Change of Plans

In a previous post, I mentioned that my partner and I have decided to utilize shot-reverse-shot with the messages our main character would be receiving from her phone throughout our film opening; however, after a class discussion last week, my partner and I have reconsidered the idea of having the text messages show up on screen next to Lucy when she receives them. 

The class discussion consisted of groups of 5 students coming together and explaining their advancement with their film opening project. Moreover, one of the students in my group wasn’t convinced that the use of shot-reverse-shot to show the text messages was the best way to go. Thus, she made the suggestion that my partner and I make use of text messages that appear on screen, and I told her that my partner and I had been trying to decide on that the week before. I also told her that we decided to use shot-reverse-shot just because of how much more practical it was compared with making the text messages show up on screen. However, she told me about an editing tool named “Adobe Premiere Pro” that she had used once before and that she remembers there were ways to mimic the screen of a phone of the video clip itself. She also told us about the 30-day free trial and brought up some of the same points that I mentioned before in a previous blog post on the benefits of using texts that appear on the screen. Some of these benefits include the following:

• One can see the facial expressions of the character on screen
• It is visually/artistically pleasing
• It showcases my team’s capabilities in editing

https://vimeo.com/103554797

^^More benefits can be seen in this video made by Tony Zhou^^

As a result from the group discussion I explained before, my partner and I decided on having text messages that appear on screen next to Lucy in our film opening and having the shot-reverse-shot of actually showing the phone as our “plan B” or backup plan if we have trouble with the editing required in the first option of displaying the texts. Thus, we will be doing the 30-day free trial for “Adobe Premiere Pro” and we will be playing around with the all the editing tools it has. We will update any advances or setbacks we have in a future post.

New Addition to our Schedule

The new addition to our schedule is the highlighted portion of the schedule. Again, we decided to film this video clip on a Friday because of the fact that Sawgrass mills is generally full on the weekend; therefore, we could get the best video clip, consisting of many individuals, to portray the chaotic atmosphere. The detailed explanation of what we would be doing to capture this video clip is located in the blog post titled, “Further Development for our New Broadcast”.

Storyboard for our News Broadcast

Located below is the storyboard for the news broadcast that will be included in our film opening. Here, one is able to take notice of the order in which we will be presenting the video clip of the woman running through the mall and image of the empty grocery isles. This storyboard is still up for change just in case we run into problems when editing/filming. Thus, any changes will be noted in a future post.

Designing Scene for New Broadcast (News Anchors Scene)

In order to design the scene of when the news anchors, which will be me and my partner, speak about the main conflict occurring during our film opening, we went online to find inspiration for our desired set up.

My partner and I were able to find the image above while searching for a good set up that we could realistically manage to achieve. So, we decided that the image above was the perfect inspiration for us, and basically what we are going to do is get a desk/ table to be the bottom portion of the image and find a way to replicate the background using our own logo, of course. In order to replicate the background, I have an idea that I think could work. So, the first part of this idea is designing our logo on a either Piktochart or Canva (This logo will be revealed in a later post). Then, we would set up the desk for our scene in front of a neutral colored wall, and we would essentially be utilizing a projector (which I can get from a family friend) to display our logo on the wall behind us. Thus, this would create a professional atmosphere and help me and my partner capture the look of a real news broadcast to insert in our film opening.

As for the lighting of this portion for the news broadcast, we plan on using the three point lighting technique. Specifically, we plan on using lighting as can be seen in the image below, with key lighting directly in front of the news anchors (me and my partner), fill lighting coming from the sides focusing on us, and back lighting coming from directly behind us.

Finally, my partner and I must consider the physical appearance for the news anchors. One element of this is the outfits, which must be business-like and serious. Thus, my outfit will be a black, fitted blazer with a white undershirt and straight-leg trouser pants. My outfit will also be complemented by certain accessories to contribute to the formal, elegant look. Thus, these accessories consist of the following: glasses, earrings, a necklace, a watch, and silver bracelets.

