Filming

     Yesterday my sister, Valeria, and I went out to the mall and we went around the mall to shops that she liked and I got a good amount of b-roll and and shots of her at the mall and interacting with clothes. Since she was mainly focusing on jeans I decided to focus my excerpt of clothes on jeans. I had some trouble trying to embed some of my what I filmed onto here but it's ok. Here's an establishing shot of one of the shops we went into where Valeria tried on some jeans. I'm not sure if it will play or not, but it's an establishing shot so there isn't much to see other than the sign of the shop anyways. 

This is another shot , it's just Valeria and I waiting for the fitting room I also don't know if this will load but it's whatever. 

    I'm not entirely sure if those videos will load once this post publishes but I'll check later. For the rest of this post I'll just explain how the day went. So, we arrived at the Sawgrass mall and we started off at PacSun. I was sick when we filmed this by the way, so I tried my best not to speak the entire time because it hurt and because I sounded like a completely different person. So, we went to PacSun and Valeria and I were looking around for some cute jeans for her to try on. She picked out like five I think and she went into the fitting room. Every time she tried on a different jean I filmed her review about it basically. She'd tell me and show me how the jean would fit and whether or not she liked it. It was great, her feedback was exactly what I wanted. 

    Later, we stopped by Hollister but she didn't like anything there so I just didn't film anything in there. We went to Forever21 after that and same story. Aeropostale same story. Then we took break and went to Shake Shack to eat something. Our last stop was Zumiez and I took some shots there because she ended up trying on like three jeans I think. I did the same thing I did at PacSun and filmed every item she tried on and her review about it. It was really great. Then on our way back to the car through the mall I filmed some pov shots of us walking through the mall. 

    Also I just want to put it out here that I really love how the shots came out. I love that it looks nostalgic. That's what I really wanted it to look like. It just makes it all look so raw and natural in my opinion. I'm so excited to edit it all together when I get all the footage I need.

Instagram development

 I have successfully further developed my Instagram account after the group meeting I had this week. They gave me some confidence to put out some of the ideas I had for my first two posts. 

This is how my overall account looks like, I really like it so far! I finally ended up deciding what template I wanted to use out of the ones I previously demonstrated from Canva. The only thing I changed from my template was that I added "docuseries coming soon" instead of just the "coming soon". Below I'll include more info about each of my posts!

This is the first post! I really ended up liking this one the most so I decided that I'm going to stick with the background and the font for the rest of my plans for the docuseries. When I first uploaded it I forgot to include a caption so I had to go back and edit a caption in. Oops. But it looks so cute I love it. I got my sister to like the post too. I still have yet to send the link to my account to my AICE media studies A level group chat so that they can follow and support my account too. I'll probably do that soon. 

This is the second post! It took me a while to finalize this one because I didn't think it looked right. I had a little trouble looking for a picture of myself that wasn't at school. I just wanted something that was taken outside of school. So I ended up with that picture from Valentine's day. I also had to go back to the template of my first post to find the name of the font, which is called Playfair Display, to apply it to my "meet the director" post. Since I was looking at the creation of the post for too long I started to think it looked bad, but I realized that it did look nice I was just overthinking it. So, I posted it and tagged my own Instagram account on the post. But once again I forgot to include a caption when I posted it, so I immediately went back and edited a caption into the post. Oops again..

Group meeting #2

Ok so today I had a group meeting with some of my classmates. Gabby, Emma, Alec, and Corina! They all gave me very good insights for my production. I told them the details of my project as they looked at my blog through Mrs. Stoklosa's website. I mostly just asked them for help on how to further develop my Instagram account because I wasn't really sure what else to post and stuff like that. 

 They saw my blog post where I demonstrated all the templates I had in mind for my posts and they said that they liked the aesthetic that I was trying to go for. I also asked them about what else I should post other than a "coming soon" post and a "meet the director" post. Gabby said that I should post things like outfit checks and Corina added to that by saying that I should include things that the person likes doing. That I should find some inspiration from Pinterest since there's a lot of that type of stuff on there. Which I will definitely do since I already have Pinterest. As for the outfit checks themselves, I can probably have some help from my sister and my brother by just grabbing some of their clothes and laying it out on a nice background like their bed or something. Then I could come up with a cool outfit out of the clothes that they have to do this. I could also just use my clothes too. They were also saying that my genre sounds really artsy and that I should also go for that artsy feel on my Instagram account. I see what they're trying to say and I totally agree. I really want to give me Instagram a nice artsy and aesthetic feel.

Print research

 Ok so this time for print research, I was looking at posters for docuseries and I came across a docuseries that I watched a long time ago on Netflix. It's called The Nightstalker. It's about a serial killer called Richard Ramirez. I know it's not anywhere near my genre but it is a docuseries, so the poster can somehow relate to my type of research.

This the poster for the docuseries. I feel like they did a good job at making a poster, but I feel like they also messed it up because it's makes Richard Ramirez look cool with the dash of red light on his eye. Maybe that's supposed to represent the evil within him since the light is red. I feel like they messed up with that. Like to me, Richard looks cool when he's not supposed to. I think I'd make my poster with the colorful gradient that I used for my logo. Maybe some sparkles around the corners of the poster, and for the main focus maybe one of the interviewees. I need to think about the main focus a little further. It's hard to know what you want to be the main focus of something that represents the whole piece.

Instagram

Ok so I applied the logo onto my Instagram account! 

