The One Where She Plans the Costumes

 

Costume Planning

    As for costumes, I have each character's wardrobe planned out. To help me figure it all out, I viewed different examples from many movies of the same genre to inspire me. I think this part is one of the most important because it's one of the details that sells the authenticity of the story. It wouldn't make sense if a person who lives in a post-apocalyptic world would wear brand new sneakers and a fresh outfit. 

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Inspiration:

•     A Quiet Place: Day One (2024):

    In this movie, the characters aren't wearing clothes especially for the disaster that happened, because they clearly weren't expecting it. What I mean to point out by saying that is the characters are seen wearing regular everyday clothes, subtly signaling to the audience that the invasion was out of the blue. Something like that would contrast the wardrobe characters have in The Hunger Games because the people in district 12 dress according to their economic situation, in preparation for the reaping, or in Katniss' case, in preparation to hunt. 

    A detail I really like about the costume is Samira's yellow cardigan, which continues to have emotional significance towards the end of the movie. 

 

•     The Last of Us (Series and Game): 

    Like the previous example, the main characters in The Last of Us wear regular clothes that they've either had since the start of the incident, or clothes they've found along the way while they traveled. One difference is that they carry a bag with supplies like weapons, food, and other necessities because they move from place to place regularly as their journey goes on. One thing they both have in common is how worn-out and dirty the clothes are. These signs of distress reflect the leading issues in both pieces. 

 

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My Costumes

    Beatrice (Present):

    To reflect the destroyed future that she is being shown in, she will be wearing worn, dirty, and torn up clothing along with a bag that is just as disheveled. She might even wear an old utility belt, knee pads, some bandages, and so on.  To achieve this, I'm planning to thrift some clothes and distress them until I get the look I want. As for the accessories, I already found the bag I want to use. 

Visual Example: The Last of Us

    August (The father, in the flashback):

        He works at a blue-collar job, possibly a mine or a factory, so he will be wearing an old, dark uniform. 

Visual Example: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

    Officer (Flashback):

    I don't have anything special in mind for the officer, just that instead of him being dressed like a regular cop with a blue uniform, I want him to have a more military-like looking outfit with badges and a hat. 

Visual Example: Random

 

    Beatrice, Maxxine, and Civilian (Flashback):

    These three characters share screentime but also similar economic situations. So, they'll be wearing simple clothes, possibly hand-me-downs or over-worn clothing. 

Visual Example: The Hunger Games & The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

  

The One With the Character Development

 

Character Development

    Though this movie opening doesn't necessarily focus on the characters presented to us, rather more their surroundings, it's still important to subtly build their personalities and how the world around them has affected them as people. 

    There are 5 characters in total. Beatrice (the main), Maxxine (her younger sister), August (the father), the officer, and the civilian. (Both being background characters. Though, I'd say there's 6 characters, since there is a character difference between current Beatrice and her in the past. 

Let's Go One by One    

    1. Beatrice (Then): 

In the flashback, Beatrice is very quiet. She carries herself in an organized manner, back straight, eating with manners, things like that. While she tries and gets her dad to consider coming home early from work to celebrate Maxxine's birthday over dinner, she immediately gets shut down and she accepts it.  Though, you can tell from her attitude that she questions the society she lives in and obviously isn't happy about it.  

    Beatrice (Now):

Beatrice's manner of carrying herself is completely different in the current day we're shown at the start. She slouches, drags her feet, kicks around the suitcases around her feet. And this isn't only because she's tired, but it's also because a part of her has given up. After all, for all we can see, she ended up alone. Acting "right" won't help her with anything, and beyond that, she's starving. Survival is the only thing that matters now. Lastly, it's also supposed to represent how she's free. In an isolated world, with few survivors left, there are no rules or rulers left to oppress her freedom now. 

    2. Maxxine:

Maxxine won't talk much, if she even says anything at all, but her body language will speak for her. She'll slightly slouch over her seat, moving the few pieces of food around on her plate, eating in very small bites. I want this to not only represent the family's poverty, but the way it has affected her. She's grown to learn how to savor small amounts of foods to feel less hungry when she's done, or at least feel like she's eating more than she really has.  

