Preparing to film "Super"-Hero!

Welcome back, bloggers! In today's post, I will be going over all the preparations that are in place for the official filming of "Super"-Hero. Specifically, I'll be reviewing 6 main components of our prep, as well as which of them will be easier to pull off than others. 

1. Actors

The actors for this opening will be: myself, Yulian Vargas, Pedro Rodriguez, and Pablo Mendez. Yulian, who has appeared on this blog numerous times, will be cast as Power-Man himself! Yulian has always been a phenomenal actor, especially with his work on the Sound Story project, and I have no doubt his performance as our beloved protagonist will rival any Hollywood actor! (Okay maybe not ANY Hollywood actor but you get the idea.) As for myself, I will be cast as the lead robber, (name). I always thought that, if I were an actor, I would suit a villainous role way more than a heroic one. So, being cast as the main antagonist is not only my best fit, but also a chance for me to prove myself right in that I would play a decent villain!

2. Costumes

As for costumes, the only actor who will need some extra attention is Yulian, since he is playing Power-Man. For now, our plan is to dress him up simple and generic: Colorful costume, cape, and mask. Not only will this save us the headache of creating an original costume, but it also fits with the genre of the film, that being an action-comedy. Our goal is to not go overboard with the seriousness of the film, but still keep things traditional enough so that viewers will know what our intentions for the story were. Making Power-Man's costume generic will satisfy this goal perfectly. The robbers won't be dressed in anything crazy, although we didn't want to be completely unoriginal. The robbers will be dressed in black suits and tie to add a spin of absurdity to the scenes.

3. Props

"Super"-Hero will feature a couple of basic props. Firstly, we need bags for the robbers to put stolen items in, and this will probably be done using garbage bags or pillow cases. Since the robbers are just robbing a seemingly ordinary home, there's no need for us to go crazy with money bags or suitcases or anything outlandish. As for how the robbers will take care of the homeowner, we're opting for some basic bats. Since this opening is meant to be similar to that of a kids show, we wanna keep true to that feeling, so giving the robbers cartoony weapons works better here rather than giving ourselves prop guns or other crazy things. This should be everything as far as props go, since with how we plan to shoot the scenes it doesn't look like we'll need much else.

4. Locations

The entirety of "Super"-Hero will be shot at our group member Pablo Mendez's house. In the mood board post, I stated that I had an idea in mind for how we could shoot the film in a casual location. As it turns out, Pablo's house was perfect for this! His house is predominantly white, and looks like where a fairly wealthy individual would live, which connects with the plot of the film perfectly! We won't be filming in the entire house though. The plan is to film in a few select rooms, where the robbing is set to happen, and we'll have Power-Man enter the house from the back. The main confrontation is set to happen in the living room, and then the robbers will escape in a getaway car right outside the house. With this plan, we will be able to shoot the entire film without going overboard with locations!

5. Dates and Times

Due to complicated scheduling, "Super"-Hero will be filmed early in January 2025, most likely either the 3rd through the 5th or the 10th through the 12th. We tried aiming for a December 2024 filming date, but since half of the group was going on vacation, filming the project in January was our best (and only) option. The entire opening should be able to be filmed to completion within one day, but just in case the process is a bit rocky, one weekend to film should be enough to get as perfect of a shot as we can (hopefully). We plan to film "Super"-Hero during daylight hours, preferably in the afternoon. If we can't get a good product during the daytime, we might consider doing the film at night. If anything it'd make more sense to make the opening take place at night since it's a robbery, but doing it in the daytime would add a touch of uniqueness to the opening IF we can pull it off.

6. Film Equipment

Although we did have opportunities to acquire special filming equipment, we have decided that this film will be shot on iPhone. Even though we wanted to use special equipment to make our film look nicer, we decided it would be best to film with our phones so that we could have flexibility when filming the final product. By flexibility I not only mean with scheduling, since we won't be bound by strict filming schedules due to the rented equipment being due a certain day,  but also with capturing some camera angles and movements that would otherwise be hard to do with specialized equipment. Although so far we have no plans to use such angles and movements, some examples of which being canted angles or handheld movement, the ability to do so if we change our minds in the future is a nice thing to have just in case.

