AICE Media Studies

 I wanted to do an opening related to my cat, but I thought that would be too hard to do, so I planned to do a car accident with my friends. However, those plans also fell through, and I couldn't meet up with them to film the scene, so I was forced to go back to my original ideas.  To be honest, filming my cat wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, because I don't actually need her in many scenes. The plot of the film will be a boy who eats a mysterious food and turns into a cat. With the way I plan to film it, I only need to use her at the very end, so there will be no hassle hopefully. 

 So I don't know for sure when our projects are supposed to be done, so I didn't want to make a set schedule just in case I had to change things, but I did start planning some stuff to do while I wait to get info from my teacher.  I also need to have Christopher record the voice over for the opening. Instead of having him talk to himself out loud, it would be much more realistic to have a voice over of his inner thoughts, so I'm going to make a script for that. I have to shoot the video first before I can get him to record it, because it won't all be said at the same time, so I need to know when he needs to stop, take deep breaths, etc etc.  I feel like this isn't too much work to do as long as I pace myself accordingly, plus, I'm really excited to actually start getting some work done, so I have the energy for it. 

 Before I get into my main film, I wanted to test out my skills with a preliminary film. I'm going to treat this preliminary like a main film in terms of filming and editing, but I don't want the plot to be too serious or anything like my final film, because that wouldn't be fun. I'm going to spend the next few weeks working on the preliminary and then, once it's finished, start filming the final opening. 

 Meet my one and only cast member, Christopher Hill! He's going to be playing Miles.  Name: Miles Age: 18 Background Info: Miles is the star athlete on his track team. He's also amongst the top of his class academically. Having a lot on his plate, Miles is starting to feel the real struggle of balancing his academics, social life, and the pressure from his parents to remain the best on his team. Along with that, he has a dark secret that he's hiding from the rest of the world. Something happened to him last summer that's coming back to haunt him, and it's keeping him up at night and distracting him from his usual life. 

Ok! So everything I said in the last blog about having a car scene and building an idea around that has been scrapped! I've been doing some more soul searching these past few days, and I've also evaluated my situation, and came up with a new plot.  First, I can't really do a car scene because my mom is always using her car for work and my friends live too far away, so it would be a hassle for them to drive to my house everyday to shoot. I still want to do an outside scene though, so I thought about it and decided to just use my brother. He's going to be the main star in this coming of age running film. The premise is: a young athlete who's struggling his school life, his running career, and another dark secret. The film opening will show a progression of his day and how he spirals mentally. I also want there to be sort of a jump scare type of moment at the end, to hint at a bit of mystery.  I have big hopes and plans for this film. I really like the plot I came up w

These are the results of my survey. Honestly, the answers were pretty much what I expected, but again, I didn't make the questions super descriptive or meaningful or anything, I just wanted to do a general survey so I could know my peers a little better and try to be more relatable. 

 I decided to do a survey just to get a baseline of what my peers are looking for in films. The questions are pretty general, but I was just interested in the results and how they could maybe help me.  My questions:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc0fTLseJhb58CcSrxupuAynY28oI_FAigTO2fSEAXR3XxxHQ/viewform?usp=pp_url

 After so much research, I finally started planning out my film opening. I've decided to do a coming of age film, because that is a genre that I've seen a lot and can relate to as a teenager. I want my filming to be done outdoors, so I've been trying to build a plot around that idea. So far, all I can think of is good car scene that ends up with the main character getting dropped off.  What plot can be built from that?  In most coming of age movies I've seen, scenes that take place in a car usually feature a fight between two characters while the main character looking out the window. Or, the main character and the driver are having a deep, emotional talk while, again, the main character is looking out the window.  My favorite car scene is from "Clueless," because it's funny and the high energy is something I want to emulate. I've re-watched "Clueless" over the weekend, and even though it's more comedy than I want for my film, I did take

 I also did a bit of research on representation in sub-genres of drama films. Films like comedies, historical dramas, coming of age films, etc. all have different standards that they follow to appeal to different audiences.  A drama-comedy, for example, combines what makes up a drama and a comedy. So there are elements of a realistic setting, mixed with humor, mixed with the range of emotions that you experience while watching. Movies like this usually utilize a lot of characters and display a wide range of representation.  Historical dramas are set in the past, are usually focused on one country and one race. In America, most popular historical dramas have little representation and are centered around white people, but if you go around the world, you see that each country focuses on their predominate race.  The sub-genre that I'm doing is coming of age, and this genre has shown a positive growth in representation over the years. This genre is more focused towards youth, and evolve

Women are a minority in film. In terms of representation, women have historically been played as the weaker characters. Most of the time, they're there to be eye candy or to hang off the male lead's arm. If not, they are helpless creatures who can't protect themselves and must be saved by the male hero. Even behind the scenes, there are a lot less female directors than there is male. But, these past years, there has been many strides to change this. There are movies like "Booksmart" that came out this year that have female leads who's entire plot don't revolve around falling in love. In the "Avengers" franchise, there's a female lead, Black Widow, who's getting her own movie soon. Although women in the past were mainly given insignificant, sometimes even degrading roles, things are slowly changing for the better as more people demand for gender diversity in media.  image credit: thewrap.com

Ethnic groups are gaining more representation in media. Minorities, especially African Americans, have received more roles in film in the past years. More black roles in film make a dent in the racial stereotypes that have been built for decades due to racism. And not just supporting roles, but main roles with characters who embrace their race and culture and inspire other young black kids to be proud of themselves and to strive for similar accomplishments. African Americans have mainly been displayed as the "thugs" or the "black best friend" or the character who usually dies first, but things have slowly been changing for the better, and directors have been called out for their lack of diversity in casting.  image credits: vulture.com

Before I made a survey for my film, I researched representation in media. Equal representation is important because it breaks negative stereotypes of minority groups that have been withheld for a long time. People of different cultures grow up with certain mindsets that are built on what they see in the media. Most of the time, different cultures don't connect much on a personal level, so people don't really know much about cultures outside of their own, aside from whatever stereotypes they see on TV. That's why it's vital to equally and accurately represent everyone, to lower the amount of misinformation spread, and promote diversity and acceptance of others.  It's also important because everyone, especially younger audiences, want to see people who look, act, and grew up in similar situations to them in the media. A lot of kids would feel less isolated from the people around them, or in general if they knew that there are other people in the world like them. It pr