Get Jiggy With It, It’s the 90s !

Moreeeee research ahhhh ! Today I was able to discuss with my partner, Rachel,
what I thought the content and plot of our film opening should be, I had a concept
that I presented Rachel with and she seems to be onboard with it, we’re still
deciding the specifics but as of right now we are set on a 90s summer romance film;
there will hopefully be a storyboard going up soon once we solidify our ideas. I thought
that for this blog post I would share everything I have compiled in my research about the
great 1990s.
Let me set the scene, America 1995, O.J. Simpson is on trial, gas prices are at a whopping

$1.05 per gallon, a stamp is 32 cents, The New York Times and Washington Post have
published the Unabomber's manifesto. Obviously all of this is very relevant to the time and
we may even allude to some of these events and facts in our opening to establish time, but for
this posting I’d like to focus more on the styles of the era. I L O V E 90s fashion, the colors,
the accessories, the cuts and patterns; I don’t know how else to describe it other than, visually
loud. This era was met with some different genres of looks, grunge, preppy, punk, and hip hop,
to name a few, and while each style has its own unique elements and flair, for the purposes of
this project we will probably lean more towards grunge and preppy.

I’m going to separate different aspects of style into a few different categories to make all of this
easier to navigate.

Colors and Patterns:

Because of the rise in popularity of grunge culture, by the mid 90s darker colors such as black, maroon,
indigo, brown, greys, dark green started to gain traction but there was still a good amount of yellows,
blues, pinks, greens, reds, and oranges from all of those who were not into the grunge scene. For our
film opening I’d like to incorporate bright colors for our protagonist to make her stand out and have
darker hues for any of the other characters. Some patterns that were very popular at this time were:
stripes (horizontal and vertical), flannel, animal print, and camo. I definitely see us using some flannel
pieces for another character. I’m attaching some images of pieces I already own that I’ll either be using
or drawing inspiration from.

Clothing:

Denim on denim. Denim jackets, ripped denim jeans, denim overalls with one strap unclipped
of course. Denim was definitely a staple fabric of the 90s. Other clothing items included neon
windbreakers, crop tops, and baggy track pants.

Accessories:

Accessories were a huge part of 90s fashion. Some of my personal favorites are mood
rings, bucket hats, hoop earring, Jansport backpacks, and of course Discmans and pagers.
Some of my favorite staple 90s shoes are Doc Martens and Birkenstocks

-andrea :)

Who's THAT Lady ?

Since we want our film to be character driven it is only right that we find every bit of information we can
about lead characters in coming of age films. So I’ve compiled some research on solid protagonists that
I think will aid us greatly in constructing our own protagonist.

I’ll begin this catalog with my biggest inspiration for our film, Christine “Ladybird” MacPherson, she is
tall, with pink hair, very opinionated, and unafraid of sharing those opinions, she is stubborn and extremely
driven by what she wants. And what she wants is to grow up and leave her small town in Sacramento to
attend college in New York. Honestly one of my favorite aspects of this character is the fact that she has
colored hair, it makes her stand out amongst all the other people in her “boring” town. It reminds of how
in animes the protagonist always has the craziest most ridiculous hair so that you know they are destined
for greatness. I think that we will be spending a good amount of time developing the costume, makeup,
and hair design for our protagonist so she can stand out in her own unique way.

The next character I’d like to discuss is Veronica Sawyer played by none other than Winona Ryder.
Ryder spent a good portion of the late 80s and 90s type casted as the ideal “manic pixie dream girl”
not only in “Heathers” but in countless other films as well. However, her role as Veronica Sawyer really
caught my attention because of how the character managed to make such a dark and morbid movie simultaneously
be a movie about romance and transitioning into adulthood. Veronica is smart, mature, and empathetic;
in this film she must figure out where her loyalties lie and not get herself and her boyfriend sent to prison
in the process. The color blue is heavily associated with this Veronica, having a “signature” color paired
with a character will help not only make them memorable but also imitable by fans.

