Planning - Storyboards

 Since the beginning of the planning process, I have had a idea of what the beginning of the film opening would look like. I had a more solid idea of the shots to use, but not so much the editing, movements, and angles. I did not need to do research on storyboarding since I have prior experience from the practice projects/assignments from class.

    For the opening shot, I knew from the beginning that I wanted it to be an establishing shot. I wanted the audience to immediately get an understanding of setting and a vague idea of the time place the film/film opening will be taking place. No dialogue will be used in the opening shot and the only sound the audience will be hear will be the alarm clock. The use of asynchronous sound allows for a smoother transition and cut to the next shot, and gets rid of the possibility of awkwardness in the scene. My group and I were confused about the use of music in the film opening because of copy right, so we just decided not to use any. 

    There is a straight cut to the alarm clock sitting on a nightstand and a hand coming in from out of frame and aggressively hitting the alarm clock when the alarm clock doesn't turn off, the hand rips the cord out of the wall and throws the alarm clock. This is done all in a static shot and the only movement occuring is within the scene. The diegetic sound of the alarm clock continues until the cord is pulled. I think sound effects will be used for the sound of the cord being pulled from the wall and the alarm clock getting thrown and hitting something. The use of sound, I believe, gives the scene a comedic and light-hearted feel while also slightly introducing the personality of one of the film's characters. 

    The storyboarding has been very helpful in helping me think more in depth about the scenes and the sounds I want to use in each scene. It has also given me a way to organize my thoughts better, so I think I will have to make more of these for each shot I want to include in the film opening. I also think my group and I need to have a discussion about what each of us want to include and what ideas we have for shots, movements, angles, and sound that can help our film opening align with our subgenre better.

Planning - Prop List

    Since I now better understand the aesthetic of my film opening and the time it is set in, I need to figure out which props I want to feature in my film opening.My film opening being set in the 2000s era will make finding props slightly difficult because I want the props to be as historically accurate as possible and matches aesthetically to the characters and film opening and it is kind of hard to find items like that today.

Prop List

Alejandra's alarm clock

    In the opening scene of the film opening, Alejandra gets woken up by her alarm clock and she rips the plug out of the wall when it won't shut off when she hits it. When looking for this alarm clock, I had to do some light research on what alarm clocks looked like in the 2000s. I found that they had "Timex" digital alarm clock, sadly I was not able to find one that matched Alejandra's mcbling aesthetic so I had to settle with a plain black one from Amazon.

Alejandra's makeup bag

In another scene, Alejandra is getting ready in her bathroom and her makeup bag is shown. Sophia figured we could use my makeup bag as Alejandra's because it has a cheetah print pattern and matches to Alejandra's mcbling aesthetic. Using my makeup bag saves out group the trouble of having to buy another prop in the long list of props we have so far. 

Alejandra's blush 

    In the scene in Alejandra's bathroom, Alejandra will be applying blush when Arianna calls her. When finding a blush for Alejandra to be holding, I had to do light research what makeup brands were popular during the 2000s and were reasonably priced. I also had to find makeup that passed for being from the 2000s since some brands have changed their packaging since the 2000s. I found that the makeup brand NYX just started becoming popular and their brand is known as affordable and good-quality, so it was perfect. I found this "Sweet Cheeks" NYX blush on Amazon and I think it is perfect with reasonable pricing and 2000s-esque packaging.

Alejandra and Arianna's schoolbags 

In the scene where Arianna is standing in front of her house when calling Alejandra, the audience will see a full body shot of Arianna, showing her school bag. In the short research I did, I found that JanSport was a common backpack kids had in the 2000s. I already have a black JanSport backpack, but my only concern is if Arianna would have a black instead any other color like brown for example. I don't want to be too particular, so we will have to stick with the black. For Alejandra's backpack, I wanted it to also be a JanSport backpack that still matched her mcbling fashion. On Amazon, I found a cheetah print backpack that perfectly matches Alejandra's aesthetic.