"Super"-Hero's Initial Storyboard!

    Welcome bloggers! In today's post, I will be discussing a storyboard my group has created for our film opening, "Super"-Hero! We got a lot of experience in storyboarding from our previous attempts, and I think this new plan looks and sounds WAY better than what we did for different movie and TV show clips!

Official Initial Storyboard for "Super"-Hero:

    With our opening being under 2 minutes long, our previous storyboarding will come in handy since we were working with a project of similar length. That being said, the only source material we could go off of was our own ideas of what "Super"-Hero would look like. To make the story board, we decided to tackle it as follows: Pablo would provide pictures and ideas for the location of the film, Pedro would brainstorm ideas for the first half of the film (from the robbers breaking in to the bedroom robbery), Yulian would brainstorm ideas for the second half of the film (from the bedroom robbery to the robbers escaping), and I would be drawing all of these ideas out and making notes on how each scene would play out. Although drawing out all of the storyboard seems like a Herculean task, having the creative input of my peers and discussing which ideas would work best actually made the storyboard progress way faster than if just one of us did the whole thing or if we split up the work. Additionally, the quality of the storyboard likely experienced a BIG increase when we tried this strategy.

    Obviously, the biggest challenge I personally encountered with this storyboard was how time-consuming it was to draw everything out. All in all, this storyboard took over 6 hours across two days, and even though all that time wasn't spent drawing stick figures, it was still exhausting after a while to be brainstorming how to piece together the story of "Super"-Hero. Aside from it being time-consuming, the middle act of the story was surprisingly VERY difficult to piece together. By that point there were worries about the storyboard ending up too short for the kinds of shots we were planning, and potentially making the final product look stale and more like security camera footage rather than an actual movie opening. With that in mind, I decided to break up the bedroom robbery sequence into more scenes that would add more depth to what was going on, as well as adding the unique shot at the end of the back of page 1 showing all 3 robbers' reactions to the entry of Power-Man. Aside from all of that though, the time spent was worth it, as this final product is something that even I feel pretty good about! Not just because it has a comic-like feel to it, but because this looks like something that we can transfer over to the big screen!

Mood Board for "Super"-Hero!

 Welcome back bloggers! Today, I will be showcasing the mood board I created for my groups' final project: "Super"-Hero!

    In the previous post where I revealed the idea we chose for our final project, I said that the opening for "Super"-Hero was going to be a comedic action scene. With that in mind, I found some pictures to provide inspiration for how we could shoot the final product. As for the superhero, Power-Man, himself, I thought he should look somewhat professional, but still just out-of-place enough to feel unserious. This is why I not only included pictures of Superman, a fairly serious and established superhero character, but I also included Captain Man, a superhero from a kids show! Additionally, since we opted to switch from the superhero stomping into the house to a superhero landing, I included a photo of, well, a superhero landing! I'm not sure if that's the exact pose we'll use for the final product, but considering the nature of the film it might not be such a bad idea to go for a classic. One minor detail I mentioned earlier was that I thought Power-Man should look somewhat professional, but just unserious enough to hint at his incompetency, and I think the picture of an absolutely non-serious Spider-Man costume in the middle of the board fits my thinking perfectly.

    As for where we will shoot the final opening, I had ideas of shooting in a fairly commonplace home, since we didn't want the robbers to be high-profile criminals and more just your everyday anti-do-gooders. With that in mind, I included photos of a white house and white interiors, since not only would that be perfect for the nature of the robbing scenes themselves, but also because I think I have an idea of where we can film our final project in real life since the house looks similar to one I know. In the brainstorming post, I mentioned how the editing for this opening would have a comic book feel to it, hence the inclusion of comic-style pictures, including one featuring Superman being defeated by Joker, which gives me some ideas of how we could depict our superhero being defeated. Finally, to emphasize the comedic aspects of the film, I want something old-school in terms of comedic effect. With that in mind, I included a picture of a Looney Tunes episode since I think that show has the perfect comedic effects that I'm looking to create with this project.

Final Project Idea!

 Bloggers, after a long time of brainstorming and speculating, it's finally here: my FINAL project idea for my AICE Media Studies project!! Out of the brainstorming ideas I discussed a couple posts ago, my group has decided on doing... "Super"-Hero!

