here it is

Not Quite Write

Instagram: @somethingsnotquitewrite

Print: here

Critical Reflection

    The short film Not Quite Write follows a writer as he struggles to come up with any ideas. In his desperation to have anything to write about, he takes a few risks and ends up in a very interesting situation. 

    While doing research for the creator of the short film, I viewed many existing short films to get an idea of conventions commonly used in short films. One that was pretty common was the use of only one location. Most of the short films I viewed, such as The Barbershop, One Minute Time Machine, and The Gunslinger, all take place in one single spot. This is likely to keep the plot relatively simple, but even more complex films, such as Eagles are Turning People into Horses, still stay in one spot. This is a convention that I strove to break within in my own film. I felt that a short film that explores multiple locations would both be more interesting visually, as well as leading to a slightly more complex plot. Not Quite Write starts out in an office scene, where the main character, Brian, is getting a lecture from his boss for not having written anything recently. The next scene then takes place in a cafe, where Brian is trying to come up with something. It's there where he meets Alex, who then, after talking for a bit, leave together for the third location, with is outside in the town. After Brian's discovery of Alex's true intentions, and his subsequential kidnapping, that he ends up in the fourth location, the thugs' house. After escaping, we go back to the first location, the office, to wrap everything up. Although some short films that are more complex may have a second location, the use of four subverts the convention of using minimal locations in short films. 

    The target audience for Not Quite Write is the same demographic that I fall in. The film is marketed towards teens and young adults. Characteristics of pieces that often are enjoyed by this demographic are stories that are often intense, but broken up with comedic moments. I tried marketing and stylizing the film much in a similar way to Baby Driver, a film that I had researched it's advertising techniques. I tried to have some mystery behind the characters, for example Alex, who's intentions are not clear until over half way through the film. This is common in movies that apply to the same demographic, such as Baby Driver or Pulp Fiction. The plan for the social media page was to use some humor and trends to attract the online users of the younger target audience. I feel that this was an area that I could have improved upon. I feel that I could have benefitted from playing more attention to current online trends into order to bring in more of the younger audience. 

    The brand that I wanted to create with my short film was one that felt almost a little surrealist. There is no specific place where this film takes place, nor a specific time period. While some scenes in the piece look like they could take place today, such as the outside scenes in the city. Other scenes, such as in the diner, look like they could be taking place in the 50s or 60s. Then, the office could easily take place in the 90s or early 2000s. The purpose of this was to keep the story less grounded in reality, and help make the quite absurd plot feel more fitting. Another part of the brand was common use of less seriousness within the film. The very beginning graphic of the short film states "Warning: The following picture was created by Zachary Golomb in it's entirety". At the end of the credits, a graphic says "dont ask how i came up with this". The plot of the short film is one that is honestly kind of absurd, so I decided to tap into that. I think something I could have improved upon looking back is having more of these elements in my social media. This less serious and more fun theme for my brand is something that markets towards my target audience of younger people very well, and I should have capitalized on that more. 

    Although my film does not really target any specific social groups, it does subtly cover some social issues. The short film features a female lead character in the drug business. This is something that is very uncommon to see in current media. In all of the most popular pieces of media, such as Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Narcos, and Ozark, this almost never seen. The short film does not have much representation for many social groups. However, the main character, Brian, being a writer does have some real life connotations. It highlights some of the difficulties that writers can face currently. In 2023, there were many long tern writers' strikes due to the poor conditions of writers all across the media industry. Writers all across the United States took measures such as going on strikes for several months, while the writer's guild attempted negotiations. Now, while writers don't tend to take as extreme measures as Brian does in the short film, it still highlights some of the difficulties that people in the profession may face.  

Final Thoughts

 So, after these nine weeks, I have just uploaded the film to Youtube. It doesn't really feel real, after having worked on it for so long, and now I have the link that anyone can go and watch it on. I've been sort of cryptic when anyone asks me what this film is about, I normally just respond with "it's about a writer who can't think of anything to write about". I mean, that is technically the plot, but we all know that a lot more happens. 

