Media Studies Portfolio

Hey guys, welcome back! So in the last blog we talked about the filming of scene one of the credits. Now we will be talking about the process of the rest of the credit scenes. Scene two is the one with the spilling nail polish that will include the opening credit of "Produced by Sara Briones." This scene is shot using high angles shots of only Margo's hands, since we do not want to show her face just yet. The 'story line' of this short scene is that Margo is painting her nails peacefully but then realizes she is late for school. Her alarm clock goes off and she is startled and starts rushing and grabbing all her things. This make her knock over the nail polish bottle. This is where we would write the credit. The bottle spills into a napkin, where 'magically' the words "Produced by Sara Briones" appear. Scene three is the one with the sign. In this scene, Margo grabs her bag now full of clothes to reveal the lit up sign that reads "Edited

Hey guys, welcome back! We are now getting ready to film scene one, the one with the credits "Starring Paola Toro and Tomas Quilaqueo". This scene will include the white T-shirt and with the help of the fabric markers, we can incorporate the credits in a really creative way. The scene will start with a POV shot of Margo lifting up one of the plain white T-shirts and then when in full view, it will reveal the credits to the audience. The T-shirt has "Starring Paola Toro" in the front and "Starring Tomas Quilaqueo" in the back. As seen above, the color of the letters of "starring" is made in blue and the name of the actress is made in purple. This isn't just because it looks pretty, but also because the colors have a meaning. Blue in this case represents sadness, as Margo is not happy with her life. Purple represents royalty, and in this case it is used because teenagers usually feel they know it all and are superior than everyone else.

Everyone knows that a plan is helpful before doing anything- it makes things simpler. That is why before filming, our team mate Daniela did some shopping for all the supplies needed to start filming some scenes. Since most of us could not be there because we were out of the country, Daniela consulted with us before buying anything to make sure we all agreed on the supplies bought. She first went to AC Moore to buy the two white T-shirts needed for the credits scene, and also the fabrics markers we needed to write on the shirts. She then went to Walgreens to buy nail polish to pay her nails white. She also got a red lipstick to write on the mirror for the credits scene I mentioned in my last blog. Once she had all the materials she got right to work in filming the scenes. 

Hey guys, welcome back! It is now spring break and I am still out of the country, but that does not mean the filming is on a break. I have talked to my team mates daily to see how we are doing and made some important decisions about the filming process. Yesterday we talked more about the credits and the specifics: what order they will appear and how they will appear on the screen. We all brainstormed until we came up with four ways we want to incorporate the four credits we want to include in the beginning of our film opening. The first credit will appear while folding Margo is folding a shirt into her bag, before she runs away. The next one is the one I talked about in my previous blog post: the nail polish spilling. The third one will be one that one of our team mates came up with and we all loved it: putting the credits in a sign that is usually used to decorate bedrooms. This sign lights up and the letters on it can be rearranged whatever way we want to. I will include a picture

Hey guys, welcome back! Well sadly I missed the second peer review because I'm out of the country; however, my group members filled me in and made sure I was aware of what is going on. I am so thankful I did this project with a group, and with very reliable people. First, this sit down made us realize we need to finish filming and we need to finish NOW. We should be editing by now, but because of some problems we came across, we still need to finish filming some scenes. This spring break will be perfect for that, to finish everything. Also, they mentioned that some of the their group members offered some advice on Margo's clothing, specifically her all black clothing. They suggested that instead of Margo changing into a basic all black clothing, she goes with a more edgy look. This will probably work as well, but we have already filmed Paola as Margo, in all black clothing, and as said above, we have no time to waste. Therefore, we have decided we are going to stick to t

Hey guys, welcome back! Sadly, we have run into some problems since the last post. We were supposed to finish all our school scenes on Thursday March 21st. This was the last day we could film since Paola, who is playing Margo, was leaving that day and was going to be gone all spring break. However, we completely forgot we had a group discussion in class that day and therefore we couldn’t film at all that day. We had to change our schedule to figure out a way to film the opening scenes without Paola. Solution! One of our group members mentioned she had read somewhere that Reese Witherspoon , the main character of the movie Legally Blonde , was not available to film the opening scene of the movie so the director had put a stunt double in place since in none of the opening scenes, her face was shown. This is very similar to our situation so we can hopefully get away with the same solution. Our teammate Daniela is planning on posing as Paola in the opening scenes, where her face is

Hey guys, welcome back! So, my group had notified me of some changes we are going to be making. I am sadly out of the country, but we have communicated through text to make sure I am aware of everything. We have been inspired by a scene in the film BUtterfield 8 : we want to include a scene in which while Margo is looking at herself in the mirror while changing for school, an opening credit is shown in the corner written in lipstick. Furthermore, she could be painting her nails black, to show her rebellious side early in the film opening. A sound of her mom screaming she is going to be late for school causes her to spill the nail polish all over the floor or her bed, which we could use to write yet another credit. This then disappears when she desperately cleans it up to avoid being late for school. Below is an image of we are trying to go for.  Hopefully we have time to include these new creative ideas! Thank you for listening, see you next time!