    After reviewing the ideas we brainstormed earlier, my group decided that "Super"-Hero was BY FAR our strongest idea in terms of structure. The final plot for our film opening is as follows: A group of criminals break into a house and begin robbing it. They incapacitate the homeowner, and move onto the various rooms of the house to steal from. Right as one of the robbers enters the homeowners' bedroom, a loud smash is heard from the outside. Panicked, the robbers rush outside to see what's going on, and they discover an entire superhero standing right outside! The name for this superhero for the time-being is Power-Man, which although it is a little generic it does have a little ring to it considering where we want this film to go. Power-Man walks in, acting all tough and heroic, and demands that the robbers surrender before he has to beat them up. The robbers, seeing that Power-Man doesn't look all that intimidating in actuality, refuse and challenge Power-Man to a fight. Heroic music ensues, and Power-Man prepares to engage the robbers in combat.

    However, Power-Man is not the best at combat himself, proving the robbers' suspicions right. He is soundly and comically defeated, with goofy sound effects and visual effects right out of a comic book. The robbers grab what they have and bolt out before any further attention is drawn to themselves. The homeowner will wake up, seeing Power-Man defeated, and he will become livid. Power-Man sulks right out, with a defeatist song playing (something like the sad trombone sound.) The genre of this project will be a comedy, with some action but with a general unserious feeling. This opening will fit the comedy genre because of our intentions to make Power-Man look straight out of a kids' show and generally unthreatening. We also intend to use sound effects and editing that makes the film look like something you'd see on Cartoon Network, but we don't want to overdo this since it'll mess with how the plot is meant to progress. As far as how our project detracts from the comedy genre, I can't answer that with full confidence until we start filming, but I'm thinking it'll seem like a high-stakes thriller for the very beginning when the robbers initially break into the house to rob the homeowner.

Title Sequence Analysis!

Today we're doing something a little bit different, bloggers. I will be analyzing... Title Sequences! Every movie has their own unique title sequence, and so today I'm going to look at 2 movies and a TV show with some especially interesting title sequences and talking about how they're made as well as how good they are.

Movie 1: X-Men: First Class 

The title sequence for X-Men: First Class is a deviant from those of the rest of the X-Men saga. Instead of going all 3D and futuristic, director Matthew Vaughn opted for a much simpler 2D design. The designer for the sequence, Simon Clowes, took inspiration from the sequences of the early James Bond films as well as from the works of Saul Bass. The final product is a sequence designed to make the movie look like it was made in the 1960's (also when the film takes place) while still keeping a modern flow. The visual designing of the sequence itself is especially clever, as it portrays the X-gene and its mutations. The title sequence alone is able to seamlessly blend both futuristic and retro elements while referencing the film's story, both with the soundtrack and the visuals.

Movie 2: Twister 

The title sequence for Twister, despite being up there in age, is still one of the more clever sequences to this day. Obviously movies made before the 2000s didn't have the best options available in terms of CGI, but Twister was able to use this to their advantage to create a title sequence that was both creative and chaotic, just like the movie. The sequence features a tornado barreling towards the screen, revealing small credits as it approaches. The tornado then rapidly intensifies, eventually revealing the TWISTER title, which has an extremely jarring font that emphasizes the brutality of the film. The title then moves towards the camera before being swept away, and the tornadic winds die down. Finally, the winds disappear, transitioning into a seemingly calm scene with no real danger. This sequence does an amazing job with what little technology was available at the time, and is able to convey the terror of the movie without showing any actual tornadoes yet.

TV Show: Secret Invasion

Finally, I will be analyzing a show that is NOTORIOUS for having one of the most controversial title sequences ever made: Marvel Studios' Secret Invasion. The main plot of the show involves shapeshifting aliens infiltrating various world governments and agencies, with one of the main underlying themes of the show being that you can't trust anyone or anything. With this in mind, the designers of the title sequence opted for something unprecedented: AI art. That's right - the entirety of the opening credits for Secret Invasion was created using AI tools. On one hand, this makes perfect sense regarding the show's main theme, that being misinformation and distrust. The chaotic and unstable nature of AI art allows for visuals that would be hard for human artists to create and imagine to become reality, giving the title sequence an uncanny presence. On the other hand, AI art is fully comprised of data from the works of other artists, meaning any sort of AI art is comprised of stolen work. This caused controversy when the show released, with the public being outraged that a studio as big as Marvel would resort to AI art for a multi-million dollar production. From an analytical standpoint, though, the use of AI art adds a really neat "alienesque" quirk to the sequence that I don't think any human artist could have created (or at least not as good), so I personally don't have an issue with it. However, I do understand why people would be outraged about its use since it IS creative theft no matter how you spin the story.