                                

Alejandra and Arianna's phones /phone cases

    Since there will be a scene where Alejandra and Arianna will be on phone, I wanted their phone cases to match the 2000s era and their character aesthetics. Buying new phones that were available during the 2000s is way too over-the-top, so I thought at least having 2000s-esque phone cases is the most we could do. For Alejandra's phone case, I wanted to say on the animal print patterns because they are the most obvious mcbling design to me. I found a cheetah print phone case, but I felt it would be too matchy with her backpack so I chose the zebra print case instead. I'm not sure type of iPhone Gaby has and I will have to ask but if the type of phone she has isn't available I will have to look for a different case. For Arianna's phone case, I decided to use the one I currently have. My phone is of the Japanese bear named Rilakkuma and I found that Rilakkuma was popular in the 2000s and matched Arianna's aesthetic, so it is perfect. 

                                 

    There will probably be more added to this list once I discuss more in depth with my group. A more a pressing issue is figuring out how we are going to pay for the props. I'm not sure if we will be splitting the costs of if each of us will be buying a certain amount of props, but I think adding the total cost together and splitting it between the three of us is the best option. There will be some props we won't be getting until the day of production, like the Starbucks the girls get on the way to school, but that is to be figured out later. 

Sources:

Alejandra's alarm clock

Alejandra's blush

Arianna's backpack image

Alejandra's backpack

Alejandra's phone case

Arianna's phone case image

Planning - Moodboard

    I wanted to make some moodboards related to the characters in my film opening to get a deeper understanding of their personalities and spirit. Getting a deeper understanding of Alejandra's and Arianna's personalities will help me act as Arianna better and understand the interactions with Alejandra more.

Alejandra's character aesthetic

    For Alejandra, I wanted to convey her impulsivity and carelessness in the mood board. I did this by finding images of "cool girls" or girls that seem popular at school. Sophia mentioned she wanted the characters to give a mcbling aesthetic which is essentially hot pink, glitter, big sunglasses, and animal print outfits. I incorporated aspects of the film in the mood board such as the girl doing her makeup and the image of the girl driving a car with her legs up on the dashboard. I think I did a really good job of capturing what I imagine Alejandra's personality and character is.

Arianna's character aesthetic

    For Arianna, I wanted to to capture her calm and almost timid personality in the mood board. I wanted to add in some academic features (library image, record shop image, girl in purple top doing homework)  and give her almost a whimsical aspect (photo of girl in the woods) to her character. I included the image of the Starbucks frappucino because in the film opening we plan for the girls to stop at starbucks before going to school.  I think this mood board perfectly captures how I imagine Arianna's character to be and how I want to play her. 

Alejanda's wardrobe

    When thinking of Alejandra's wardrobe, I considered Sophia's idea of the characters having a mcbling outfit aesthetic. I found images that included bright colors and animal print patterns. The two grey outfits in the mood board, I felt conveyed the drama and "trashy" glamour of the mcbling aesthetic. I feel like Gaby, Alejnadra's actress, doesn't have any clothes that fit this aesthetic so we will have to figure out where to get Alejandra's wardrobe from.

Arianna's wardrobe

    For Arianna's wardrobe, I felt like the mcbling aesthetic didn't match her personality so I took a different approach. I took inspiration from Aria Montgomery from Pretty Little Liars, Elena Gilbert from The Vampire Diaries, and Bella Swan from the first Twilight film. I wanted her outfits to be less flashy than Alejandra's, reflecting their differing personalities. I wanted to make finding Arianna's wardrobe easier for the group so I deliberately looked for pieces that were similar to the clothes I already have in my closet. When my group had our first discussion about what era we wanted our film opening to be set in and  what we wanted our characters to wear, Sophia said that I already wore the clothes of a person from the 2000s, so I feel that assembling an outfit for Arianna to wear will not be hard. 

    I think Arianna's outfit will be the easiest part of the mise-en-scene for the film opening, but finding an outfit for Alejandra will be difficult. To my knowledge, neither me, Gaby, or Sophia have clothes that give a mcbling aesthetic. I will have to talk to my group and figure out how we are going to get clothes for Gaby and what clothes we have to get. I think I have a deeper understanding of my character and Gaby's character now that I made those mood boards. I feel I have a better understanding of Arianna as a character and I now know how I want to play her.

