Sound

Earlier in the year, my teacher had us do a project relating to sound where we had to portray a story using only sound. What I learned from this assignment was just how important the sound aspect of a production is. I know that our intro would require the perfect music in order to convey our mood and tone. The only problem is, we had no idea where to start. I wasn't emotionally attached to any song enough to seek out the rights for it. When we asked for help a fellow classmate recommended a site that contains royalty free music entitled Purple Planet. After searching through this site for what felt like hours, we found the perfect songs that we wanted to use. The songs are entitled "Cool Clicker" and "All Together" and both were found under the "fun background music" tab. The most exciting part about listening to this music was that it made the vision for the movie really start to come together in my mind. Next step: filming!!

Purple Planet Royalty Free Music. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2015, from http://www.purple-planet.com

The Actor

As we get ready to begin filming our final project, we had to make careful choices as to who we were going to cast for our main character. We knew that we wanted our character to be dorky, lovable, and somewhat relatable. Initially I thought of my tall, awkward, white friend named Jake. He perfectly embodied the character. However, I couldn't stop thinking about how our film was supposed to "challenge social conventions." I went home that day, like every other day, and sat down next to my mom as she watched a show on television called "Fresh Off the Boat." It was then that I had an epiphany (or as close to an epiphany as an 18 year old can get) and knew how we could challenge social conventions. Not only in the news but everyday at school I hear people talk about stereotypes in one form or another. "All Asians ___," or "All Jews ___," and I am getting annoyed with theses bold generalizations. Not only that, but these stereotypes were being used for entertainment on my own television. I decided to do some research and came across many websites such as this one and this one. Basically, they talk about how Asians are still being underrepresented in media while films are (thankfully) making reforms to incorporate black and female representation.

Growing up in Southern California, I was constantly surrounded by Asian Americans as well as their culture. I noticed that what I saw on screen didn't match what I saw in real life and even though I have absolutely no Asian blood running through my veins, I couldn't help but feel offended. I knew that for our film we wanted to have an Asian American cast as our lead. I can't even recall a movie I have seen where an Asian was the lead. As I started thinking about who to cast, I needn't look further past Aaron Wong. I met Aaron in my economics class this year and he was the perfect balance between cute and awkward. It was clear that Aaron would be the perfect choice to represent Asians in media for our project. Below I have a picture of Aaron looking off into the future of Asian representation in media: and it is looking bright.

Cheng, J., Hsieh, C., Lu, S., & Talgo, S. (n.d.). Media Representations of Asians. Retrieved March 26, 2015, from http://sitemaker.umich.edu/psy457_tizzle/home

Haque, Z. (n.d.). Representation of Asian Americans in film limited. Retrieved March 26, 2015, from http://www.nyunews.com/2014/12/05/haque-9/

Storyboard

Before we film anything, it's very important to have a clear idea of which shots exactly we want to film in order to effectively portray our tone and style. When looking at other films similar to the one we want to make, I noticed that they made heavy use of long shots. In order to keep with this trend, we decided that the best way to open our film was with a long shot of a barren street. After a second or two, a shopping cart rolls by in and out of the screen and then some music begins to play as our opening title sequence begins. We're deciding to take the Napoleon Dynamite route and show our credits before introducing any characters or the story. Keeping with this inspiration, we plan to use the labels of items in the grocery store to show the credits.

After more deliberation on which scenes exactly we wanted to include in our limited, two minute film opening, we finished out story board!! It is displayed below. :)

Target Audience

As we further plan out our film, we realize that we hadn't really given much thought to a target audience. Having a target audience will drive us to make almost every decision in our film. Given the quasi "love story" basis for our film and the age of the characters, we decided that teenagers would be the best audience to target. It's actually perfect because we are teenagers ourselves and therefore know exactly what people of our kind enjoy.

