Cambridge Portfolio Blog Post #10

 Today, I decided to ponder a bit more on how I wanted the scene to go out, so I started planning it a bit more. So far, I think I've decided that the scene is gonna open up with the voice-over. The voice-over is going to begin outside, the location of which I am still unsure. The camera is going to be traveling through the location, eventually reaching Tommy's room where he is sleeping. The camera is going to go above him and then his alarm is going to wake him up, causing him to burst up out of his sleep. The next couple of shots will be Tommy getting ready for school by getting dressed, eating breakfast, brushing his teeth, and then driving to school. As he is doing all these tasks he is going to encounter a couple of obstacles or setbacks such as his toast burning or getting stuck in traffic, however, Tommy stays persistent and eventually does arrive at his destination. Seeing as I only have two minutes, I may have to tweak some things around to make sure I do not surpass the maximum. 

Cambridge Portfolio Blog Post #9

 Like all movies, my opening scene needs a character. Today, I thought about who my character was going to be and what he was going to be like. Seeing as I am the main actor in the film, the character needed to be a male. I decided to go with the name Tommy Glover, however, the name might actually not be mentioned in the opening scene as there might not be a necessity for it. Tommy is a kind and friendly person who lives a boring normal life and therefore is always looking for some sort of adventure to rid himself of boredom. Tommy tends to do things without thinking everything through, so he gets himself into troublesome situations sometimes. I want there to be some sort of character development, however, I'm not yet sure what development I want it to be nor how I'm gonna show this development due to the short time frame that the opening scene has.

Cambridge Portfolio Blog Post #8

 Today, a couple of my classmates and I got together to discuss our ideas so far for our opening scenes. I told them about my idea to start off with a voice-over which later leads to the main character waking up and quickly getting ready for work, which happens to be a quite hectic journey foreshadowing the plot later in the story.  The group seemed to like the idea quite a bit and got me to think more about other factors that I may have to consider while filming. One of these factors that I have begun to consider is the color palette. Since the film is starting off lacking adventure and action, I think the beginning is gonna have a plain boring color scheme with bland colors. However, during the drive to work/school which is a foreshadow of the coming journey, I want to slowly make the color palette brighter to show the action and the change of pace in the film. Together, we also discussed the other issues and ideas that the rest of the members in our group had, and I as well as the other members helped each other out by commenting on how the ideas could be improved as well as by trying to help solve any challenges they have come across.

Cambridge Portfolio Blog Post #7

 For the project today, I further thought about what I should do with my scene and started to plan it out a little bit. So, I wanna include the beginning shot that I've mentioned in previous postings because I thinking that this would be a perfect way to begin this type of movie, especially with it leading to an adventurous plot. In the voice-over, I could talk about the plot of the movie or hint as to what is happening. After the voice-over ending with the stars, I think I want to get a shot of the main character waking up and getting ready for school/work. after quickly showing him getting ready, I want to maybe show him having a rough and difficult trip to work with a couple of obstacles to foreshadow the difficult journey he was to have ahead of him. This is a very loose plan with little detail, but it is a quick basic sum-up of what I am thinking of doing for the scene.

Cambridge Portfolio Blog Post #6

Today, I thought about what the story for my scene should be. Deciding on this part was quite tricky as I had to ensure that the idea for the story was possible for me to make with my limited tools as well as entertaining to the viewers. Since the film is an adventure film, I could go a couple of routes with this. The story can be an adventure to try to obtain something, an adventure getting away from someone, or an adventure exploring someplace. These three ideas seemed like I could make something fun out of them, but I had to make sure everything was possible. A scene about exploring a location could be interesting, however, I have to ensure that I will be able to reach this location whenever I need to film. The idea of getting away from someone also seems interesting, however, with this idea I may need someone to film with me, so I must ensure someone is available to film if needed. For the idea of looking for something, I have to ensure that the story isn't the same as every other film with this idea. I have to ensure that it is creative and different.

Cambridge Portfolio Blog Post #5

 Today, I pondered about what I should make my opening scene look like. I liked my original idea of having a voice-over and a long take leading to the stars as the beginning of my opening scene, and I am still considering doing that, but I have to make sure the story would fit in with this type of opening. Another way I could open the scene is with a voice-over and a scene that could be from later in production which then leads to the origin story of how the movie gets there. This seems like a pretty interesting way to begin my scene because it would catch the audience's attention due to their most likely being some type of action, and it may cause them to want to watch more to understand how the "movie" gets there. Ultimately, I still must decide on a story before I begin any filming or concrete planning of my scene.

Cambridge Portfolio Blog Post #4

 Today, I watched a couple of adventure film opening scenes in order to get a better idea of what I want to do with mine. First I watched the opening scene for "Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle". This opening scene started off by giving subtle hints about what was going to happen in the upcoming moments. This gave me a couple of ideas that I could use for my opening scene. Next, I watch the opening scene for "The Revenant". This scene was very interesting as it seemed to slowly lead up to what the movie was going to be like. For my scene, I plan to do something similar to the both of these but I want to continue researching before I fully decide.

