Day 3

     Over the weekend, I have been delving deeper into my imagination for my idea. Alec and I have not really talked much about ideas since the last time we saw each other at school. The last time we talked was when I was telling him about my idea. He had told me that it's a really great idea but that we just need to become more specific about the ideas we have so that we can successfully piece it together. For the scene I was thinking of a song similar to the song "On The Run" by Pink Floyd. I feel like a song like that could really bring the scene and story together. Because the main character's purpose is to basically start an anarchy by implementing the idea that society doesn't need authority. I feel that "On The Run" does a great job of presenting that surge of adrenaline that is constantly circulating through the main character's thoughts and ideas. I feel that this song combined with the narration of the speech, "The First Napkin", would be a great combination since the song doesn't contain lyrics. However I'm not sure if I want to use this song specifically because of how long and difficult the process is to obtain permission to use copyrighted music.

"On The Run" by Pink Floyd

Day 2

  Alec and I were discussing the topic of our film opening a bit more and he presented to me his new idea. He wants to do a film opening where there is a narration of a speech called "The First Napkin". I think the narration of the speech over the film opening is actually a really great idea. I feel as if it could leave a lasting impact on the audience. As for the mise-en-scene, Alec described some of the things he would like in the opening. He described to me men in suits, and a table. Since, Alec is in the JROTC program, he suggested that for the men in suits we utilize some of the JROTC students in our film opening since they are required to wear uniform. I think that's so useful for our project, and could really make it look legit!

    I was brainstorming ideas based off of Alec's new idea and eventually thought of something. What I told him was that I think it should be character vs. society because of the context of the speech. I was reading the speech again and it basically talks about who gets to hold power in a society. Who gets to make huge decisions that cause for others to follow along? I told Alec that our main character could have the purpose of changing the structure of society. The protagonist dislikes the idea of power being held by only one person. He believes in freedom. I still have to brainstorm a little more though and be more specific about my idea. However I do think that there should be a close-up shot of our character looking at the men in suits with intent. The intent to change how the world works. Basically saying "everything's going to change" through his eye contact to the men. His eyes are supposed to speak.

This is the link to the speech 

 The First Napkin

1st day

     Me and Alec are officially working together for our portfolio project! We have yet to discuss all the general details of our project and our ideas. However, this week we will be brainstorming and deciding on what we want our film opening will look like. I'm pretty sure we decided on our genre being horror. Alec described to me his vision. His vision is a person in the dark on a computer screen and the character noticing something terrifying in the reflection of the screen. My idea is to make the film opening a dream sequence. Both our ideas could play hand in hand. If we were to combine our ideas we could make a horror film opening that is based off the main character having a dream that tells them what will happen in the future. He told me that he's going to give me the full detailed description of his vision for the project. So I will be talking about it in my next posting.

transition post

  In the beginning of the year we started off by learning the different elements that media consists of: sound, camera shots, mise-en-scene, and editing. The past few months have been preparing me and everyone else in my class for our final portfolio project. Today was the day that we began the process of the portfolio project. We learned about all the important aspects of it, and all the necessary requirements that the project needs to meet in order to be an acceptable piece. I still have yet to come up with approaches of what I would like to do for my project. I decided to work on my portfolio project with my friend Alec.

Alec was telling me about one of his ideas for our portfolio project. We didn’t have much time to fully discuss it, but he gave me a general overview of what it is. It falls under the horror genre. He described it as someone paying attention to a computer at night and having to see a terrifying reflection on the screen of something that was behind them. I’m open to anything, so I thought this was a really fun and cool idea.

My approach to this project would be to create a dream scene that would insinuate something happening in the future. The scene would start off already in the dream, and it ends when the person wakes up confused. When the character wakes up, that's when the title of the film will show up. The credits will appear as soon as the title disappears from the screen.

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

     The research process of our music marketing project took about two to complete with accurate information. We had to complete our music chart first. We had to look into the record labels that had signed off on the song that we had chosen for our project. Which is "We Are Young" by the band fun. After, we researched Lana Del Rey, The Weeknd, Ed Sheeran, and Bruno Mars. We looked up the history behind the record label, and other famous artists that are signed under them.