    3. August:

The father is tired and overworked. He ignores the atrocities of the outside world because there's nothing he feels he can do about it, just like most people in his situation. It's clear he cares for his daughters and wants to have enough time to spend with them, but it's hard to when you're living in a world that doesn't give you many liberties, and your only options are to pick which necessity (like food, water, electricity) you want to pay for this month with the little money you earn. 

    4. The Officer:

There's not much to the officer. He represents a small part of the brutality of the world they live in. The way his immediate response to an inconvenience is violence, the way others react to his behavior, it's meant to build the world around them.

    5. The Civilian: 

He doesn't have specific character traits, his main purpose is also to represent a part of this world, the oppressed. Who have nothing to do but give into the violence. 

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The One With the StoryBoard

 Story Board 

    To picture each scene/shot thoroughly to have an easier time filming when the day comes, I decided to sketch out some story boards to be prepared!

    I honestly didn't put too much effort into the story board, I just wanted it to envision the line of events and the shots I'm going to be taking all throughout the filming process.

    Story Board Below:

(My artistic abilities aren't displayed the best in these)

The One With the Project Idea

 

My Project Idea

        After a lot of consideration, research, and planning, I finally have the final draft of what I will do with my film opening project. 

    I'm going for a sci-fi, post-dystopian to dystopian movie. I want my project to start with the end. In that it starts with a world after war and disaster at the hands of a corrupt government/regime. Then, it flashes back to the cause of it, as in how the world in the movie got there. 

    It'll start with a young woman, dressed in old clothes worn from time and distress. She has bruises and cuts over her skin. And she walks along an isolated train station, polluted with already rummaged through suitcases as she holds an old tote bag in search for something. As she kicks around the suitcases, she approaches one and zips open a compartment that hasn't been looked through yet. In the compartment, she finds a golden locket on a necklace. After looking at the gleam of the yellow gold, she tosses it inside of the suitcase and looks further to find a can of tuna.

    She sits down and rolls the lid of the can open to take a bite. . . and the scene transitions into the second part, some years before. 

    We see the main character in the dining room with her younger sibling and parent having a meal before the day begins. As they eat over boxes covered with an old bed sheet, the main pleads that her dad get home early to celebrate her sister's birthday, and the father dismisses it as there's nothing he can do. While they talk the camera pans in on the background outside the window, on a situation between an officer and a civilian. It quickly escalates to get violent but the father gets up and closes the blinds, ignoring it. They get back to their conversation.

    As I discussed in my last blog post, I want to use different symbols to represent the state of the world in a way the audience can recognize.

My Project Inspirations

    Though the story I'm telling isn't particularly inspired by another, some of the aspects I used to identify it and my genre are. Pieces of media that inspired me were The Last of Us (game & series), The Hunger Games, A Quiet Place: Day One, and Mickey 17. 

  

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The One With Media Theories

 

Incorporating Media Theories

    A media theory that I'd like to integrate into my project is Roland Barthes' Narrative Codes, specifically the Enigma, Semantic, and Cultural code. I found these to resonate most with the idea I'm trying to get across. 

     Roland Barthes was a French philospher and social critic who believed in/ created various different narriative codes that he thought defined majority of media. 

    The enigma code is applied when a creator withholds information to leave an audience curious on why it happened or what it is. Which is followed by the action code, which is elements in media that lead the audience to wonder what comes next.

    Differently, the semantic code describes when an element in a piece of media represents more than what it literally is.

    And lastly, the cultural code refers to references outside of the piece of media that could pertain literary, social, historical, and pop culture nature. Though, cultural codes only work if the audience recognizes the references being made. 

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    I think these different codes defined by Roland Barthes link most with the project I'm doing because. . .

    The main plot point that I'm trying to get across to the audience is that the universe I want to build is one of which corrupt leaders/government and their actions towards society led to war and catastrophy.   

    To show this, I plan to show a snippet of the world of the main character, and others, after the war and then flash back to the past to show how it happened. 

