Short Film Package

 My Short Film Package

                                             Misunderstandings

Link to short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJDc3zNI1ms

Link to website: https://misunderstandingsm.wixsite.com/website

Post Card

Misunderstandings Critical Reflection

 How do your products represent social groups or issues? Our products represent social groups or issues in a number of ways. The first group we represent is the LGBT+ community. Our film follows a girl who is in love with another girl. This main relationship represents the L and B in the LGBT+ community. These two letters represent lesbians who are girls attracted to other girls and bisexuals who are people attracted to two or more genders. Our product represents both because both have to do with girls being attracted to girls. Movies barely have lesbian or bisexual characters especially those who are the main characters. Also, when there are lesbian or bisexual characters, they are often oversexualized or given no personality. Our product does not do these things and instead gives a proper representation. A proper representation is one that is realistic and writes characters as more than their sexualities which our product does. Our product also gives representation to other groups in the LGBT+ community which are gay and bisexual men. Our product also contains two boy side characters who are in love. They do not appear much in the movie, but they do play important roles. They, like our main couple, are more than their sexualities and have their own personalities. We also represent other social groups such as Latino, Black, and Asian people. Our main characters are all apart of marginalized groups who are also barely given representation in movies. The main friend group consists of the main character who is mixed with black and white and her two friends. One of her friends is Black and her other friend is Asian. 

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’? The elements of our production worked together to create a sense of branding by working towards making our product romantic. Our product is a romance movie with comedic elements so it should contain romantic and comedic elements. To have these elements we started by defining who the love interest is in the movie. Then we worked on what is the relationship between the main couple. We decided that the main couple would start off as disliking each other and then growing to like each other. We felt this would create the sense of romance as we see their relationship grow and change from hateful to loving. We also have a side couple which adds onto the romantic feel by giving a variety of romance. Unlike the main couple this side couple is in a relationship from the beginning and is always loving. This gives two versions of romance that further the branding we want. A main important thing is dialogue. How the characters talk to each other is key in building the romantic connection between them. It is also key in separating the romantic connections from the platonic connections. There is a difference between how the main character talks with her friends versus with her love interest. There is also a difference between those she dislikes and her love interest. With her friends there is light banter and casual conversations. With those she dislikes is quick snarky remarks. With her love interest though, she is a lot more gentle and caring with her words. She is nervous compared to her confident demeaner around others. 

How do your products engage with the audience? Our product engages with audiences by relating to them and inciting happiness. Our main audience is teenagers, so our product mainly relates to them. Many teens are a part of the LGBT+ community and our movie contains multiple characters who are also a part of the community. Since there is not much representation teens will be more likely to watch our movie and enjoy it because they can finally relate to the characters. It is important to be able to see yourself in characters because it makes them more likeable and gives you a sense that your normal. Many of these teens may feel like outcasts but our movie can bring them a sense of normality. This ties into another way our product engages by inciting happiness. Our audience will feel happiness when watching our movie because it does not reject them or make them feel bad for being who they are. When they see the many loving and thriving gay relationships, they will be happy to know they can also have a relationship like that. Our movie though is not exclusive to LGBT+ teens though. Heterosexual teens can also relate because it is still a romantic relationship at the end of the day. The movie is also funny too and teens love movies that can make them life especially during these rough times having to deal with school and a pandemic. Audiences can become invested in our characters because they see themselves being represented properly and can feel happy seeing a loving relationship. 

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions? There are many conventions in the romance genre especially since it has been done many times over the course of history. Our product follows the main convention by having a couple that consists of two main characters. Our product also follows conventions by containing side couples also. In a plethora of romance movies there is a side couple that may already be established or get together during the movie. Our product contains both types of side couples. Another convention we follow that coincides with the previous one is having side characters push our lead into confessing their love. We also follow conventions by having a woman be the lead in our movie. We go against the conventions in many ways though. The main reason is that the main couple or any of the couples are heterosexual. Many romance movies only have straight couples and no LGBT+ characters. If there are any LGBT+ characters or couples they are often pushed to the side and consist of white gay men. Our movie also challenges conventions by having our cast be primarily people of color. Our cast is very diverse and the two main leads of our movie are people of color. Romance movies generally feature an all white cast and it is rare to see any people of color. If there is a person of color it is usually one or otherwise known as a “token” person of color. It is even rarer to see a lead be a person of color let alone the whole cast. 

 

Editing The Scenes We Have

     After filming our next step was to start editing. One of our group members edits the footage at home while the other gives their input over the phone. Editing went smooth except for one problem with a certain scene. This scene was the three way phone call between the three main friends. The first problem was there was not enough silent footage to play while the others talked. This wasn't too big of a problem since we had so many takes that we could take footage from. There was another problem that was bigger than the first. The problem was with how we wanted to edit the phone call. I really wanted the phone call to be edited a certain way. The way I wanted it was where all three girls would appear on screen side by side. Although, there was a problem figuring out how to do it. The editing program only allowed us to edit a two way screen. We did some research to find out how to get a three way screen and tried using a different editing program. After trying a different program I suggested an idea. If we can only do a two way screen we can just work around that. I suggested we could do this by editing a two way screen with only two of the girls from the phone call and saving that. Then inserting that footage and editing another two way screen thus adding the third girl. This way it would look like a three way screen but in reality it was just two, two way screens. This ended up working and with a little editing to the size it looked natural. Editing overall went pretty smooth and fast.

