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.