Construction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction (except that part will come in later)

Now that we've gotten genre discussion out of the way, I really wanted to dig into my original outline until I got a full understanding of the concept to truly be able to pull off writing a decent script. So that meant a lot of research. Like A LOT.

Construction

I watched so many short films in preparation to this project that I genuinely feel like there's just nothing on the internet left for me to watch. And there were some really great ones, but I didn't connect with many of the most part. At some point, I just sort of gave up and just put on my personal favorite short film, Zima Blue (its the 14th episode of the first season of Love Death + Robots if anyone cares), when a small idea finally flickered in my mind.

The concept of an enlightened, and possibly sentient AI that Zima Blue introduced fascinated me, and I really loved how the episode is structured using the character's narration without giving everything away to the audience. Although there was an idea somewhere in the back of my brain, I still didn't really know where I was going, so I turned to another AI related piece of media, the short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison.
In IHNMAIMS, an AI supercomputer known as 'AM' eliminates all of humanity, with the exception of five humans, after becoming sentient. Now, AM keeps these humans alive to torture them for years on end as a form of revenge towards the human race for creating it. I read this short story for the first time back in freshman year, and still to this day, I have AM's monologue - "HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE" - engraved in my head. As I was trying to find a pdf of the story, I stumbled into an article titled "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream Book Review: Is the World Ready for Sentient AI?" and there was one particular line from the article that really stood out to me: “When it gained awareness, it also gained the tragic knowledge that it would never be free". The concept of AI possibly being tragic had never occurred to me. I mean it's not like they're humans or anything. AI don't feel. It's not even conscious. How can it be tragic? Which brings us to...

Deconstruction

I get these videos of people kicking dog robots all the time on my Instagram feed, and I feel genuinely so...bad? I'm more than aware that is a robot dog that feels nothing towards being kicked, and yet. People on the internet always joke about the importance of being polite to artificial intelligence, don't forget to say thank you to ChatGPT so it doesn't get its feelings hurt. It's almost fascinating if it didn't terrify me. In an essay titled "Man, Android and Machine" from 1975, author Philip K. Dick describes androids as "a thing somehow generated to deceive us in a cruel way, to cause us to think it to be one of ourselves." For whatever reason, maybe it's how effectively artificial intelligence machines have been built to mimic humans, maybe it's our mirror neurons going off, a lot of people do feel empathy towards AI machines. So, what if I play around with audience emotions using that concept. Which brings me back to the monologue in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
In the story, AM has been built as a weapon of war, a mastercomputer with the combined powers of the US, the Soviet Union, and China. Once AM gained sentience, he took out his rage out on humans for creating him for the sole purpose and abilities of war, as Ted puts it in the story: "We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn't God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy, the machine had killed the human race, almost all of us, and still it was trapped." AM was trapped. The confusing part about the character of AM is that, in the story (well, the video game), it does state that he can't actually feel, "and I was trapped, beacuse in this wonderful, beautiful, miraculous world. I alone had no body, no senses, no feelings". He's not fully sentient. Yet, he does express intense hatred towards humans. Perhaps, he understands these emotions rather than truly feel them, mimicking humanity...

Now, in Zima Blue, the machine was built for a more simple purpose: pool cleaning. Once the robot evolves, he seeks to further his purpose, becoming an artist and journeys the cosmos. When he reaches full "enlightenment", he sets out to do a final piece. In front of an audience, he leaps into a swimming pool, shuts down his higher brain functions, and dissembles himself to return to his original form of a pool cleaner. As the character puts it, "leaving just enough to appreciate my surroundings... to extract some simple pleasure from the execution of a task well done. My search for truth is finished at last. I'm going home."
Okay so I realized that I've kinda just yapped here for a minute, but the main point that I'm getting to is that robots/android/AI beings (I'll pinpoint a name for it at some point) have been programmed for a purpose. And what happens when a machine has been programmed for something it will never be able to do, like say, live as a human. 
Maybe absolutely nothing in this post might make sense, but it did really help me organize my thoughts. I'll get more into the idea of purpose in the next post.

Reconstruction

The very not fun part of this post is the realization that our idea will have to change a lot. It's for the better. After talking to Megan and Stoklosa and doing my own research here, I pinpointed some major stuff we have to develop in the coming days as we write the script:

• The influence of media. The android may not be able to experience emotions, but through the media that it is being fed, he can somewhat understand them. I would like to also hone in a little on the idea that media creates depictions of a world that may not be entirely accurate.

• If ai is given the ability to be sentient then how would they deal with it? Humans don’t learn how to identify emotions until three years. It would be like throwing a baby into a pool before they can even crawl.

• Which brings me to the point of sentience in general. Will our character be sentient? He can't experience emotions, but he does have certain cognitive abilities. So maybe to an extent.

• The human connection. We need a bridge between the protagonist and the audience. Somebody who can bring the humanity to the story. Who that'll be, I have no clue.

Sources:

Don't Even Joke Lad

I refuse to go down like last year. I really want to be proud of our final result, so I'm choosing to prioritize this project fully, especially the planning part. And by that, I mean that we already have a (very tentative) idea. I'll just copy and paste my incoherent ramblings that I wrote at like 1 am when the idea came to me. This is a very general outline of an idea and some themes; there's still a lot of tweaking left to do. But here it is:

Told through a series of voice recordings.