In trying to appeal to the widest base possible while still having a target in mind, we decided to not just aim for teenage girls with the love story aspect but also appeal to teenage boys. In order to do so, we know that we will have to make our film humorous and quirky. Go too quirky that we teeter on the "dumb" portrayal and we lose a lot of our female audience. Go too cute that it becomes a "chick flick" and we isolate the male audience as well. Given that all of us are female, we turned to the teenage boys in our life to ask them for their opinions. We of course went to our male classmates as well as my 19 year old brother and got some well-constructed input. As we started to piece together a precise script, it looks as though we are going to be able to pull this off. I can't wait to start filming!

The Plot

Things are beginning to fall in place. As our group is getting more and more confident about this project, we spent a whole class discussing the plot finally. Here is what we decided so far (we are keeping in mind that things are subject to change):
                                                                                                                                                                 Our story begins with a young boy who works in a grocery store restocking the shelves. He lives a fairly sheltered life and is a very awkward, dorky character. He is in love with the cute cashier whom he works with. She tells this boy that she I'd being transferred to the grocery store in the next town over. Of course, the boy is devastated and heartbroken. He knows that he won't lose his love that easily and decides that if she is going across town, then so is he. The boy decides that he is going to follow his love across town in an epic journey. His vehicle of choice? None other than a shopping cart. Now that we have a good idea of what our story is, we can begin working on our storyboard and script!

Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes

What I have learned first and foremost about the creative process is one dominant lesson: things change. Since I have always been the obsessive student with a type-A personality, it is difficult for me to accept the fact that not every aspect of this project will turn out how I initially planned. While my group began to sit down and develop the real plot of our story, we noticed some holes. What prompts our character to go on this journey? Does he have a love interest? Why is he in a shopping cart? It was clear that these questions were easier to ask but not very easy to answer. Naturally, we turned to our teacher for guidance. She made us take a step back and look at our project with fresh eyes. We were convinced that the idea of using one actor to play every role was pushing the crazy envelope for a film that was already entitled "The Shopping Cart Diaries." So we scratched that idea. She also suggested that we were asking too many questions and needed to decide first and foremost what type of film we wanted to make. Did we want to make a very quirky, funny film that is reasonably nonsensical? Or did we want to make a quirky film that has humorous elements but is taken seriously? I decided to watch the trailers of two films that represent both ends of this spectrum. First up was the 2010 film, Rubber.

My initial reaction to this trailer was one that I imagine most people had: what the heck did I just watch? Despite the fact that this story made absolutely no sense to me, I actually liked it. It was weird, nonsensical, and entertaining which are all characteristics my group members possess. I kept this idea on the back burner as I moved on to the next movie entitled Frank.


Now this movie seemed much more realistic to me (relatively). Yes, the main character is wearing a giant mascot head, but for some reason it makes sense to me. I felt that we were getting warmer with the type of movie we wanted to make but still weren't quite there yet. My group member and I began watching short films for inspiration and came across this short entitled "Foureyes." This film was not only adorable, quirky, and charming, but also made sense to me without having to explain every minute detail. After watching this short, our ideas began to flow more easily and I could a taste a plot arising on the tip of my tongue…


Foureyes [Motion picture]. (n.d.). Brudder Films.

Characters and Characterizations

One of the most important, if not the most important, aspect of a film is the characters. A trend often found in our genre of film is having a dorky, yet lovable, main character. I began to research the characters of some of my favorite indie films. My first thought was Napoleon Dynamite. This character perfectly encompasses the socially awkward, quirky personality often present in these films. Everything from his style to his speech contributes to his demeanor and makes him a figure that audiences enjoy watching.

While Napoleon Dynamite is wonderfully weird, I want our character to also be very lovable and someone who the audience will just want to reach out to and give them a big hug. I remember that I felt this way while watching 500 Days of Summer. As I looked up the Tom character, I came across this article where Joseph Gordon-Levitt himself talks about his character from the film. It was shocking for me to read about him describing Tom as "obsessive" rather than a "heartthrob".

