CCR

HELLO, ALL THIS IS THE FINAL PIECE TO THE PUZZLE!

CCR

IN DEPTH REFLECTION

VIDEO: 

Oh man, oh man, oh man... the things I could say about the entire filmmaking process can go on for ages in reality. 

Script-

     I like to think of myself as a pretty okay writer when it comes to narratives, sometimes my lines of dialogue are a little formal or may not fit a character's vibe but overall I'm usually able to make a pretty good flow within discussions. Within "Growing Pains"our first draft (before Miss.Rona hit) was one of my favorite pieces of writing I have ever done for the screen. I wrote it sometime last year after my AS project was finished and wanted to prove myself as better than what I made because, in all honesty, I was way too ambitious last year with my project and it didn't turn out the way I wanted it (though it was a neat idea especially for my first time making a film). 

     My AS project failing in my eyes was mainly due to my inexperience and procrastination which Yejin and I heavily tried to avoid this time around by giving ourselves countless schedules to work off of. When we had to change the plot I was honestly heartbroken, as that story meant a lot to me coming from a poor family who had to acclimate to the real world, while also modeling the older sibling after both my older sister and brother. Yejin and I still wanted to use a similar sibling aspect, and Yejin had told me about a scene they had stuck in their head during a facetime call about a mug breaking, which immediately got a story going in my head. When regarding the story, I love it, its the best we could've done in a tight situation and it's a seemingly nice watch. For the actual script itself, I do which I changed a bit of the dialogue as it sounds a little off in some of the scenes but overall it's pretty good.

Filming/Editing-

     I'm not usually one for filming or editing, though I do prefer editing out of the two I believe I'm much better at creating stories and giving overall direction. Within our process for both of these major aspects to the film, how do I say, Yejin and I wanted to DIE. When filming we were not able to house Phillipe (Marco), or his older sister Sophie Diebold as their parents have been very cautious throughout the pandemic and didn't want to risk anyone getting sick. So our plan was to draw out every scene and have Sophie film it for us in her house and use a technique called rotoscoping, which is when you draw over a picture and place said drawing in a real environment like it apart of the surrounding world. There were some overall issues with some of the framing but Yejin and I did what we could in fixing whatever we could through animation or in post. Now we thought filming was difficult, then we started editing and knew only pain. 

     When editing any scene without Phillipe it was a breeze, making sure audio was synched and our color correction looked okay has never been a huge problem for either Yejin or I. The true pain came when editing in the animations. We both animated through Adobe photoshop, converting each video to singular frames, drawing over them, saving them all one by one as a PNG, then exporting them into EZGIF (a gif making website). Now when we put these gifs through Adobe Premiere every single one malfunctioned, leaving me to reanimating every single one through photoshop one by one. This took HOURS, and I truly wanted to scream the entire time, leaving me up to fixing our animations until FOUR AM so the next day we could just do straight editing. This was truly torture and by the end, some of them still messed up, and we couldn't do much to fix it from that point but hey! We still have some cool animations.

WEBSITE:

     Websites are cool, right? WRONG. I mean, I get it, we need to have a home for all of our media and be able to direct people on where to go. The actual construction of the website did not bother me or Yejin as we both have had experience in making one (Yejin a lot more than I). But in all honesty, I'm just not big on websites in general. I definitely know they're important and needed in life, but I'm not keen on the whole ordeal.

We included everything we thought necessary to a film website like-

• Synopsis 
• Pictures 
• Where to find

And that's pretty much it, not much to say about the website, but I'm glad it looks cool!

POSTCARD:

     From the beginning, Yejin already had a vision of what the key art should be and so did I. Because of this we were able to bang the design out pretty quickly. The key art was important because we wanted to show the most prominent factors within the film, rotoscope, Charlie and Marco, and the broken mug that carried the story. We also knew there had to be easy access to our website, the host of where people can watch our film and extras we created. To do this we made a QR code that can be scanned my phone that directs the scanner straight there.

__

All in all this project was a complete whirlwind, with the world going haywire I really needed a sense of grounding throughout it all. I'm happy to say this project, though it definitely encouraged my current madness to expand, was able to do that for me. 