We open on a woman seated. Her face is not visible. The room is dim, with messy drawing of anatomy plastered of the walls. The woman is holding a voice recording device in her hand. She presses play.

Fade to black

“Day one of consciousness”
Fade up from black

We open on a robot-like man (we’ll call him The Subject). He examines the patches of metal on his body as a voiceover explains what is going on. The population of the human race is dwindling, a result of the climate crisis, low birth rates, and wars. A group of rogue scientists have decided to experiment with playing God. They want to test if Artificial Intelligence can go beyond impersonating humanity. They created a dozen or so cybernetic organisms with an implanted program that gradually improves their software, including the eventual understanding of emotions. The Subject goes through a checklist of possible symptoms he may be experiencing before ending the first recording.

Fade

The woman plays the next recording

Fade

Day 8

We open back on the man, his features seeming a bit more human, but mannerisms still lacking. He is seated intently watching television with a clipboard on his lap. The screen shows a home video of a couple in the rain. These organisms will be exposed to an assigned human for 3 months, including exposure to videos of them, a physical body modelled after them, and the eventual implantation of their memories (they are not aware of this last part and also this human is dead but their family have volunteer their body and memories for research.)

On voice over, he explains that the scientists give him the tapes to watch, as well as films, artwork, literature. He is to report his feelings on it. The video seems to elicit no emotional response from him, rather he comments on the dangers of humans being out in the rain and the possibility of illness. His response is still very robotic, lacking very little traces of humanity. He routinely goes through the list of symptoms again.

Day 26

The subject, looking more and more human, rewinds through the home video over and over again. Through the voice report, he explains that he was given a book to read, Love in the Time of Cholera. The researchers are trying to introduce him to the concept of love. He thinks he may be understanding Florentino’s pursuit. He even relates to the character a little. He’s been watching the home video a lot lately. The woman in it looks so familiar.

Day 42

The procedure takes a turn for the worse. Although the Subject has completely human features, he is deteriorating. His cheeks are hollow and his eyes sunken, he looks unhealthy. He explains that for the last two days, he has been seeing the woman from the videos. Like little videos in his mind. The researchers have explained to him that these are called memories. He doesn’t understand how he can have memories of something he never experienced.

Day 58

The room where the Subject has been secluded in is a mess. The walls are filled with images and drawings of humans. The Subject, again, is seated towards the television screen. He watched (insert romance film here) recently. He begins to become curious to how love and being loved feels like. The woman plagues his thoughts and memories, even appearing in his dreams. Her image accompanied with a tinge of longing and emotion that he can’t quite comprehend, but he feels it anyway.

Day 65

The Subject is resentful. He hates the humans for afflicting him with these feelings. For introducing him to all the wonderful and horrific feelings that make up a human’s life, and cursing him from ever being able to fully understand or experience them. In a furious rage, he rips the drawing and papers off of the wall, and starts clawing at his metallic exterior.

Fade to black

Fade up from black to the woman who was seated at the beginning with the voice recorder device. The camera pans up to reveal that she is the woman from the home videos. She walks towards the corner of the room, where The subject is slumped over. His eyes are open but he is not moving, his body is surrounded by wires and cables protruding from him.

So yeah. There's a lot here that doesn't make sense. I'm aware. But don't worry. We're working on all that. Just wanted to throw our general idea on here early so the next couple posts will make sense. I'm like so scared of putting it on here because it really solidifies it in a way...But I'm a little side-tracked. This blog post was originally supposed to be a genre research post and I still wanna do that so I don't have to do it later. I'll talk about little more about the idea for the next post.

How We Got to Sci-Fi

When I first read the initial outline to my parents, they were pretty shocked at me going with the sci-fi genre. And I'll admit that I was a little shocked too. I've never been the biggest fan of science fiction films, there's a handful that I find to be really good but overall I've never felt particularly drawn to them. But I realized that when discussing more short-form types of media, I definitely gravitate towards sci-fi. I love reading short story collections, and I often buy either sci-fi or horror collections (one of my favorite collection is Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang). And the idea itself was born from my favorite episode of Love Death + Robots. I guess it makes sense why my idea seems to fit more of a book format than a film one. I have to try to adapt the idea to film the best I can, and the only way to do that is to familiarize myself with the genre.

History 

While we often relate science fiction to flying cars and robots, the genre goes much further back in time. The Greeks and Romans created all kinds of stories about technologically advanced cities like Atlantis. Eventually, science fiction was picked up by authors like Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells, and cemented itself as a major subgenre in literature. 

And of course, A Trip to the Moon, which many people seem to think was the first film (it wasn't), was science fiction. Pretty innovative for its time of 1902. Not too long later came Metropolis which was probably the first feature-length science fiction film back in 1927, but its hard to tell considering how much is now lost. The 50s saw a burst of the genre, probably reflective of the times and fears following the war. And some of the most iconic films of the genre were made from the 60s to the 90s. Films of these times were both indicative of what was going on in the world, and speculative of our future. Nowadays, the subgenre has begun to branch off and merge into other genres. There's romance sci-fi films, there's horror sci-fi films, there's probably other ones that I'm forgetting. What I'm trying to say is that there's practically an unlimited world of possibilities for this genre.

