The sound of our opening

Hi guys it's me Santi

Sometimes, audio is even more crucial than visuals because it's what pulls you in and makes you feel like you're right inside of a scene, the right sounds can totally elevate the film by boosting emotions and taking you into the world we've created.

Throughout the class, we've learned about the different types of sounds we can use, from synchronous sounds to voiceovers, and in our film opening, we'll definitely be using non-diegetic sound, so any sounds that don't come from the story world, like background music. In our film opening, background music will be strongly shown throughout, helping to tell the story and immerse the audience.

Alongside the non-diegetic sound, we'll complement it with synchronous sound (grocery store sounds and car sounds) to give a sense of place as the story unfolds, so the audience can hear the environment where the story is set and pick up on background noises that are relevant. Synchronous sound is basically sound that's matched with what's happening on screen, like the noise of objects (like grocery store or car!!)

There's also a scene in our opening where a radio turns on and an multiple announcements are made, this is where we'll use a voiceover, it's not something you see happening on screen, but it provides essential information to the audience, the planet is heading torwards Halley (and the world) in about 5 months.

As for the music, we're still on the trying to find the perfect fit to match the vibe of the film opening. Music is super important because it helps set the tone, and it will be heard through a lot of the opening, as Halley gets her products from the store. We're exploring different options, and if we choose a track that's copyrighted, we'll make sure to get the necessary permissions (though that's unlikely since artists probably never respond to us...)

Our group member Sam contacted all of the artists that we might want music from!

Until next time, Santi :)

Halley like the girl not like the comet

Hi guys it's me Santi,

Selecti‌ng a name, for a character can be quite a task as it conveys a lot, about their identity and origins​​​. In making the beginning of our movie​​​ we aimed to pick a name that truly reveals our characters essence and history to the viewers​​​, and we knew that we wanted our character's name to have some sort of connection to space and all things cosmic, as a sort of nod to the already cosmic setting of the movie.

After looking online for a while, we landed on Halley (like Halley's Comet).

The name Halley carries a lot of weight and meaning, mostly since we made it so that it's tying into the space theme of our story. Additionally, our character of Halley is shown to be very uncaring and indifferent, specially in the event that we're putting her in, and that's for a reason.

While we don't show it directly, Halley went through a traumatic event when she was younger, leading her to grow up with a diagnosis of depression, in return, she acts indifferent to everything around her and tries to isolate herself from her friends and family, thinking it to be best for both herself and those she loves. However, as the story unfolds, she meets someone who helps her find meaning and joy in life again.

There's a cool link between her name and her personality, because when you think of the name Halley you think of strength and courage, while also thinking about the comet. Halley's comet passes Earth once every 72-80 years, mostly being distant from us, yet when it does pass by us it's a beautiful sight to see.

In her case, it reflects how she's endured loneliness and apathy, but someone else helps her overcome this, seeing the beauty inside, and by the end of the movie she finds the strength to push through and rediscover life's purpose, while she still can.

At its core, our film is about healing and overcoming depression, and about trying to help out those who seem like they might not want help, because everybody deserves to have someone by their side.

Until next time, Santi :)

it IS that deep! (Media Theories)

Hi guys it's me Santi,

Studying media means a lot of super cool learning opportunities, such as learning media theories! Using these theories, I can learn more about how films are made and how they connect to the audience.

I’ve attended my classes to learn about various theories which made me very excited to implement them in my project work, so the opening is gonna be where I put what I learned into practice!

A theory that me and my team really want to include in our opening is Todorov's Theory, specifically the disequilibrium part. This is that point in a story when the main character's life just explodes and everything changes. In our opening this is done by literally having a planet on it's way to disrupt our story! The planet won't be revealed until halfway through the opening, serving as that point where the entire story changes.

Then there’s the semantic code, it’s when objects in a film mean way more than what they look like on the surface. We plan to apply this concept to our film by assigning symbolic meanings to the items our character selects at the grocery store. Every item they choose will have this deeper, hidden meaning. Obviously this won't be shown in the opening itself, but it'll be part of the bigger film overall, something important to keep in mind when making our opening.

Let's see how this goes!
Until next time, Santi :)

Our name and idea!

Hi guys it's me Santi,

You might've noticed that the script of our opening has something that the others don't have: a title!
That's because we found the name for our film! the name is....

Ataraxia

Finding the name for our film was a bit silly, because we know that our film has an overall theme of depression and learning to enjoy every moment. Our film uses the planet as a sort of metaphor, but i'll dive deeper into that in another post.
We wanted a name that reflected both the theme of depression and something that sounds like it could be the name of a planet or a cosmic name, so we started looking at our dear friend theasurus.com

While it wasn't much help, we kept looking through multiple vocabulary websites to find a word we were happy with. We then thought: what if we instead looked for a word that meant the opposite? A word that meant release, calm, serenity, something hinting towards what our main character would be feeling by the end of the film.