Research/Planning - Distribution Practices

Studios 

 A24 is an extremely popular studio that produces smaller budget and artistic coming of age films. Some notable films include Moonlight, Eight Grade, The Florida Project, American Honey, and Lady Bird. Many of their coming of age films earned Oscar nominations, like Moonlight winning Best Picture. Films such as Into the Wild, Call Me by Your Name, and Licorice Pizza manage to find small theatrical releases because of director's passion for filmmaking and theatrical release.

Distribution Practices

    Many films, including those in the coming of age genre, are distributed through Video on Demand and streaming services. These services include Netflix, Prime Video, and Hulu. Netflix has distributed coming of age films such as Tall Girl, Tall Girl 2, The DUFF, All The Bright Places, Moxie, All Together Now, To All The Boys I've Loved Before, Work It, and Jessica Darling's It List. Netflix and Hulu dominate the film consumption in the modern day, so coming of age films are included in the vast majority of films they distribute. 

    Student films are often distributed through Prime Video, like in the case of high school senior Calen Coates and his film Wrapped. Wrapped is a coming of age comedy that is streaming on Prime Video and is now known as the first-ever student-made film that is widely distributed on a streaming service. Studios like A24 distribute their films through their own company. They did this with the films The Florida Project and Moonlight.

Film festivals are also a common tactic of distrubting coming of age films. Coming of age films such as Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Lady Bird (2017), Eighth Grade (2018), Thoroghbreds (2017), Clerks (1994), Boyhood (2014), The Squid and the Whale (2005), and Pariah (2011) were featured at the Sundance film festival. 

    I know that I can not distribute my film opening on a streaming service or a film festival, so I will have to distribute my film opening on a social media platform like Youtube. This was done my previous students in the AICE Media Studies class and seems to be the easiest way to distribute my film opening and it doesn't cost money and gets my media to broad audience because many people use social media/YouTube.

Sources

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/coming-of-age-films/#:~:text=Moonlight%20via%20A24.,for%20filmmaking%20and%20theatrical%20release.

A24 picture

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/coming-of-age-movies-tall-girl-2

https://dailycollegian.com/2020/02/the-beauty-and-authenticity-of-a24s-coming-of-age-films/#:~:text=A24%20sets%20themselves%20apart%20with,the%20hardships%20endured%20throughout%20it.

https://gruvi.tv/post/film-distribution/#:~:text=Video%2Don%2DDemand%20(VOD,creating%20a%20global%20fan%20base.

https://www.biola.edu/blogs/biola-news/2021/student-directed-film-first-ever-student-film-be-w#:~:text=Alumnus%20Calen%20Coates%20('18),distributed%20on%20a%20streaming%20service.

https://www.gq.com/story/the-42-best-sundance-movies-definitively-ranked

https://www.sundance.org/blogs/what-to-watch-at-the-2024-sundance-film-festival-10-coming-of-age-stories/#:~:text=The%20Sundance%20Film%20Festival%20has,for%20one%20last%20summer%20together.

https://collider.com/big-girls-dont-cry-review-sundance-millennial-coming-of-age-movie/#:~:text=Coming%2Dof%2Dage%20films%20are,wealthy%20to%20make%20ends%20meet.

Sundance picture

Research/Planning - Target Audience

     The typical target audience of a coming of age teen film is teenagers, ages 12 to 18. Producers cater to this audience because the film displays topics and events they relate to as they are at the stage of their lives where they are coming into adulthood. The iconography in the coming of age subgenre is important because by using typical teenage items and belongings it establishes the age of the character. This appeals to the target audience by allowing them to relate to the characters in the film and could possibly compare themselves to the characters on screen. 