This is my last high school project for media, a class that's changed my life forever. Leading me to my two most favorite teachers, my major in college, and another country. This class lead me through life with a new perspective, leading me to chase my dreams in my dream program, Emerson college's Global BFA in Film art. In a couple months, I'll be living in France pursuing what I love most, I would've never pursued my greatest achievement, not without Mrs. Marchetti, Mrs.Stoklosa, or my new life long friends I met in media. 

So for everything, thank you, I hope you enjoyed my madness, and remember to look for my name on the big screen.

DONE-ZO!

WERE FINALLY DONE- I PRESENT TO YOU "GROWING PAINS" BY YEJIN KOO AND ME, JOEY COUSIN!

VIDEO! 

(I recommend you download the video from google drive to see it in its best quality!)

WEBSITE

POSTCARD:

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Home stretch

Hello humbled evaluators, teachers, and honored guests, I'm currently writing this draft for one of my final blog posts at 2 am- not because I procrastinated it as you can see by the post date, but because I can't sleep till Yejin and have our animations finished.Yejin asked if I would be willing in helping them animate and of course, I said yes, not only because I love drawing, but it introduces me to new techniques and methods of filmmaking. Above are some of the animations I helped Yejin out with. Each is quite painstakingly long to do in all honesty, sometimes frustrating (like when you draw on the reference frame), but overall therapeutic. We had some issues in transporting these gifs into Adobe Premier as sometimes each individual frame would glitch out of recognition leaving us to manually animate each individual keyframe. But oh well, whatever it takes to make the film as best as it could be. 

Yejin also asked me if I could find us a color palette 

to use within the film and this is what I came up with!

Reasoning: This pallet shows a spectrum of colors that are often seen as nostalgic, they all fit within a "vintage" color scheme. Although our film is not vintage per se, it's a homage to what the film represents. As "Growing pains" is about reflecting on the past and either moving on, or getting stuck within. You could also look at it as Marco embodying the yellow, the most prominent within each palette as he is in Charlie's life and taking said yellow, joy and happiness, out of his life would leave them dark and seemingly unfinished The light blue, mint, and yellow bring a childlike feel to the scheme, while the brick and dark blue shades ground it, as Charlie does for Marco. When studying color psychology you can also see darker colors, more specifically brown, red, grey, and blue have a more 'mature' feel, which is why I felt they would work great not only in visual effects but in meaning for our production.

Shooting day-2 LAST DAY!

Okay, so we officially finished day two of filming! Sadly the two videos I wanted to include were too long to fit in so in the drive link you can see them here!

We didn't have a whole lot to do today but it still felt a little overwhelming, probably from staying up all night. Honestly, I'm just super anxious to formally put everything together, hoping everything will work out with the editing and rotoscoping. 

Now that we have things filmed Yejin and I can finally work on the website and work on the key art as well, productivity!

Its crunch time babeyy! But m fully confident Yejin and I will be able to finish everything in a way were both proud of (hopefully we don't have to go back and refilm anything). I'm really happy with how we adapted to everything happening with Covid-19 and turning our original story into the one we currently have.

Stay tuned...genius at work.

Shooting day-1

WE'VE STARTED!!!

So today we filmed all the birthday party scenes along with the scenes at night, now tomorrow we're only going to have to film the opening scene and the ending. The reason we had to do that was because we needed to film all of the un-broken mug scenes before the ending where its seen as broken. We ended up filming until 1 AM so Yejin just stayed the night at my house so we could edit as much as we could that as soon as possible. Throughout the process, I acted and recorded all audio as Yejin directed and filmed each scene.

Here is Yejin under my kitchen table recording the mug in Marcos's "hands".

 And here is some GRADE A acting from me...oh give me an oscar you say? Well, thank you kindly.
BUT ACTUALLY, I really do like acting though I know I do better in more emotionally intense scenes in my opinion. I've been in my schools AMT for the past three years with the last two resulting in me having a lead role (sadly this year's show was canceled because of Corona :( so no senior show for me)

This is how we filmed Marco "holding" the mug, you actually can't see it from this framing but I put a cup underneath in order make it look like it was suspended in mid-air.