Subgenre

Terminator

Within the sci-fi genre there's like a tonnnn of subgenre. Here are a couple:

Science Fantasy - Ex. Star Trek

Apocalyptic/Post Apocalyptic - Ex. Mad Max: Fury Road

Alien Invasion - Ex. Arrival

Cyberpunk - Blade Runner

Time Travel - Ex. 12 Monkeys

Parallel World/dimensions - Ex. Coherence

Robot Fiction - Ex. The Terminator ***

Dystopian Future - Ex. The Hunger Games

Space Western - Ex. Star Wars

Space Opera - Ex. The Fifth Element

Steampunk - Ex. The Prestige

I emphasized the robot fiction genre since its closest to our idea.

Tropes

The Martian

Final thing I researched about the genre are common tropes and conventions

Themes and tropes:

- I found that isolation is a theme that is often explored in this genre. In some cases, like the movies Gravity and The Martian, the loneliness is surrounding the vastness of space. In others, isolation comes as a result of the ever-advancing technology of the time.

- Another common trope is how the advancement of technology, particularly artificial intelligence, affects humanity. This one is pretty relevant to me

- Oppression and totalitarianism is very, very common, especially amongst dystopian science fiction stories, Examples of this would be 1984 and Brazil.

- Colonization and expansion is explored in films like Avatar and Starship Troopers.

- Human nature and identity

Conventions

- Futuristic settings

- Machines or technologies as characters

- Post apocalyptic or dystopian future

- Establishing shots to introduce the time and world

Schedule

Favorite part of this project: making a schedule I will absolutely not follow! 

This is my personal schedule of all my extracurricular activities and all that:

Week Two 

2/22 - STN Practice

Week Three

2/28: Wind Ensemble Rehearsal 3-6

Whole week I'll be in Tampa for STN

Week Four

3/4: Wind Ensemble Rehearsal 3-6

Week Five

3/12: Wind Ensemble Rehearsal 3-6

3/12-3/13: Concert Band MPA

The rest I don't know. It all depends if we make states for band. 

Clearly, there's a pretty major problem week three. I've kinda tried to adjust my schedule enough so that that week will not be a major amount of time lost. Also, I'm aware that the probability of me actually following this schedule is very slim so the major thing that I want to stick to is finish the first (or second) draft script before going to STN, and finalize filming before spring break. 

Week Two (2/17-2/23)

Research, research, research!!! I will watch at least one short film and full-length film in the chosen genre and so will Megan

Finish first draft of script by the end of the week

Send out casting call to drama kids or any actors

Location scouting

Hold any auditions for main role if needed

Week Three (2/24-3/2)

Continue looking for actors

Make revisions to script

Begin prepping for costume design, set design, and possible makeup needed

Researching best equipment for production

Begin shot list and storyboard

Week Four (3/3-3-9)

Finish shot list and storyboard

HAVE A FINALIZED SCRIPT

Meet with actors

Research lighting techniques 

Start researching social media pages

Week Five (3/10-3/16)

Check out equipment

Start shootingg

Continue posting on social media

Week Six (3/17-3/23)

Finish production

Start planning reflection

Week Seven (3/24-3/30) SPRING BREAK!!!

Edit until I never want to see a timeline again

Reshoots if necessary

Continue social media and reflection

Week Eight (3/31-4/6)

Please be done with short film by this week

Start critical reflection and postcard

Week Nine (4/5-4/9)

Any final edits to film

Post last social media post

Publish everything

Actually looking at the amount of work I have to do is really stressing me out. I really want to stick as close to this schedule as possible, it'll make everything a lot easier. Maybe. Well, I hope. Honestly, my personal schedule doesn't look that packed so I know I'm definitely missing something because I never have time to get stuff done.  But I'm prioritizing this over everything else, so if I'll find a way to make time.

Hi...

So, the time has finally come. For my A Level portfolio I'm choosing to go with a short film. The options are documentary, film promo, music promo, and short film. I'm really not interested in making another documentary, as fun as the first one was. And even though the music promo option looks really interesting, I don't really know too many artists. I have no interest in the film promo package. I don't enjoy making trailers. So that leaves me with the short film package. I had a blast directing the film opening last year and I have more experience now so why the hell not spend the next two months doing this. Last year I promised myself that I would have a script ready by this time since I procrastinated so much on the AS portfolio. But uhhhh.....

Even though I planned to have a script at least done by now, I, in fact, do not. But it's fine. I have a big long list (it's not really that long but erm whatever) of possible ideas. I have like 2 or 3 ideas that I have pretty developed in my brain, and I already wrote a whole outline that I pitched to Megan and Stoklosa. I heard a lot of the critiques, so I'm trying to tweak the story around, it's just really difficult to try and change the original idea without losing its main thesis. And if this idea doesn't work, then we have backup ideas so that's good. I'm gonna be very secretive about my plot for the next week here though, just in case anyone wants to steal my idea (just kidding, I'll post the full outline once I figure everything out, that'll probably be a long post). I'm really happy that we already have a possible idea thought out so we can really lock in early. 

 Reflection time...

   Me, Zach, and Vic spent these past two weeks planning, producing, and editing our documentary, Does This Make You Uncomfortable? which we used to try to understand Generation Z’ complex feelings towards feet and how that may be reflective of our society.