    Producers of coming of age films cater to teenagers because they enjoy watching coming of age films. Particularly female teenagers, because coming of age films usually have a romantic aspect to them for the female audience. Coming of age films contain themes the target audience will enjoy, like music or sports. The themes of a coming of age film appeal to the audience's interests and passions and make viewers want to watch the movie. 

    The protagonist of the film usually has a personality and style the audience can relate to. When I think of characters that have relatable personality and style the audience can relate to, I think of Maya and Anna from the show Pen15. They are two awkward and cringey teenage girls set in the year 2000 going through middle school. Though it is primarily about tweens and not teenagers, I still feel like their personalities represent the awkwardness and cringe-worthy experiences of youth. 

    When making this film opening, I was hoping my target audience would be teen girls, ages 12 to 18, and adults looking to reminisce on their youth and wanting to feel nostalgic. The love from adults for coming of age films comes mainly from nostalgia. No matter the time or culture the film is set in, the themes of hope, rebellion, and self-discovery are universal and relatable. Adults see parts of themselves in the characters on screen. Whether its a awkward teenager or a young adult, viewers can relate to the characters' personalities or experiences. 

    In my film opening, I want it to be the kind of film that can be enjoyed at the current age and can be looked back on when the teen girls get older and become women. I want the film to remind them of the unsurety and hopefulness of youth. I am going to do this by highlighting the contrasting personalities of Alejandra and Arianna. Alejandra's impulsivity will contrast with Arianna's anxiety and represent both sides of teenager's emotional spectrum, allowing a broader audience to be able to relate to the characters. 

Sources:

https://prezi.com/u-mzr7kqffc7/target-audience-research/

PEN15 picture

https://ayushithakkar.substack.com/p/why-were-all-secretly-obsessed-with

Project Proposal

    Hi! My name is Jocelyn Villa and my group members are Sophia Espinosa and Gabriella Offredi. For our portfolio we decided to do a film opening. It took a while, but we decided on the coming-of-age teen subgenre. We chose this subgenre because its a genre we understood and could relate too the most. The story being focused on teenage girls makes the planning process much simpler because we have first-hand experience and information about teenage girls' emotions and experiences. 

Story Elements

    I imagined that target audience of our film/film openings would be fellow teenage girls (ages 14-19) or young female adults that have already experienced teenage girlhood and want to reminisce (ages 20-35). I think that since the film/film openings is primarily focused on the teenage girlhood experience, teen girls would want to watch this movie to have relatable representation to their lives and young female adults would want to watch this film/film openings because they feel nostalgic and want to reminisce about their teen years.

    The plan for Alejandra and Arianna is for them to be in their senior year of highschool, since Alejandra will have her license and the plot of the girls skipping school ties in to the stereotype of seniors not caring about school because they are about to graduate. Arianna is going to be the more rational of the duo while Alejandra will be more impulsive with her choices and decisions. I see their dynamic almost like Ferris Bueller and Cameron Frye from Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986). Ferris is confident and impulsive while Cameron is anxious and pessimistic. The girls will have an "opposites attract" friendship, similar to their's.

Technological Elements

    Me and my groupmates have no prior experience with professional cameras, to my knowledge. Sophia has experience with her own personal projects using secon-hand cameras. My teacher will be supplying cameras to us to use for the film opening. Using a professional camera makes me a little nervous, but I think once I get the hang of it, I will be okay. I will be editing the film opening with Premier Pro, that is supplied to students for free and we used Premier Pro to edit a practice project in class so I am not as nervous about that aspect of technology. I am glad that I have never edited on any other software so learning to use Premier Pro was easy because I did not need to relearn any techniques or tools.

    I am hoping, once it is time to film, that my teacher will give us a lesson on how to use the camera and how to upload the footage from the camera to Premier Pro for editing. If she doesn't that is something I will have to research on my own. For the microphones we will use I am unsure of why kind we need to get. Sophia has friends in the TV class that have experience with cameras and microphones so she will ask them which one would be best for us to get. 

    I think I will offer myself up to buying the microphones if it comes to it, with permission from my parents. I will have to wait for what Sophia's friends say. My next planning step, I think, is creating moodboards for the scenes and the characters to get a deeper understanding of their spirit and the aesthetic for the sets we are going to use.