OVERALL FIRST DAY FEELINGS: Tired! But motivated to continue until everything is perfect :)

The balls a-rollin

Hello Cambridge! I know as of lately I have been a little lack-luster in my documentation of what's going on with "Growing Pains" so I decided to show some more exquisite evidence of our current path. Above is a photo of Yejin and I working hard on the script deep into the night, prospering and enjoying our collaboration anyways. Below is the official storyboard, done by Yejin with my consult. 

With the shots involving Sophie's brother, we directed a system to make everything work out. Yejin and I will be in constant contact with Sophie, collaborating on how each shot is supposed to look and instruct her little brother on how he should deliver dialogue.

Overall Yejin and I are very excited to start filming within the next couple days to see our work come together!

First very rough draft

Charlie: Older sibling 

Marco: Younger sibling 

(Young Marco and Older Marco is made distinct for the actors as they will have different voices)

TITLE:

MUG LIFE

PIECING IT TOGETHER

GROWING PAINS (we are leaning more towards this one)

SCENE 1 :

Put tape over the box and carry it out of the room and downstairs and put on a stack of other boxes (FIRST COUPLE OF SHOTS) 

Charlie

There’s more boxes for you in front of the door!

Older Marco

Got it!

Walks around the house into the kitchen already filled with boxes 

Places box down with “Marcos college stuff” facing front 

Charlie opens up cabinet to an array of mugs and starts placing mugs into the “Marcos college stuff” box

Charlie then grabs a broken mug 

Graphic match of charlie's hand position to when the mug was originally given to Marco

Charlie 

A lil something for the birthday boy!

Yung Marco

Awkwardly 

Awe thanks...what is it?

Charlie

Mockingly 

Do you not have eyes? It's a mug dummie.

Yung Marco

Laughs along 

I mean I know it's a mug but… why?

Charlie

Cause spiderman is the best superhero? I thought you liked spiderman 

Yung Marco

I do, I guess, but not enough to drink out of him. I like Iron man better

Charlie

Well if you don't want it … I guess I can take it...

Yung Marco

Trying to be like Charlie

No, no, I want it, spidermans my favorite too.

Charlie

Ouch, poor Iron Man. Okay lemme take it off your hands for now.

Marco hands the mug back over to Charlie to put away into the cupboard 

Scene two

Night time-lighting change 

Graphic match of opening cupboard back up

Charlie fixes themselves a cup of liquor in the mug they gave Marco after a long shift at work

Shots of Charlie drinking then re-filling cup

Charlie’s head is down while they clumsily hold the bottle 

Over the shoulder shot of Charlie to see Marco sleepily walking into frame 

Yung Marco

Not fully awake 

What are you doing?

Charlie

Very drunk

What are YOU doing?

Yung Marco

I thought we were getting robbed, i kept hearing banging 

Charlie

Drunkenly laughing 

Never get a job in security then I guess

Yung Marco

Why are you like this?

Charlie

I'm a big boy, and this is my big boy juice. You see, when big kids get stressed we drink this and all our problems go away.

Yung Marco

But aren't I a big boy too?

Long pause

Charlie

Not enough. Go to bed, Marco.

THE NEXT DAY

Marco gets home from school and walks past the fridge to see a note left behind from Charlie

“Hey kid! I picked up an extra shift at work so i'll be home later today. There's mac and cheese in the cupboard for you to make. Love you, see you later

Ps: don't do anything I wouldn't do”

LATER THAT DAY 

Marco goes to look for the food his brother left him, and makes it. Later he looks for a juice box and cannot find it but he ends up finding Charlie's alcohol and takes it. Marco tries reaching for the cupboard to get a mug, but he can’t reach so he drags a chair over to get it. Marco tries to grab the spiderman mug and succeeds but charlie busts in as they've now come home from their shift  leaving Marco to drop the mug as they stare at each other.

Yung Marco

Pleading

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry …

Charlie

What the HELL were you thinking?

Yung Marco

Tripping over his wordz

I just wanted to be a big kid like you

Charlie stands in shock and sil e n c e

Cut to Two shot of them but they are sitting far away from each other and not facing each other

Charlie

At first sounding angry

Why would you ever want to be a big kid… 

Tonal shift to more sincere and jokingly 

that means you’ll do taxes and..other stuff

Yung Marco

What are taxes? Is that like math?