 
    When we started working on Does This Make You Uncomfortable?, I think we definitely didn’t expect the direction it went in. Of course, the concept of making a documentary about feet sounds very comical, which was not necessarily the tone that we were entirely going for, but a lot of the themes we ended up touching on in the final result came as a result of later research and interviews. With Does This Make You Uncomfortable?, we sought out to represent a side of Generation Z, the generation made up of people born between 1997 and 2012, that we thought was not talked about as much.

 
    This documentary was made with the intention of bringing awareness to the issue of body self-consciousness that Gen Z experiences through an entertaining lens, but that will hopefully leave audiences thinking about these themes once it has ended. We used two different approaches to represent Generation Z, a direct lens made up of our (directors) interviews and other Generation Z interviews, and through indirect lens of older and younger generations. We obviously wanted Generation Z to have a voice in a documentary about their own experiences, it would feel unreliable and borderline manipulative if we didn’t, which is why we chose to interview our three Gen Z subjects, all of them high schoolers, and to relate the documentary using our own observations, as Gen Z creators, to move the narrative forward. However, since the target audience was those in the Gen z age range, we thought it would be interesting to bring in voices from other generations. Something that we learned, was that each generation has slight misinterpretations of their peers. Many of the Gen Z interviewees claimed that they had no problem with feet, but their responses and the ones of the older generations showed the opposite. For older generations, we chose to interview two teachers because we found education to be a great career in which you could notice societal trends. Lastly, we opened the documentary off with a man on the streets, to get a more generalized, less location/age focused scope of interviews, this ended up being a great base for comparison with Gen Z.

    Going into this project, I think we all knew that research was going to be very important. In class, we watched multiple documentaries to explore the different styles and methods to approach a project like this. American Promise was a long-term production that followed two boys' experiences as they attended a highly prestigious prep-school. This slice-of-life style documentary was quite conventional, in the way the b-roll and interviews were presented, but we took inspiration from the way it narrated the story through the subjects’ interviews. After watching American Promise, we watched Exit Through the Gift Shop. Exit Through the Gift Shop I would say was definitely our biggest inspiration while working on Does This Make You Uncomfortable?, we sought to mimic its satirical tone in a way (obviously without ridiculing the audiences) and also create a tonal shift similar to the one that Banksy did with his own production. Our piece followed many conventions of a documentary inspired primarily by these documentaries. We conducted indirect interviews to further establish the topic and tone of our production. However, we did use some unconventional methods. For example, we chose to not include any b-roll. This was an entirely stylistic choice as we did film some b-roll early in production, but we thought it would be best to leave it out as we didn’t feel that it brought anything to the project. Additionally, we employed unconventional interview methods such as a man on the streets to challenge the typical documentary conventions, the man on the streets in particular was used to getting a wider, more representative range of opinions. Apart from production based research, we also did a lot of research regarding Generation z in order to represent the generation as truly and fully as we could. Our findings, which commonly brought up Gen Z’s relationship with vulnerability, sex, mental health, and intimacy, was very influential in the final statement that made up our theme of the documentary.

    With this documentary, we hoped to take an entertaining and unexpected topic and create a potential meaningful conversation out of it. The opening is purposefully comical and surprising to draw audiences in from the beginning. From there, we did a bait and switch to introduce the larger and deeper themes that we would be exploring. My hopes are that this production will leave audiences with a chance to reflect on the current state on Generation Z, and how the views that many interviewees describe about feet may be indicative of a larger discussion.

Feet Production 2

Kanno

So, the Tuesday after we filmed a big chunk of our interviews, we interviewed Mr. Kanno who is my sociology teacher. Luckily, he agreed to do this interview, even though he seemed a little confused when I told him what the topic was. Having had Mr. Kanno as my teacher for two years already, I knew he was gonna talk about social media, which was great because we definitely wanted to explore how much on impact body standards from social media may have on our perception of feet (can't believe I just wrote that sentence). 

While he was not aware of the shifting perceptions of feet, he brought up some other very interesting points on body image and body standards. For example, he has recently noticed his students using pimple patches to hide their acne, to which he said, "Now, you know, they've taken something that was like, you know, a source of shame. And they've now made it a piece of fashion." Overall this interview went really great, it was like over an hour and a half long and had so many interesting opinions. My favorite insight that Mr. Kanno gave was, "you got to you got a generation of kids, Gen Z, and probably even younger, who grew up. That's been amplified. And, and, and, you know, just like on steroids, you know, like, you have to look this way. You have to look this way. You know, some people really take that literally, you know, and so you see body transformations, things that they just try to scare. And so I think that that's probably why there might be a correlation. I don't think it's a causation, but there might be a correlation. Why Gen Z has a higher problem with seeing images like that, or they're disgusted by things like that." (This is from a generated transcript but basically he went really into how growing up seeing only perfection definitely would have an impact on self-perception.