As for the makeup and hair, my partner and I plan on doing a slicked-back ponytail in each of our hair and neutral makeup (with one of us in a red lipstick) to contribute to the formal look of the news broadcast.

Further Development for News Broadcast

We already have an idea of the layout for our new broadcast in the sense of when the anchors would be speaking and when any clips/images would be presented. Thus, now we have to find a way to represent chaos through the clips/images that my partner and I would essentially be creating. So, we have settled on two ideas that we created to successfully capture the atmosphere of chaos in the video clips/images we would include in our news report.

The first idea that we came up with is a video clip consisting of what looks to be like a woman running through a crowded mall, with people that all have the same intentions as her in wanting to buy as much as she can in order to prepare for the worse. Furthermore, we would capture this description for the video clip by having one of us, me or Sophia, run through the mall with a cell phone pointed straight ahead, recording everything. Thus, by having one of us run while we film, we would be utilizing handheld camera movement, which would produce a shaky video clip, which is exactly what we are going for. Moreover, the shaky camera movement will help conceal the fact that the people in the mall were actually walking calmly and make it look like they were part of the chaos portrayed in the video clip. In addition, my partner and I have considered adding sound effects to this video clip just to add to the chaotic atmosphere. Furthermore, we are looking into screaming sound effects; however, we are not sure whether or not the screaming sound effects would make the video clip extremely chaotic because my partner and I must keep in mind that in our film opening the main character, Lucy, is not very concerned about the issue at hand. Moreover, we might just use the sounds from the actual video clip we record at the mall. Our decision on the use of sound effects in one of our video clips for our news broadcast will be noted in a later post.

For the first idea of running through the mall to capture a chaotic video clip, my partner and I plan on going to Sawgrass Mills mall in Sunrise, FL on March 15, 2019 to get this video for our news broadcast. Moreover, this new addition has been updated in our schedule.

The image above is what Sawgrass Mills looks like from the inside, so this is where we would be getting our video clip. Moreover, we plan on going to Sawgrass on March 15 (Friday) due to the fact that it will most probably be full because the weekends tend to be the days in which the greatest amount of individuals go. Thus, we could get the maximum effect in depicting a chaotic atmosphere.

The second idea we came up with consists of presenting images of our local grocery store, Publix, with empty isles where water bottles are supposed to be. Moreover, these images would actually be from when Hurricane Irma hit Florida, and they would come from my partner, who was the one who took these pictures when she went to Publix during the times in which people were preparing for Hurricane Irma. Furthermore, the images would add to the chaos occurring in the United States regarding the apocalyptic issue going on during our film opening.

The image above shows the idea we are trying to capture, of course we would use my partner’s own images that she took herself when she went to Publix during Hurricane Irma. We would also take inspiration from the headline and try to create something similar with our own special touches.

As for the order in which we will be presenting the video clip and images, we plan on inserting the video clip first and then switching back to the news anchors to explain the previous clip as well as lead in to the next image of the empty grocery isles. This layout will also be seen in a future blog post, which will include the storyboard for our news broadcast.

Our Filming/Editing Schedule

Located below is our schedule for filming and editing both for our film opening. Moreover, this schedule is still able to change depending on my and my partner's personal schedules. Any changes will be noted in a future blog post.

Our Storyboard

The two pictures above are the storyboard we have created focusing mainly on the events occurring in our film opening involving our main character, Lucy. With that being said, we still need to do the storyboard and script for the news report and we also have to make a script for the text messages seen on Lucy's iPhone screen (These two elements contributing to our film opening will be included in future posts). Furthermore, the storyboard above mainly focuses on outlining the events Lucy Thomas will go through in our opening scene.

Just to clarify, in a previous post I said that I was leaning towards the side of including text messages on screen, appearing right next to Lucy; however, me and my partner decided that it would be better to just show the actual text messages in order to capture the look of an iPhone with notifications that many of our viewers would be familiar with.