So, am I happy with the finished product? Well, it's definitely not of the same quality as any of the short films I had researched in the beginning of this project, and I'm sure I could be torn apart by any critic. However, when I look back, I made this entire thing by myself, and stuck with a plan all the way through. If you look back at my first post talking about this project, I wanted to make something that was kind of the sum of my four years of making videos in high school. My goal was, for the first time for me, properly write out a completely original short film, and follow through completely. I didn't want to make any changes to the script because I ran out of time, or thought something was too hard. And that's exactly what I did. I came up with a plan, then I executed it. So with that being said, I'd say I finished my goal.

I'm really going to miss this class. A Level Media is probably my favorite class I've ever taken, and I will always remember everything I've done for it, and everything it's done for me. With that being said, I guess this will be the last you'll read from me. Thanks for sticking around, whether you had a choice or not. 

on the first day of editing my true love came to me,

12 hours of editing, and a PARTRI- 

anyway,

It's mostly all in one layer at the moment. This is the line edit for all but the last scene(which is probably going to be the most annoying to edit). It only took a few hours, and most of that time was dedicated towards selecting the takes that I liked best. I would have finished tonight, but it's kind of late, so let's just take a look at what I have so far. First of all, I'm not excited for tomorrow night, because editing audio is going to be a NIGHTMARE. I have to balance out pretty much everything, which is expected, but I also just have to edit out tiny little tings that someone made it in, such as me saying three or just loud things in the background. I also have to color grade all of my footage, but that won't be nearly as bad. 

After I watched play, I'm going to have to go back and adjust the clips a lot. The pacing is pretty fast paced, but it's almost too much in a few sections, so I'm going to need to make some scenes just a little bit slower, or else it will just be a sensory overload. Right now, it kind of reminds me of the first few minutes of Flight Club. You know how it starts with Tyler pointing a gun at the Narrator's mouth, to us talking about a controlled demolition in a few minutes, to plastic explosives, to Marla Singer, to Bob's bitch tits, to insomnia? That's the first two minutes of the film. The difference is the movie actually starts to slow down after that, mine seems like it keeps that pace for all eight minutes. It's definitely something I can spend the next few days working on, but it's not going to be easy. 

That being said, I don't have any super obvious continuity errors so far, the transitions aren't too awkward, and I think it's turning out at least a little bit funny, so I'm starting to actually look forward to see the finished product for this thing. 

and a partridge in a pear treeeeeeeee

We did it guys. Today was the last day of filming. It also happened to be the longest, which is fun, but I now have all the footage I need to make the short film. 

Chapter 1: who do we have here

    Today I had five different actors come to my house to film. Wesley and Isabel of course, and then my friends Brian, Phillipe, and Enmanuel. I won't say who, but one of the other three actors was hired mostly because he has a really really nice car. The plan was to have the characters end by walking towards a PORSHE of all cars and it would be implied they drove away in that. That would actually be so cool. My friend who owns this car said his dad doesn't let him bring it around often, but that friend owes me a HUGE favor so I hoped he would have. Unfortunately he wasn't able to bring it, so they drove off in a Mercedes instead. Still cool, but the missed opportunity is depressing. 

    Everyone showed up at around 11, and I started out by filming the outside scene first, the one where Brian and Alex take out the thugs and escape. I started with this scene because I knew that some of the thug actors wanted to leave as soon as possible. 

Chapter 2: We Live on the Surface of the Sun

We've had some pretty decent weather outside for the past week. That did not continue today. Not even close. There is a heatwave in Britain right now. People are passing out in the streets as the blazing sun beats down upon their backs. The Brits have to attempt to tolerate the blazing 78 degree heat. 

Anyway today in Florida it was 87. Not fun. Especially when every scene was either outside, or in my garage. I feel really bad for the actors, especially since I had them wearing jackets because they were supposed to reach into their jackets to make it seem like they had guns. 

You can tell how hot it was because Bryan had ummm, white power, all over his face, and it started sticking to him from his sweat. Flour + water means we made dough on his skin. And it's already seasoned! I'm sorry, that's gross. 

Luckily, right when we were finishing up filming the outside scenes, we were saved. 

I planned for that to happen, trust me.

Chapter 3: My Neighbors Think I'm a Freak

I think the picture itself is enough of an explanation. 

The inside scenes weren't nearly as hot, but inside the garage it was even more humid, so yay. I brought two lights to make sure my garage was bright enough. I think with some color grading, it will be perfect. 

And yeah, after a swift FOUR AND HALF HOURS of filming, we are finally finished. I feel bad, I told Brian it would be an hour. 