Charlie

Worse. You never answered my question

Yung Marco

I just wanted to act like a big kid so I could be like you. I want to do everything you do.

Charlie

Well...

Scoots closer to him

You’re not me. And I’m not you. Being a grown-up isn’t always fun. Sometimes I wish I could be more like you. 

Yung Marco

Well, being a kid is hard too. The times' table quizzes at school are too hard because they only give us like 30 seconds to do it and there are like a million questions.

Charlie

Hm, yeah I bet. I couldn’t do those either. But, it does get easier. There's always going to be new things that are hard but that's just what you have to go through to become a big kid. So, you think you can do that?

Yung Marco

I think so

Charlie

Okay good, now let's clean up this mess like real big kids

They pick up the pieces to the mug and glue it back together

We still have to write the final scene but here's its path for now! I'm actually pretty okay with how it's turning out now that we have everything sorted, plus this time we were able to figure out character names and possible title names unlike before.

New plot!

Okay so Yejin and I were figuring out what was going to happen with the story and Yejin had one key moment stuck in their head of having a scene surrounding a mug breaking. Since Tina always tells us to do things simply I figured that should be the main point of conflict between our subling dynamic. After this talk, I quickly came up with a very rough outline of what should happen that follows the sibling dynamic, the leaving for college, and finally the mug breaking.

Sibling starts packing 

You see college box somewhere in the frame 

Pick up kids cracked mug 

Turn around to see the scene 

Mug was given as a gift to the kid 

Sibling drink Alcohol out of the mug 

Kid finds them 

Sibling says like don’t tell mum or something like that

Late that night sibling hears banging downstairs

Siblings walks downstairs to see kid trying to get the mug

Kid trying to get mug to also drink liquor 

sibling sees them 

They drop mug 

They confront each other

They glue mug together 

High angle of siblings putting the mug in goodwill box 

Hear sibling as an adult saying the closing statement 

We really wanted to focus the story on growing up, a loss of innocence, and the fear of moving on. Since I'm the youngest in my family and Yejin is the oldest in there we were able to combine our experiences to truly gauge what would happen in this world. I'll let you know what happens with the script because sadly I don't think we'll be able to film this week :(

Scheduling...again

SCHEDULE

Monday: Rewrite script and Storyboard
Tuesday: Rewrite script and Storyboard
Wednesday: Deliberation with Sophie about shots
Thursday: Shoot
Friday: Shoot
Saturday: Edit and Reshoot if needed
Sunday: Edit

This is going to be our schedule for the next week! Things may be lengthened depending on our school workload as this week were also starting school from home but let the creativity begin!

Maya Deren you beautiful genius

Hello!

A while ago I was given the opportunity to watch Solange Noles short film at the Perez Art Museum, although before there were a few short films showed before as well.  Maya Deren's film "Meshes of the Afternoon" played and forever changed my view of film. Maya Deren was an experimental cinematographer and creator during the mid 1900's. Considering Maya Deren's techniques (written below) mainly revolving around the idea of amateur filmmaking with little budget and no commercialism interference Yejin and I will be taking on her ideals and incorporating them into our project. If you haven't seen Deren's work I highly suggest you do!

New plans

Okay okay okay, let's get this started for real this time!

Yejin and I had a group meeting with our teacher about the logistics of our existing project rather than changing the entire concept like I was thinking we were going to do.

~ TINA'S NOTES ~

(These are her words paraphrased)

- Keep the sibling dynamic, its what made your piece so special!

- Switch the storyline of older sibling reflecting back onto the younger sibling 

- Younger sibling should maybe be going to college, some sort of transition 

- Have an experimental view of the past, give reasons for refection and metaphorical interpretation 

~
After our deliberation, Yejin and I will be taking her advice and applying it to our newly formed concept of the story.

I think the reason as to why I was so hesitant to switch some of the main traits of the story and preferred to change the concept entirely was because of how attached I've become to it. This story is something I've been super protective of due to it resonating close to home in many aspects, but this interpretation I'm still happy with.

Plus in this fashion, Sophie is able to film from her house and Yejin and I from mine.