This twist on the main character again had me begging the question of what can our character do to make him different from other stereotypical characters? Once again, our quirky group member Emily came through with her creativity and suggested that maybe we do an In the Heights inspired approach and have all the characters played by one actor. We all paused for two seconds, contemplated, and then immediately got excited and how inventive and interesting this idea could be. We will just have to be very careful with costume and makeup!

Napoleon Dynamite (Character). (n.d.). Retrieved March 12, 2015, from http://napoleondynamite.wikia.com/wiki/Napoleon_Dynamite_(Character)

Makarechi, K. (n.d.). Joseph Gordon-Levitt Says His '(500) Days Of Summer' Character Is 'Selfish,' Not A Role Model. Retrieved March 12, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/17/joseph-gordon-levitt-500-days-of-summer-selfish_n_1795676.html

"How to Make an Indie Movie"

While sitting in class doing some research, my partner Mariana came across a blog for "How to Make an Indie Movie." This blog was perfect in the sense that it answered most of the questions we were asking ourselves. If you refer to number ten, most opening titles are hand-drawn such as in Juno.

This idea seemed cute and simple enough. I felt it would be easy and fun to hand-draw our opening credits if possible. Other tips from this blog included things such as having a green color scheme, lots of blank stares, and many wide shots. As I read through this blogger's ideas, I began to see our own film formulate in my mind. Our group began discussing places we could film. We already had the suburban setting down given we live in a very Pleasantville inspired town. However, as we were bouncing ideas off of each other, we began to wonder what can we do to allow our film to stand out and make it different from the rest?

How to Make an Indie Movie. (2013, May 27). Retrieved March 11, 2015, from http://thegingebinge.com/2013/05/27/how-to-make-an-indie-movie/

Examining Film Openings

Now that the genre was officially sorted out, I felt a huge relief. I knew that this one decision would have a domino effect on making other important decisions. The next question I began to ask myself was: what makes for a well-developed film opening?

As a child of the modern age, I instinctively went straight to google and typed in "best films openings." At this point I was ready to zero in on my genre of film openings and felt that I could get inspired by any kind of film openings. I was immediately brought to this website and began watching what film.com declared the best introductions. I noticed that most of the films displayed were much older and decided to check out other websites. A pattern existed within these sites as this one also felt that older films had better film openings. I decided then to watch some of these openings and try to find a commonality between them. As I did so, I found myself getting inspired for my own opening. I knew that I would have to take this knowledge and create modern twist in order for my project to be unique and creative while still maintaining the elements of an effective introduction. My next step would be focusing on the beginnings of movies in the genre of film we are creating.


The 50 Best Opening Scenes of All Time. (n.d.). Retrieved March 10, 2015, from http://www.film.com/movies/best-opening-scenes-movies

Susman, G. (n.d.). The 40 Best Opening Sequences in Movie History (VIDEO). Retrieved March 10, 2015, from http://news.moviefone.com/2014/05/28/best-opening-sequences-movie-history/#slide=2643959

Choosing a Genre

The first question I found myself asking was: which genre of film did our group want to choose for our final project? We teetered back and forth between multiple genres and had much difficulty coming to a finite conclusion. A suspense or thriller film seemed like it would have a strong impact on a viewer, but I have always been more drawn to indie, quirky films such as Napoleon Dynamite. After searching through various websites (such as http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html) and having many discussions that ran in circles, we still could't come to a conclusion.

It was't until after we met with other groups that all the members of our group were convinced to take the indie film route. Earlier in the school year, a member of our group, Emily, joked about creating an indie film entitled "The Shopping Cart Diaries." This became a running joke between the three of us but since we decided to explore the indie route, this movie idea suddenly didn't seem like that bad of an idea. We pitched our ideas to the other groups and I was incredibly surprised by the positive response. People liked the weird and unique idea of the film and I also began to get more invested in this project. I'm still unsure of how this film will turn out and what exactly our plot may be, but I am excited and confident that we will be able to make a project I am proud of.

Dirks, T. (n.d.). Main Film Genres. Retrieved from http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html