Hey guys welcome back! Today we are talking about sound. We decided we wanted to play background music that reflects the mood in that certain scene. Some examples that create unforgettable and inescapable atmospheres are the “bum-bum, bum-bum” theme music that plays before the shark appears in the movie Jaws and the shrieking sound that plays during the shower scene of the movie Psycho . Likewise, at the beginning of our film opening, when Margo is packing her clothes before running away, we want to make it seem as if Margo is a ‘goody two shoes’; therefore, we want to create a happy and upbeat mood with songs such as “Smile” by Avril Lavigne and “Perfect Day” by Hoku. However, in the next scene, where Margo changes to her true self by changing from her normal clothes to black attire, we plan on using an edgy alternative song. This will set the mood of the scene and show her rebellious nature. In this scene, the perfect song would be Copycat , and in order to avoid getting copyr

    Hey guys, welcome back! So as you can tell by today's title, we have run into some problems and I will be talking about them today and how we plan on solving them. The biggest problem we have is time. We have a lot to film, with very limited shooting time. My group, specially has no time to waste since Paola, who plays the female main character, will be gone all spring break. This was the time we wanted to get most of the scenes done but sadly, there is very little to do without Paola. Moreover, we already had our first shooting day as I talked about on my last post. However, we have run into some problems. Tomas, who will be playing the male main character, got a haircut the day after we shot and looked noticeably different. Because we do not want to ruin continuity, we have decided to re-film all previous scenes. Also, I played an extra in those scenes and since I will be gone all next week and spring break, they will have to re-film the scenes I appeared on. This wi

Hello guys, welcome back! Today I will be giving you guys a glimpse of the script my group and I have been working on. Please keep in mind it is still a work in progress and will most likely change in the future, as we peer review it frequently to make sure what we are writing makes sense. This part of the script I will be sharing with you guys is the scene when Liam finds out Margo is planning to run away. With the help of two-shots and over the shoulder shots, we are trying to show the chemistry between Margo and Liam. We took inspiration from one classic scene of the movie Twilight  when Bella and Edward first meet. Off the bat you can feel the chemistry between these two characters and the audience knows there is going to be more about them later in the movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc1UqeHhjeo Furthermore, we specifically picked certain words and phrases to reflect both character's personalities. The dialogue and how it is said by Liam was picked to show th

Hey guys, welcome back! So today we spent all class filming and getting as much as we could done. In our filming opening, many scenes take place in a school setting. So we took advantage of already being at school and filmed as many scenes that occur there as we could. Both our lead characters are in the same class so it was easy to film those scenes. Additionally, as mentioned in the previous blog, Tomas, who will be playing out male lead character, let us shoot in his Jeep. The scenes we filmed in his Jeep are the ending scenes of them going away, starting a new life. We wanted to show both actors in these scenes and really capture the love between them. Therefore, we decided to record from the car's trunk; this allows the audience to see both actors as they talk to each other.  Moreover, we shot other scenes that took place at school. We shot one at the library of our school and lucky for us, they had desks out because of testing so it really looked like a classroom,

Hey guys, welcome back! As promised in my last post, today I will be talking about our male main character's style! I briefly talked about how we want Liam to be portrayed in previous posts; however, today we are focusing on his style (his outfits, the way he talks, what he drives, etc.) As previously mentioned, we want to give Liam a 'bad boy' look but with a loving personality. I mentioned Damon Salvatore and John Bender as two guys we could take inspiration from to be able to do this. However, I recently watched a teen romance film called To All the Boys I've Loved Before  and instantly fell in love with the male character Peter Kavinsky, played by  Noah Centineo . There are many things to love about him but the main things I was inspired by the most were: his jeep and his personality. Peter's beautiful gray jeep appears many times in the movie and it is one of those things you cannot miss or not pay attention to. A Jeep can be known for 'adventure',

As a fashion fan, this is one of my favorite parts in creating our opening film: choosing the best outfits that go with the character's personality! People may not think clothes really matter in TV shows or movies, but in reality so much work goes into choosing the best outfits for each and every character. You may not think about it but there is a group of people who are in charge of choosing who wears what. In this case, that group of people is US! My group and I talked about how we want to dress up our characters and came up with some ideas. For Margo, the female main character, we were looking for simple yet stylish. Margo is characterized as a rebellious teenager, so we wanted to take inspiration from someone like that. Therefore, we went with teen film 10 Things I Hate About You 's Kat Stratford. Kat is known for being rebellious and not caring about what anyone thinks of her. She is true to herself and although may sometimes come across as a know-it-all, she has a kind