Now all I have to do is edit it all together, which I'm excited (and scared) to see how it turns out.

dia dos (im fluent in spanish see)

So you know how A New Hope was a really really good movie, and then Empire Strikes Back was somehow even better? Well that wasn't the case for me. Not to say to went badly. It actually went pretty much just as well. What am I even saying anymore...

So I picked up Wesley at around 3:30, then took him to my dad's office. This was for two reasons: I need my dad, and I need to film at an office. Now, I needed my dad to play the role of the boss. So here's the thing, I've never seen my dad act in anything before. When I had asked him if he was willing to act, he just said "Actually, I used to be a thespian". No clue what that means. But when I asked if he could play the role of an annoyed boss, he just went "Oh that will be very easy, I'm annoyed all the time". 

He pulled off the annoyed and disappointed boss really really well. 

You can tell because one of his actual employees walked by, and she thought someone was actually in trouble. When I told him he did it really well, he just said "I was imagining I was talking to you". Love you too, Dad.

After that, Wesley and I drove back to the city center outside, where we had started filming last Thursday. On Thursday, Wesley had to be back by 2, so we just filmed all the scenes that Isabel were in so she didn't need to come back for another shoot. 

The last scene that we filmed on Thursday was Alex giving Brian a mysterious bag, and telling him to go drop it off in a corner. So that meant that the next scene was a bunch of walking. Yay. Nothing more fun to film than that.

I probably should have gotten more inspiration for what to do with the scene of him walking. If you have too many scenes of a character walking from one location to another, you just get something slow and boring, like the driving in Taxi Driver (ooh burn!). 

In all seriousness,  I just got a wide shot and a couple of close ups of Wesley walking, so it should look good. I also had some handheld reverse tracking shots, which I was worried would come out shaky, but they actually didn't turn out half bad. I guess I'm just the best (or the $3,000 camera has good stabilization, one of the two). 

The scene after I'm a bit worried about. Brian drops a bunch of what my econ teacher would call "powdered sugar", and as he is picking it all up he gets knocked unconscious. The slight problem is that if he is acting, and I'm filming, we need someone else to punch him. I wasn't about to bring a third person along just for a single scene, so the plan was to have that shot be with a tripod, and I would do the punching. This didn't really work out however. I wasn't able to get the angle that I wanted with the tripod(the shot was too low down), and getting him to stay in frame and in focus without being at the camera was just too difficult. 

My on-the-fly solution was to have the camera zoom onto Wesley's face, which would then cut to black right as his face covers the frame fully. I would then add a smack sound in post. Looking back at the footage, I'm not sure how well it will turn out, but if it's really bad I can always refilm it. I just really don't want to. 

It would cut earlier than it does in this clip, so hopefully it turns out okay. 

After that, we went to my house and did Wesley's black eye makeup, which actually came out really well. I took of picture of it with the camera to make sure it would turn out well on recording. 
 

And yeah it did turn out pretty well. Wesley's looking pretty tuff.

After that was just the ending office scene. All this really starts to feel more real once you record you're ending scene(even if you still have more to record).

Now, all that's left is the scene with the thugs, and I'm done filming. I do have about a week left, so...

i have become victim of a terrible attack

 So, the second day of filming is tomorrow. Here is the plan: I'm going to pick up Wesley and take him to my dad's office. There, we can film the opening scene where the boss is talking to Brian. Then, we'll go back to my town's city center to film the rest of the outdoor scenes, the ones that Isabel aren't needed for. Next, I need to give Wesley a black eye. 

If you remember, my film ends with Brian having a black eye from his encounters in the film. Unfortunately, I don't have much experience with using makeup, especially doing something like making a black eye. So, I will punch Wesley in the face really hard, and if I time it right, by the time I get back to my dad's office, the bruising will appear. 

And so that's the plan for tomorrow, I'll upda- 

oh. what's that?

Okay so apparently it's unethical to sucker punch my actors (who aren't getting paid) in the face. I guess I'll need to find someone who A. knows how to do makeup, and B. is willing to use their makeup on this random dude I've recruited to act for me. My mom said she could probably do the eye, but doesn't want to use her makeup on some random kid. But then she tested it out... 

That, actually looks pretty good.

After my mom tested it out on me, she said "Actually, bring your friend over. I am amazing". Which I agree. You're the best, Mom. 