Cambridge Portfolio Blog Post #3

 Today, I thought about who I could include in my film and who could help me during production, as my scenes will most likely need some type of dialogue and since I am going to be acting, I may need someone to help me with filming. First off, my mom and my siblings could help me with getting a couple of shots that I may need someone to film. I can also use some of my friends to help me if I need to shoot while my family is unavailable. My friends will most likely be the most useful as I could use them in my film as actors. Knowing that I have a couple of people that could assist me in filming my opening scene, I thought more about what genre I should make it. I decided not to go with comedy, as the dialogue was seeming to be quite difficult to make. I ended up deciding to go with an adventure piece as this type of genre gives me a lot of creative options and seems like it would be quite fun to make. 

Cambridge Portfolio Blog Post #2

     Over this last day, I have been pondering about what type of genre I should pick to make my movie scene. So far I have cut it down to either a mystery, adventure, or comedy film. With these three different types of films, however, I may encounter different types of challenges. It may be difficult to make a comedy film because I must ensure that the dialogue is funny and that it all makes sense. For an adventure film, it may prove difficult to find proper locations that are suitable for an adventure film. Considering I don't have a car, it may be difficult to constantly need to go to a location that could potentially be quite distant. For the mystery film, it may be difficult to keep the audience intrigued and ensure that the story makes sense while keeping the mystery going.

    To further help me in choosing the type of genre I would like to do, I also began thinking about the target audience. Considering I am a teenager, I want to ensure that people of my age are included in the target audience as I feel like I know this part of life the best and can please an audience of my age. This would help me when making a comedy film because I could make jokes and dialogue which would most likely be funny to teenagers. Overall, I think I would like the target audience to be from the teenage years to the mid-'20s. This is a target audience that I feel comfortable making a piece for and it helps in choosing which genre I would like to use.

Cambridge Portfolio Blog Post #1

     Recently, we just finished our music marketing project which we worked on in groups. This project was helpful to me because it helped me practice some things that may be helpful for this upcoming project. One thing that was quite helpful was practicing acting a little bit. Though there wasn't much acting to be done in the music video that my group and I created, it definitely helped because I hadn't done something like that in a very long time. Another helpful thing that came from that project was that I got to practice creating a form of content. This was helpful because it required brainstorming to figure out what we wanted to do as well as planning it all out which helps because that is exactly what I must begin to do now. 

    I'm actually quite excited to begin the process of making the opening scene for my project. I was thinking that I wanted to start the scene with a voice over and a master shot which would end looking up at the stars and revealing the title of the opening scene. Though I'm still not 100% certain on what I want the actual story to be about, I thought that this would be a pretty cool and interesting way to begin the story. I would like to include things such as graphic match cuts when possible to make the transitions as smooth as possible. Also, I would like to research a bit more on interesting editing techniques I can use as well as possible including special effects.

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

    The first step in beginning our project was the research we had to do. As a group, we researched how artists in the pop culture, such as Lady Gaga, marketed themselves as well as the record label companies that they were signed for. Through this research, we discovered ways in which we could market ourselves as well as ideas for how we should make our music video, either promotional or artistic. Ultimately, we decided to go for a promotional type of video, seeing as we wanted to give the band a sense of normal. This way, people could relate to the band more since we were just like any regular people.

    Next, we had to brainstorm what we actually wanted to do for the music video. We wanted the whole group to be together for it, so we decided to go to the regional park so that we could all film together. We brought a couple of instruments to the park, as well as fake ones from video games, but ultimately decided to use the gaming ones due to the fact that we didn't have enough actual instruments. We scouted around the regional park for a while looking for the locations that we wanted to film at and then go to filming. A problem we encountered was that we had limited time due to all of us having different schedules, but we made it all work with the time that we had. Another problem we faced was lighting. We fixed this by using the headlights of the car in the areas that we needed more light. However, the battery of the car died so we had to jump-start it. 

    In post-production, we came across one main problem. A lot of our shots were very similar. This made the music video a bit hard to make because we wanted to have more variety and not have the video look very boring. This was solved by having solo shots of the band members as well as trying to incorporate shots that were meant to be later in the video. This helped us add more cuts so that the video wasn't looking like one long recording with a couple of cuts in it. 

    In the making of the presentation, we all split up what we had to do so that we could get everything we needed. We created a couple of possible pieces of merchandise that the band would sell such as the t-shirt and the skateboard. We also created an image of what the website for our band could look like as well as what would be on there. The presentation included our explanation for why we choose to make the music video promotional and how it served as a marketing tool for our band. I believe that we communicated pretty well on this part of the project.

    Overall, the group worked pretty well together. We did everything that we needed to do on time and made sure everyone in the group knew what was going on. One thing that this project helped me learn is that there are many different ways to market yourself as an artist and that thinking outside the box is always an option. I also learned that many record label companies often take advantage of the artists that they sign, so it might be a better option to learn how to market yourself. Something from this project that may help me in the making of my Cambridge portfolio is the researching portion. Research is most definitely needed when making the Cambridge portfolio and this extra practice of having to research something media-related definitely didn't hurt.