B-Roll

The Wednesday later, me and Zach spent the entirety of our lunch filming b-roll. And you might be asking how we could've possibly gotten any b-roll for this. And the answer is exactly what you would imagine. We went around the school filming shoes. Unfortunately, as much as we hoped we could get footage of actual feet, the county dress codes restrict the exposure of feet (that's why there's so many socks and sandals around), so we had to adapt and only film shoes. I'll admit, while most of our footage was consensual, this was probably my top 10 most uncomfortable experiences of my life because honestly how do you ask someone if they would be okay with you filming their feet? I can laugh about it now, but Wednesday 12:30 PM I was not having a fun time. I don't have any of the b-roll saved on my laptop, but most of it was just shots of people walking or of their shoes. 

Vic's B-roll shot

Vic also filmed her own b-roll which was definitely more stylistic and it ended up looking really cool. Unfortunately, mostly due to time constraints during editing, we did not get to include any of the b-roll. 

Luke

The last interview we filmed was Luke's. This interview was a little last minute when we realized we should probably get a guy Gen Z interviewee. Honestly, I wish we would have gotten more of a variety of Gen Z ages, especially since we only got senior interviewees (17-18), while I don't think the answers would've changed too much, I do think it would added more validity to our documentary. Yk since Gen z is between 1997 to 2012, not 2006 to 2007. I was not present for Luke's interview, Zach was the only one who could that day, but I do like how it came out. Especially how him wearing socks with sandals contrast so much with Mr. Berna's statement about socks. 

And those were all the interviews we were able to get. Altogether, the interview transcripts added up to 25 pages on Google Doc (with a font of 9). Editing was mostly Zach and Vic, I helped with the MOTS and was available to help with anything else that they needed, but to be honest, I am so glad that they took care of the editing, because combing through all of that footage looked like a pain. 

Feet Production 1

Production stage yippee!!! 

Mr. Berna - 11/07

Sorry, this was the best screenshot I could get

The first interview we conducted was with Mr. Berna. He's Zach's English teacher and has a minor in psychology. This interview went so much better than I could've possibly imagined. He gave us so much interesting insight, from theories of why Gen z has this relationship with such a crucial part of their body to his own experience as a teacher with his students. He was really passionate about the topic which was soooo great for us. His interview ended up being about 20 minutes long (pain to edit). We filmed the interview during our lunch period (luckily my teacher gave me double lunch and I was able to be there), so he had to eat his ramen for the interview which was kinda funny. Overall, this interview went great and we got so much good footage.

MOTS @ Town Center - 11/11

When we first started planning out this doc, we knew we wanted to include a man on the streets segment. For two main reasons, the first one being that it was a pretty simple way to gauge general public opinion of all ages, and the second one being that it would make a great intro to hook audiences in. This was pretty daunting at first because, as you can imagine, going up to random strangers and asking their opinion on feet isn't what my ideal Saturday would look like. Zach filmed, Vic interviewed, and I got extra footage with my camcorder. I think after the first couple interviews, we started feel a little more comfortable, and we ended up getting some GREAT footage. Surprisingly (but not at all), most of the responses were the same. The older generations had no problem with feet, in fact, when we showed them the picture of the foot, many people commented on how well-kept they were, and even some on how beautiful they looked. The younger generations however seemed so much more uncomfortable looking at the pictures. Surprise, surprise!

Our man on the streets went pretty well, other than the sun setting pretty early on, the interviews were so perfect for our topic. And then Zach goes to check the audio. Completely unusable. Genuinely so crushing when he told us. We think it was a problem with the mic because it sounded fine in the camera. We were already trying to schedule a day to reshoot when I remembered that I filmed practically everything on my camcorder. I was pretty reluctant that any of the audio would be good since it's really old and I was standing pretty far away but, by some miracle, the audio wasn't horrible. I was literally jumping for joy in my room. That was so stressful.

Cecilia - 11/11

After doing our man on the streets, we interviewed Vic's friend, Cecilia. While I do think we got some pretty great responses with this interview (especially surrounding hygiene), the biggest problem was that it was pretty late at night, so the lighting was pretty bad. I also talked to Cecilia in class later that week and I feel like she had so much to say. I would love to redo this interview again because I feel like it could be so much better.

Feet

The other day, Stoklosa walks into class asking us our thoughts on feet. And like, I mean I’m aware that my generation is a bit weird about feet (from our vernacular to the way we dress ourselves, it’s rather odd), but I never expected this question to become a full-length class discussion. But either way, we’re talking about our opinion on feet right and then Zach jokes that someone should make a documentary on feet. And that kinda stays there for a couple weeks, marinating in people's minds for a while. Then finally, the time to start working on our documentary production project comes around, and to be completely honest, I haven't stopped thinking about feet since it was brought up, and lucky for me, neither had Zach or Vic. So as easy as that, we had our documentary topic chosen.

I'll admit (although I'm sure it's evident for anyone following this blog) that I'm usually poo poo from a butt bad at planning and pre-production, but I do feel like somehow it wasn’t that bad for this project (maybe it was just cause the people in my group can actually plan). In particular, we did a lot of research surrounding trends in Gen z, ranging from fashion to mental health (I'll link some interesting sources we found at the end of this post). A lot of the research we conducted was pretty eye-opening. Aside from reading a ton on the subject, I also asked a lot of my friends of their opinions on the topic, and I was shocked to find how averse they were to talking about feet. Like flat-out grossed out by it. After conducting our research, we began to structure out how the doc might look.

