Research Post for CCR
Questions I'm trying to tackle:
How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?
I think our product is referencing the social issue of technology in the modern age. We show in the beginning how much our character is obsessed with social media with multiple shots of her on her laptop, looking through social media and messages. This very technology which she uses in every corner of her life ends up turning against her. This is us trying to communicate that the more we rely on technology to give us self worth and manage our lives, the more we are losing ourselves and turning it into an enemy instead of a helpful tool. Gen-Z is who this most applies to. We are the biggest technology consumers so far. We have grown up with it, and it's only becoming more and more present in our day to day lives as the years go by. This overuse of technology is slowly destroying us. Like the abuse of AI in our education. As more people rely on it to think for them, the less people think. Which is kind of really important when it comes to keeping your brain healthy and just having basic thinking skills. That is the issue my opening represents. The problem with the current generation's abuse of technology and how it will eventually turn against us. Either like taking over the world style or taking over our human intelligence.
Here are some real life negative effects connected to social media:
In this meeting, I was paired up with a new group of people. Now that we had all filmed, we had problems related to scheduling, sets, and time management. The group was Juan, Manuela, Jake, Camil, Agustina, and Samuel. It seemed like the main problem for everyone was scheduling their actors to be in the opening. This made me thankful that it was just my partner that was acting in our project and a video of my friend. Because it's just us, and because we both have theater + media studies together, it was way easier to find the time to do it. When I discussed my film opening, the advice I got back was to make clear that the technology was the villain and not someone controlling it. They also told me to have a voice-over for the google/Alexa home- whichever one we’ll do.
Here are my notes:
Juan: purge movie, has trouble with scripts and set
Manuela: scheduling, thriller.
Jake: horror, thriller. Set in the woods. Scheduling and audio
Camil: fantasy, animated. Time management. Dragon sounds
Agustina: coming of age, had trouble with scheduling actors. Lighting trouble
Samuel: mystery, doctor is getting interviewed, has trouble with parent scheduling
(Also just wanted to say I was kind of the group leader...I was interviewing everyone and starting conversations)
Hello again. So for this post I want to discuss the scene where our character is leaving the house and coming back.
Here's the link to all our filmed videos:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14NR6HDKtY1fPyhbCcd8oj_457T0QTn9S?usp=sharing
For this scene we got a lottt of shots of her struggling with the door. This is because that is the first sign of something being wrong. So we thought having a lot of material would not only give us a lot to work with when editing, but would provide a tense moment when all spliced together. We still need to download the ring footage of her struggling with the door because we want the technologies perspective of her as it will tell the audience that the door being difficult is something that was planned.
Here are some different angles we got:
Hi Blog! filming started this week and we decided to get the simple scenes over with and took multiple point of views and shots of each scene.
Here's all the videos we took on filming day:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14NR6HDKtY1fPyhbCcd8oj_457T0QTn9S?usp=sharing
For this post I want to talk about the scene inside where she's looking through her laptop. During these shots, we are trying to communicate that she is a little obsessive with her technology as she has her whole life on there. She's checking her social media apps, calendar, messages, etc. We still need to screen record the facetime call with her friend which we already have an actress for. The hard part about that will be switching between the screen recording of what's going on the laptop and the little shots of her on her computer. But what I want to do during editing is have those computer shots be her moments of doubt and the screen recording be the "mask" she puts on for her friend.
Here are some shots that I think communicate that doubt/obsession
Target Audience
My opening is a psychological thriller, which some popular examples of are Silence of The Lambs, The Shinning, and Black Swan. Their main audience is young female adults- but it ranges all the way to late 50’s. Women are more attracted to this genre as it has less crime and violence than other thriller sub-genre's. They also enjoy the intellectual and emotional side of the genre. Audiences younger than 18 are obviously not targeted for these types of movies because of their mature themes.
I think all these stereotypes apply to my opening and how it will be advertised. Because it centers on a young woman who is dealing with “teen issues” the main audience would be young adult women who can relate in some way. And the fact that the main “antagonist” is technology gets even more young audiences. There will not be any graphic violence so it still maintains the female audience.
Here is where I found the information on audiences for psychological thrillers: https://prezi.com/_tx5rlgdlb1u/psychological-thrillers-target-audience/
For our logo, we decided to combine our names: Trisha and Andre. Which I combined into A. N’ T. We then wanted to find a way to incorporate a word that related to production, and since we’re both in musical theater, we decided on ANTheater. ANT + theater= ANTheater. Andre is also very artistically talented, so she drew an ant eater and used Canva to put the title of the logo/touch it up.
Here’s the time lapse of the logo:
Here is the finish product:
A discussion on audio:
Before I describe/plan out the audio for my opening. I wanted to discuss how much I appreciate audio in film ever since I learned how complicated it is. Because only dialogue is recorded on set, EVERY OTHER sound must be made and recorded in post-production. Every creak, step, wind, or touch needs to be accounted for. It can also add so much to the scene when you put specific sounds throughout the scene. For example, In the titanic the scene where Jack and Rose are running off the ship you can feel the ship breaking with every creak and groan that was added in post. Those sounds heighten the feeling of anxiety to the moment. Another important element of sound is music; music can completely change the emotion of a scene. One example is Jaws. Jaws has a famous motif that warns the audience that the shark is coming. It makes you tense up every time you hear it. The interesting thing about this motif though is the fact that it's not used during the third act of the movie when the shark surprises the crew. The repeated use of the music throughout the music makes its absence during the jump scare that much more surprising. Because I’ve studied this invisible element in movies, it makes me conscious of it and appreciate it a lot more when I watch things.
Audio in my opening:
In my opening I want there to be a lot of silence in the beginning, just the occasional dialogue and noises Carmen makes. When she has the disturbing encounter with the technology in her home is when I want there to be a lot of noise, so much so that it disorients her and the audience. But leading up to that moment I do want to have moments where this intentional focus on sudden sounds in the middle of silence. Like the blender going off suddenly, or mechanical locking of her door. And when it comes to music, I think it would be good to have instrumental sounds paired with actions, not a consecutive song. Like a a sharp violin when she thinks she hears something.