I told my mom I should show up to school with that makeup. When people ask what happened, I could say "My mom did this to me". I wouldn't be lying. Anyway,

So after we film in the city center, we will stop by my house, beat up Wesley(give him makeup), then go back to the office and film the ending scene. That should mean that after tomorrow, the only scene I have left to film is the kidnapped/dark room scene. Wish me luck again  :D

WE FILMED (part of it)

 I filmed today. And nothing caught on fire. Hell yeah.

I had to pick up Wesley, who doesn't live in my town so it was a twenty minute drive to his house and another twenty minutes back. We met with Isabel in front of the restaurant at around 10:30 (they said come at 10:45), and went inside. So Lucille's opens at 11am, so we were pretty surprised to see customers waiting to be seated. Apparently, so where the employees, because they were like "why are you here this early". Then the manager saw us and said we could film anywhere. We sat down at a booth and set up. 

The restaurant was a little dark, but I wasn't about to bring a three point light kit in there, so it will have to do. I think the aesthetic matches so perfectly, and I'm so happy we were able to film there. 

I want to mention I came PREPARED. I wasn't sure if the restaurant would let us use theirs, so I brought three coffee mugs and a thermos full of coffee. Filming all the diner scenes took about an hour, which overlapped with the opening, which gave us a lot of really weird looks from customers. Normally, I get kind of stressed out in these situations, and rush myself. I had to focus on just taking my time, wearing headphones, and just making sure everything was done right. Luckily, looking back at the footage it seemed like that paid off.

After the diner scene, we went to my city's town center to film the outside scenes. However, Wesley had to be back by 2, so we decided to just film the scenes that Isabel was needed in, since she can't do any other day this week, and Wesley and I could meet up to finish the rest a different day. 

There is a really big difference in lighting from the dark atmosphere of the diner to the blinding Florida sun, so I'm hoping the transition isn't too harsh. The lighting kept changing with the cloud cover as well, but I think I managed to make everything look decent. 

It's going to need some color grading, but nothing that the lumentri color wheel can't fix.

Wesley and Isabel have never spoken until this day, but they both managed to act their parts really really well. I'm really happy with what I have filmed so far, and for the first time, I'm feeling kind of good about this project. So, that should be one day of filming down, two to go. 

oh god im filming tomorrow

So, tomorrow's the day. I had spent pretty much all day preparing, and somehow it's been so insanely productive. 

For equipment to film, I checked out from my school's tv club's equipment closet. My camera is a Canon Mark IV 5D. It's a DSLR that is mostly made for photography and not cinematography, but it's pretty much the best thing I could get my hands on. My audio is a wireless Hollyland lav system I got for free on a recent school trip. 

Next, I wanted to secure a location to film at. I had originally written the second scene to be at a cafe/diner, but I could easily film at a park if I couldn't get permission. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to confirm I was filming tomorrow until late last night, so I hadn't been able to ask anywhere for permission to film. So, on a whim, I went out to lunch with my friend at a local resturant called Lucille's American Cafe. I had mentioned it in my locations post a little bit ago. 

After eating a delicious meal(the pulled pork sandwich is really good there I recommend), I channeled my inner white woman and went "Can I speak to the manager?". I'm kidding. I said "Is there a manager I can speak to? It's nothing bad I just have a question". The manager thought I was about to ask for a job, but once I explained that I wanted to film there, he was really happy to help. He gave me the email for the owner, and said that they love it when they could help with projects. 

So now I had to email the owner, and hope she responded... tonight. Yay. 

I sent this off at 4:38pm, before I even left the restaurant(yes it was a late lunch). Anyway, now it was time to go buy some items to make props. Well, there's only one real prop I needed. I needed to make what looks like a bunch of cocaine. I went to Publix, and bought two big bags of flour, then some Ziploc bags and saran wrap. I then started filling up the bags with flour and wrapping them in plastic. It's probably not a good idea to post my reference image for a few reasons, but I'm pretty happy with the result.

Do you know what the worst thing for your mom to walk in on you doing is? Well the second worst thing is walking in and seeing this:

I know I did at least a half decent job, because my mom has no idea what my film is about, and the first thing she said was "is that cocaine?".

After a few hours, I wasn't feeling very hopeful about getting an email from the restaurant, when suddently... 