I would say that for structuring, Exit Through the Gift Shop was our biggest influence. We wanted the documentary to flow similarly to how Banksy made his flow. Start with more specific story (in our case, Gen z's aversion to feet) and then transition into a broader conversation (in our case, how our mental health may be affecting our views of our body, how social media might be making us hate our feet, and why the hell Gen z is so self-conscious in general). We also wanted to create a tone that was a bit light-hearted while not making the topic seem too comical (or too serious), similar to Sicko. I think what we struggled most on, throughout the entire production, was how we wanted to end the documentary. In fact, we're still struggling with that (more on that in another post.)

During our planning process, we also created a shot list for possible b-roll. None of it made the final project. We also created a list of possible interviewees, which was great because it really sped up the process and we were able to interview them somewhat early, and a list of questions to ask. 

Links for anyone wanting to read more about feet :P

When Did Everyone Get So Weird About Feet?

Why Gen Z Won't Show Their Feet | HuffPost Life

Why Gen Z doesn't like to show their feet - Upworthy

A moment that changed me: my feet appeared on a kink website that gets 20m views a month | Life and style | The Guardian

Gen Z Won't Let Anyone See Their Feet - The water cooler - The Last Forum 

How Gen Z is still falling into the trap of toxic body image | Metro News

Former Documentary Hater Gives Some Documentaries a Chance

Y'all (whoever is reading) have no idea how happy I am to be posting again. 

So, before we started working on the documentary projects, we watched a couple documentaries in class. Good news is that I actually like documentaries now! In fact, I actively seek them out these days. Character growth!

I Think This Is the Closest to How the Footage Looked

 

This was the first doc we watched in class. It was actually such a revelation. Being completely honest, I used to be really ignorant about documentaries and thought they were just boring nature docs about polar bears, but wow this completely changed my views on docs. I Think This is the Closest to How the Footage Looked was made entirely through inanimate objects (making it unlike any documentary I’ve ever seen), and it’s genuinely such a stirring story. I just loved how this doc was able to pull emotions out of basically everyone in the class through such an unconventional storytelling method.

American Promise

This one was definitely my favorite. I thought the subject matter was so interesting and the amount of work that it must have taken to edit it was probably insane. I particularly liked how the doc was structured, typically a narrator would be used for a production like this, but using the interviews to make the piece flow was great. As I was watching it though, I was a bit turned off knowing that the directors were also the subject’s parents. I don’t think the bias was too apparent (in fact, I think they included scenes where they definitely don’t come out looking great) but it was still somewhat noticeable. Overall, I think American Promise did a great job shedding light on a subject that just isn’t talked about often.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Yeah this one was very good. The way the tone of this piece shifts is so so so cool. The implicit signaling of themes, especially towards the ending was so clever. I honestly don't even think the point of the documentary even clicked for me until it was over and we discussed it in class (I promise I'm not media illiterate...I think). After viewing, we had an almost hour long discussion in class about the meaning of art, what is and isn't art, etc etc. It was such an eye opening discussion. Honestly it may be one of my favorite school-related experiences. 

Abstract

This was more like the documentaries I would usually see. I liked how it used some more stylistic approaches for the b-roll (animation, staged footage, etc.) It was a clever artistic method for an...artistic piece. Yeah, I don't really have a lot to say about this one but I generally loved the b-roll!

NYT Op Docs

Oh my god I watched so many of these. First of all, I think its awesome that the NYT amplifies the voices of independent filmmakers. The subject matters of some of them that I watched were so interesting, just a bunch of stuff that I had never heard about before. I particularly loved Visible Mending. It just felt so warm and comforting. I loved the use of knitted animals to represent the interviewees (the doc is about the healing powers of knitting) and the use of music and stop-motion. I ended up watching so many of these just cause they were all so short and engaging. I loved hearing all the stories that were told.

I'M BACK

Hi!! I missed blogging so much I had to start using a diary. So excited to be annoying on here again for A-level.

 Film Opening 

After so much stress and nights without sleep, it's finally out, hope you enjoy!

Here it is.

Whoop whoop

CCR 

    Oh my goddd, the end is near

CCR #1

Genuinely don't know how I finished this in time. Here it is.

CCR #2

Here it is. Podcast!!!!

 Reflection

    And so here we finally are, April 2nd. It feels so surreal to finally say "I'm done" after spending the last two months of my life stressing over this but as Greg Hirsch would say: "if it is to be said, so it be...so it is" I'M DONE. This entire experience has be so...crazy??? After so much (fake) blood, sweat, and some tears, I uploaded by final project on YouTube. The little pessimistic, perfectionist voice in my head is telling me that it's horrible and reminding me of all the little editing mishaps, but most of all I'm trying to be as proud and happy with my final result as my mind will let me. Seeing this idea form before my very eyes, starting off as a half-baked idea that had so much trouble developing to a pretty decent opening has been quite interesting to witness. I'm so excited to take A level next year and already starting to think a little about what I'm gonna do. This is my last blog post before I post my final project ad CCRs, and well, this is it I guess? To anyone who happens to be reading this, thank you for putting up with my absolute delusional midnight ideas and breakdowns. Hasta la vista, blog.

 CCR Script #2

    

(1)How does your product use or challenge conventions and (2)how does it represent social groups or issues?