Filming Majority of Our Scenes

    This past weekend we filmed almost all of the scenes needed for our film. After many failed plans, our actors were finally free to film. As previously stated we planned to film on the past Sunday. We had one issue that almost caused our plans to crumble. One of our actors who played a key role cancelled an hour before we were supposed to film. Luckily, we happened to have a friend who could come and help out on such late notice. We filmed all at one location but in different areas. My group member came early to my house so we could film the first scene before the others arrived. This is because we wanted to use our time wisely to avoid not filming all the scenes we had planned to. The first scene is our main character waking up to her alarm. We had to do a couple of takes for this because of little mishaps such as the background being to noisy or certain things were in the shot that weren't supposed to be. The next one we filmed was a three way phone call between the three main friends. We filmed each of the friends separately and planned to edit them together. We filmed the main character first since we had just filmed the first scene which also contained only the main character. Next we filmed the two other friends doing their parts of the phone calls. Then we moved on to the next scene which was located at the sidewalk. This scene contained almost every character and has an important part which moves the plot forward. This scene was easy and fun to film because it was just simple banter between the characters. After the sidewalk scene we filmed the last scene for the day which was the pool scene. We had filmed this scene last time but we decided to refilm it because the footage was too long. We would also have to refilm it anyways since the actress who was in the previously filmed footage was not in the new footage we filmed on Sunday. This scene was also pretty easy to film and went much smoother the second time filming. We really appreciated everyone coming to help and even got snacks from a nearby 7-11 as a treat after filming. 

When We Will Film Again

       As stated in my previous blog we will not be filming during break. However, what we consider to be part of the break is technically not the whole break. The weekend before school starts is technically part of the break but we don't really consider it because we have weekends off regardless. I clarify this because we will be filming the Sunday before school starts again January 3rd. I didn't want there to be any confusion because of my last blog. There was a lot of thought when we picked this date. Many of the reasons we chose this date have been explained in my previous blog. A lot of holidays happen during this break which would cause many schedule conflicts. Parents want their kids home to celebrate with family. Also, many parents work and will be unable to provide transportation during this time. We also felt a break was needed during these hectic times. We were initially considering two options, film the weekend before break ends or the weekend after. We decided the weekend before. While a break from school was needed these are also good opportunities to get ahead in school. We thought it would be better to utilize this time towards the end of break. Also, we still have time to film but would rather get filming done sooner than later. This gives us time for editing and re-filming. There are also reasons as to why our filming date is Sunday and not Saturday. Last time showed us that Sunday works better for the majority of our actors. Many of us have plans that can pop up on Saturdays like work or family events that we don't get much prior notice about. These events don't happen a lot on Sundays so there is more certainty on the availability of our actors. Also, Saturday is very close to New Years and we wanted to give our actors a little space for celebration and relaxation. This will be my last blog of 2020 so happy New Years I hope 2021 will be a better year.

Why We Aren't Filming Over Break

    We are not filming over break. There are many reasons as to why we will not be filming. One main reason is simply because it is break. Breaks are important in life especially pertaining to school work. In order to produce our best work we need to take some time off for ourselves. School is stressful enough in normal conditions but we now have the added on stressor of being in a pandemic. We realize our mental health is important and taking a break is important. Also, this is not just any break but winter break. Many important holidays take place during this break making it difficult to plan filming in the first place. People want to spend quality time with their families and so do we. Spending time with family is important and we would not want to put our actors in the position to chose us or family. Even if our actors did want to film their parents would most likely say no. This is because their parents would probably want them to stay home and celebrate. We understand how important religion is to many and would not want to put our project in the way of people's celebrations. Also, many people's parents still work during this break. Not all adults have two weeks off like us and instead have two or three days off. This would also cause problems when planning to film. Our actors would have to gain permission to go somewhere while their parents were at work. Also, our actors do not have their own cars so they would have to find their own means of transportation. This would mean a parent would have to get off work to take them, they would have to pay for an Uber, or take a bus. We don't want to inconvenience our actors or their parents so it would just be easier to film after break or the weekend right before it ends.

Editing

            We decided to look over the footage we have so far and start editing. Since we are not at school in person and it is break we had to edit over facetime. One of our members has the actual footage and the other member gives their input over facetime. While discussing we realized that the footage was too long. The dialogue was unable to be edited down without the quality also going down. This is because the dialogue was continuous and flowed together so editing it would make it choppy. We then had to make a decision of whether or not to refilm or try our best to edit. Since we still need to film other scenes we thought it was best to just refilm. Since the reason we are re-filming is because of the dialogue running long we will also be editing our script. The scene we are re-filming and changing the dialogue for is the pool scene. We are going to try and make the dialogue shorter while still keeping it realistic and funny. The scene is important because it leads us to the Dairy Queen scene which is the climax and resolution of our film. This also caused us to think about how we will transition between scenes. For the Dairy Queen and pool scene transition we plan to have it cut straight to the next one for comedic effect. For the sidewalk scene to pool scene we have something different in mind. We plan to have the girls walk into the camera, have the screen cut to black, and then cut to the pool scene. For the phone call to pool scene we have two different ideas. One of our ideas is a fade to black and a fade into the sidewalk scene. The other is basically the same thing only with the end of the phone call still going on. This is because the two friends hang up on the main character in the middle of her sentence. We are thinking having the end go on as the screen is black would add to the comedic effect but we are still unsure.