Independent Study Checkpoint 2

Second Production Check

Ali, Shay and I have decided to work together for our film. We found a good way to merge all of our themes together to create a complex yet doable film with a given plot sequence. Shay wanted to do the theme of struggle with body image, Ali coming of age and myself the portrayal of unique and shared human experience. So we worked out a way in which we'll have two protagonist with contrasting lifestyles who exprience growing up in very different ways to show they experience a shared human cycle in a unique way. Furthermore, we also decided that we could easily have one or both of the protagonists struggle with body image. We haven't decided if both of them should, but I feel it's more impactful if only one of them did to show how other people face struggles some do not even think about once in their lives.

Though we need to discuss our individual conceptions; currently, I'm thinking that the style of the film will be developed using techniques relevant to the theme such as parallel shots between one life to the next, dark vs bright colors, dramatic shot angles and sound designs, which works well to incorporate all the elements each of us wanted to focus on individually. The mood of the film will be relatively somber as the audience is watching contrasting coming of age stories of struggle. However, I'd like to think we can insert moments of hope in there as well. The purpose of this movie is to portray the uniqueness of each human experience and educate the audience on struggles with body image.

We also have decided on our roles in our film. Shay will be the sound designer. Ali and I had both selected cinematographer but one of us will simply switch to director as we further explore our strengths and weaknesses. So far, we don't have our crew of cast or locations yet but I think the nature of our film gives us a pretty clear of the setting we'll need so I don't feel that will be an obstacle.

Overall, I think our film collaboration is shaping up to be more complex and interesting than what I I initially had in mind and I am excited that all of our themes worked so well together to create an inclusive storyline. I also feel that this will be good in the sense that I didn't have a strong sense of how I could find a cast and crew by myself and I'm comfortable knowing that we can share those duties now with each other. Overall, I am excited to work on this newly formulated project.

Genre Presentation

Independent Study: Checkpoint 1

Lighting Project

Our use of thirds worked really well in highlighting the contrast between different lighting types. The use of simplicity also looked well for our purposes, and shots with a busy background looked out of place. We were fairly successful with our lighting set ups, except that in some shots the difference between hard and soft light wasn't as pronounced as it could have been. For editing, we attempted to use the part of the clips that were the most steady and the use of black and white was really crucial, also. Overall, this project was a success with few problems.

First Production Check

I want to base my film on the combination of the uniting human experience theme and the theme of individual experience by focusing on the connecting theme of theme. I want to connect these two themes by portraying how although everyone experiences the same life cycle, privilege or the lack therefore can cause one's person experience to be drastically different from someone else's. For the sake for expressing my message clearly, in my plan, I plan to depict two drastically different lives - one person who faces struggles in every step of the way while the other person almost glides through life without worries. In the exposition, I will start my depicting their lives separately and then lead them to meet at the climax and show the fallout of what each character learns from the other's life.

Next, I will discuss the film techniques I will use to create meaning. Using parallelism, I might layer shots or drop contrasting situations between each characters quickly one after another for maximum effect about my theme. Furthermore, I plan on focusing on the technique of using dramatic, often contrasting camera angles. For example, the person with privilige will be depicted around vertical lines, in order to convey that they have easy access to power. On the other hand, the other character will shot using bird's eye to make the person look weak and overpowered. In shots where the two characters are together, I will use proportion to make the privileged character look a lot larger than the other character. Because I will be focusing on camera angles anyway, I will choose the role of cinematographor as my primary focus will be on the layout of each frame. 

Based on my experiences with film, I plan to make adjustments to highlight my strengths and cover my weaknesses this year. During the making of the chase scene last year, I was really frustrated with movements such as the dolly and tracking that involves fully moving the tripod as it was extremely stressful to set the timing of those shots and it was not something that worked well for me. On the other hand, I very much enjoyed using movements like panning and tilt that involved only moving the camera and they were effective for me. In addition, I want to create better unity through using similar principles of design as my films last year appear disjointed a lot because of the jumbled principle of designs in the background.

Themes In Conceptual Film

A theme in art is a message or a thread that connects the images the artists present in order to convey meaning. A theme presents a perspective through which it views the world. Below are the three perspectives I personally want to explore this year.

One of the themes that interested me the most was the one titled "Looking Inward: The Human Experience". This theme was the most fascinating to me, as it emphasizes that our inherent human nature makes us more similar than we think, despite vastly different upbringings, culture, or life experiences. This is because we all experience the broad life cycle the same: we start as helpless children, grow into adolescents, and fall into adulthood and decline and pass away. I want to explore the way in which our human nature allows us to connect and embrace each other and allows us to look beyond superficial differences.

On the other hand, I am also interested in the uniqueness of each individual experience. To portray individual experience, I want to experiment with parallelism by telling two stories through alternating shots of each story. I am not yet sure if I want to explore the distinction between two lives, two cultures, etc. but I am interested in this difference. By showing the sharp distinction of the same routine, I hope to convey the message that each story follows the same pattern but is riddled with unique differences characteristic of only that person, culture, etc.

The last separate theme I'm interested in stems from the reading on iconoclasm. The rejection of images and idols bears the question of what do images signify that they extract such a violent act of destruction. I want to draw upon the idea of the meaning an association gives to an idol or image and why that association elicits such strong reactions. Furthermore, I want to explore the inherent worth of objects. I hope to explore whether we, as humans, can get caught in a trap of giving inherent worth to objects and whether we can value them independent of any other idea.