Music

Hi peeps! So, my partner and I had been thinking for some time about what music to put for the opening credits of the film. With this section, we found, and are still finding some problems because music is a tool that can affect the complete emotion of a scene as it has the ability to set a mood which will lead the audience into thinking one way or another. last class, we were researching music and found out three particular songs which captivated our eyes. These three are:

1. Under pressure: Queen, David Bowie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a01QQZyl-_I

2. Pressure: Billy Joel
https://youtu.be/4QvNft-MxLk

3. Peer pressure: L Devine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrNCIfc_a5M

One thing that all three songs have in common is the theme of being pressured into doing something that the person does not feel comfortable in doing. My partner and I wanted to focus on the lyrics more heavily than with the rhythms, this is why the genres of all three songs are different. These all three songs were copyrighted tho, and since they are under a patent, we had to ask permission from the artists by composing emails asking permission to utilize the songs. Here is the email I composed and sent in class to Vanilla Ice's representative(who owns the copyright to Under Pressure):

Good morning Mr. Quon. We are reaching out to you from Cypress Bay High School, located in Weston, FL. My name is Luis Plaz, and I am currently a Senior student erolled in the institution. It turns out that I, alongside a partner called Ana Cubeddu, are working in developing a project for our Cambridge program, which will aid us in obtaining a scholarship in our desired university. The project consists of developing an introduction to a film. We tought the song, Under Pressure by David Bowie and Queens was the perfect fit for the music incorporated alongsode with the opening film. It is exactly what we were looking for. I t comes to our knowledge that Vanilla Ice currntly withholds the copyrights of the song. We wantde to make a request to utilize the song in our media project. I t will be used only for educational purposes. Please reach back to us as soon as possible, we’ll be waiting for your response. We also want to thank you for your time and your consideration for permission,
Best Regards,Luis Plaz.Luisiplaz@gmail.com,(954) 842-0136.


I know that I need approval in order to use their song, but ever since I sent the request, I haven't recieved a response. We'll see how it turns out in a few days and I'll keep you posted on updates we make to our project. Until then, PEACE!

A More Concrete Idea

Hi peeps! So, during these past few days, I have been discussing the new idea that my partner and I want to implement in our portfolio project. If you asked us a week ago what we were doing, we wouldn't have possibly had a concrete answer, but I think we are starting to get it. After doing some research on some coming of age teenage films, I landed on films such as:

 Booksmart(2019). 

Even though the films revolve around the teen comedy genre, throughout the whole premise, the two main characters(as shown by the cover) grow to a level in which they experience various situations before leaving for college, which means that they both grow and develop throughout the storyline. This is what my partner and I want to focus on throughout our production; However, we want to add a slightly more dramatic tone to the scene(while still being light to the audience).

Now, our idea is not perfected yet(far from it,) but I hope you enjoy it and can see the vision that we have towards the scene!

Our idea will begin in a house as a group of girlfriends are getting ready to go out. These friends will be joking around and doing their makeup as the main character, who will be a blonde high school teenage girl will seem as having a good time with them. The girls will show a great connection and some scenes will have to gossip between the girls to show that they have developed trust with each other. As the scene develops and the group of girls is getting ready to go, they will proceed to hurry the main character who is showing uncomfortability in the scene, demonstrated through the shots. The group of girls will go outside the room as the main character remains. During this part of the opening, the main character will grab a guitar and begin playing it, one of the girls comes back to get the main character out of the room, and as the main character is leaving, she will look back at the guitar laying on the bed before closing the door. the scene will transition with a black screen with the writing "four hours later"(don't know the font yet) in which the girl will enter the room again only to find the guitar laying in the same place as she left it. She will sit down next to it, turn off her phone(to demonstrate the disconnection that she wants from the social world) and begin playing a song which will lead to the name of the movie showing on the screen(don't know the name yet). 

Basically, what the scene will attempt to transmit to the audience is the feeling that the main character has of wanting to be left alone and the battle she has with her social status and her passion which is music. The film will be a coming of age teen drama as the character will battle throughout the whole film with finding her true passion and following through with them, while still battling with the things that don't allow her to follow them, one being her social status.