How do you... engage?

There's a couple of main goals I want to be demonstrated to the audience when watching our untitled project, and in this reflection, I've realized how certain aspects of the project represent similar ideas to whats in the movie "The Blind Side".

I reluctantly watched "The Blind Side" when it was released in theaters with my mother who dragged me to see it. At this time I was seven years old, more interested in colorful animations who spoke in an exaggerated structure with each character topped in glitter, not in the story of a kid who played football.

I walked out of the theater that day a new person, having "The Blind Side" proceed my love of Disney's "Princess and the Frog".

After viewing "The Blind Side" I walked out of the movie with a newfound appreciation not only for cinema but for people. I'm not sure how evident it's been but when I was younger I was very emo and honestly painstakingly cringy, so because of this, I fell into a mindset of "hating everyone and everything" to quote my younger self. Though the movie did not stop my 'emo-ness', it flourished a desire within myself to help everyone around me, and I never really stopped.

(this is the only picture I could find from my emo days... I really liked this shade of blue for a period of time)

In revisiting John Lee Hancock's portrayal of Michael Oher and the Tuohy family, I wanted to make audiences feel everything I felt when watching "The Blind Side". But how?

Well, there are a couple of things both "The Blind Side" and our untitled project have in common.

Both have a

- Touching story

- Impoverished upbringing

- Highlights the hidden life of many

But most importantly, they both show the true power of kindness and selflessness.

So how can we do what Hancock did?

ATTITUDE!

One of (if not the most ) important thing that needs to be integrated within our film is attitude.

Micheal Oher's character never once takes pitty upon himself, never victimizing himself for his situation, but also realizing that most of what's happened to him hasn't been in his control. In our project situations are a little different, the little sibling has never known anything above poverty as that's the life they were raised in similar to Oher. But since they're younger, they haven't realized or necessarily experienced all the negative societal implications that comes along with being below the high and even middle class. This will mainly be portrayed by our actors and in the way they embody themselves as a character, trying to make it all feel as real as possible.

In reality, this is just a post about how much I love this movie and how much it affected me and honestly brought me to volunteering so much to help others, realizing I can never judge a book by its cover...which is exactly the point in our untitled project.

Art is key!

Since this week hasn’t shown much progress in production due to the Coronavirus, I have spent some time doing more research in regards to creating the key art to be used for marketing.

Thankfully, Yejin, my partner for this project, is well versed in creating digital art so we can get really creative with what image we want to create that best represents our film and is eye catching and visually appealing.

As it is with any marketing campaign, the target audience will play an important role in how the key art will look. We are thinking a target audience between the ages of 16-23 would be good, because they may still be young enough to relate to the child perspective of the film, while also being mature enough to understand the theme of the story. (I’ll probably elaborate on this on another post in the new future)

Yejin introduced me to Behance, a sort of social media site for artists and content creators in general. We completed some research regarding the design trends of 2020. Knowing contemporary design trends, we can create as engaging of key art as possible.

Here are some of the trends we found.

In Illustration: 

• DISCREET OUTLINED FLAT ILLUSTRATIONS

In terms of trends in illustration, a certain style of illustrating has been quite popular. Using a combination of bright colors, with little to no line to create eye-catching and graphic images have been a trend. If we end up doing some kind of illustration for the key art, it would be good to do it in this sort of style.

• ULTRA BOLD COLORS

Bold colors can bring any illustration to life ! I mean, I love ultra bright colors anyway so I would love to include that aspect in our keyart. I also think it would work well with our target audience too.

• LARGE UNINTERRUPTED COLORED SPACE

In combination with some cool typography of sorts with the title of our piece and an illustrated part of our key art, we could also include an abundance of colored negative space. Maybe we could do something cool with the negative space that we do create… kind of like that face-cup illusion.

 

Yejin has already talked about making an interactive postcard… so we’ll probably be using our key art for mainly the social media and other digital marketing components (aka… the website).

Although it is a bummer we haven’t been able to get into production yet we are moving slowly... but surely. I hope nothing throws another cog into our already struggling gears.

SOURCE

https://www.behance.net/gallery/86124977/2020-Design-Trends?tracking_source=search%7Cdesign%20trends