Brainstorming for our Final Project!

Welcome back bloggers! In today's post, I will be discussing some ideas me and my group came up with for what our final project could potentially look like. Some of these ideas were good, the others... not so much.

Live footage of us deciding which idea to choose:

Concept 1: Manuel y Linguini

This concept was created in about two minutes, but it still has some potential to turn out interesting IF done correctly. Essentially, this would be a comedy/drama about two brothers who enjoyed dressing up as Mario and Luigi ever since they were children, although their Hispanic mother would always call them "Manuel" and "Linguini" since she didn't speak much English. Today, however, these men are quite old to be dressing up and running around in costumes, and Linguini thinks they should stop doing this activity because of how childish it is. Manuel, on the other hand, wants to keep the tradition alive since they have been doing it for so long and in remembrance of their mother. The opening would have shown the brothers when they were kids running around in these costumes, with their mother telling them to slow down, fading into a title card. Then, at some point it would have cut to them as adults, doing the same thing at a family gathering whilst other family members are laughing along. This opening would have ended with a talk between the two, with Linguini confessing that he thinks its time to stop this tradition and Manuel getting defensive. In hindsight, maybe this idea wouldn't have been so bad after all with a bit of improvisation, but I think our other ideas turned out a bit better. Additionally, this would require us to find extras for the cast, which could prove challenging.

Concept 2: "Super"-Hero

I personally like this idea a little more because of how much we can do with it. Basically, this would be a comedy about a superhero who is... not that great at his job. The opening would have featured a robbery, with masked men robbing a house of everything possible. Then, they would hear loud stomping coming from the back of the house. They turn around, and the camera reveals a superhero, cape and all, with a title sequence occurring right then and there. However, the hero, who is physically inept and not very good at crimefighting, would lose spectacularly while confronting the robbers. The whole scene would play out like a Looney Toons episode, with over-the-top sound effects and comic-like editing. This would probably be the most fun project to do, since the plot is very unserious and would look like something you'd see on Nickelodeon. I think this idea would also be easy to film, allow for a lot of creativity in sound effects and editing, and make for an interesting enough filming process without demanding too much extra things in order for the opening to make sense. As far as cons go, superhero comedies aren't exactly the most original of ideas out there, and choreographing a fight scene to look at least somewhat realistic may be a little bit difficult.

Concept 3: Something in the Forest?

This final idea is much different from our previous ones, since it is the only one that wouldn't have any sort of comedic elements. The plot for this one is a bit unfinished, but essentially, it would have begun with a person waking up in the woods. They would have had no memory of how they got there, except for head and back pain and an empty wallet. The person would wander around the forest, completely lost and with no idea where to go. They would try to find other people or perhaps a way out of the forest only to fail. This is where the plot twist would set in. Along the way, the person finds strange things, such as old clothes on the ground and broken flashlights. At times, the person would hear twigs snapping behind them, heavy breathing, and towards the end of the opening they would hear sounds of a baby crying. The person would follow the sounds of this baby crying, only to find there is no actual baby at all. The person would have a look of pure terror on their face, and the scene would abruptly cut to a title card. As far as pros go, this would make for a very interesting film idea, be fun to film, and we would have more creative potential with this concept than with the other two. However, this would be the most challenging concept to film for a few reasons. Firstly, this would have to be shot outside at night, which may not be at all ideal to film most of the time as well as making lighting an issue. Secondly, this would require us to find some extra props to imply that people were once in the forest, which would become difficult if we wanted to get creative with the props we used. Finally, since we want to keep what's in the woods hidden from the viewer for the entire opening, we would have to figure out how to drop these hints while also making it obvious enough that something has been following our protagonist.

