Group Meeting #1

     The internet went out at my school today so obviously it was a very difficult day for all of us, the horror ! Haha anyways, because we were unable to use the computers to work on our projects in class individually, we had a group meeting, socratic seminar style, in which we shared our ideas for our portfolio project as well as our trials and tribulations so that we could get feedback and advice from our classmates and instructor. I was nervous to share my idea in front of my peers as I had come up with it the day before and the only person I had shared it with was my mom and she’s almost required to support my ideas. I was the last to speak during today’s meeting which was extra pressure since everyone before me had such interesting ideas but, I shared my short film and it was pretty well received, my classmates liked the idea and gave me some really good input.

     A few people reminded me of stories that I could use as inspiration such as the cutting of Solomon’s hair which is about betrayal and the Greek myth of Prometheus who was brutally punished for bringing fire to humans, this story was brought up because it has to do with negative consequences for something arguably moral which is a theme I want to touch upon in my piece. The story of Prometheus led me to remember the myth of Tantalus who killed his son and fed the flesh to the gods, Tantalus was punished in Tartarus to live eternity in a waist deep pool of water under the dangling branch of fruit tree cursed to forever have food and drink right out of reach, I think I may do something with this for instance, have my main character yearn for some other food but be forced to only eat the cake and make it exactly the same way it was the night of the murder.

     The biggest obstacles I had in my story and the questions I brought to my peers was whether or not I should show my character being tried and questioned in purgatory and/or show the murder of her boyfriend, since originally I had just imagined her making the cake and eating it. My teacher was very concerned with how my depiction of purgatory may come off as cheesy and not read well. Her suggestion was that I turn my piece into a comedy which was difficult for me to picture since I had imagined it as a dramatic piece but, after some consideration and suggestions of how I could present it comedically I have decided to take her advice and try my hand at something funny. The idea is quite daunting to me which is ironic but comedy is so subjective I already know I’m going to have to show my work to many many people to get their opinion of whether or not it would translate well. But, as of right now my head is in a NBC’s The Good Place sort of mindset so we’ll see how this goes.

Funny How Quentin Tarantino Has Been Real Quiet Since I Dropped This Idea.

     Hello friends and Cambridge grading fiends, at the beginning of this week I met briefly with my Media Studies teacher to discuss my project and gauge where I was at; we quickly arrived to the fact that I had to decide what I wanted to do for this endeavour so that I could truly get the gears going. So, today I bring you the pitch (as promised by my week one schedule) !

     Allow me to set the scene, I was sitting in my econ class just absolutely completely immersed in the world of income taxes, when I thought of how much I wished I was watching Tik Toks. Tik Tok is a Chinese owned video sharing social media platform and I will openly admit that I am entirely addicted to it; I genuinely spend an unhealthy amount of time scrolling through these silly videos and one of my favorite genres of videos to see pop up on my feed are those in which people bake and decorate extravagant multi-layered cakes. This guilty pleasure has led to the conclusion that I too need to create my own multilevel delicacy. So, as I sat in my econ class I tried to think of how I could bake a giant cake in my short film and it somehow led me to Hell. 

(@jillsejd on Tik Tok is my favorite to watch)

     I came up with the idea of a woman who bakes a cake to kill her boyfriend. I knew I didn’t want to enable the women are psychopaths narrative that is seen in many relationship tropes in the media so I decided that the woman should have a solid motive, the boyfriend was abusive to her. From there I still didn’t think I had a full fledged story so I continued playing around with the plot. What I came up with finally was: the story of a religious woman of the biblical branches who has ended up in purgatory after death for the murder of her abusive boyfriend, as her punishment she is forced to bake and then eat by herself the cake she used to kill him for the rest of eternity.

     My teacher told us to write what we know and I will admit I have never personally been to Hell but, I did grow up very very Catholic so I think it will be interesting to dive back into the bible and its teachings to help me take inspiration for this piece. For instance, I know I want to look for stories in the bible where women have killed their husbands and I think I would name my main character after one of those women. I want to touch upon the fifth commandment (thou shall not kill) and really get into the ideologies of what should and shouldn’t be punishable based on circumstances according to the Catholic belief.

     Now that I have my plot I am so excited to get working !!

How to Write a Screenplay

     Hello and happy week two ! Today I want to further explore the nature of a short film in terms of how the screenplay is written. I imagine it’ll be one of the first steps in this creative process once I figure out my narrative, and, according to my handy schedule the screenplay should be going up sometime next week so let’s get right into the lesson.

     How to write a screenplay: as explained by my Media Studies teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa (a condensed version). The first thing I wrote about was the importance of listening and observing the world around you, in order to make a successful script the conversations have to seem plausible and natural; an individual’s way of speaking has a certain flow and it is important to try and capture and emulate that in a dialogue. As far as other tips concerning dialogue we learned about the importance of giving characters their own unique voice that remains their consistent way of speaking and sets them apart from other characters just like in real life how people have specific styles of speaking. We learned to economize our words, since a short film entails limited time to get a story across the dialogue can at times become unnecessary and lengthy if not checked.

