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Throughout the course of the school year, we have been learning about how media/films affect our culture and society through the use of filmic sound, editing, cinematography, and mis en scene. Our teacher assigned students with a group where they will have to make an independent film and each student had a different role when creating the film. The script for our film was a difficult one to make and a difficult one to create, but I definitely learned new things when I edited the film. One of the many things I learned was how to make someone fly during the editing stage, it was really hard since what I was trying was not working for me, then I tried to do a greenscreen where I made my actress lay down on a chair while moving her whole body left and right and then put a sky background behind her. The feedback that was given in the first rough cut was that we should work on the volume and try a green screen for the flying scene instead of trying to make it out of scratch, this was given because the sound was a little bit low and hard for people to hear and the flying scene just did not looked the best it could.

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Independent Distribution and Marketing Plan-- Secret Lucy

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Independent Distribution and Marketing Plan-- Secret Lucy

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1.  If you were to distribute your film independently, how would you do it?

If I was to distribute my movie independently I have to keep a lot of things in mind when doing it. The core audience is crucial to the distribution plan, our target audience is women teens between the age of 9-15, and the specific genre is superheroes. Towards our movie I believe that it would be a better way to distribute it on streaming services instead of distributing it theatrically. One of the best options of aggregator for our film is BITMAX, this has great reputation which could potentially benefit the people that would watch our movie, they do no have a really expensive budget and still could be a very successful distribution.

2. What is the title of your film? Do you think your title works?  Why or why not (short and sweet, pithy, reflective of genre, aimed at target audience, etc.)?  How could it be improved and why?  Do you have a new title now?

As of right now the current title is "Secret Lucy", since she is a superhero that has her powers hidden because of fear for acceptance, but eventually she stands out for herself and fights against the bullies, I believe that is a great fit for our film but we still have our options open to look for a better tittle, although the name "Lucy" is much a great fit for our target audience, it sounds innocent and gives a feeling of protection. It could be improved by making it a little shorter and more reflective of genre and the story.

3.  Create a tag line for your poster.  Aim for familiar but fresh.  Remember your genre, and your target audience.

Be Yourself Everyone Else Is Already Taken...

4.  Create a paragraph sketch of your target audience member.  Think about who would be interested in your film and why?  Specifically:

The target audience in our film is women teens between the age of 9-15, their interests are books, movies, go on adventures, it is not important if they play Video Games which the probabilities are they don't since women are not usually interested in playing games. Social Media platforms could be Snapchat and TikTok, I feel like the majority of teens have specifically those 2 social medias and would be a great platform to see and be interested in our film. The people that are most likely to see our film are probably going to be introverts, they don't hangout with much people but when they do is close home, they go out to eat a lot with their parents to fast food places or even fancy restaurants. They dress with vivid colors, try to be fashion each of their outfits on point, shop on the mall on probably every stores that their friends do since she probably wants to be accepted at school for having something "cool" that nobody has wear before.

5.  Using your notes from number four above, think about how your could reach that target audience if you were self distributing your film on Youtube or Vimeo or a similar platform.   How can you use that information to REACH them?  Where will you advertise?  INDICATE, FOR EACH GROUP, TEN PLACES WHERE YOU WOULD PLACE ADS TARGET ADS/TEASERS/TRAILERS (six virtual, four nonvirtual), and WHY, and mention that you would do this if you had to SELF DISTRIBUTE.

If I had to Self Distribute my movie on Vimeo on YouTube I will try and reach them online, on their websites, sending emails trying to approach them, etc... Vimeo and YouTube are both platforms where movies/videos get posted a great amount of time but somehow are never "Popular" or "Good" to the public. We always seek good quality when we are watching videos or films and if they don't have that it will be hard for people to even watch it. Places and Platforms that are good to advertise are YouTube ads, Twitter, Instagram, Google Search Advertising, TikTok, Twitter, and nonvirtual like Newspaper, Posters, outdoor advertising, or even direct mail. For each group of people the nonvirtual ads would be placed around schools, ask them if they could let me place those around schools and classrooms to see if students are interested in watching them, small businesses like salons, grocery stores, etc.. Trailers, moving homes, cars on the rode.. etc...

6.  How would you ENGAGE your target audience online?  How will you turn passive audience members into ACTIVE, ENGAGED audience members? This is in reference to pull marketing (or interactive marketing).  How will you get them to click on your ads?  What would you offer them in the form of promotions?  How would you incentivize them to repost/retweet/share/forward your ad?  Please INCLUDE SOME OUT OF THE BOX THINKING!  Audience engagement must be addressed in your critical reflections.

There are multiple ways available that I could use to engage my audience. I would do surveys/polls, this would be a good way to engage them since you ask them what kind of content they would like to see, who they would like to see, why, etc... Monitor their activity in social media, using Google Analytics they are ways we could see who are the type of people to watch our film, and the type of people that will be most likely to advertise it. They are a few ways I could get them to click on my ads, for example using curiosity, putting the ads with the questions like: How did I manage to record my first film?, another example could be by using benefit, a lot of people just see ads and wonder What could I get from this?, what I would do is I would create my ads with the sentences like How I Worked Less and Still Earned More..

