARD BACK FROM THEM. This is actually a problem because as if you have been keeping up with these blogs, you know that this song is one of the most important parts of our film opening, and yes, we realize that we probably should not of have put all of our card in one table, but now is not the time to point fingers. While the obvious solution to this problem is to simply just find another song, we have to realize what that implies. Looking for another song not only implies being able to find a song that has the same message behind it as the one we originally wanted to use, but it also implies having to ask another record company for permission which might put us back in the same position we are now in. Fear not, however, as I have/ will continue to spend the whole day today finding alternative song options for us and sending as many emails as I can to try to get permission to use these songs. For now I will leave you with a link to our original song, "Butterfly Fly Away" and maybe just maybe it will help me get the go ahead from Disney that I need.

Week 4 pt3

Updates, updates, updates...

I'm back! I wanted to come on here again to share some updates and talk about something that might be a problem or become a problem. First, I wanted to give you guys some updates about our filming and our script. So, as far as filming, there have been some changes as far as the schedule goes due to some important traveling from my partners side. To explain, Isa, my partner, is an amazing volleyball player, captain of her team, so much so that she’s actually been traveling to some out of state competitions this past week. Her having to travel meant that we had to halt filming for a couple of days, as our filming location is in her home. Now, with that being said, this halt does not put us too behind schedule as we got most of the first minute filmed before that, it just means that we need to make sure we keep on working and keep on task this upcoming week. According to the new schedule, we should be done with filming completely by midweek that way we can get all of the editing done by the end of this upcoming week. We are still planning on competing our CCRs the week after this week, March 16ish, so I am not too worried about that or even meeting our deadline. Bellow I have attached our old schedule so that you guys can kind of get an idea of where we are and how long we will push filming for.

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According to our old schedule, today was supposed to be our last day of filming but due to our situation, our new last day of filming is set for March 11th. Our editing will also be pushed a little bit and will now be done March 12th-14th. Like I said, everything is still on schedule as far as the CCR goes, so that is still set to be done and completed on March 16th. Well, that is it for me for right now. I am sorry that I could not give you gives more fun or interesting updates about our filming and more behind the scenes action, but we have to understand that these are things that happen and we just have to be prepared for them and be able to adjust to life getting in the way for things. I want to end this blog by just giving a major shoutout to Isa, my partner, because she is amazing and even though she's traveling the world being amazing all other the United States, she still somehow manages to find time to sit down and work the logistics of this project out with me. Anyways, thank you so tuning in. 

Week 4 pt2

Hello hello, today I am really excited to write this blog as I can officially say that our script is almost done with the exception of a few changes that we will continue to make as we film. With the script being almost done, I really wanted to explain how we are breaking down our film opening and how we are going to tackle the filming process. When we started planning out our filming and creating our storyboard/ script, we realized that the easiest way to handle it was to divide the whole thing by minute and since our opening is 2 minutes, this was really not difficult at all. Upon doing this, we also had to decide what were the most important aspects to include in each minute, so here is how we are doing it. Our first minute is really important for us as we are introducing/ alluding to the main problem or conflict in our movie, as well as introducing the main character for the first time. The first few images that our audience will see are different handmade paintings that look like a small child made them all around the walls, some toys, and bedroom decor meant for a little girl. Thus, establishing that somewhere in the movie there will be a little girl who will be important to the storyline. Next, our audience will see Avaley, the main character, for the first time sleeping in her bed. The next few shot will be the most important ones as we will be alluding to the fact that something traumatic happened to Avaley's mother as she flips though photo albums (after she wakes up) as well as to a the relationship between her and her father through the sing that will be playing in the background. The song is really one of the most important things for us as the song is all about a beautiful relationship between a father and daughter and we want this to represent the relationship that Avaley wishes she had with her father. As the audience is expecting them to have a good relationship based on what they have seen, our second minute is going to be all about showing them that that is not the case at all. In our second and final minute, we will be introducing Damon, Avaley's father, and the relationship between the two of them. We are still testing a few ways that we can do this, but what we basically want to show is Damon demeaning his daughter as the audience realizes that he blames Avaley's mothers death on Avaley herself. During the second minute is where we will be adding dialogue, which will between Avaley and her father. So to conclude this blog, this is how we are planning on tackling out film opening but of course due to life and us - Isabella and I - always changing our minds, this is subject to change. Anyways, thank you for reading and I will definitely be checking in tomorrow.

