Jocelyn+Final+Film+Journals

=Journal 1= Our movie is based on the premise of a traumatized, agoraphobic character who confronts his irrational fear. He is scarred because he was bullied by a little girl, when he are around the age of 6. The constant reoccurring bullying caused him to have an irrational fear of the world. He stays home, takes online and virtual classes, exercises at home, and orders food. The thought of leaving the house completely scares him, for every time he leaves, he sees the "phantom" of the girl. The inciting incident that will cause the boy to leave his house is the moving in of a new girl in the neighborhood. At first he merely admires her beauty, and as days pass, he is intrigued by her character, and finally decides to go out to reach out to her. After many attempts he fails to overcome his fear of the little girl bully. One day, he resumes his window position to watch the girl go back to her house, but he immediately noticed that in her hands, she carried bags of groceries, and stuff was falling out of her bag, without her notice. He quickly runs towards her to "save her" without thinking much about the bully. He, instead of being overwhelmed by the outside (like he is used to), he mentally defeats the bully in his mind. Only to find out that the girl who moved in, was in fact, the bully from his past.

As the director of this film, I helped each individual to plan their own parts out. As a team we decided on what elements we wanted to incorporate in the film, and what would it signify metaphorically. For example, we liked the lighting and the color scheme from Pan's Labyrinth, and we decided to adopt and change it for our film. So for our film, the interiors of the agoraphobic character's house will have low key lighting, but a warm color scheme. His house will be a physical manifestation of his internal conflict, and his tendency to "hermit."' Another thing I did as a director, was to orchestrate a location scouting session: Vipula and I examined the compound Stradford, where we plan to shoot our film, and two of our peer's houses. We compared the two, took videos and photos, and decided on which house would be a better fit for setting for our final film. One of my job, besides finding a good location, is to also organize the props. In our movie, the protagonist has a teddy bear that he talks to; as a team we decided on how we want the teddy bear to look like and we ordered two online (because we will tear one's head open for one of the bully scenes). As for the specific mise-en-scene, we also agreed on the actings of the character. We wanted a protagonist who is queer, but extremely likable, his actions need to be more cute instead of disturbingly weird. His outfit and costume has to be eccentric to emphasis his "special condition" —being detached to the world and society.

=Journal 2= Being a director is all about translating a text-bound script into engaging visuals that is workable for the editor (//Directors Idea —The Path to Great Directing)//. The director's job is to keep an eye on the overall production: from preproduction to postproduction. The director is involved in all the aspects of the movie; due to this nature of the director's job, it is hard to be mastered.

It is also the director's job to understand the script and every aspect of story, in order to explore all potential of the plot and maximize the cinematographic strengths (137 Film Direction). The process of reviewing the script is incredibly important, and our team has gone through three working drafts of the script. Each time we edit the events in the story to make it consistent or more compelling.

Once the general premises and specific story has been solidified, the directors must develop a sense of unity for the film (//Directors Idea//). Unity is essential for the overall tone and mood of the film, any little glitch or inconsistency can bring down the entire atmosphere of the movie.

For example Stanley Kubrick is a director who is infamously meticulous planning, and won’t let anything unplanned happen on screen. He is especially famous for his visual metaphors that drip and shout “irony” (//Directors Idea, 232//). The success of the juxtapositions and metaphors are due to the planning, developing and conducting of Kubrick. In his film //The Shinning//, there are scenes in which the inconsistency of the furniture is in fact, a planned detail of Kubrick’s. The society now is much more liberal and accepting, which gives modern-day directors a wider scope to work with because they neither have to worry about censorship nor being persecuted after touching on a controversial topic or scene in their movie (//Problems of Directing//). Directors can take advantage of this freedom to explore more ideas and concepts with fewer limitations.

