Target Audience

    It is probably a good idea to research the target audience of coming of age films. I used an article (link in sources) to help me find the audience. Like the subject matter, coming of age films have a target audience of teenagers 12-17, of no particular gender. This contains a majority of the Gen Z generation. They can relate with the matter more easily compared to adults. Teens are finding their identity that will stay with them for life, so the films can be something they latch on and relate to. Problems discussed can be personal problems that they face currently, like dealing with lots of homework. In my opening, I target older teenagers 15-17 because they can better relate with ideas like following your passion, even if it won't be guaranteed. I will have to put one or two teenager stereotypes in my film, like always being on their phones. 

Sources: 

red-rock-films.medium.com/how-to-uncover-the-proper-target-audience-for-your-film-bfbb101d078

prezi.com/u-mzr7kqffc7/target-audience-research/

 The Slow Frame Rate Technique

    As usual, I was on YouTube when I saw the music video for Viva La Vida by Coldplay in my recommended feed. I haven't watched it in a bit and since it's my favorite Coldplay song, I rewatched it. I completely forgot about a technique they use. In the video, a slow frame rate effect is used. This was meant to show that the video is old, like a painting from the 1800s. When the chorus happens, the slow frame rate effect is turned off. This creates more of an emphasis on the chorus and almost takes us out of the 1800s. Chris Martin, the singer, is also singing more directly towards the viewer, like he's calling for help. Interestingly, shots with the drums do not have the slow frame effect. Maybe this is because of how fast the mallet hits the drums. The video below shows the effect in action.

    In my opening, I want to use this technique to show the actor playing by themselves. Here, the effect will show how choppy and tense the actor is alone. When the clone appear, the effect can be turned off, which shows how much more confident and loose the main actor is with the clones. 

    I watched a tutorial, and it said that to implement this only requires using the Echo effect in Adobe Premiere Pro, my editing software of choice. The echo time and number of echoes should be lowered so the rate isn't too choppy. When the actor gets interrupted, the effect can be enabled again, but with less intensity. 

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgZkm1xWPE

https://youtu.be/sdjWuO4Yxek?t=25

 Costume Design

    Costume design should be (for the most part) simple. I can just wear a t shirt of an artist on top with a shirt underneath. I think having a black or white long sleeve shirt underneath would look cooler, but I would have to get one. On top, I already can wear a Coldplay and Marshmello t-shirt (I know he's not a band but no one really cares) since I already have that, so me and my clone can wear that. For bottoms, I have some ripped jeans and boot cut/flared jeans that I can wear. If I wear the Coldplay shirt, I should wear the flared jeans because they are blue. If I can't get the long sleeve shirts for any reason, I can just wear the ol' reliable blue jacket with a zipper and have it open My ripped jeans are black, which would match too much with the black Coldplay shirt. I can also wear a cream beanie which fits with the main character being a teen and some teens wearing beanies.

    Here is a mood board with some of those ideas visualized. I have also included a picture of Chris Martin and Thom Yorke performing that has the general aesthetic that I want to achieve.

Mise-En-Scène / Set Design

The Dark Side of the Moon poster. It looks cool!

    For set design, I can buy a bunch of music posters.  Ooh, I should get a Daft Punk poster, which leans into the electronic part of producing music. If Skrillex drops some merch, maybe I can pick up a cool poster. With the more "live music" part, I can get posters from classic bands. There's one album with the prism and the rainbow that I want the poster of. I forgot the name of it but it's super iconic so I think you should know it. I did 2 seconds of research and it's called The Dark Side of the Moon. I can get LED strip lights to change the lighting of the entire room. But I'm not sure if I will do that because they're evident unless I want to add to the aesthetic of a TikTok bedroom producer, which many have those lights. I can probably find some old speakers that will "play" the music I make. If I can't find any, then I can buy cheap ones from eBay.

 Final Idea + Initial Plans

    I think I am going to combine the producer and idea together. Using the clone technique, I can have me play the piano and my clone play a MIDI Keyboard. Only thing is I would need is to buy one of those. Some of the more expensive ones can cost a couple of pretty pennies, but I won't need the professional stuff unless I'm Skrillex or Metro Boomin. For my opening, I can just get a somewhat cheap one. I went on Amazon and I found a MIDI keyboard that includes some drum pads to play digital drums. I actually wanted to get one for a while, so I can use this for producing songs.

    After we play, something could interrupt us. I'm not sure what does, maybe my parents or another friend. If it's a friend, I can have them be like "Who's playing the drums in here". I could be playing a chord that is "unresolved", where its hinting that it would return to the tonic chord, which is supposed to relieve the tension created by the unresolved chords. The clone could have decided to peace out and fade away, which seems cliche, but it represents that it only comes out when I am in a musical spirit. I'll figure this out later. For costume design, I can wear a band t-shirt with jeans and for basic mise-en-scène elements, I can put up music posters. I'll make a more in depth post for this.