The last protagonist I want to present is a little different than the the other two, Simon Spier, from

the film “Love, Simon” (2018) is well first of all, a boy, he is awkward, dramatic, passionate, and
emotional. As much as I love his character I don’t think our protagonist will be very much like

Simon, what drew me to discussing Simon is the story line he follows throughout his film. Simon
is a seventeen year old high school student struggling to accept his sexuality, throughout the film
he must go on an emotional journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance as he comes to terms
with being public about who he is after being outed by another student. I think that what Simon
stands for and the community he reaches in this film is very important in modern media and I would
love for our protagonist to be able to reach an audience like that in a similar fashion.

Finally I’m going to add this little picture that I drew of my vision of our protagonist I’m clearly

not too artistically inclined in this way but I thought it might be nice to add a visual.

A New Old-Fashioned Coming of Age

My partner, Rachel and I have decided that we want to make our film opening a retro, 90’s, summer,
romance, coming of age story. We want our film to be character driven, revolving around a strong,
relatable, female character that wants nothing more than to leave her small close minded town.

A coming of age movie is defined as, a film that focuses on the growth and development of a teenage
protagonist as they transition from childhood to adulthood; working with this genre will give us an advantage
in finding actors as well as coming up with a plot that is relatable and attainable since Rachel and I are at
the age (16/17) in which the protagonists of coming of age movies are generally in. There are quite a few
iconic tropes that are associated with this genre of film, some that I would like to include or allude to in
our film opening are: the protagonist wanting to leave their small town, identity crisis, and teenage rebellion.
Another aspect that will be important is all the audio related content, I would like for our film to be set in
or around the 90’s so having a strong soundtrack that will evoke nostalgia in an older audience will allow
the film to reach a wider target audience. The other aspect of sound that we have considered incorporating is
a voice over, that will let the audience feel a more personal connection to the protagonist, we aren’t quite sure
yet if we want this for our film opening but it is definitely something we will be discussing soon.

There are a few films (and TV shows)  that I absolutely love and are what led me to decide going down
this path of teen drama. The first one is “Heathers” (1988)  and although we probably won’t be going down
the morbid direction that this film takes, we will be drawing inspiration from the film for characterization and
setting. Another film is “LadyBird” (2017) this film is a perfect example of a recent coming of age movie that
evokes nostalgia through the concepts, setting, soundtrack, costume, and makeup design; it doesn't hurt that this
film also encompasses the ideas of teenage rebellion and wanting to leave your small town. Finally I want to
discuss a TV show, “Everything Sucks” (2018) is a Netflix show that was cancelled after just one season which
is such a bummer ! This show created such relatable characters and storylines to depict the concept of a fleeting
childhood and did it with an amazing diverse cast and period costume and makeup design. All of these pieces are
going to help us in creating our own brand new story and I cannot wait to start this journey.

-andrea :)

Marketing and Distribution in Music

Welcome back !! recently I was able to work on a project in which a partner and I created a
marketing campaign for a brand new band, in this campaign we discussed the methods of
marketing and distribution that we would employ based on research we found about the
methods used by other musicians in that genre. We learned many things in our research,
for instance how social media is geared to certain audiences and how bands use that to
their advantage and if a band wanted to reach a younger audience of 18-29 year-olds
they would want to focus of social medias such as Twitter and Instagram, but if a band
wanted to reach an older audience of say 35 and older they’d want to focus on their
presence on Facebook. In researching distribution in the music industry we found
out about the many different ways content can be distributed, from online streaming to
digital download to physical copies, we discovered which way is the most popular and
accessible, in this case online streaming.

Our campaign was composed of various marketing creations. We began by creating a logo
and a symbol that consumers would be able to associate and recognize the band by. We made
social medias- twitter and instagram- to engage with our target audience. Within our social media
we created a hashtag that fans could use to get involved with the band while also bringing exposure
to them. We also made merchandise using our bands color pallette and aesthetic, merchandise
included, hoodies, shirts, popsockets, and fanny packs. Finally we produced a music video for the
band that would capture their essence and hopefully allow them to build recognition as well as
develop their brand.

This project taught me many things that will be useful for my upcoming portfolio project.
The most prominent of these being the importance of understanding your target audience in order
to create the most successful product and also how genre can affect this and should always be taken
into consideration when creating, Beyond that I will also take into account everything I learned
about cohesive branding as well as all the knowledge I gained firsthand by filming a music video.
Attached below are some images of of our marketing products as well as a link to the complete
music video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7fSHl-1tw&feature=youtu.be

-Andrea :)