Although planning will definitely enhance the overall quality of the movie, directors must be flexible and able to adapt to change. For example when Tony Scott was directing the film Days of Thunder in 1990, he did not have a script when they started the movie, and they continued to write and change it through out the shooting (The Directors – take four 37). Therefore a quality a director should have is able to fix any complications on the spot of filming and still keep in mind the basic structure of the story with all consistency.

=Journal 3= Three sources: http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/6-filmmaking-tips-from-quentin-tarantino.php http://io9.com/5916970/the-22-rules-of-storytelling-according-to-pixar http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jan/27/coen-brothers-interview-true-grit

Part of a director's job is to assist the screenwriters and cinematography to envision the final product and movie. The Coen Brothers often take a different approach to this. Often we come up with the central conflict to the story and then develop it, but the Coen Brothers revealed in an interview that one of the strategy they used is that they come up with an era and premise and then work to the specifics. In a way that is what our group did for the brainstorming process. We first came up with the premise, a man has agoraphobia, and then came up with the trials that he goes through the overcome his fear. We also came up with a backstory to this character after the specifics has been solidified. Although this is not the conventional way to form a story, it is also very effective. It worked well with us because our group tend not to agree when brainstorming. This way once our premises are agreed upon, we just need to work out the specifics.

Another tip that Quentin Tarantino revealed in one of his interviews, is that movies should be impersonally personal. The fact that it involves, and, or, is part of expressing something personal will make the film more moving and high in emotional content. He explains that the audiences don't have to necessarily know that it is personal, but will be able to feel the emotional impact.

Pixar has twenty-two rules when it comes to storytelling, and character building. One of their stock sentence they use for creating a dynamic character is their rue #4: "Once upon a time there was… Every day… One day… Because of that… Because of that… Until finally…." For each movie they come up with they will replace the elapses with a specific character from the movie. I applied this to our movie, and came up with the following sentence: "Once upon a time there was an agoraphobic boy. Every day he would look out the window to admire the girl he likes. One day the girl did not walk by his window. Because of that he wants to leave his house to see her. Because of that he tries again and again to confront is fear. Until finally he successfully leaves his house and meets her."

Another rule pixar has is that a character must have the audience's admiration for trying for more than their success. We will apply that to our film, because through the flashbacks, we will portray the girl bully as someone who is incredibly sassy and a absolute nightmare. We plan for the girl to tear off the head of his teddy bear in one of his flashbacks. One of the attempts, the agoraphobic boy will even strap on pillows to really visualize his intense fear. By having him wear such a thick armor it is evident that the girl means a lot to him so that he is willing to leave the house for her.

=Journal 4= http://www.elementsofcinema.com/directing/mise-en-scene.html http://www.media-courses.com/blog/i-want-to-be-a-film-director/ http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-art-of-scheduling-a-film.html

Elements that involves actors, lighting, décor, props and costumes are collectively refereed to as mise-en-scene. All of which is the job of the director to coordinate. A good example for the element "décor," being put to good use is in //The Graduate// (Elements of Cinema). At the beginning of the movie there is a close up of Benjamin Braddock's face in front of a fish tank. The director choose to include the fish tank symbolically as suggesting Ben is trapped in a unwanted life. The choices of props, sets and costumers should better the movie, and even introduce new concepts to it, by adding more layers of meaning.

For our film, we decided to include stuff toys as a part of the set and plot. Stuffed toys suggest a kind of reliance and it often a symbol of childhood. In our movie, the agoraphobic protagonist still carries his teddy bear, and talks to it even though he is grown up. The fact that he still hangs on to his stuff toy suggests and implies his refusal to let go of his past; thus, shutting him in his house, and unwilling to leave. The stuff toys can also suggest reliance, for toys are supposed to be an alternate source of comfort. Our protagonist finds comfort in having teddy bears, and in his house there will be a ton of them.