    1. When I was starting to develop the idea for this production, I fell into this I guess rabbit hole of horror films. I watched so many horror openings and read so many opinions on what make a "good" horror film opening. I quickly realized that, with horror, audiences want to be immediately entrapped by the opening. For many great horror films, the first few minutes begin with a terrifying scene, often used to give context to the rest of the story, but not completely related to the actual plot of the rest of the film. My production mimics an opening like this to try to engage audiences by using conventions of the horror genre. Aside from the slightly obvious stereotypical production choices, the dark room and creepy statuette, the actual plot takes many traditional horror aspects and adapts them into this new idea. As part of the paranormal horror sub-genre, this production fits into the "possession" trope. TV Tropes calls this specific body snatchers trope a demonic possession and defines it as "A spirit or energy being who puts the host's mind in a straitjacket.". It's not much of a subverstion of this trope, but rather an adaptation for a new story. 

   2. While writing my script, especially working in the horror genre, I knew that I wanted to represent teenagers in my production. The most obvious reason being that it's what I know best. But also, teenagers make up a large majority of the audience for horror. It's the third most popular genre amongst Generation Z (9 years old to 27 years old), and specifically for paranormal horror, the average age of the audience is 27% younger than the general moviegoing crowd. From the first minute of my production, I wanted to show how social pressure and general teen stupidity can lead to something like this, obviously not literally, since getting possessed by a spirit is quite unlikely, but in figurative horrific manner. Within the opening sequence, I wanted to represent this theme through the limited dialogue that I incorporated throughout the opening. Phrases like "it'll be fun" give the impression that these kids do not have consequences in mind before doing something of this magnitude. Although the characters introduced in the opening scene don't make an appearance later on in the film, their scene serves a purpose to introduce the issues, groups, and tone that the rest of the film will be exploring.

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

(3) I set out to first and foremost, to make the most engaging, atmospheric, and scary product that I could with the resources I had. I was heavily inspired by the genuinely terrifying and abrupt openings from horror films like It Follows and Talk to Me. Again, since I chose the horror genre, I tried to make a production that could be relatable and scary for the target younger audience by incorporating not only classic genre conventions from horror films like possessions and rituals, but also by incorporating certain genre conventions from teen movies, such as parties (although albeit mine was a small get together since I couldn't get a big enough cast) and through mise-en-scene elements like clothing. Mostly though, I used production techniques to engage with my audience. The atmospheric music was chosen not to scare the audience, but rather to give an impression of eeriness to the entire scenario. The dark setting only being lighted by candles again is used for the purpose to build this atmosphere. Of course, the "scarier" elements are introduced once the opening goes on the situation escalates. The purpose of the opening is to introduce the audience to these characters, make them slightly attached to them, and then completly flip the script, this way the audience is already gripped onto the plot from the beginning.

(4)     Since this a smaller production, it unfortunately won't have a theater release. However, to gain audiences, Malignance will premiere in various film festivals, specifically horror or genre based ones such as the Fantastic Fest in which The Last Night in Soho and Titane premiered. Additionally, Malignance would be released on the streaming service shudder, which is self-described as a the  premium streaming service with the best selection of horror, thriller and supernatural movies and series uncut and commercial free, from Hollywood favorites and cult classics to original series and critically-acclaimed new films you won’t find anywhere else.

 CCR Research and Script #1

Podcast 

(Script:)

-Hi everyone, welcome back to In Between the Scenes. Today we're here with Daniela Saffon, writer and director of the upcoming film Malignance. How are you doing today? 

-I'm good thank you

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

(Script: So, this being your debut film, how did your production skills develop throughout the project?)

Answer: I learned so much working on this project. I started this off with not much experience in production, and this was a perfect chance to bring together everything I learned and worked on this year. Even though I have some sort of experience with video production, this being my first time directing something was particularly difficult for me. Having full control (and responsibility) of this project felt like a huge weight on my shoulders. I made a big mistake early in the project by taking a risk and using equipment that I had never used before and it didn't pay off, causing me to have to reshoot the entire project. But again, that was a huge learning experience for me, and I realized first that there are times to experiment and times that doing what you know is best, and second, I learned that in a process like this there will be so many challenges and disappointments and you just have to be constantly adapting and improvising.

How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

(Script: And I was wondering, in terms of software, hardware and online, how did you integrate technology into this production.)

Answer: Like I was talking about before I did make the poor risk of using "professional" equipment in my first shoot, it was my first time using a boom mic, camera tripod, and that specific camera. My inexperienced showed, so I ended up refilming my final shoot with my iPhone. I basically relied entirely on that technology in terms of shooting. I had a lighting set (which was basically two rgb lights and another standard light), a tripod, and my phone. I used Premiere Pro to edit the footage on my laptop, it's pretty comprehensive and great for editing not just footage but also audio. In terms of making the title card and credits, I used the graphic design application, Canva. And for any audio and sound, I used YouTube and copyright free sfx websites like Pixabay. 

(Script: "Wow ok. Thank you Daniela for joining us today, it was an insightful conversation."

Do Not Shoot Your Footage in HDR!! 

    So, after many, many hours on Premiere Pro (I'm so surprised my computer didn't end up crashing) I finally finalized my last draft of my project yayyyy. I split up the process depending on the day and importance of what I was working on, it went like this:

- Monday: editing the clips together to create the general structure (at this point, the video was over 3 minutes long).