     Screenplay production was split into four main steps:

1.) BRAINSTORMING: We were told to begin with one character or major plot point and then consider a genre and how it can be developed. The most important piece of information I took away from the brainstorming step was to “WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW,” it is a million times easier to create a strong story if it engages you and you are familiar with it

2.)OUTLINE: This step is about developing the spine of the production which includes major plot points and characters.

3.)SCREENPLAY: The third step is to write the screenplay ! In this step you should focus on developing the story through dialogue and visuals. A screenplay can be thought of in three acts.

Act One:
- 2 minutes (for a short film length)
- Establishes setting
- Develop characters
- Exposition

Act Two:
- 3 minutes
- Develop a conflict
- Have the characters react to the conflict

Act Three:
- 2 minutes
- Present a resolution
- Illustrate character evolution


4.)REVISIONS: Feedback! Feedback! Feedback!

     We learned how to format the actual script.
CENTER OF PAGE:
- Dialogue
- Character names (typed in all caps)
- Character actions: only actions that are important to the scene (typed in parenthesis)
LEFT OF PAGE:
- Scene heading: setting and time of day of scene (typed in all caps)
- Action: actions that can be seen or heard. Important sound effects should be described in all caps

     Here is a short excerpt i have written in the screenplay format as practice, enjoy.




SCHOOL - 10:50 AM

Students sit in the classroom, a BELL RINGS announcing the dismissal of class, the students get up to leave the class.

STUDENT A:
Wow what a great class! I feel so knowledgeable and educated, I can’t wait to go on with the rest of my day and share my new knowledge with my friends.

(STUDENT A drops their pen from such excitement.STUDENT B picks it up)

STUDENT B:

Hey you dropped this.

STUDENT A:

Thank you so much, it's my only one.

FIN

     Additionally the article “5 Tips for Screenwriters: How to Write a Short Film” form screencraft.org provided me with a few other pieces of advice. Including but not limited to:
- Delivering visuals in the most dynamic, interesting, and important way for your given genre.
- Tell a complete story, don’t let the story feel unfinished.
- Make it more concept driven rather than plot driven to work around time restraints
- Don’t force your film to have a twist, as it could compromise the storytelling

Narrative Development Stream of Consciousness, but not really

I currently have a few ideas floating around in my head as to what I want the plot for

this short film to be. I would want for this story to be set in the past. I'm entertaining

the idea of setting it in the 70s because I think I could really play around with costume

and makeup design to match the era. I know that I want to have an extremely limited

number of characters; my goal would be one character MAYBE two but they would

most likely be dual protagonists in that case as the sources I read recommended. I

want to limit myself to one location as well. 

I am into the idea of making the story about a wedding or more specifically a bride,

there’s something about going to Goodwill to get a wedding dress that is really appealing

to me right now. If  I went with this narrative I’d probably want it to be a sort of suspense

or psychological thriller, I’d want to try working with some alternative narratives for this

idea.

I am certain that I will have to get rights to a song for this endeavour, because I know

I want music to be an important aspect and component to this piece to set the tone. I have

a few songs in mind but I’m not sure if getting the rights to an ABBA song may be too

ambitious.

I know for sure an aspect I really want to experiment with is the color pallate of

my short film and I’d want to achieve this through mise en scene, I would like

to take inspiration from Wes Anderson films and the Netflix series Sex Education. 

Scheduling Rough Draft

As of today I have approximately one month and 21 days to complete this project so I thought
I’d go ahead and develop a rough schedule to begin my process.

Date	Goals
2/18 - 3/1	Research ! Research ! Research ! By the end of this time frame have a clear idea of narrative (plot, characters, etc.)
3/2 - 3/15	Story boarding Script writing
3/16 - 3/22	Prop making  Costume designing
3/23 - 3/29	Filming
3/30 - 4/5	Editing Website development Postcard development
4/6 - 4/12	Final edits to content CCR

Anatomy of a Short Film

By definition of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences a short film is “an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits.”

I’m happy to confirm that for this year’s portfolio project I will be delving into the world of short film ! And for my first real blog post concerning this endeavour I wanted to research what exactly a short film was. I am most interested today in learning how to structure one, and in learning how to successfully develop plots as well as characters.

So let's begin. Short films can be live-action, animated, computer generated, or a combination; I feel as though I will probably stick to a live-action short film but I have no intention of limiting myself to a medium just yet. It is crucial to note that a successful short film possesses a distinct beginning, middle, and end. In addition, due to the length limitation they generally utilize few locations - one or two- and have a limited amount of characters.

A tip I found from a Jodie Foster masterclass article is to start each scene as deep into the action as possible so you can develop the story with as much efficiency as possible and don’t waste time with unnecessary backstory or moments. Another piece of advice was to pick a simple premise and give the main character an extremely specific goal and potentially a short time frame to complete it. The rest of the components of a short film such as screenplay and creating a storyboard generally follows that of a feature film just a more condensed version.

Sources:

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-short-film-step-by-step-guide#what-is-a-short-film

https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/how-to-make-short-film/