Again, we hope you can see that our vision is yet to be perfected, but cut us some slack and know we'll get there! There are many things to decide, but we are sure that we'll leave you wanting more. So long! PEACE!

Topic Change!

  Hi peeps! So, last class, I had an extensive conversation with my AICE Media teacher about the topic my partner and I had chosen. To begin the conversation, we went through our developments in the blog. She told me that I had to focus more on research, and I believe that it is true. I believed that this was a platform in which I could write my thoughts, and while that is true, I also was required to do research in order to support my opinions, which I really didn't implement on this blog. After discussing this, she told us to explain why we chose to do a thriller opening and our ideas behind it. After telling her our vision, she deliberately told us that we were being artificial and fake with ourselves because my partner and I are extremely happy individuals, and we weren't focusing on a topic that related to our actual interests. We discussed our day to day interests, hobbies, and lifestyles, and with her guidance, we decided to change our topic to:   

 drumrolls, please.....

DRAMAAA!!!

Drama is a genre that is intended to have a more serious than humorous tone. This genre normally has a setting or takes place in real-time. Throughout the films, the main character is often in conflict with themselves, others, or even some forces of nature. A typical drama often shows people at their best, their worst, and everything in between. Drama is most likely the largest genre industry because it includes a broad platform of subgenres. These subgenres include, but are not limited to crime films, courtroom dramas, melodramas, epics (historical dramas), biopics (biographical), or romantic genres. In addition, Drama is considered to be the top-rated genre as indicated by the graph below.


My partner and I want to focus our story on a coming-of-age drama in which a regular, high school student is considered the typical social butterfly as she has a large group of friends and hangs out with them constantly; however, she is not. She finds conflict within herself as she considers herself an extremely insecure individual who enjoys being alone, sharing with herself, and practicing on her interests, which mostly are recording her original songs.
Drama is a genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. This is most likely why the genre's target audience includes women between the ages of 17-50. Hence the reason we chose a female to play the lead role in the movie.



The storyline we chose focuses on developing the interest of a relatively younger target audience(16-20 years of age) as this demographic makes up part of what we call Generation Z. And one of the common interests of Gen Z includes music. In addition, the American psychological association states that Gen Z individuals are more insecure about themselves, and tend to focus and act in a way of what society considers as the norm. This is supported by the graph below.



Up to this time, this is all the ideas my partner and I have thought on the storyline, but as time progresses we will begin developing the character and we will make this film opening as much of an honest piece as we can. I hope you enjoy!

PEACE!

Time to Start Working

Hi peeps! I hope you're doing fine, cause I am too. So, my partner and I have decided to put our feet to the ground and start from the beginning. After a long conversation with her, we decided that we really want to base our idea off a psychological thriller in which the main character, who will be male due to the fact that normally men tend to be more aggressive and physical, will put people's lives in danger; however, he will give them a way to survive, they just have to figure out how. The main character will most likely have a bipolar disorder, and as explained on the previous blog, throughout the entirety of the film, he will switch roles between the person who puts the people in danger, and the person who attempts to save them. 

I talked to my friends about this idea, and they related it to a movie called "Saw." I haven't watched the film, but I decided to watch the trailer in order to see what was going on. As it turns out, both movies do relate closely; However, that is not the way we are trying to go. The difference with our movie is the psychological disorder that our character has. Instead of the "games" that people have to play to survive, we will only put 3 subjects which will possibly die during the film. These subjects will be tied and will have to find a way to manipulate the character so that he decides to help them instead of murder them. 

So far, I'm really enjoying this project because its getting me out of my comfort zone, I believe that I can really improve my skills with this project on my hands.

I DON'T KNOW!!!!!!!!

Hi peeps! I want to let you all know that I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO! 