This is how my account looks like now. I think it looks really good and fits well with the aesthetic I'm going for for the documentary. I'm gonna start posting on Monday, with the coming soon post. Then I'll probably start posting more posts about "behind the scenes" since I'm gonna start filming more b-roll and footage of the interviewees. On Sunday I'm supposed to go out with my sister to the mall to get some b-roll of her shopping at the mall. There might be a possibility that it won't happen because of rides. Like, my whole family except my sister and I are home, so it's a little difficult to coordinate with help from my family members. Because I have a shift on Sunday from 5:30-11:00PM, and my plan was to go to the mall with her earlier before my shift and end it when my shift ends, so that I can just go straight to work. And my brother would go and pick her up from the mall since he usually stays home during the weekends. However, he isn't home this weekend, he's with my parents. So this complicates things. I have no idea how it's gonna work if we do end up doing it, but I'll keep you updated!

Production/Instagram

I've started filming some b-roll! I filmed some b-roll of clothes around my house, since I'm sure that I'll film my project on the topic of clothes. I filmed my closet, my sister's closet, my brother's closet, and my parent's closet. I filmed four second still shots for each. I also took a still shot of my jeans cabinet. This Sunday, before my shift at Hollister, I'm going to go shopping with my sister to get b-roll of the mall and more clothes and shots of my sister shopping. I also started creating some designs for my Instagram page. I'm kinda nervous about that since I haven't posted anything at all. But I was editing them on canva. 

This is the logo that I created! I think it's really cute and it accurately represents what my documentary is about. The colorful gradient in the background is meant to represent the types of personalities that are within every person, and like kind of the aura of each personality. How everyone is so colorful. I put the window in the center to represent the title of the documentary and so it can symbolize the action of being let into a person's personal insights to their personality and their true self. Now I just have to put that as my profile picture on my Instagram. After I created my logo, I started making different templates for the type of Instagram posts that I'd want to post on my account. I want it to really be the aesthetic that I want, so I made multiple.

Ok so all these are the ones that I created, so I really need to pick one so that it can be the basis for the rest of my Instagram posts. As you can see these specific templates are meant for a "coming soon" post for my documentary. I'll probably get my friend's opinions on which one they like the most and I'll pick the one that gets the most picks because I like all of them equally.

Production

 Ok so today I had a shift at Hollister, and I didn't really have much time to record since I had to rush to work. However, after my shift I took two shots of the outside area of the Sawgrass mall. In the parking lot area. I'm probably gonna use those shots as establishing shots for my documentary. Before I left for my shift I was making sure that my digital camera was fully charged and everything. When I was doing this I realized that the camera wasn't turning on which scares me a bit. Though I eventually realized that it was because I had inserted the battery the wrong way. So after I fixed that, I inserted the correct time and date on the camera. I also recorded a short video to test for audio quality and camera quality. After I recorded it, I checked it out and it was pretty decent. Like its not pristine quality, but it's not horrible either. I can work with it! 

Group meeting

  

So today we had a group meeting in class where we all shared stuff about each of our portfolio projects. It was with my classmates, Corina, Julia, Zain, and Samantha. When it was my turn to tell them about my project they gave me really helpful criticism. They told me that I should focus on only one aspect of a physical appearance for each episode of my episodic documentary. They said that if I focused on too many aspects in one episode, it would be too overwhelming and just too much to fit in one episode. That it would be better to space it out more by assigning a different aspect of a physical appearance for each episodic episode. Zain said that she thinks that if I decide to choose the clothing aspect for my portfolio, that it would be pretty difficult to choose what to include in the 5 minute excerpt. Since clothing is a very big aspect of a person and how they express themselves. Clothing is a very broad aspect and choosing the right things to be in the 5 minute excerpt could be a challenge. I didn't really think about that at all before she mentioned it. However I still feel like going the clothing route will be the best idea at conveying the whole topic of my documentary. Plus I also feel like it's the most fun aspect of an appearance to document. Corina also recommended me to interview the president of the Fashion Club at Cypress. Apparently she knows a lot about fashion and she dresses very fashionista. That idea really got my attention, but I need to think about how I'd incorporate it into my project. Their criticism actually helped me a lot though, they told me things I didn't even think about!

Planning

 Ok so originally I was going to buy a digital camera to film my project, but I talked to my mom and turns out we have a digital camera! She kind of taught me how to charge to battery and how to insert the memory card. The bag had a few memory cards so we were going through them on my dad's laptop to see which ones were empty. Three of them were empty, two of them were 1GB and the last one is 4GB so I'm going to use that one. This weekend I work on Saturday and Sunday. So I'm going to use the fact that I'm going to be in the mall to my advantage, and I'm going to start recording some b-roll of clothes around the mall. As I previously mentioned in one of my blog posts, I'm gonna record around Hollister since that's where I work. 

This is my digital camera!

Social media

 So it was about time that I created a social media account for my project! I created it today on Instagram. I put my username as the.windowtothesoul. Creating the social media account helped me finalize the name that I want as my title for my docuseries. I really want to call it "Window to the Soul". I think it fits really well with the topic of my docuseries. People usually refer to the eyes as the window to the soul because a person's eyes can be pretty expressive of what their emotional state is. Since my docuseries is about how people express their personality through their physical appearance, I think that the phrase the window to the soul works really well for what I'm trying to convey through my project. 

This is what I have so far, I still need to come up with the logo for my docuseries. My mind is still blank for that, as for the posts I'll most likely start posting some time next week. I need to start getting followers on the account so I'm going to send the link of the account to the AICE media studies group chat that my classmates and I have for the class to gain some followers. I feel like my first few posts can be like a "what I wear in a day" type of post and the caption can be something like "which outfit is the best?" so that it can be interactive with the audience. Later on I'll also create posts of "behind the scenes" stuff.