Sources:

Ferris and Cameron picture

Film Planning - Script

    Now that the characters have been cast, it is time to work on the first draft of the script. Me and the group already had an idea of how we wanted the film opening to start. We all agreed that the beginning of the film opening would show Alejandra (Gabriella) waking up to a loud alarm clock and she would try and fail to shut it off and resort to ripping the alarm clock out of the wall. 

    The film opening would continue with Alejandra getting ready for school and calling Arianna (Jocelyn) to let her know she is on the way to pick her up. Since we already had the plot idea and the progression of the film opening figured out, I helped figure out which camera movements, shots, and angles would look best and seem more fitting for the scene.

First Draft of Script:

    In the script, we wanted the close friendship between Alejandra and Arianna to be established immediately and made clear to the audience. So we thought that my character, Arianna, calling Alejandra "Ale" when talking to Arianna on the phone while getting ready is an easy way to make their close relationship obvious and clear to the audience. 

    We wanted the film opening to be light-hearted and a little silly. The inclusion of Alejandra's disheveled state, her ripping the alarm clock out of the wall, and Arianna saying "You're still in your pajamas aren't you?" with the reveal of Alejandra in her pajamas as she laughs embarrassedly clearly expresses the comedic aspect of the coming of age genre.

    The rest of the film opening and the scenes will be probably focused on the Alejandra and Arianna and Alejandra's car. We planned for the girls to grab some breakfast probably at a local Starbucks location and then they would drive to school. I pitched the idea that the last scene after the girls decide to skip school is a shot of the car driving away in a static shot so that the scene does not have too much finality but shows the audience that more events are going to occur after the cut.

    The next step is to gather the props needed for the scenes. This would include an alarm clock, blush, a backpack, and I am assuming the food/drinks from Starbucks would be included. We are going to have to think more on how to shoot the getting breakfast scene. I will also have to find an empty spot in my schedule to figure out when to film since we have to film inside Gaby and Sophia's house. We cannot use my actual house as Arianna's because I don't live close enough so Sophia's house will be used as Arianna's house. I also have to figure out what outfit I can wear that will encapsulate the 2000s era and the aesthetic the teen girls had at the time. 

Film Planning - Actor List

     Me and my group have decided the plot of the film opening, so now we had to figure out who will be acting as the characters. It was decided that Me and another one of my group members, Gabriella, will be acting in the film opening. My other groupmate, Sophia Espinosa, will be acting as a director and telling us what she wants from us to make the film opening best align with the subgenre and convey the spirit of our characters to the audience. She had the idea for me and Gaby to act in the film opening to make the film more authentic and make the characters more relatable to the audience. Sophia believed that having us as the actresses would make making the script easier because she knows us pretty well and she can model the characters after our personalities. She told me and Gaby that our lack of acting experience would tie in to the awkward personalities of a teenager.

Alejandra's actress - Gabriella Offredi

Arianna's actress - Jocelyn Villa

    Gabriella Offredi will be playing the role of Alejandra. I, Jocelyn Villa, will be playing the role of Arianna. The actresses being the same age as the characters helps relate the characters to the audience. I imagined that the target audience of the film/film opening will be teenage girls and young women. The characters and actresses being the same age and the characters having similar personalities to me and Gaby will make it easier for us to get into character and emulate the experience of being teenager and a teenage girl. My other groupmate, Sophia Espinosa, will be acting as a director and telling us what she wants from us to make the film opening best align with the subgenre and convey the spirit of our characters to the audience.

    Now that the actors have been cast, the next thing we have to work on is the first draft script of the film opening and figuring out the dialogue. I am wondering if we could work in some slang vocabulary from the 2000s ear into the dialogue. I figured that if the characters are teenage girls living in the 2000s, they would fully understand the language and references from that era. I discussed the idea with Sophia and we are working on finding words that we can work into the script that don't make the language feel unnatural and over-the-top.

In my next post, I will be talking about the script for the film opening!