This project is just worth too many points, and every decision counts towards getting those points, even this blog. I want my project to be amazing; literally, something that my teacher decides to use as an example for future classes. I want to leave my mark before leaving Cypress, but I just don't know how to make something good enough yet. I've been heavily researching topics to focus our openings on alongside my partner. All we've been able to implement has been psychological disorders, and even with this research, WE DON'T KNOW WHICH ONE TO FOCUS ON!!!

We decided to focus our storyline on a psychological thriller in which the main character has a psychological disorder which is leading him/her to do atrocious things such as putting people's lives in danger and making them fight to survive.

After heavy research, we have landed upon three options to make our opening. One is that the main character has Multiple Personality Disorder(MPD); However, this topic was heavily discussed in the movie "Split" and "Glass," and we want our opening to be unique in order to captivate the audience to the fullest. Our second is that our character has complete psychosis, which means that the character lives in his own reality. This could possibly be a good idea; however, we are still trying to figure out the logistics. Our third and last idea is that the main character has bipolar disorder, which is leading him to switch roles between a people that put people in danger, and someone who tries to save them. My partner and I believe that the third idea is the best because the audience may not know if the subjects will die or be saved by the same person who is putting them in danger.

Thriller Film Opening

Hi! to anybody who might be reading, I want to tell you that after talking to my partner extensively, we decided that we want to focus on a genre that will have our audience on their tippy-toes, and we believe that there is no better genre to do that other than thriller and suspense! We have viewed multiple film openings in class relating to the genre and we have also created some sort of plan we want to follow in order to deliver the most amount of information within the time limit; however, we're both scared. My partner and I go a long way back in regards to this class as we've worked together on multiple projects, including the music marketing campaign, and the film pitch project. Both of which we have successfully completed and have been able to entertain the audience due to our vision and ideas. Now, we are scared because we think that we may possibly overdo the transmission of information and reach a pint in which the audience does not understand it, or even create a meaning to the scene which is difficult for the audience to understand without explanation, which is what happened in our music marketing video. In order to evade this, we have researched heavily on film openings of the genre in order to base our ideas on that. We landed upon some ideas. After seeing the film opening of "Get out(2017)" and "Joker(2019)" we discovered that thrillers often begin by introducing the audience to the main conflict. Watch for yourself:

The film opening of "Get Out(2017)" begins by the main character, Daniel, Getting abducted by two mysterious men. This opening lets the audience know that there will be large amounts of problems throughout the movie and that they will have to wait in order to understand the purpose of that scene.

The scene to "Joker(2019)" shows the main character getting ready for work as a clown. However, the conflict is first introduced to the audience in a psychological manner as they are shown that the main character has an emotional problem within. This is shown by the tear coming out of his eye. In this opening scene, we are also shown that the character is literally kicked around by the world. These conflicts let the viewer know that a reaction to these emotions will come, which will create a response from the character.

My partner and I want to also introduce our audience to a conflict that will leave them wanting more. We just don't know exactly how...

Research: Thriller and Suspense Genre

Definitions:

A thriller is a genre of literature, film, or any type of media which provides the audience with high levels of emotion during the time of exposure. Suspenseful films are ones that provide the audience with a feeling of uncertainty during the time of exposure. These films accomplish this by putting the audience in a situation in which they don't know what will happen in the following sections of the scene. An example of this includes jump scares. These are techniques that are often used in horror and suspenseful films to fill a scene with emotion and uncertainty.
You can see a remarkable jumpscare in the following video:
This jump scare comes from a film called "Annabelle: Creation(2017)."

Target Audience:

The target audience of many psychological thrillers are 18+, this is because they contain many disturbing characters with psychological illnesses. Some common themes in most thriller films are violence, psychological issues.

Thrillers and suspense films may contain many similar characteristics; However, with a thriller, you might know who the killer is from the beginning of the movie, but you’re intrigued and insecure by the chase — and the action needs to be punctuated at key moments. For suspense, you might know who the killer is from the beginning but there could be a slower pace and you’re still insecure by the sense of danger. Also, thrillers normally contain action as well as danger, an example being "It"(2017), while suspense films may contain danger but not necessarily action, such as, "Buried"(2010).