Reviewing former student film openings!

     Welcome back bloggers! In today’s post I will be evaluating 5 film openings from past AICE Media Studies students and what I think they could have done differently to get closer to a true Hollywood opener. 

Project One: Roll Call

    Roll Call's opening features 4 suspects that were brought in for questioning due to possible involvement in a murder. Each of the suspects acted differently when questioned, some of them even becoming distressed. I think this opening develops the characters in great depth for how short the scene is. I was able to distinguish each character from each other based off of personality and how suspect they were rather than me only knowing their names and involvement. However, the opening is fairly rushed. We first see a police car for about 10 seconds before moving immediately into questioning, with no idea as to how the suspects were found nor why they were brought in. I think this opening was too ambitious for the maximum 2-minute time frame, and could have benefited from simply showing the suspects being brought in rather than attempting to include entire interviews of them.

Project Two: New Everything

    New Everything's opening shows a student waking up in the morning for school, going to school, and walking into a classroom. During the walk, the sound of the student's surroundings are drowned out by music the student is listening to. This opening's main strength is in storytelling in that the film doesn't try to be too ambitious. It tells a simple story, and is able to fully show said story within a 2-minute time frame without introducing any major plot holes. However, this is where the strengths end, as the plot of the film itself is hard to derive from what is shown in the actual opening. All we see is a student going to school, with no real clue as to what the film will be about nor any other details aside from who our protagonist is. This leaves room for a lot of speculation as to what the movie will be about, which may confuse viewers and/or make them disinterested in the film. The opening should mention something about the student that makes the plot more clear, perhaps that the student has just moved to a new school.

Project Three: Dreamland

    Dreamland's opening features a girl lying in a field, then getting up and walking around, gathering flowers as she goes. Then, it cuts to the same girl at Walgreens grabbing a bunch of medical products. This is the first opening I've seen that uses special effects, such as the flowers levitating upward into the girl's hand while she is walking. This opening is certainly one of the most creative I've seen so far, with an interesting story being told with no words being spoken as a result of the stark contrast between the scene's 2 locations. The opening doesn't try to be overambitious, and is able to tell a story quickly and leaves room for expansion upon the plot. The only real weakness I can see in this film is that the transition from the flower scene to the Walgreens is a bit abrupt, and may leave the viewer confused as to what just happened. A short clip showing the girl waking up from a presumable dream and going to the Walgreens then might make the plot more clear for the viewer.

Project Four: Dear Lover

    Dear Lover's opening features a girl talking about how she ran away from her family after her mother refused to accept the fact that she had a girlfriend. The girl gives this speech in the forest, with the opening occasionally cutting to her mother talking about how much she misses her daughter. This film definitely has the strongest plot out of them all, telling an emotional story about a daughter fleeing her home after her mother refused to accept her for who she was. The film is able to tell this story exceptionally well, giving a short introduction as to where the story takes place, explaining why the girl is in the woods, showing her mother's side of the story, and leaving room for expansion upon the plot with the last scenes showing the girl's lover still being in her life. The opening does this all without leaving any major plot holes, and sets up the rest of the film for a full story to be told. As far as weaknesses go, I don't think this opening has any, as it is able to do so much under 2 minutes without overextending the story. Well done!

Project Five: Dare to Thrill

    Dare to Thrill's opening features a group of teenagers going up a building and taking a car, one that's presumably not theirs. They drive a long distance, before stopping and opening up the trunk, only to be horrified at something inside the trunk off-screen. This opening is certainly exciting to watch, with the frantic and exotic editing as well as the high-speed drive scene hyping up the viewer. I also think its cliffhanger ending wraps up the opening really well, telling us that there's a lot more to this story than we can assume just based off what the teens were doing. As a bonus, this opening has the most creative (and best) title sequence out of all the openings I reviewed up to this point. The only real weakness in this opening is that due to its fast-paced action and chaotic progression, viewers may struggle to keep up with the plot of the film. In this case, nothing much can be done since it seems the fast pacing is the point of the opening, but if the creators wanted to make the plot a bit more obvious they could lengthen the opening scene where the characters are going to take the car.