    When the title card plays, I'll be walking out of frame. I can make a mask of the text appearing when the door closes. This is very hard to explain with words, so I'll put a little gif that shows it. I hope that when editing, this part won't take very long. 

 Genre Film Opening Research

The genre of my film is mostly coming of age and drama. The coming of age genre can focus on the life of a singular member of the band, and their progress to having their first concert. The drama can focus on character development and their relationship. I'll take a look at some film openings to see what techniques they use.

Nick is in love (hopefully this isn't a big spoiler)!

The first opening I will look at is Heartstopper. It is a coming of age film about Charlie, a gay boy in an all boys high school, and how he falls in love with another boy, Nick. The intro starts with an upbeat indie-pop song, and a close up shot of Charlie and Nick, shown split screen. They both have similar environments and outfits, which implies to the viewer that they are both students of the same school. Nick's phone has a notification from Ben to meet up with him. A montage of Charlie walking to meet up with Ben is shown, but Ben is nowhere to be seen. He sadly walks to his first class. There isn't much audible dialogue until the end, where he talks to the teacher to find his seat. Turns out he's next to Nick, the guy from the split screen close up! Indie music plays and doodles of leaves fall, showing how Nick has love for Charlie and maybe how nervous he is. Title card plays, and that's basically the intro. The editing overall is fairly slow paced, with no fast paced shots. There aren't many complex editing techniques used, this isn't 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I would show screenshots of the intro, but Netflix has some copyright system that prevents screenshots from being taken on my phone. Maybe there is a way to bypass that on my computer, but I'll have to wait and see.

I in fact found a way. (look up a bit)

He in fact kicked the competition!

A drama opening I will look at is Cobra Kai. It starts with a flashback to a previous karate tournament, to give some past context. The shots are medium paced to match the action on screen. The use of non-diegetic music helps increase the viewers' tension. When Daniel does his game winning move, the shot slows down and is drawn out. That intense music stops and the audience is muffled to put further emphasis on Johnny losing. The camera zooms onto Johnny so we can see the anger that he feels by losing. We cut to the present day, with Johnny on his bed in the same position as he was when he lost the game, implying that nothing much has changed. A montage of him making his unhealthy breakfast plays out. A shot of a soccer trophy and another shot of a picture of a boy winning a soccer game on his fridge lingers, which hints that Johnny might be still obsessed with sports. Or at least his kids are. A wide shot of Johnny eating his breakfast shows that he lives alone, almost isolated with the TV as a source of comfort. He takes out the trash and the camera focuses on a boy outside. The two converse and Johnny gets in his car. Rock music plays with a shot focusing on the gear shifter implying that his car is a really fast one!  He looks at an ad for Daniel's car dealership and the camera slowly zooms into it to show Johnny's shock and disbelief at the billboard. The slogan is "we kick the competition", which is a reference to the karate fight from the flashback. Honestly, I would act the same if I saw my biggest rival has an obnoxious billboard. He puts on shades, turns up the music, and insert the title card!

 The Split Screen Clone Technique

The cloning technique in
"We Have to Leave Here Together"

    I was watching a YouTube video by Joel Haver. In it, I couldn't stop but notice the clones and how seamlessly they were made. It indeed seemed like there was a clone when in reality, it was all done via the power of editing. In his film "We Have to Leave Here Together", he uses a clone to represent the girlfriend that he falls apart from in the movie. The use of a clone is a clever idea. It allows him to be a one-man production without needing anyone else, which can reduce costs for producing the film.

    After reading the comment section and watching some Premiere Pro tutorials, I figured out how to do the technique. The only thing that has to be set up during filming is not messing with the camera, consistent lighting, and a commenter also added "avoiding your own shadow". Basically (I am massively simplifying this), in your video editing program of choice, create a mask of one shot that includes the first actor, and overlay that on top of the other shot that has the second actor/clone.

    I want to incorporate the use of cloning in my film open. With the gaming idea, I can have me and my "clone" play a split screen game together or we both play games on separate devices but still in the frame. With the music idea, I can have myself play the piano and my "clone" play another instrument, like the ukulele. The ideas and possibilities are endless.

Sources (I should add these more):

We Have To Leave Here Together by Joel Haver https://youtu.be/jGpwCRLni3M?t=198

The commenter's comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGpwCRLni3M&lc=UgxD9m-liWMvi4_A6ZV4AaABAg.9i_VZ04PuFr9ib6wAAPctI

The Premiere Pro tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7lVtXvy13w

 Ideas Pt. 2

Another idea just popped in to my head. The film opening could show someone making paper planes and origami cranes multiple times until they finally create the best one. There could be a paper plane competition that the main actor signs up for so that they can create the best paper plane for 100$. I'm not sure how I could further develop this idea, so this can go in the "maybe I'll use it" bin.

