Film Opening - Blog Post #10

A Meeting with Non-Group Members

        During today's class, my classmates and I had to attend another meeting - however, this meeting was with non-group members. Though this did not make much sense to me at first, I quickly realized why such a meeting could be beneficial: instead of discussing our project with our own group mates, we were able to hear about others' plans and get feedback on our personal ideas. I was paired with four other students: Maya, Paola, Max, and Gerardo. Though I had seen all of their faces during class and even collaborated with some of them during previous projects, it was both refreshing and interesting to hear about their film openings and how they were going to make their ideas come to life. 

        Maya volunteered to speak first. She talked about her interest in creating cyberpunk film opening and incorporating lighting and editing techniques to not only stick to her selected genre, but also to make the video as interesting as possible. She asked about incorporating green screen footage and potential filming locations that she could use (both Max and I were able to help with that). I really enjoyed how she played the song she wanted to edit in and explained the opening as the song played. Next came Paola, who spoke about her horror-comedy idea and how she is going to film at a nearby plaza in order to have her story and location match. She asked about what kind of shot types she should use during times of high action and how to make the actors' fighting seem as real as possible. 

When Paola asked about using tighter or wider shots during her fight scene, I suggested that the use tighter shots 

in order to limit the audience's view (and ultimately make the scene much more realistic). I referenced the 

bathroom scene from "Psycho" and how Hitchcock used tight shots to achieve the same effect that 

Paola was going for. 

        Then came my turn. I gave them a quick run-down of our outline, our filming location and possible decisions that my group and I are still making. All of the people on the call were able to give me good advice on how to potentially overcome these problems and even asked me questions about my project. The one question that stuck out at me was Paola's, which had to do with establishing that our character was the last person on Earth, not necessarily the last person in the area. Having this question come up definitely opened my eyes to how important this was, especially since it is one of my group's largest doubts at the moment (we found out we can no longer get a drone shot due to restrictions in our filming location). Max suggested that my group gets a drone shot somewhere else that has a similar look and then find a way to connect both the drone shot and the surrounding clips. Though this might be a stretch, I definitely will be mentioning this idea to my group.

 

        Max talked next, who much like Paola is planning on creating a horror-comedy film opening. He talked about using two main characters to tell his story as well as make elicit feelings of amusement and fear. Gerardo talked last, since we was not too sure about his idea and was still trying to decide how he was going to portray his character's coming-of-age story. All of us tried to give him as many suggestions as possible in order to help him come up with ideas, and eventually we began to talk about different filming locations in our area.

Conclusion

        To be completely frank, this meeting was not very helpful in terms of being productive for the project, but it was definitely enjoyable to share project ideas and talk to people in my class (especially after not being able to interact with them in person due to the pandemic). I am very excited to see how everyone's project turns out (mainly Maya's final result - I think her idea has plenty of potential)! Anyways, I will continue posting updates as they come! Thanks everyone for all the support on this project!