SHE RESPONDED!!!! AND SAID YES!!! FOR TOMORROW!!!! 

She is literally the nicest person in the world oh my god I am so happy. I started freaking out in the gym and the guy at the machine next to me looked at me weirdly. And I don't even care. 

So now that's where we are at, wish me luck :D

actors

 So I kind of got myself into a teeny little situation. My plan was to film during my spring break, which is next week. However, because I took so long to write the script, I never solidified any actors for the film. I didn't want to ask anyone to act without having a full storyline to give to them, so I probably should have just finished the script earlier... oh well. 

I never really realized how many people travel for spring break until I started looking for actors. 

This is how it went most of the time.

I had asked my friend Mateo, who is in my media class, if he would be willing to act in my film, and at first he was pretty iffy. But then I showed him my script, and he seemed much more up to it. I asked him to recite one line from it, and right after he was like "Yeah I would do the role pretty well". He gave me the days he could possibly film, which was all but like three days over break, so that meant I just needed to find an actress for the other lead. 

I have a lot of friends who are in drama. Some think I'm friends with them because they're nice people, but this is completely incorrect. I actually have been slowly becoming friends with the drama kids in hopes that they would act in my short films. (I'm kidding I love all my friends in drama)

Turns out most of them are traveling over break! Yay! Luckily, my friend Isabel, who sits next to me in media, isn't traveling. 

As you can see I was very prepared, sending the script and everything. And she said yes!!! I'm really happy she did, because I know she's a really talented actress, she played a lead of one of the school's shows recently. 

Now I just had to find a day they could both do it... 

So I guess Mateo can't do it.

After some scrambling, I was able to find someone else. My friend Wesley said he'd be able to do it, and I think he's going to do the role really well. He is a lead actor on my school's short film team, and I think he's a really good fit. So, if all is well and good, we shall film Thursday. 

fixing ma script

 Okay, I worked on that one bit of my script that was terrible. Let's compare the before and after. 

So to fix this, I employed this hyper effective super cool strategy. 

Step 1: highlight

Step 2: delete

So then I spent a bit rewriting and came up with this. 

I just think that this conversation flows a lot better between the two. It was kind of hard to write, since this is such a strange exchange, but I think this feels about as natural as it can. 

second group meeting

I have my second group meeting today, and I finally have a finished script!!! It needs some work, but I'm posting it here for my group to view. NOTQUITEWRITE.

Okay it's about an hour later, and the group has reviewed my script. It was a lot of fun watching everyone's face and trying to guess what absurd part they were at. And the general consensus was... they didn't hate it!!! They really liked the ending and now it kind of tied things together, which was the goal so I'm happy with that. 

The only real issue that people pointed out was the first conversation between the two main characters. It was a really awkward conversation that didn't really flow well, and it felt completely unnatural. Which I personally fully agreed with. When I had written it originally, I sort of rushed it because I was struggling to figure out what to say. Now, I know that I should go back and both shorten it, and make it seem more natural. Mateo gave me some good advice, which is to have people read out loud the dialogue while writing it. 

My teacher also read the script. She didn't love the second half, and said it had some pacing issues. Which I get, because it kind of does. Her solution was just cutting most of the second half, and leaving the audience to wonder how the two main characters escape. I do not love this route, but I can very easily film for both and decide which is better in editing, so that's what I shall do. 

I FINALLY CAME UP WITH A NAME FOR MY SHORT FILM

 I was walking my dog, deep in my own thoughts. I don't know about you, but in the shower and walking my dog are when I have the most random and creative thoughts. Anyway, I was walking my dog, when suddenly the title came to me. "The Write Stuff". Wait no, that sounds just like The Right Stuff. But I kept thinking for a bit and came up with the title "Something's Not Quite Write". Because it's about a writer, get it. I'm so funny. I decided to shorten it down to just "Not Quite Write", because I think the more concise the title the better. 

I'm actually really happy with this title. I think so many short film titles are really really boring. If I go search up "short films" into Youtube, some of the responses that pop up are: "The Barbershop", "The Cook", "Tunnel", "The Elevator", "The Loop". Now I've watched most of these, and they're all pretty good, but I just feel that it gets old when almost every title is just "The" + a noun. "The Crush", "The Neighbors Window", "The Wait". It's really pet peevie, because let's be fair, a quick and concise title is a good idea, especially when the point of short films is to be quick and concise. However, I really love it when titles and just a bit more unique than that. One of my favorites has the title "To The DEATH". You have no clue what it's about, but come on that's such a cool title, and it has mystery. Like the title "Alternative Math", you really have no clue what happens until you watch it. When you start watching "The Neighbors Window", you can guess it's going to be about a neighbors window. Okay sorry I'll stop, this is really not that important.