    ^ I think the enigma code applies to this because while the audience might understand the surface of the situation, they won't know of the details of the why's and how's until they watch the whole movie. (Obviously.) Details like the main character wearing a mask at the start of the movie, being alone, having injuries, that will not yet be explained.

      In the beginning of my movie opening, the main character will be walking along an isolated train station, surrounded by left behind suit cases that people have left behind when they were trying to evacuate from the area. While rummaging through open suitcases, she will find a gold necklace, look at it for a bit, and toss it to the side. After rummaging further, she finds canned tuna and takes it. 

    ^I think the semantic code applies here because the denotation of this would be her tossing a necklace away and taking food. The connotation is that in this point in time, finding food is more important than anything. Things like jewelry that were valuable in the past are no longer the number one priority, which are the basic needs to survive.

    Whilst the family is conversing while they have a meal, the camera will focus on a situation brewing outside between an officer/military enforcer and a civilian. The officer will question the civilian and it will quickly grow violent. Instead of being surprised or shocked, the main character's dad will simply shut the blinds and ignore it. 

    ^I think the cultural code applies to this scenario because although it doesn't take a history major to understand the meaning behind turning a blind eye to violence by a government, I immediately thought of incorporating this because there are so many instances in the past, and even now, where violence is cast upon a society, specifically a group in a society, and people ignore it because it's not happening to them. But eventually, as Martin Niemoller stated, "Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me." 

    It's supposed to hint at the fact that the amount of ignorance, even by innocent people, is what concluded in society's faliure. Not just at the end when everything went up in smoke, but at the very beginning when it was "simply" just ignoring police brutality. 

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Media-Studies article on Barthes’ narrative codes
Media-Studies. (n.d.). Roland Barthes’ 5 narrative codes. Media-Studies.com. Retrieved February 8, 2026, from https://media-studies.com/barthes-codes/

Fiveable article on cultural codes
Fiveable Content Team. (2025, September). Cultural codes. Fiveable. Retrieved February 8, 2026, from https://fiveable.me/key-terms/media-literacy/cultural-codes

Britannica biography of Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes. (n.d.). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved February 8, 2026, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roland-Gerard-Barthes

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum article on Martin Niemöller
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the socialists…”. Retrieved February 8, 2026, from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists

The One With the Group Meeting

 

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. 

The One With the Music Permission

Music Choice for Opening

    While finalizing my official ideas for my film opening project, I knew that I needed to have a song in the background that fit the tone I'm trying to reflect in the scene. After some searching, I remembered this artist I've liked for a while who often makes music/OSTs for games, shows, and movies. (Some examples being The Book of Life and The Last of Us)  His name is Gustavo Santaolalla. 

                              

    I think it could be achievable to get permission to use one of his songs, but how do I do that? Or rather, how do I do that correctly? To know for sure, I've decided to do some research. 

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    To be able to use the song I want, I'd have to get a "Master Use License" that would allow me to use the specific song made by Santaolalla, instead of a Sync License that would only allow me to use a cover of the song. Regularly, it's recommended to surge through websites to find how to get a license through there or contact the record label that represents the artist. But interestingly enough, Santaolalla represents himself and owns Surco Records J.V. which he is the co-founder of. 

    Since he is a smaller artist/composer, it is possible to attempt to reach Santaolalla via social media or eMail and directly asking for permission to use his song. If this does not work, I will attempt to contact his record label company, Surco Records. 

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    American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. (n.d.). ACE repertory search results for “Goodbye” by Gustavo Santaolalla [Database search]. Retrieved February 1, 2026, from https://www.ascap.com/ace/#/ace/search/title/Goodbye/performer/Gustavo%20Santaolalla?at=false&searchFilter=SVW&page=1

Copyright Alliance. (n.d.). How to get permission to use a song. Retrieved February 1, 2026, from https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/how-to-get-permission-to-use-a-song/

Discogs. (n.d.). Surco Records J.V. Retrieved February 1, 2026, from https://www.discogs.com/label/42950-Surco-Records-JV

Rough Trade. (n.d.). Gustavo Santaolalla. Retrieved February 1, 2026, from https://www.roughtrade.com/en-us/artist/gustavo-santaolalla