Researching the credits of movies

 Hi guys it's me Santi,
A quick note on what I want the credits to be before I start researching, I want my credits to be super simple, yet in an elegant way, so I found some movies that did that!

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Okay so this opening sequence is actually not very spacial, but that's what makes it so perfect for the film opening. The movie starts with Jim Carrey driving in his car, and the whole thing has this washed-out winter look that just feels very real and boring, which is what we're trying to go for at the beginning of our film opening.

The credits appear in this really simple white text that just kind of fades into existence and then dissolves away. Nothing fancy or wild, just clean, plain text that appears and then sort of evaporates like it's dissolving from memory (like the movie!) 

The whole sequence is maybe like 2-3 minutes, but it tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the film's mental state. He's just existing, driving his car, while these white words float in and out of frame like the thoughts he's trying not to think about. No fancy effects, no crazy typography, just this dude and the text, which is the vibe we're trying to go for in the film opening, for our boring character in the boring grocery store not caring. 

Guardians of the Galaxy

I know, weird change of pace, just went from Eternal Sunshine to a Marvel movie, but just hear me out.

The whole thing is set to Radiohead's "Creep" but it's this acoustic version that feels more slow. Instead of the usual upbeat retro music we expect from GOTG, we get this slow, melancholic cover that perfectly matches what we're seeing, a more emotionally driven film (watch the movie it is probably the best marvel movie out of all of them).

The credits themselves appear in this metallic chrome-looking font which is still simple enough for the movie, again while the movie is playing, so rocket is going around Knowhere (where the guardians live while they're not doing much), and the title credit at the end is in plain white, with a subtle depth effect appearing behind Nebula's head.

Again, these work great for the vibe we're trying to go for, and I really like how "big" the title is, taking up two thirds of the frame, which is what i wanna do when we get to the big scene that reveals the planet in the sky.

Ok, I think I get the gist of what I wanna do, so, let's get scripting!
Until next time, Santi :)

Making you bored on purpose

 Hi guys it's me Santi
I realized that before scripting my opening I have to look at other openings so that I make sure that I'm not just going insane and making an opening that would actually miss the point! So I spent all of today looking at openings and their respective credit sequences (but that's for another blog).

I looked up "Don't Look Up"

If you're not familiar with "Don't look up" It's basically a disaster movie about a comet that crashes into the earth and everyone dies but with political commentary!
It wasn't good. But, the opening scene was really clever. What I like the most about it is how the entire time nothing is said, it's just music, sound effects, and mumbling from the character on screen as she sings along to a song she's listening to. The point of the opening is to introduce the comet, but we don't know that it's on a collision course for earth, that's revealed later in the movie.
Something I like here is how there's a lot of inserts and close-up shots, I took it as a way to emphasize the nothingness of the moment, until she discovers the comet. In fact, you don't even know where she is until 24 seconds into the scene, the scene starts with just sound of a tea kettle followed by close-ups of her making tea and a sandwich. You can tell she's used to it, going on her science computer to start up her science laser telescope (I don't know how it works), it tells the audience that this is probably a repetitive thing she's done before, so she's uninterested for the most part, something that our character will be doing a lot in my film opening!
The way the film opening was gonna go was that my character would be in a grocery store and you wouldn't know there was a rogue planet in the sky until later, so this helps with figuring out how we could do that with cinematography

Rogue Planet Side Note

Yeah I said rogue planet. We were gonna go for an asteroid first, but then we realized that asteroids were sort of very much so overdone, so we decided to look for other disasters. At first we thought "what if the sun started flickering" but then we realized there were so many limitations with that (I'd have to find a way to use vfx to globally illuminate the entire scene so that it would look realistic). Then we thought of more natural disasters like tsunamis, but the disaster has to happen slowly, something that you know about months before but you can't do anything about it. So we thought "wait what if asteroid but much bigger" and boom! rogue planet!
But more on the story of our opening later...

Melancholia (the planet and the word)

This is an insane film opening, I wanna take a second to actually talk about the movie in general. It has a similar premise to our film opening, about a character who doesn't care about the end of the world, and it had a rogue planet! The opening itself is beautifully made, and you have to watch the film to actually understand what's happening, but some of the takeaways is definitely the look of the planet.

There's such an otherworldly look to the planet, but in an elegant fashion, it's very pretty basically. Me and my team are definitely taking inspiration from this still to create our opening. 
Another thing Melancholia does is show the planet's trajectory. It flies by Earth, before turning around and crashing with it. It gives people plenty of time to see the planet (and their doom) yet it takes a lot of time to actually happen, something that could set up the story pretty well for us.

I'll definitely be looking into this approach when thinking about our opening, hopefully it looks as good as this movie!
Until next time, Santi :)

Schedule time yayy!

Hi guys it's me Santi

I need to make a schedule otherwise I am NOT finishing this on time so me and my group made a rough schedule with enough time to do everything AND even have an extra week of nothing just in case something happens (99% chance something will happen).

So the schedule is as follows:

Week 1 (1/29-2/2):Research

Already done! (Check my earlier blogs for that)

Week 2 (2/3-2/9):Planning

Storyboard (done by 2/7) 

Script (done by 2/7)

Location scouting (done by 2/10)

ShotList (done by 2/9)

Casting (done 2/9) 

Week 3 (2/10-2/16):Filming

Get props/costumes (2/10-2/12)

Begin filming (2/15)

Create Foley

Find sound effects/music

Week 4 (2/17-2/23): Wrapping up filming/Editing  

Wrap up (2/18)

Start editing- line edit (2/23)

Start graphics/VFX

Week 5 (2/24-3/2): Editing

Final edit (3/2)

Revisions: make changes needed 

Week 6 (3/3-3/9): CCR 

Creative Critical Reflection

Research information relating to the reflection.