Now that I actually know what the hell I'm calling the film, I can finally make a social media page  advertising it. I'm literally writing this blog in real time, so I'm going to go create the account now...

Dammit. 

Ayyyy it's not taken. 

I actually kind of like the name for the account. It has an extra word on the title, being called "somethingsnotquitewrite" when the title is just "Not Quite Write", but I think that's actually kind of fun. 

Bwahahaha, it has been created. 

Now I want to post something as a little teaser for what is it come... wait I should probably create a description first. 

Okay, this is what it looks like for other people viewing the account. Also now I have six Instagram accounts, that's probably too many. They all exist for a reason I promise. 

Anyway, back to figuring out what my first post on the account should be. I'm thinking it should be a little tease, something that gives absolutely no information about what the plot is, but can start to build hype. Also, I should try introducing mise-en-scene and, oh what's the word... ICONOGRAPHY (didn't even have to search that one up), to start building an image. 

Obviously it's still very early relatively for the creation of this film, so there's not much to share of the production process, but I have an idea that I think could be cool. There is a scene where the main character is in a cafe trying to write something in a notebook. So, what if I draw the words "Not Quite Write" onto a sheet of paper? I'm terrible at drawing, but I'll give it a shot. 

I hate both of these. They are terrible. This is the very first post for my account, and I don't want this to be it. I don't think this really matches the mood of the film that I'm going for either. I'm going to work on something that looks a little better, I'll probably make something using photoshop instead. 

Anyway, now that I finally have a social media account, I will start posting there regularly. I have some advertisement ideas I'm really excited for, so I think this account will be a lot of fun. 

real estate agents may be on to something...

 There is something that is so essential to a short film, and although I may not have the entirety of my plot figured out at the moment, I need to get started on it as soon as possible. There are three L's when it comes to real estate, and they apply just as much to film making. Those three L's are:

L: location

L: Location

L: LOCATION

Phil Dunphy would be so proud of me... 

A good filming location can make or break a short film. Having something that is visually pleasing, yet also convincing can submerge the viewer into your story, and a weak location and pull them right out of it.

So, I know I want to try to film in a coffee shop/cafe. Great. Now how many of those exist near me, and how many of those would let me film there? I'm going to try to see if any of these places are closed on a certain day, that would probably be the best time to ask to film.

There's this really cool coffee shop in my town called Watts & Coffee. It was a originally a bike shop, but they expanded it into also selling coffee, as sort of a meeting place for bikers. It's not exactly the idea aesthetic that I'm going for, however, their hours are really appealing. The bike shop it is attached to is open on Monday's, while the coffee shop isn't, meang if I asked to film there, I could hopefully do it on a Monday, which would prevent me from getting in the way of business. \

Another potential location is a local American diner called Lucille's. I really love this place, because they have kept the 50s aesthetic, making it a really visually appealing place to possibly film. I know that they hire a number of people from my school, which would hopefully make the owners more open to letting us possibly film there. The place also doesn't open until 11am on weekdays, so I could probably ask to film before then to avoid disturbing customers. Also, quick shoutout to this restaurant because the food there is really good. 

Next, I know there are a few scenes that take place outside in a cityish sort of place. Last year I filmed in my town's local town center, although I really don't want to film there again. Mainly because I've already filmed so many things there, like last year when I recorded my film opening there, and people kept walking up to my friends on the ground pretending to be unconscious. Also this year, I walked around with my friends asking people about feet. The second reason I don't want to film there is because there's quite a lot of people there, and although I haven't revealed a particular event in the plot that occurs, I would prefer if I didn't have numerous people seeing it. 

Holy crap. I took a break from blogging and went to go walk my dog, and suddenly it happened. I FINALLY CAME UP WITH A TITLE. Anyway, back to the location blog. 

Yeah so outside, where could I do this?