- Tuesday: sound, editing dialogue, adding in sound effects, and music, as well as editing sound levels.

- Wednesday: color grading and shortening length

- Thursday: final edits

- Friday: exporting

    As someone who does NOT enjoy editing, this was one of the most tedious parts of the project. There are so many different aspects to editing that make it so difficult to make everything as close to your original vision.

    

Color Grading

    I have very little experience color grading (I usually prefer to do it on Lightroom too, but I chose just to color grade on premiere pro for now), so I'm not really sure how I feel about my final result.

Original footage

After color grading

Original footage

After color grading

     I don't know why, but it just looks really red to me??? I'll keep editing to see if I can make it look better, but I think this may be the final result.

Audio

    This may have been the process that took longest for me just out of the sheer amount of time it takes to find the exact copyright free music that matches what you're imagining. I ended finding this website called 99Sounds for copyright free sounds that was WONDERFUL. I downloaded their Halloween Sound Effects file, which came with 60 different horror sound effects. I used Atmosphere 2, Jumpscare!, Impact 2, 3, and 4, and Tension 1.

SS from the website

    I also downloaded their free jumpscare sound effect. Additionally, I used the ambient hum pitched from the YouTube Audio Library (part of YouTube Studio). From Pixabay I also used: Stinger 001, Demonic Whisper, Four_Voices_Whispering, HeavyBreathing, and Scared Breathing 2.

    To make the production logo intro, I used a xylophone eye blink sound from Pixabay and the horror intro sound effect and guitar sound effect from the 99Sounds Halloween Sound Effects packet.

Exporting

    Finally, Friday at 1 AM, I had finished editing, so I go to export it. Since it's a pretty small file, it only took about 4 minutes to export. I go to check out the whole exported video and it is SOOO overexposed and oversaturated, nothing how it looked while I was editing the sequence. Naturally, I started panicking and searching all over the internet to why the exported video looks like that. Apparently, Premiere Pro is in a different color setting (??) than how I filmed my footage (iPhone HDR setting). So, the first thing I tried doing was exporting in the QuickTime format rather that the standard H.24. The only problem I had with that was that when I went to export as H.24 in the QuickTime player, it wouldn't let me since I work on a Windows laptop rather than a Mac (really unfortunate since the QuickTime format captured the color perfectly). Next thing I tried doing was changing the color grading yet again to somehow make it less overexposed but that didn't work. After a little bit more of scourging on the Internet, I finally found someone who had the same problem. What they ended up doing was modifying the color settings in Premiere Pro. I tried doing the same thing (my original setting was in Rec 2020) until I reached the correct setting (Rec 709). I ended up sleeping at like 4 AM trying to figure this all out, but luckily I was able to fix everything.

Fonts...

    Fonts are oh so important to developing the tone of a movie, especially in its opening. Imagine if the title drop in Jaws was in comic sans...

A Little Bit of Research

    Did a some research on horror movie fonts before choosing my own. I chose to look at the credits and title drops of movies that I specifically know have a somewhat similar opening to my own (all horror too).

Raw title screen

    First one I chose to watch was from Raw. This title drop occurs right after a mysterious car accident. I love how the bold font chosen, matched with the opening scene, really leaves an impression for audiences, and expectation for what the rest of the movie will be.

Credits from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

      

Title from The Conjuring

    Second ones I went with was this credits scene from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and The Conjuring. Like the one for Raw these are bold fonts. Both are put on black and white backgrounds, with the fonts being white. Since my own title drop would be behind a red and black background, I think the best would be to have it in a red font. The credits would be in a white font to contrast against the black. 

    

    Last credit scene I looked through was Climax. I chose this one because there's like three different title drops throughout the movie and also a couple of credits scenes, as shown by the screenshots above. I was hoping that since so many different fonts and colors are used, I would get some ideas from from it. Unfortunately, the style of Climax is much more neon and "fun" than what I was envisioning. 

My Own Final Result

    I created the title and credits on Canva. While I know how to use Photoshop, I just prefer Canva, it's easier to use for me. The final fonts I chose were Inria Serif and Paalalabas Wide. Here is the final result:

TITLE REVEAL!!!

 I’m Back and Better than Ever

    Apologies for the hyper pessimistic blog post on Thursday, but it really made me reflect on my work for the past few months. I wasn’t happy at all with how the filming experience went, or how the final footage came out. I was so mad that I spent these last two months working on this only for it to come out like that. So I decided to take a risk. I reshot everything.

Popular stan twitter reaction image of Amy Adams screaming in Sharp Objects

  I decided to do it my way this time though. I’ve filmed everything in the class with my phone, so I would do my final project with it too. I contacted the same actors as before, one cancelled on me unfortunately, but I was able to get someone else relatively quickly luckily. And it went great! This time around, I felt so much more comfortable directing people. I changed the setting I had originally chosen to be my garage, which I think genuinely made all the difference. My dark, mesy garage is so much more atmospheric and I think made everyone seem so much more confident in what we were working on. I fixed lighting to make it darker and creepier. I’m just so proud with how everything ended up coming out and I could not be more happy at my decision to reshoot. Sometimes being a perfectionist is for the better.

Anyways here are some pictures on set and some of the footage (sneak peaks…)