Create the reflection.

Edit and review CCR.

Week 7 (3/10-3/16):CCR

Week 8 (3/17-3/25): Quick Fixes

In case any fixes are needed

Ok so, it seems like a lot, but during one of the weeks, I have a TV competition, so I basically have one week less to work on it, so me and my team accounted for that. I'll keep the blog updated in case anything moves around, but otherwise this should be the schedule that the whole team will follow.
Hopefully nothing goes wrong!

Until next time, Santi :)

World-Ending Genres

Hi guys it's me Santi,

Me and my team have decided to go for a disaster movie vibe but more grounded than the usual vibe of disaster movies, so our two genres that we'll analyze are Drama and Sci-Fi.

Drama films typically focus on realistic characters dealing with emotional themes and conflicts, something that will definitely be hard to pull off when trying to build our character for the opening (though we won't have to show much of the story since it's just an opening). Drama movies often explore complex relationships, personal struggles, and social issues, but what makes drama films special is their ability to make audiences connect deeply with the characters through raw, authentic performances and relatable situations. Examples like "Aftersun" or "The Whale" come to mind when I think of "grounded," the twist in our opening is that I want to go for this "grounded" vibe in a plot that's more fictional, which will require a lot of thinking.

Still from "Aftersun," I like the use of color here to "ground" the scene more.

On the other hand, Sci-Fi films allow for more creative freedom with the nature of their environment and vibe. While they often deal with advanced technology or futuristic concepts, I think that the best sci-fi movies use these elements to explore very human themes. Movies like "Arrival" show how sci-fi can also be used serious topics while keeping elements of fiction, and it also gives filmmakers the ability to create unique visual worlds and use special effects to enhance the storytelling rather than just for show. I think a great example of this are the visuals in "The Creator" which has one of the best environments in my opinion. 

Still from "The Creator"

Still from "The Creator"

The reason why I love "The Creator" so much is because they have a lot of sci-fi elements, like the floating ships or the giant structures, and yet it all feels so real, it feels as though this was something they actually built and not made with computer graphics (even though it was). It's a vibe that I haven't seen recreated in many other films (Side note watch "The Creator" it's a really good movie.)

Combining these genres could work really well for our film opening. The drama elements would help keep the story grounded near the beginning of the opening, while the sci-fi aspects could provide an interesting backdrop or cause for the disaster itself. Films like "Interstellar" have successfully balanced both genres, using sci-fi concepts to drive the plot while keeping the emotional drama at its core. Using these two genres would also help to hide the twist we're trying to go for (but more on that for a later post!)

Until next time, Santi :)

Moving to the big project! 🔥

 Hi guys it's me Santi,

This is a very exciting post because now for most of the rest of the year I'll be focusing on creating a film opening for my portofolio project! We learned a lot about how to get started, which was learning about how film openings are made in the first place! 

We went through a whole lecture about learning all the different types of film openings, and now we are making the project itself! From now on, this blog will mostly focus on production for the project, so I hope to share more fun news soon! I already have a vague idea of what I want to do, but I don't wanna spoil too much!
Stay tuned for a bunch of silly stuff coming soon!

-Santi

Music Marketing Project Recap Video!

Our project is finished! Here's a brief recap at how it was made from start to finish in just 40 seconds (narrated by yours truly)

Music Marketing Project: Research Time!!

Hi guys it's me Santi

My team and I are starting our Music Marketing Project! I'm very excited and I think it's a great opportunity to develop my knowledge of how the music industry works further.

Usually, I would say this is a fun project and a great chance for me to do some cool stuff, but my team and I want to kind of go crazy on this project since we all are really into television, so we have a big project, with not a lot of time to do the said project. Should be fun!

Researching Our Genre

Our assigned Genre for the project was "Alternative" which helped since a member of our team, Quinn was actually very into alternative music, and we're actually basing our artist on him! (More on that later.)

To further develop our research of different artists, we each focused on 2 record labels that specialize in Alternative Music and 5 alternative artists. My teammates all did different artists, and I did Mitski!
We analyzed how the artists developed their brand and how they marketed it to different audiences, which then helped us in the second part of our project, creating a whole new artist from scratch!

A look at a page from my research document into Mitski

New Artist Time!

Now that we had a better idea of what the genre looked like and what artists tend to do in the alternative genre, it came time for us to create a whole new artist entirely from scratch! After a bit of deliberation from the team, we named our artist "Ace Demitri," based in New York, releasing his first single "The Man."

(The song is actually by a band called "The Killers," but part of the project is to pretend like our artist made the song, and we need to promote the song as if he made it.)

We landed on a couple ideas for his vibe, the way he dresses, and other fun things to add to his theme, all pictured below.

An idea of what he would wear

What the album cover would look like

The idea for a shot of the music video

Planning all of this.

So now came the part where we had to actually make all of this real. We had about 2 weeks to finish our whole presentation, so, we decided to simplify the story of our music video so that it could all be filmed in one day, giving us another full day to edit what we needed to edit. We also gave ourselves extra time before the project is due to look over everything and make sure that we liked our presentation and that we were able to submit a fully cohesive and well-done project.

We're filming this weekend, on the 14th. Wish us luck!

Until next time, Santi :)