The location that I was picturing in my head looks something like this. The problem with actually doing it at that location is that it's Las Olas Boulevard. So hopefully there's a less busy place that actually is kind of close by. I really want to find a place that has an alleyway, but I genuinely think that there isn't an alleyway within a 20 mile radius of where I live. Oh the struggles of living in a generally wealthy part of Florida. 

I found this place, which could work aesthetically, although it seems like it would be difficult to film there without permission, and I highly doubt I could get permission. 

I have some time, so I'll focus on the other parts of production for now and keep looking for alleyways in the meantime. 

scriptwriting is hard

 Over the past week, I've been writing the script for the film. Well, I've been trying. It's funny how the script isn't even that long, yet it can take so long to write. I have been employing a technique that a producer who came into our school told me about. It's called "Sit down for ten minutes a day and write". This technique consists of, well, sitting your butt down in a chair with the script open for ten minutes each day until you have something good. Hence the name. Sometimes I'd be able to write three pages in like fifteen minutes, and other times I'd sit down and not be able to write a single word. 

This part of the script literally took me like five minutes. It was probably the easiest part, since it was the opening scene and I've been visualizing it for a while. 

This part of the script took over like an hour. And the worst part? IT'S TERRIBLE. I really need to go back and rework the dialogue, but I decided to move on, because I knew how the next section was going to go, and I wanted to work on that before I lost the motivation. 

The next two pages were fairly easy and really fun to write. It's when the absurdity really starts to kick in, and I really enjoyed writing the main character's reaction to the insane thing that is happening, as well as the ridiculous banter between the two characters. 

The hardest dialogue to write besides the conversation in the diner was the dialogue for the thugs, mostly because it's really hard to not make them sound cringy. "Oh we're so stuff we're gonna beat you up bwahahaaha". Yeah we want to avoid that. So basically, I employed this genius tactic called not having them say very much. 

I'm almost done with the full script, so once I finish writing that I'll talk about any edits I need to make. 

group meeting

 I want you to picture yourself in my situation. You have just spent the last week away on a trip for a competition you have spent months preparing for. You have never been so mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted. Of course, you have become sick after all of this chaos, but you've already missed so much school, so you drag your ass into class the next day. 

Yeah so that was me on Friday. I will have to say that I was definitely not in the happiest mood, nor was I especially ready to use my brain a bunch. I hadn't really worked on my project in a week. So just imagine how I felt when the first thing I hear from my media teacher is "Time for group meetings!".    :D

Yay! I was hoping I would at least have the entire plot figured out before this point, but I was a teeny bit behind schedule. Luckily, I at least had the basic outline to present to my groupmates, and it ended up being really helpful. 

As you can tell I was so ready to be there!!!

Martina started off explaining what she had planned for her short film, and I tried my best to be helpful but I'm going to be honest (and I'm so sorry Martina), I only heard about the last 30% of her plot. However, we all gave her some advice, and then it was my turn. 

The first thing Martina asked me after I described my whole plot was what the deeper meaning behind my story was. Sure, a bunch of things happened, but what is the whole reason for all of that to happen? Well damn, that's a really good question. I think it my hatred for short films that got too philosophical, I forget to put a theme into my story. WHICH IS KIND OF IMPORTANT. I'm really glad she asked this however because the group discussed some ways I could maybe improve the story. What was suggested, and I'm really heavily considering putting into my story, is having the boss not like the final story at the end of the film, but the main character goes ahead and publishes it on his own. It would show that the character realizes he doesn't need that company to express his creative talents, and I honestly really like that. 

I spent a lot of time trying to describe the mood and tone of my film, and the members of my group gave me some recommendations that they thought would really help me, based on what I told them. Sofia recommended the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and Megan suggested How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. They both seemed to really feel that I'll take a lot from those films, so I'm definitely going to give them a shot. 

The biggest thing I got out of this meeting was adding a little extra motivation to the character in the plot, or just some way for him to develop himself over the film. I wrote the ideas down to implement them, and will definitely include them while I write my script. 

I really wish I could individually credit every group member for their ideas, but I was like half conscious for most of that meeting. Our teacher kept looking at me and just looked so sad seeing me, which meant I must have really looked ill because she's never given me that look before. So anyway, if any of my group members read this, thank you so much for all the help, I think the end result is going to be improved a lot by what you guys suggested. 

