Some scheduling issues

Sooo we began filming over spring break, but we had a big issues, it was raining LIKE CRAZY. Corina's street was flooded and we had to make a million trips to the car to get our equipment so it wouldn't get wet. A lot of our scenes were outside so that was a big big issues. However we came up with a game plan. 

So essentially we filmed the sleepover scene, aka the scene that was inside along with other interior scenes. Not only was it rainy, but the weather was super gloomy. We didn't want that because we want it to be sunny and colorful outside. A lot of the film is colorful, so I feel like we needed a good sunny day!

Here's when we first found out about the rain issues, we did in fact figure it out yayy!

Characters

Since we will be filming soon, we wanted to make a few mood boards using Pinterest to help us visualize their aesthetics and what they will dress like. 

Here's what we're working with:

Kat 

Kat, the protagonist is a bit quirky (that might be a cringy way to say it, but it's the best description for her). She's a tiny bit awkward, especially around Alex (her crush).We want her to dress in stripes and some button ups. Different patterns and colors on her clothes match perfectly with her "quirky" personality. We also included a lot of pictures of friendship, since she loves Cat and they're the bestest of friends. The picture in the bottom right is meant to be representative of her and Alex since it's more couply then the others (heheh so cute) and it's a big part of the short film.

Cat

Of course we can't forget about Cat. She is also a bit quirky, she loves wearing different patterns and colors like Kat and cute outfits. There's a lot of pictures of friendship here as well, since Kat is a big part of her life. A picture of a girl alone was also added, since sometimes she feels a but lonely because of Kat's love life. A picture was added which says "And I hate to break it to you, but we're pretty big losers" was added, because that is indeed true of Kat and Cat. 

Alex

Alex, Kat's love interest is awesome. She loves baggy clothes and layered shirts (like the ones pictured above). She always looks cool and collected, she's also very charming. I also added someone wearing a soccer outfit since she plays soccer. There's a few pictures of couples. For instance the bottom middle image shows two women laughing, which is meant to represent Kat and Alex. I also added a little doodle that says "me + my girlfriend", even though they aren't yet dating in the short film, it represents something they would do maybe in the future, I just thought the doodle was very them lol.
 

 

Group meeting part two

 Today we had another group meeting! I actually love these meetings so so much. I like getting feedback from others not involved in my particular project because I get honest but good feedback. 

Here's my group!

Aren't we cute?? lol 

This meeting was very productive, I feel like I got some really good ideas from it. I explained that I was having a hard time designing the social media to look the way I and my project partner want it to look. We know what we want to post, but organizing everything so that it has a certain aesthetic has been a bit hard. They suggested something I had never thought of. They suggested I use an app that lets you preview what an instagram feed will look like. It essentially lets you place photos as if you are posting them on instagram but nobody else can see them. This will let me visualize what my instagram will look like. I found the app, it's called "Feed Preview for Insta". Another person suggested that I can also use Canva, which is a great idea considering I use the website frequently. I also brought up the fact that on Instagram Corina and I want to post snipits of the film in the reels format. We weren't sure about this but they agreed that that would be a great idea to hook the audience.

I also got a lot of positive feedback, which honestly made me so happy. They mentioned that they liked the name Fruit Punch and the meaning behind it, as well as the logo we made. They also liked the concept of the comedy/romantic aspects of the story and how we want to make our social media and marketing pretty colorful. This feedback made me really happy because sometimes I can get a bit worried about the decisions we are making for our short film since we want to make it a strong piece.

Almost production time, yay!

This week, we made the final touches onto our story, we knew what we wanted to make, but we were having a really hard time putting it into words and into a 5 minute time limit. It was so hard to explain what we wanted to make, but we finally figured it out. We decided to take a class period to write our story out once again and story board it. After much debating, we finally figured it out: our story will be in steps. Our main character, Kat will have a love interest, she tries to get her love interest through steps. 

The steps will be structured this in this order:

Step 1: Admitting

Step 2: Interaction

Step 3: Denial

Step 4: Initiation

Step 5: Prep

Step 6: Execution

 These steps will help the story flow easily and allowed us to properly structure the way it will play out. in the beginning of the story, Kat admits her crush to her best friend Cat one night after some chatting and establishing that they had planned to go to prom together, Alex (Kat's love interest) is Cat's neighbor who is having a house party. Kat goes outside and sees Alex, they interact. Alex invites Kat to a soccer fundraiser (because Kat pretended to like soccer since Alex is in it). It seems like Alex wants to hangout with Kat, but she's in denial, however, Kat sees Alex at school with Cat and she reinvites her, which reassures Kat.

Then, at the fundraiser, Kat invites Alex to prom, in a very indirect way because she's terrified, Cat helps Kat prepare for prom, but she's a bit angry Kat broke their pact to go together. Then, Kat reassures Cat by inviting her along with them, they can just be a trio for the night. Alex is understanding of their pact and accepts Cat third wheeling for the night. This story will have many jokes included into the story. 