    Brainstorming occurred constantly throughout the progress of our project. At first we had brainstormed about which song to choose for our project, which led to thinking about what type of music video to produce. A promo, storytelling, artistic, or combination video? We went with a storytelling type of music video. We then wrote down our ideas about what our story was going to be about and how it would capture the essence of the song we chose. We used a storyboard to illustrate the technique we were planning on using for our video. 

    The production process of our project was tough because everyone in the group had a difficult time deciding on a specific time and place that could correlate correctly with everyone. My group consisted of three members including myself. Me and one my partners, Megan Kelly, were able to start production just the two of us because our other member, Mariano Bertello, was not able to make it to the shoot. Which did make things difficult. He was hard to work with, but we eventually were able to obtain everything we needed for our music video. 

    For the post-production aspect of the project, we were able to edit the shots we took into a dramatic fast-paced music video. We had better expectations of the music video but in my opinion it is not as bad as I thought it would be. I'm proud with what we made. After finishing up the video, we recorded our voices for our presentation and began to solely focus on the PowerPoint and the extra aspects that we wanted to incorporate in it.

The presentation is a good length. We made it look very colorful and lively, which mostly corresponds to the color scheme that we chose for our band, Snow Birds. We talk about our marketing strategies, and how our band came to what it is throughout the presentation. I had constructed and decorated a website for Snow Birds, to make it seem legit. On the website, I included press comments, merchandise, and upcoming tour dates. Our band mostly consists of the colors blue and pink, which is what the color scheme of the website is. It is very colorful, and it is everything we expected it to be which is very satisfying. We created an Instagram account, and a YouTube account for the band. We also created images for their hit song "Tonight" on SoundCloud and Spotify.

I learned a lot about attention to detail and creativity throughout this project. I feel that this project will certainly help me be more creative and think of every detail for my Cambridge portfolio. It also has helped me to coordinate with people and ideas which I find very helpful. Being organized also plays a great role in this project. The practice that I have acquired from this project will be very helpful in the future.

Storyboard:

Band logo:

Website link:

flying-snow-birds-2xgz.squarespace.com

 

password for website: flyingsnowbirds

Music Marketing project

My group has been constantly planning and outlining the basis of our project and how we will go by it. We organized which steps we would complete first. Our first step was to choose our song and do research on who the artist is signed to. Which then led to us researching the history and other artists that are signed under the same company. After researching all the different marketing strategies under each artist, we had successfully created our chart full of information. 

Next, we chose which type of music video we wanted to go for. We chose a storyline music video. We created an authentic story in about a day. After, we spend time in class to decide on scenes and the sequence of events. Finally, on a separate piece of paper we went into full detail on each scene. It describes all the techniques we want to use in our piece.

We successfully created an identity for our artist, and chose the name "Tonight" for our music video version of "We Are Young". Some of our challenges include deciding on what techniques to use for our music video to make it a successful one. Another challenge would be making media samples for our artist's marketing strategies for their music. Our next steps would include the making of our presentation and putting it all together to illustrate what we have constructed, and recording the music video.

Here are some illustrations of our brainstorming process:

Sound Blog Post

 Project description: The students will be able to learn how to tell a story through sound effects and other auditory techniques. 

Sound project outline: soundscape outline

Development:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9clayDEGuyQ 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRnzW1Rru-jDNPOJzEk6yukU77mFWs_H0eWF5DxQVLoEWgBcdzjgK1kSNU0FvYBdOd-7-KdE-l0TLza/pub  

    My partner and I decided to create Foley for the footsteps, body falling, and doors opening and closing. For the footsteps, we walked in place until we were satisfied with the sound. For the body falling, we used the sound of a zip-up sweater falling to the ground. We had to do multiple takes for that one because we had a little trouble making the sound aggressive and harder. The Foley for the doors were simple. Our work for our Foley is shown in the YouTube video listed above.

    The editing took about two full hours to perfect. In the google doc listed above, it shows the layering my partner and I did so that all the sounds could sound as natural as possible. We had to be very meticulous as to where and when each sound would come into play. Everything had to flow smoothly so that it could make sense and sound great at the same time.

Final sound project: https://youtu.be/nCosW5l4ejs