My First Group Meeting:
On Monday, I met up with various peers in my class to discuss our (or our group's) project ideas with the purpose of having an opportunity to give or get advice and overall thoughts of each other's plans. Everyone was a bit hesitant to share at first, but we got around to it.
My group consisted of seven people (including me) and their names were Arantza, Lydia, JP, Carolina, Amanda, Mateo, and Eli.
What did we accomplish/learn?
Throughout the meeting, we exchanged our blogs, discussed our movie opening plots, asked each other for advice on the plots, and gave each other ideas and tips on how to get certain points across to enhance our openings, as well as sharing websites we researched that helped with our projects.
For example, since I researched how to successfully get music licenses to use freely in our openings, I shared the websites I found that helps search for available music or how to get the license for that music.
Getting Specific:
Arantza: Coming of Age genre.
She wanted her story to be about a girl who's about to go to college (during summer) but had just lost her best friend. So while she's getting ready to go to college when the time comes, she's also trying to deal with the overwhelming grief of losing her best friend. Arantza wasn't completely sure how it was going to play out, but two of her main problems were that the current weather doesn't align with the summery beach vibe she and her group wanted to go for and that she wanted to incorporate a specific prop into her opening. For the weather part, we suggested that she could use the opportunity of the weather we have now (the gloomy, rainy, cold) to film scenes of the main character currently (after her best friend passed away) and film the flashbacks with the main's best friend while she was living. That way, she could start earlier and save time but also use the ambience to represent the main's mental state going from having her best friend, to suddenly not.
Lydia: Sci-Fi/Crime
Lydia wanted her story to center around a character who comes into possession of glasses that allow him to see into the future. In his first vision, he witnesses a series of events that end up in him dying. And once he wakes up, he realizes he looked into the future. Only, Lydia didn't know how to express that he found out he was in the future and that it wasn't just a random vision or dream. So, after establishing that the death was due to foul play, we thought that there could be police officers or medics around that state "Time of death, 00:00 pm/am of MM/DD/YY." She seemed to like this idea and might use it for her opening! Some others gave her ideas like a knock at the door at the end to build tension and indicate theres more to come.
JP: Thriller (and I would say slightly drama)
JP's opening idea too a slightly dark turn, to say the least. The main character is a young man who had experience bullying, and with pent-up emotional distress, he ends up killing the one that bullied him. JP seemed like he was clear on how he wanted the story to play out, but wasn't very clear on how to portray the scene where the main murders his bully. Someone said the main could throw something at the bully's head, but we pointed out that that might be difficult to film and could make it seem like the act was an accident, though it's meant to be very intentional and angsty. Then, we suggested that he should be attacking him... off screen, if that makes sense. Let's say he's swinging or pushing the weapon towards the bully, but we only see the main's face or arm. While he does this, I suggested he should add a VO (voiceover) of the bully's words echoing through the main's head while he's committing his crime. That way, it's a little more clear to the audience the motive without using so many flashbacks, that could turn out to be repetitive.
Carolina: A mix of Crime/Mystery
Carolina was also pretty clear on the main idea of her plot. She wants her story to revolve around a woman who's seriously mentally ill and being kept in an asylum, except not as a regular patient, one being accused of murder and being kept under the asylum in a basement, in a cage. She's experiencing flashbacks but remains confused, and due to drawings on the wall and tally marks (which was a group suggestion) we know she's been there for a long time. Carolina was just very unclear on how to follow up the scene of her having flashbacks to make the story continue, and seem like it'll keep going. We talked about how asylums have different activities like lunch and outside time. She liked the outside time idea and considered to include it! Carolina does have her setting, costume, and makeup that she will use down, though.
Amanda: Coming of Age/Drama
Amanda incorporated a part of her real life/resources into her story. She wants the scene to open with her main character taking a deep breath before a Taekwondo match. As she's taking a second and closing her eyes, she sees flashbacks of her as a kid winning matches and having fun, but unfortunately ends up failing and getting hurt. The great thing about this idea is that not only does Amanda have experience in the sport and a setting to film in, but also has old photos/ videos of herself as a kid that she could use as flashbacks. She wanted some tips on how to incorporate the flashbacks, so Mateo and Arantza suggested she could use a filter or a frame that looks like a recording camera to add a sense of nostalgia into the clips.
Mateo: Crime/Drama
Mateo was heavily inspired by Italian mafia universes like The Godfather or The Sopranos. He wanted the opening to be the family discussing events that hint at exactly what crimes they have committed, off the bat letting the audience understand what kind of family we're going to be looking into. As for the advice, we talked about how in these types of movies, they usually meet up in a private room at a club or maybe at a bar. I mentioned how I don't know how he would get in a bar in the first place, as we are all underage. . . but Carolina mentioned how when the class did their music video project, someone mentioned how there's a bar in our city that let them film there, which was good to know!
Eli: Was between Comedy, Thriller, and Mystery
Though she wasn't too decided on what kind of genre she wanted to portray, Eli knew she wanted her movie to revolve around a psychiatrist/therapist who visits or gets visited by various patients that are dealing with different mental states like BPD or schizophrenia. But beyond this, Eli wasn't too sure on how to put her idea together. So, we all tuned in with some ideas. Carolina suggested that if the patients are seriously affected by their mental state, the main character should be the one visiting them at an asylum instead of them going to her. Then, some others suggested that if the patients were also main characters, they could have a mutual link, like a crime they witnessed which explains why the main character is talking or... questioning them all. I suggested that if she wanted to add mystery, each patient should have witnessed the same story, but from different perspectives that don't exactly add up. Like puzzle pieces that are supposed to make the same picture but don't have sides that lock in with each other. All in all, we all had different ideas to help her develop her own unique plot further.
Andrea: (Me!) Sci-fi - Dystopian Apocalyptic
My main idea is to open with a "fast-forward" of a world after an accident/bomb (not clear to audience) and show a woman in a lonely area that's polluted with old left behind suitcases left by people fleeing, trash, and she's walking in search of food. Then, it flashes back to the past to where it was all mostly starting, to a dystopian world, with civilians under abusive authoritarian rule. This is where it will show a family having a meal with certain details to show what kind of world they live in. (I don't want to give away too many details just yet) but I have almost everything planned out. . And they seemed to like the idea! Though, they thought that the fact that the woman at the start not being incorporated in the second half was too random, and suggested that the character in the fast-forward be the older version of a member of the family in the flash-back, to tie both scenes together. They also gave me a few ideas on different camera transitions from current to past.
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I loved the opportunity to discuss with my peers because I got a chance to hear advice from outside perspectives to better my project and also offer advice to others to help them better theirs. I also appreciated this a little further since I just recently moved schools, which I haven't mentioned until now, because it gave me a chance to socialize and get to know the minds of the people I'm working next to every other day.
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