Our main goal was to make a movie which shows queer joy, specifically involving sapphic characters. We've noticed many films about queer people address queer sadness, which is okay to do of course, but it is as equally as important to showcase queer joy and happy love stories. This article from The Guardian speaks about the fact that though it is important for us to see all terrible things that can occur to the lgbq+ community, it is equally as important to showcase stories of queer hope and love.

Fruit Punch

 Soooo, we have been decided on our short film name for a minute now, it's set to be named fruit punch. Our name is set to be fruit punch because though it's a comedy, our characters go through a mix of emotions throughout the film. This mix of emotions is a mix of flavors like fruit punch is so we thought it was a solid name for the short film. We also made a logo, here it is:

We wanted the logo to have a bunch of fruits like fruit punch does. Corina had multiple fruit stickers which she scanned and then we made those pictures in pngs and added it to our logo. We also decided to make the font look like handwritting. Since the characters will go in steps, we wanted to make those steps look handwritten so that it's like the characters wrote it. We made each letter different colors like the different fruits. We used Canva to make this logo, I'm obsessed with Canva, it made making this logo go by smoothly.

Print component- postcard

 Since Corina and I are doing a short film, we have to make a postcard for a film festival, we learned a few things we must include on our postcards in class. It is 4x6 inches, double sided and should look like the aesthetic of the marketing already done (instagram page). It is also double sided. We must include the tittle of the film, key art, the director name, the film festival, the screening as well as the time and date one can watch the screenings. Including social media info is also important and where people can watch it.

After learning what was necessary to include, I wanted to do some research on postcards, here's what I found:

This is a postcard I found

This post card is simple, I'm assuming this is the front of a post card, and the specific information is probably in the back. I like how the image captures attention, it's a simple image but yet it still conveys a lot of emotion and makes you wonder how the image is related to the title. Since our film is a comedy, our picture will be much brighter and colorful, but this is a good example for the front of the postcard. The back of our postcard will include information. We still want to add all the necessary information but still have it be simple, so we have to make sure to have a balance of the two.

Group meeting

Today we had a group meeting! This meeting helped me learn a lot about my project and all the things I can improve about it. Here's our group:

We begun by discussing my overall idea for my story, I explained my story by using my blog post named "Story rough draft". I got a few critiques especially about having a clearer beginning and end. I definitely have one, but I want to have it written down and more constructed. They suggested I do a plot diagram, like this one:

Plot diagram

This may help me get my story more defined, I used to use these all the time in middle school, so even though it something simple, it will help me a lot. Corina and I also want a comic relief character thats a bit chaotic, and Zain (my class peer) offered to be in the film, so we finally found someone for that role, which is a big relief. Corina and I have to better establish our script and jokes, once we do that, we can begin filming!

 

Fonts!

 Fonts are a big part of our project this year, since we have to do marketing and also use it in our short film, so knew we needed to do some planning as to what fonts we will use and which one will be the most fitting to our short film. 

We did some font looking on a website named dafont.com, I've known about this website for a long time, it's awesome and has so many different options for fonts. It really has anything I can imagine. We spent a while looking for fonts we think could fit, here's some we found:

Font 1

Font 2

Font 3

Font 4

Font 5

Font 6

Font 7

Okay so here are all the fonts from dafont.com. It's a lot, I know, oops! However, all these fonts are good contenders. As you can see, some of the fonts are reminiscent of school fonts, like fonts 1 and 2. The reason we thought to use these was because our characters are in high school and it's very clear in the story, so it would make sense. We also have some more funky ones like fonts 3, 4, and 5. Our characters are very silly and "quirky" (I know that word is not the most loved but it just makes sense lol), so the funkiness of the fonts match up with our characters. Overall, my top two contenders are font 1 and 4, they just make sense to me, but I don't know if we should go for a more funky or school approach of font.

 

Storyboarding yay

 Hey! So it's about time to start planning for this project and a big aspect of planning is storyboarding, last year I spoke about how much planning helped me. Storyboarding was one of the things that helped me a lot. Figuring out all the different scenes beforehand made filming go by very smoothly. 

Since I haven't storyboarded in a bit, I wanted to do some research before just straight up diving in again. I found this website which speaks about how a storyboard must be logical, which is something I really have to prioritize when making my storyboard. Especially considering the fact that it helps filming go by smoothly, so if it's far too complicated, I might get confused while filming. 

I also found this website which spoke about how short and simple captions under storyboards are beneficial, this reminded me of the captions I used to write, so this website was a nice reminder. These captions helped me a lot last year as well because they reminded me what each scene was in case my drawing was not the clearest (I'm not the best drawer, I wish though hahaha).

Here's an image of the captions with the storyboard