Music Marketing Project

For my music marketing project, I had to work alongside two of my classmates(Ana C. and Juana D.) to create an upcoming artist as well as her marketing campaign. We decided to call her Liliana Reed, we also utilized her name as her brand name as the name has a classy vibe and successfully appeals to our audience, which is supported by other artists in the pop genre such as Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, and Harry Styles.

As stated above, we decided to place our artist withing the pop genre boundaries as our brand's goal is to distribute media awareness on political and societal issues, and the target audience for this genre includes a large portion generation Z(specifically 16-21-year-olds), which evolves around digitalization and has reported increased levels of interest in social media awareness.  Also, Pop is to be considered the second most heard genre after Rock, which means that we would have endless possibilities to the people we could reach. More specifically, our target audience will focus on American individuals between the ages of 16-21 years of age who come from mid socioeconomic classes and are concerned about the societal and political issues of the world.

Current marketing trends in the pop genre have shown that the target audience mostly consumes media in a digitalized manner, which means that they don't commonly purchase albums or hard copies of the content. This is why our artist will sign a label with Atlantic Records, and American label company which has represented over 300 worldwide known artists such as SIA, Danny Ocean, and Bruno Mars. Through the label company, she will produce and distribute her music through streaming applications such as Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, and Youtube. We will release all content on these platforms as they control the majority of the audience, therefore providing us with a chance of captivating a larger audience. 

In the social media aspect, our target audience is mostly known for utilizing social media platforms. This is why we want to base Liliana's marketing platform on the most recognized social media apps which captivate our audiences such as Instagram(the target audience of 18-29-year-olds), Twitter(the target audience of 18-29-year-olds), and Snapchat(the target audience of 18-24-year-olds). Since these platforms attribute to different demographics, we are also planning on approaching each one differently to provide a different perspective of the artist in each platform. Instagram will be used as our main marketing platform as it has the largest consumer group and attributes most to our target audience. On this platform, we will keep consumers heavily updated on the content released through teasers, short clips from music videos, cover pictures for the new releases, and important information such as concert dates and events to which the artist attends to. Snapchat will work as a way to provide the target audience with a closer insight into the artist's work as well as her daily life. This concept will be transmitted through a daily vlog on her Snapchat story in which she posts what she is doing regularly, as well as by providing an insight on how she records the content that she releases to the audience. The Twitter account will focus more on the societal and political conflicts that Liliana cares about. She will distribute messages through regular posts on her opinions of these controversial topics and through reposts of influential people which she supports.

As stated above, we decided to name our artist Liliana reed due to the ongoing, widely-known names in the industry such as Taylor Swift, and Miley Cyrus, in addition to the classy vibe that the name provides. We decided to develop our artist in a way that would captivate the consumer's attention due to her rapid growth and unraveled talent. The artist comes from Long Island, California, from a middle socioeconomic class. We decided on this background since many influencers such as Laura Riihimaki and Alisha Marie live around the area. She was first recognized by consumers through these influencers and from there, she began building her consumer base. after gaining some consumer support, she started singing on her Instagram, and due to high levels of support, she decided to enroll in "The Voice" competition, season 18. She competed and grew her fan base throughout the competition until she finally won the competition, along with the $1 million rewards which she used to compose her first single called "Royals." This single became widely known within the consumer base and gained her wide support from the audience, making her known for her music. 

We decided to develop "merch" which we would sell to the consumers to promote Liliana's brand. We decided to focus our merch on the current clothing trends that have been ongoing with our target audience, which includes loose clothing and comfy clothes such as sweatpants. To further promote Liliana's brand and encourage people to purchase the merch, we would donate 20% of the profits monthly to a charity of our choosing, this month being the NRDC. Some examples include: Sweatpants with the artist's logo and hoodies with the artist's logo as well as the lyrics to her release.

"Royals" theme revolves around the idea that people nowadays live in a materialistic world and Liliana does not associate with those people. To do the video, we wanted to express this idea artistically through the representation of objects, such as a bathtub filled with gold glitter which represented the materialistic world. We also used editing techniques such as fast editing to evoke a sense of climax in the scene.