Week 4 pt1

Group Meetings

Today in class, we had the opportunity of sitting down with our class-mates to discuss our ideas, progress, thoughts, and bounce ideas off of each other. We sat down in groups of 6 and went around the table to share our vision. This was really helpful and useful as I found that as I was sharing and explaining my idea to my group, it made me realize of the extra "fluf" that I had in my storyline. Ok let me explain, so as Isabela and I started creating and developing our idea and vision, it was very easy for us to get lost in our ideas and what we thought we wanted our film opening to look like. So, what I mean by 'helping us get rid of the extra fluf' is that they helped us get away from shots and dialogue that where distracting from our main point and message that we are trying to get across. Some of the ideas that I got were actually really helpful and will definitely be part of our project. One of the people in the group talked about including a contrasting color theme. For example, having the daughter wear light pinks, whites, and light yellows and the father wear dark colors such as dark grey, blacks, and dark blues. Another idea that they gave me was start looking for alternative songs that would still portray or foreshadow to the relationship that Avaley wishes that she could have with her father as there may be a possibility of not receiving rights to the song. This is actually something really important that we need to get done as we didn't really think of the possibility of not getting the rights to the song in time. Something else really important that we discussed was mise en scene. The group thought that it was a good idea we continue to sort of play with the idea of contrasting characteristics between the father ad the daughter. For example, they thought that it was a good idea to have Avaley's room be very neat, tidy and very girly and have the living-room be very dark and messy with things being all over the place to demonstrate the aspect of the missing mother/female figure. Overall, I would say that these meetings not only really helped me to get better organized with my ideas and what '"route" I want to take, but they also really got me excited again to be able to see the final product and see all that we were able to achieve. I will leave the blog here today, but I super excited to be able to start showing more and more of the behind the scenes of what we have been doing and what we will do as we go into filming this week. 

Inspo for Avaley's father's clothing

Inspo for Avaley's clothing

Ideas for Avaley's room

Ideas for living room

Week 3 pt 3

To finalize this weekend, I wanted to post a blog to further update on our project and how it is coming along. Although this will be a short post, I still wanted to show you guys what we have worked on over the weekend. This weekend, we were able to shoot rough drafts of what we wanted our actual shots to look like that way we could see what worked and what didn’t and then edit our storyboard accordingly. With this, we were able to start working on our mise en scenes and start thinking about costume design. Below I will leave pictures of some of the pieces that we will be using in our set design for Avaley's bedroom, as well as, a picture of Avaley herself. We took various picture of Avaley in her bedroom to be able to further visualize our vision and get a better idea of what we want the shots to look like. The canvas and drawing will be placed in the room that we will be using as Avaley's room, along with other pieces, to make the room look more like that of a small child. I will continue to update you guys even further as we go into our actual filming week and as we wait for Disney to gives us permission for the usage of their song.


                
                                               

(Week 3 pt 2) Checking in

Last time I checked in, I gave a way more detailed description of our storyline and our plot which I really enjoyed as I felt that I hadn't said too much about our story and vision. I hope that after reading our story you can see and hopefully understand our vision and goal for this project.
As far as updates, I have been working on writing, editing, and finalizing our script, which is coming along really well and I am really exited to be able to finish it and be able to have an actual real hard copy of our vision.

Script 

As I write the script, we are creating the storyboard that way as soon as we come up with an idea for our script, we can immediately see what it would look like through our storyboard. I really do believe that we will have these finished as soon as next week. Another major update is that we pretty much found our filming location. As I had explained, almost, if not all, of our filming will happen inside as we our filming in Avaley's bedroom and later what would be the kitchen of her house. To do this we have decided to use Isabella's home - a huge thank you to her for allowing us to use her humble abode. This is pretty major stuff as now we can actually start using an actual location to further finalize our vision and get ready for filming. As our filming days start approaching, we are definitely starting to think about more production issues like costume design, makeup, and mise en scene. Starting next week, we will definitely be focusing on those things as they are extremely important and will have an effect on our project if not done correctly. I hope to have more updates tomorrow and have some new information to share, but until then, like always, I will leave you with our Google Calendar. 

(Week 3 pt1) Updates!

Title 

Now that we had a concrete idea we felt confident enough to come up with a title for our film opening, in retrospect we probably should have waited longer until coming up with the title of the movie but it really came natural to us. As some of you know for my previous postings, our movie opening is going to be about the relationship between a father and a daughter. The daughter, Avaley Grace, is a 9 year girl who more than anything in the world wishes to be able to be her mother and be able to hold her, hug her, and tell her how much she loves her. Sadly, this is not possible as Avaley's mother, Scarlet, passed away giving birth to Avaley. Avaley wishes she could learn more about how her mother was before the tragedy occurred; what she liked, what she didn't like, what her favorite color was, what her favorite ice cream flavor was, but sadly all that Avaley had of her mother were some old pictures of when she was a teenager and one of when she was pregnant. The father on the other hand, was an abusive drunk that blamed all of his problems on his daughter who he couldn’t even look at for more than 5 minutes without wanting to punch a whole through the wall. Now, Avaley's father, Damian, was not always this cold hearted man with no emotions, he used to be quite the opposite. When Damian met Scarlet, he felt as though meaning had just been introduced to his life. He fell in love, hard. She was his whole entire world and all he think about at every moment of his day was what he could do to make her the happiest women in the world. He wanted to give her the sun, the moon, and the stars. When Scarlet got pregnant with Avarey, they became the happiest couple in the world. They knew that they wanted to have children and they knew that they wanted a family together. The day that, sadly, Scarlet passed away, the day she gave birth. Something broke inside of Damian. His whole life had just stoped and he had no idea how to start it again. He was confused, angry, sad, miserable, and o many other things that he could even understand how to feel. He became numb. The moment that Damian saw his newborn daughter for the first time, the first time he looked into Avarey's eyes, all he could see was Scarlet. She looked exactly like her mother. This is what Damian could not handle, every time he looked at his daughter, all he saw was Scarlet and the only way that he could deal with this was through turning to alcohol and hatred. 