During this search, we found “Ataraxia,” which is described as a state of complete peace and freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety. The term is Greek and is connected to a philosophy where it signifies the highest form of happiness as inner peace. The name was perfect for our film in two ways. First, it looks and sounds otherworldly and cosmic, which is exactly what we were looking for! Second, it captures the emotional journey of our protagonist, who begins in depression and disconnection and ends in tranquillity and acceptance. The narrative arc is powerful because it contrasts the character’s initial state with the concept of Ataraxia.

Speaking of the emotional journey of our protagonist...

The story of the entire film.

If you don't know the story of our opening, here's a summary.
We don't want to get too deep into the rest of the film, as we wanna focus most of our efforts on the actual opening, but its important to have an idea of where the film is going later, so that the opening doesn't feel like a short film by itself.

After the opening, our character is shown having to deal with her friends and family struggling to grasp that their life is ending in a couple of months from this planet, yet Halley (the name of our MC) is unbothered, it's her way of "coping" with the situation. A close friend of her is then introduced, and this friend helps Halley discover the beauty of life, and learning acceptance without being sad. A source of inspiration, though a bit silly, is the movie "The Mitchells vs. the Machines," which centers on a family that has to save the world, though they're a bit dysfunctional. What I want to focus on is the dynamic between the daughter and the father in the movie, and how they learn to accept each other's difference through the events of the movie, as they travel across the country to save the world. A similar approach we want to take is that our main character and her friend travel across the state in order to fulfill a bucket list or a to-do list, and on the way our main character can learn acceptance and finding the beauty in otherwise inevitably bad moments.

Conceptual rendering of what a scene later in the film would look like. Created using OpenAI's DALL-E 3.

Overall, we want the film to be wholesome, it's less sci-fi and more drama. (And no, the two characters won't fall in love, they're strictly friends.)

Until next time, Santi :)

We have a script!! (and a name!!!)

 Hi guys its me Santi,

I have finished writing the script! I absolutely love writing scripts, and this one was more special than other scripts I usually write, because this one had almost no dialogue, so instead, I had to describe every scene's "feeling" in a way, it gives a sense of what I want the actual shot to give aesthetically.
I'm probably just talking but anyways, here's the script!

Now it's time to make an actual shot list, as well as thinking a bit more about the actual cinematography of the opening. See you guys then!
Until next time, Santi :)

Feedback from the Group!

 Hi guys it's me Santi,

Sometimes when you're making something you like, it might not actually be good. It just happens because you're biased to your own work, so you can't see the flaws in it. This was an issue for my team, so during class our teacher decided to randomly group us up into different groups so that we could get fresh and unbiased opinions on our project! There were 5 other people in my group, who all gave me solid ideas and identified a couple of plot holes in our opening. Let's go over them!

A photo of my random group going over our ideas!

Where did the planet come from?

One of the biggest comments I got was "where did the planet come from?" It's a pretty big planet (we don't know the exact size but it's a tiny bit smaller than Jupiter), so it would've probably been detected coming towards us years ago, giving the Earth more time to react, and also it would've made no sense if people were running around the grocery store in a panic (they would've had time to run years ago). So we have two options: Give extra exposition and have it so that the planet was projected to fly by the earth, but instead at the last second it was predicted to crash. The second option is to make the planet Mars instead of a rogue planet, again giving the Earth less time to react.
There are problems with each option, as having Mars go out of orbit would probably have more implications than just crashing into the Earth, but it would be easier to explain than using up our time to get more exposition out to the audience.
We're still trying to figure out what's the best approach, but that'll be decided once my team meets up again to review our critiques.


I'm still working on the script, so let's hope it goes well!
Until next time, Santi :)

The story of our opening!

Hi guys it's me Santi
Before I get to scripting, I want to explain what our film opening is actually about, specially since I've been talking so much about it in my past blogs.

Here's a short synopsis of our entire story:

A girl is doing her groceries in a very mundane fashion while she listens to a song on her headphones (we don't know what song yet). She's vibing subtly to the song while she gets her groceries, while in the background people seem to be in a panicked mood, stocking up on food, and being very fast and anxious in their movements, the girl notices but remains unfazed. As she exits the grocery store, there is revealed to be a large planet in the sky, obviously making it's way towards Earth, it looks beautiful, and almost haunting, yet the girl keeps walking, not batting an eye. She's clearly aware of the planet, yet it looks like she's forcing herself not to care. As she gets in the car, the radio sparks up, and for a moment, we get exposition: the planet will crash onto Earth in 5 months, and panic has begun to spread. Before we get to hear more, she connects her phone's bluetooth and the song she was listening to on her headphones begins playing in the car. She closes the door to her car, and begins driving away. The opening ends as she sets her phone down and starts to drive.

Still from "Melancholia" (2011) showing a rogue planet in the skyline of a shot, I want our opening to look similar.

AI-Generated image by OpenAI's "DALL-E" showing a concept for what the planet would look like in the opening, yet much smaller. (Usually I would steer away from using AI in any capacity but this was a quick way to get a visual concept for what we want without spending a lot of time photoshopping concept art.)

If any changes are made to the story I'll update the blog as we progress with production, but this is the story for now! Me and my group are very happy with it.

Until next time, Santi :)