Anyway, now that I have the outline mostly figured out, I should prooooobably write the script next. yay

DO_NOT_READ.docx

 Okay so I'm going to lay out the basic idea I have for my short film. If you are in my media class, I would prefer if you don't read this to avoid spoilers. I mentioned before that I want just a teeny little "ah ha" moment in this film, and that's difficult when people start watching already knowing what it is.

Okay, without further ado, lets go look at what my brain somehow conjured up. 

Okay, so I need you to understand that when my mind somehow connects together its single digit number of brain cells, I have fleeting moments before that idea is gone forever. So, I had to write this very quickly into my notes app, just in a way that would remind me of what I thought of. 

Translating this from incomprehensible jargon to actual words, it starts with a writer who, as the holy notes app note suggests, has extreme writers block. For some reason however, I'm picturing this guy to be a writer for some big company, where he works in an office for a bunch of people. I think I can give the character more motivation if he's writing because his boss gave him a deadline. I'm kind of picturing an environment kind of like the office in 500 Days of Summer? If you remember, Tom works for a greeting card company, so while his work is creativity based, he still works in a more average office environment. 

His boss then talks to him, saying that he's come up with no new stories in the past 5 weeks, and he have to be let go if he can't come up with something asap. Our main character, who can't come up with something good for the life of him, stays up all night at his house trying to write something to no avail. Waking up at his home desk at 4am, he decides to go to a coffee shop and trying to work there. 

As he's sitting at his table, still very early, a woman around his age (they're both in their younger 20s), starts asking him about what he's doing. She's clearly a lot more lively than him at his hour. They have a little chat, but it's unclear why the woman came up to him. 

I mostly came up with this part of the idea because I LOVE the aesthetic of a coffee shop or cafe right at the crack of dawn. It just feels so special, and a tad bit mysterious, and I would love to capture that vibe on film. 

This turns to the middle part of the story... that I do not know yet. I know, I'm supposed to have this figured out, BUT THIS IS HARD OKAY. Basically, I want there to be a turn of events that sparks what I can only describe as some "crazy adventure". I'm not sure of what it would entail, I have a few ideas but I need to check with my teacher for what she would consider "appropriate" (nothing that bad I promise, I just need something ridiculous).

At the end, after something has happened to cause some physical harm to the writer, like a big scratch or something, the adventure has mostly climaxed. Suddenly, what is happening on screen cuts suddenly to a script, showing what was just happening a second before. It is the boss reading a script that the writer turned in. The boss asks how he came up with this, and the writer just shrugs, trying to hide the scratch he got from his "adventure".

So yeah, it's very incomplete, but I have a solid beginning and end. I just need a fun and creative way to connect those two pieces, meaning I just need to sit my butt down and write for a bit. 

wait I need to be social?

 A major part of this project is that we need to advertise it. On the media that is social. As per project directions (raise imaginary glasses), an official social media page and postcard advertisement for a film fest is required. (lower glasses) So it's probably a good idea to look at the social media pages for films to get some inspiration. 

It's a good idea to look at socials for films in the same genre that I'm creating. Problem! I don't know what I'm doing yet! I do have a general idea of the genre I want however, so let's look at some films that have a similar mood and genre. 

Baby Driver

It's actually a bit hard, because so many of my favorite films in the genre I'm going for are fairly old, and came out before social media was really around, so I had to dig a little deeper to find some good options. Baby Driver was a pretty good choice however, because it's a fun drama that doesn't take itself too seriously, which is a kind of film that I love. 

My first thought was wow, because the account, titled babydrivermovie, posted 212 times advertising for the movie. That's a lot, but thankfully I did the math and the account was posting for over 450 days, so an average of a post every two to three days is very manageable. It appears that they started with a date for the teaser for the release of the teaser, followed by a countdown for the trailer. 

They then advertised the release of the trailer on Youtube.

The account then started to advertise it's unique use of music in the movie, as it's such a big part of what makes Baby Driver special.

Then the account starts to show off the top tier actors in the movie, such as Kevin Spacey. 

There's then a countdown for the release of the actual movie itself. 

And the release announcement.

After the movie was released, they then advertised interviews and talk shows with the actors and director.

As soon as I have an full understanding of the plot, genre, and most importantly, title, I can begin the social media page for my film. It will start with just showcasing production, but very soon, once I have a grasp of my films mise-en-scene elements, I will begin to incorporate that into the account as well.