I could use what I know in the film, like how I know some stuff about digital graphic design. An idea that can be used here is to have the film intro show the full process of a graphic designer starting and finishing a project. But without any further story development, it won't be very engaging. Graphic design is only interesting if it's very striking and weird. Also, another film intro did something like that, where a piece of art was being made and at the end, the final result was shown, so I need to put my own spin on it and be unique.

Still Deciding for a Good Idea

There are two main things that I'm still deciding. One the one hand, I want to make a film opening about a piano player who has a clone that can play bass or another instrument. The clone could also play drums made from random school things, but it obviously needs to be developed. One problem I already see while writing is that it could seem too much like a music video, which I want to avoid. My opening could also introduce an up and coming producer who just finished producing their first song. This could be easy for me because I can produce (not so good) songs, but I could pretend I made a banger track by using a good song, like Porter Robinson's Look At The Sky. I could name the film the song that I "made", or the file name that the song has. However, there would be some challenges to clearing the track to be used.

Another idea on the other hand is with the gamer. I'm not really too sure where I could develop this. Maybe it could be about a streamer who speedruns and the film could show their journey to get a world record in a game like Minecraft or Celeste. I wouldn't have to actually beat a world record in a game, I could just play intensely with a stream mockup. Or, I could make it about the story of 2 people and how their friendship grows stronger with playing a two player game like Mariokart. But this seems a bit cliche to me and would require another person to work with me.

Square One

I'm actually very excited to start working on the opening. Some samples I saw were cool. Before I do anything, I need to figure out what genre I would like to do. Doing sci-fi would be very hard, because of my budget of 64 cents. Some other genres that I wouldn't like to do are action, drama, comedy, or musicals. I think I could do a film about a high school musician. With my background in playing the piano, I am thinking of including piano in the film opening. I also have played video games like Fortnite and Portal, so I could incorporate that into the opening.

If I end up wanting to follow along with the video game idea, I can work with my friend who from what I know is pretty good at Valorant. Going along with the gaming idea, maybe I could do a film about an up-and-coming gamer and streamer. But that's just an idea I'm throwing out there. For the music idea, I could make it about a piano or bass player in their high school band getting ready for a performance, or about a producer finishing the production of their first song. In this upcoming week, I need to narrow down my ideas and create a full plan of what I plan to do.

I'm excited to get to work on this project, but I can't do it all at once. I'll do it one square by square, step by step.

 Music Marketing #2

The album cover I made for 9th @ Pine,
 based off of research from punk albums.

Doing research was fairly simple. I had to research album covers, punk websites, logos, and some aspects of merch. Most of my team did other parts of the research, like the target audience and the history of punk. 

Production of the music video was mainly done by Mia, Ivy, and Yael. From what I can tell, the only issue while filming was the shortness of the song 9th @ Pine. It was under 2 minutes long, which made it hard to incorporate all 20 shots. Also, there were some exporting issues with the yellows in the video being highly saturated. Nonetheless, the video remained well. 

After filming came editing. Various editing elements were used, including layering multiple shots on top of each other and changing the opacity to make it seem like they were all playing at the same time. This shot was reminiscent of Adele's Send My Love music video with the same opacity editing technique. Another technique used was oversaturation when the preppy girl wore headphones. During exporting, the plugin used accidentally caused the video to corrupt leading to the yellows being overblown. One singular shade of yellow was present during that short scene with the plugin enabled.

Planning and creating the final presentation was mostly straightforward. There was a planning PowerPoint with most of our information laid out. We then transferred the information to a PowerPoint with a punk theme, painted purple, the color of our band with some barbed wire as an accessory element. The first slide's background was made before the final PowerPoint was made. It is a collage of various punk images including artwork of the punk band The Sex Pistols. It shows an introduction to the punk aesthetic. All members of our group did 3 slides each. They were made to be in a loop so one person does a slide and 5 slides later the same person would do a slide, and this would repeat until the final slide happened. For example, I ended up doing slides 1, 6, and 11, while Ryan did slides 3, 8, and 13. This rotation allowed us to prepare our slides in advance. Some of the group members including me had a small piece of paper with the points we would say. I memorized what to say on slides 1 and 11. 

I learned a lot from this project. I have better skills in making logos and I learned graphic design for an album cover. I know how to make a mock-up for a website. Some aspects useful in the portfolio project would be making a title screen with stylized text by using knowledge gained from making a punk logo.