After establishing that this was the story that we were going to use and further establishing it, the movie title, "Love Me" came natural to us. 

General 

After searching for some days, we finally agreed on music for our opening. The song that we chose is actually perfect for us and the story we are trying to tell s it is about the relationship between a father and his daughter. Now we thought this was perfect as the whole song is alluding to the relationship that Avarey wished she could have with her father as he is the only that she was left. This song is called, 'Butterfly Fly Away" sung my Billy Ray Cyrus and his daughter, Miley Cyrus. Today, we actually emailed Walt Disney Records asking for permission for the use of the song, so we are excited to hear back from them and hopefully be allowed to use the song. 

In other news, we have started our script and our new storyboard. They are both almost done and I will hopefully be uploading pictures of both by my next blog, but if they are not fully ready by next blog expect them in next week's blog for sure. As always I will leave a picture of our updated Google Calendar below. 

(Week 2 part 3) Auditions and schedule

Auditions

Now that we knew want kind of storyline and plot we wanted to have our next step was finding our actors. We wanted to hold auditions for our two main characters, the little girl and the father. This weekend, February 21st-23rd, we had auditions for the little girl. We knew we wanted someone blond and preferably from the states, but we really were not closed to anything. Luckily, this process went by extremely smooth and fast, really a lot faster than I thought it would. Thanks to my wonderful partner Isabella, we were able to find a little girl that was available to film during our filming schedule, and that also fit what we had envisioned perfectly. This little girl is so justin for our movie and such a natural actor, that even when we asked her to give us an impromptu cry, she did it with a hitch! I am really excited to work with her and truly be able to see her evolve along with this project. 

                                  

Schedule 

As fas as a filming schedule, we have decided to film from march 3rd-8th. We came up with these dates as those are the ones that work best with our busy schedules from school and our personal life. We also plan on holding one more round of auditions the week end, February 28th- March 1st, for our last main character of the movie. We will be looking at a man in his mid 20s-30s with dirty blond/blond/brown hair of average hight and fit to play the role of the little girl's father. As always, we will be using Google Colander to track our schedule and keep ourselves organized.

(Week two, part 2) Did a full 180...

Did a full 180...

BREAKING NEWS! BREAKING NEWS! I have made life altering decisions that will completely change the outcome of this project. Ok ok I might be exaggerating just a little bit, but this is an absolute cause for celebration. For the past 2 weeks, I have been struggling to even get some plot ideas for my movie opening, but I am proud to say that this is no longer the case. By some miracle, my AICE Media teacher informed the class today that if we are working alone in the project and would like to work with a partner, we could do so. This for me was a hail Mary because like I said I truly was very lost in what exactly it was that I wanted to do. 

See my new partner, Isabella Gonzalez and I worked very well together as we have done most, if not all, of the previous AICE Media projects together. We know our strengths and our weaknesses, and this only makes the team that much stronger. Within 5 minutes of us two sitting down and putting our ideas together we were able to come up with a storyline for our movie, figure out the type of characters that we want and come up with a general idea of how we want them to look. With this, came the decision to step away from the romance genre and verge into the drama genre. Luckily, Isabela had a lot of research on this genre as it was the one that she had originally posted. Isabella and I created a google calendar were we will be posting our blog post schedule, shooting schedule, and any other scheduling that we made need to make. 

Google Calendar 

For our storyline, we wanted to create a story revolving around a little girl dealing with a tragic life event who is living with her single father who is not supportive at all. Some films that we will be using to further research our ideas, include I am Sam (Jessie Nelson, 2001), and The Pursuit of Happiness (Gabriele Muccino, 2006). 

                                        

I am really exited for what this change entails as I know that Isabella and I can deliver outstanding results. In my next blog I will be giving detailed explanations of our ideas and further expanding on our characters and genre. Until then I will leave your with a picture of Isabella and I when we found out the we could work together on the project. 

(Left) Isabella Gonzalez (Right) Ana Larez