Besides adding meaning to the movie, the director's job is to also keep a clear list of costumes, and scenes (Dummies). For our movie we have asked both our actors to wear blue, and have all their costumes to have at least a chunk of blue on it. We want to use the color to visually connect the two characters. We will also use the color blue to connect the younger version of the bully with the older girl, suggesting that even though she has grown up, blue is still her favorite color. Another reason for choosing blue is also because blue is a very popular and generic color, so when the audiences see it, there wouldn't be any suspicions at first, but they would still be able to make the connection later on in the movie. For our actors we have a clear list of costumes so they can bring exactly the outfits we asked for.

Lastly the shooting script is a job done by the cinematographer and director. For our film we didn't make an official one, but I made a table in which, I matched the specific sequences of the movie, from what is happening with the boy with what is happening with the girl, to make sure there is consistency and gave it to Lucy to develop our final script. The chart helps us understand the sequences of events, even if they are not happening on screen. A big part of out movie is about timing and sequence of events, so the table was really helpful and important.

=**Journal 5**= After learning about all the technical terms in film, I became more aware of them. For example, when we first started filming I realize that breaking the rules of thirds is actually very effective in focusing the audience's attention. In our movie, we placed Marcello (as character Ben) in the center of the frame when he was working. It is visually much more interesting and suggests that his character is pretty much "boxed" in a routined life. He follows his schedule everyday, and is extremely punctual. Another scene where is is framed in the center is the workout scene. He is also in the middle of a bunch of seemingly useless objects, doing his daily exercise. Breaking the rule of thirds forces the audiences to notice something unnatural and awkward about the character. We wanted the audiences to notice how dull and caged he is to his routine because he never had the courage to talk to the girl (Helen, as Jess) he has been admiring. The shot was actually inspired by Coen Brother's Barton Fink. When I first saw the room, it reminded me of the hotel room Barton stayed at in the movie (the wall paper, and the lights). This is a very interesting parallel because both characters, Barton and Ben, have very wild imaginations and are somewhat "comfortable" in their little working room, yet want to break out to a new world. Another addition to our film is the kinesis in our shots. The last day when Ben realizes that Jess is not out jogging at her normal time. The camera slowly pulls away from Ben, as he talks to his teddy bear and runs out of the shot. The movement of the camera is supposed to suggest the pressing of time. A shot where the camera is moving backwards seems much more intense as opposed to a still camera.

We had to compromise a lot of things when we were filming. First, because Luke's house is not actually on the first floor, nor directly in front of another person's house that we can use to film, we could not include any shots where the exterior of the windows are shown. We kept the blinds down, and just cut to Ben's P.O.V. every time he looks out the window. Another problem we had with filming at luke's house was the doorway, because there are many shots in the movie where Ben is pacing back and fourth behind the doors, and or him barging out. Unfortunately Luke's house had a very narrow doorway and it was almost impossible to film at. So we had to go to another person's house to film all the shots where it involves the doorway. We also had problems with the exterior of Jess's house. We picked a house that had no cars parking in front because it looked much cleaner and nicer. But since we didn't want to bother the people who actually lived inside the house, we never see Jess coming out from the house or actually entering it.

We also had many creative solutions to problems. First, we noticed that the clock did not have batteries, so we took batteries from Luke's TV remote control. Next, for one of the scene that included the young Ben (Holden), he needed to drop the bear. Then on the spot, because it either looked really intentional or unrealistic, so we decided to put the bear in his hood, and let it fall off. We had to angle it a certain way and reshoot the scene multiple times, to get it to fall at the time we wanted it to fall. Another problem we had problems with as the shot with the young bully Jess (Al, Marcello's sister), tearing off the head of the teddy bear. We were filming in the playground and she couldn't rip of the head. Because we didn't have a pair of scissors and it would take us a while to go back to Luke's house to get one, what I did was saw it against a metal sign in the playground until the head came off (while they were filming other shots in the playground). We also had to film the two younger children in our film on separate days because they couldn't show up at the same time. And since we filed Holden first we just remembered the exact spot where he was and determined the angle and placement of camera on that day and marked it. Then when we filmed young Jess, we knew how to piece the two shots together.