Today in class we got into groups in order to get feedback and ideas from our peers. In just 10 minutes, I got so many new ideas to make our film opening more successful! I started sharing our main plot for the film opening and what we were thinking of doing. The people in my group gave me great feedback, which gave me great ideas to improve our film opening that if  I would have never thought about. First of all, they reminded me that the purpose for this film opening is to start an actual movie, and that in those few minutes, it should give enough information to know what the rest of the movie is going to be. Therefore, having a girl and a guy running away is not enough. That is when I thought of making flashbacks, as the main character is running away, in order to explain WHY she is doing this. One great example that they shared with me was the flashback in the movie UP . In this part of the movie, Carl Fredricksen, the main character, has a flashback in which he remembers all the

Hello guys, welcome back! Today all we are talking about is boys, and not any kind of boys; but boys that are known for their bad boy characters on their shows/ movies. And why are we focusing on this, you may ask. Well, my group and I have decided we want our male character in our film opening to have that 'bad boy' image. We have taken inspiration from many well-known actors who play a bad boy character in their show or movie, in order to create our male character, who if you were wondering is going to be called Liam! The first bad boy that came to mind was Damon Salvatore , a vampire in The Vampire Diaries novel series. Damon comes off as an arrogant and reckless person, who does not care about anything or anyone. Later on the show however, his vulnerability is revealed as he falls for a girl, Elena Gilbert .  Yes, we do want to create a bad boy image for our male character but not someone who is rude or reckless, but someone who will fight for what they love. Fo

Welcome back guys! My group and I have talked more about the credits idea and have decided we still want to do something like what I talked on my last post regarding the credits--the credits being part of the actual action in the film opening--but we came up with a different idea on how to achieve this. Instead of adding the names by computer, we are thinking of doing it manually. So here's what we are thinking of doing: it includes fabric markers, several pairs of clothing, and maybe cloth patches.   So now lets go over our actual plan. We want to incorporate the credits by either stitching them to the items of clothing or using fabric markers to write them out. Of course the patches on the clothing items would look amazing and very clean; however, for the amount of credits we want to present, this task would take a lot of time, time that we could be using for other more valuable things regarding our film opening. The other problem is none of us are professionals at stitchi

Hey guys! Since my last post, my group and I have talked more about the filming process, like where are we shooting, with what, who is going to appear in it, etc. Thankfully, two of our group members own a decent camera to film our video. We are also thinking of borrowing more professional equipment from our teacher if we need it later on. But for now, we are planning on making it work with what we have. As for location, we wanted to shoot in Miami during the night. The bright lights, tall buildings and clear sky in Miami city help our story of a young girl running away be more intense. Life doesn't stop at night in Miami; therefore, it would not be a problem to shoot in the streets at night since there would still be decent lighting. Compared to Weston, where after a certain time, darkness and silence is all that there is left. Additionally, out story line is about  a girl who is running away from home because she does not feel welcomed or like she belongs there. Shooting in Mia

Last class, we started working on our storyboard, concentrating on how we the credits were going to be presented. As you can see, we chose specific shots for the different parts of the credits. We also drew some kind of idea we had for how we wanted the credits to be presented. We decided to put the credits before, instead of at the end like many movies. We did this because many people may stop watching after the film opening is done and will miss the credits, but if they are at the beginning there's no way of missing them! We took inspiration from many movies as we watched a Top 10 Opening Credit Sequences in Movies video on YouTube. This video had many different and incredible movies' opening credit sequences. We really liked the example of the movie Zombieland  that was used. The producers of Zombieland got really creative with the opening credits and presented them as if they were part of the action in the movie. For example, in one part a man runs through the credits

Time is something we cannot take for granted, especially during this project. Last class my group and I discussed on what days are best for shooting, because although one month may seem long, it goes WAYY too fast and we need to get the shooting schedule ASAP. Our plan was to shoot as much we could during spring break; however, I recently found out I will not be here at all during spring break and one of our other teammates is also gone for the whole break. This scared us a little since the weekends before spring break, at least one of us was unavailable. Therefore, we decided to make a calendar to make sure we would have time to finish it by the due date. I have attached the possible shooting days below. This lets us see all the days that we can possibly shoot and from there we can choose the best days to get this done as soon as possible.

My group and I finally came to a conclusion on the plot of the film opening we are going to do! After talking about it, we decided to shoot a teen drama about a girl running away from home with a boy. We were inspired by shows and movies like The End of the F***in g World  and Paper Towns . Both this movie and show have teen rebellion as one of their main themes and involve a person or people running away from home. In The End of the F***ing World, two teenagers run away together and develop a relationship after a series of mishaps. This dark comedy-drama show became very popular and earned high ratings from its audience . With its great success, it is hard not to be inspired by this show! I remember binge-watching the show and finishing it in just one day. All the episodes are different from the ones before, yet all equally intriguing. The show always has the audience on the edge of their seats just waiting to see what's going to happen next. This is what we want to accompli