7. How would design your movie's poster?  How will you design it to be both familiar and fresh in regard to genre? What two or three main colors would you use? What is in the foreground and background? What iconography will be used? Type of fonts/typography?

There are multiple ways that I could design my movie's poster. The background would be with dark colors such as; gray, black, something that represents sadness, empathy, acceptance, and with a background of clouds and Lucy in the middle with her clothes using vivid colors like; purple, RED, BLUE, or yellow, The Tittle would be on the exact middle or all the way the top so people could see the full background as well as the protagonist, it is going to be "Secret Lucy" with a size big font and maybe a type of Thunder Pants Typeface that would create a sense of a superhero movie. Colors like the one I mentioned are more likely to be in Superhero movies and there is always a pattern of that. The elements of all superhero movies are missions, powers, identity, and COSTUME so it is very important that what Lucy is wearing resembles those elements.

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For the movie we decided to create, it is very important we have special techniques to edit, sound effects, tense/suspenseful music, etc.. so the movie can be fun and entertaining to watch. To have a vision of how the movie will look, I have to use specific shots for specific scenes, for example, at one moment my main character has to fly and I have to make that happen, I would probably used fast cuts between the jump and the landing back so I will have the ability to edit it. For me to be able to dramatize the movie I have to include slow motions when she will be confronting the 2 bullies and fast motions when she starts running and flying away. I will for sure include a lot of effects and filters to give it a more unreal environment.

In terms of transitions, fade in at the beginning of film, fade out at the end since it creates a sense of suspense for the audience. We are not including a personal logo but we are creating a colorful background with the films tittle with the type of font called SYSTEM with a white color so it contrasts with the background and the software I am using to edit and to create the logo is CapCut, credits will definitely appear at the beginning after the introduction of the tittle with a black background and a small size font. The sounds the I will definitely have to create digitally are the superhero flying away and towards the 2 boys, the hard core sound effect of her throwing the boy onto the floor, heavy wind, etc.. Our film will not include copyrighted music, if we use some type of music it will be the usual superhero themed music.

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In the first to two minutes of the Captain Marvel movie, a new hero takes flight, Larson's unique character is already in possession of her powers but with no recollection of her past, we find Captain Marvel fighting on behalf of the Kree in the Skrull War. The genre of this movie is considered Superheroes, Action, and Sci-fi and the target audience of this movie is young teens, between 12-20 year old, even though this movie might be enjoyable for adults as well. Kids enjoy this movie since they grew up with the image of superheroes, so they might find this movie fun and distressing to watch. The first 40 seconds they introduce this with the Marvel Studios ident which is a recompilation of each of their achieves. The font they used for this is a Fakt Soft Pro, the credits of the movie appeared at the end, actors/actresses, producers, editors, etc. At 48 seconds they start with a fade in into a dream that Vers is having and it is shown in slow motion, then there is a zoom in to her face with a nose bleed, a close up cut of her face waking up, cut to show her hand with powers, over the shoulder shot on her back watching her window open, zoom in to the city and slowly panning right. The intro starts with Captain Marvel's signature sound, the sound of Kree technology, we can hear the wind and the rocks falling, captain marvel breathing/wind, explosion background, lighting, suspense music, window opening, starting music/magical.

When I finished watching the first 2 minutes I wanted to keep watching it, what was going to happen, what did that dream mean?. I feel like I was left hanging and wanted to keep watching it. At the beginning the length between the shots of her dream are short, it is like a sequence of things she is dreaming about, also most of them are in slow motion showing the moving of the rocks with the wind which is very visually appealing. They adhere to conventions by doing a nonlinear story telling, instead of starting at the beginning "Captain Marvel" is introduced as "Vers" instead which is a Kree Starforce solider  who journeys across the cosmos. The audience is only given little details that drives them into mystery. On the other hand, it is a FEMALE hero it took decades to finally have a female hero with the release of this movie it excited the audience to see what was different. This movie was important to society because it was the first movie in Marvel Studios that centers on a Woman Superhero, it was not until 2019 that a woman superhero was trusted to carry a whole movie, it felt like everyone was putting pressure into it since it was very important to Women. Before the launch of this movie, Marvel films had been licensed to Netflix for streaming but when this movie was released it was held back from the streaming platform. It was not until Disney+ launched that this movie was yet to be seen, and I feel like Disney chose this since they had all the other Marvel and DC movies in their albums.

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Throughout November and December of 2022 we focused on editing techniques, sound, learning how to write scripts and how to incorporate the different kinds of sounds and edits onto the script/film. We started to learn the different kinds of editing techniques and had to create a document addressing 20+ different kinds of edits including a video clip in each one of them. To reinforced our knowledge we watched a documentary on film editing called "The Cutting Edge" which showed very unique film clips that had innovating editing styles. Also, we learned the sound basics and how a simple sound effect could have a big impact on a film, as a class we watched another documentary based on cinema sound called, "Making Waves" which explained how visionary directors work with sound designers to create the most exciting cinematic experiences, and also featuring how sounds can transform how we feel after a movie. After we learned the sound and editing basics, we then read the screenplay of "The Incredibles" to teach us how screenplays should look like before we start filming, we after applied all of this on our Midterm assignment which was to create a horror two minute opening film about a person having a nightmare.

The requirements for the assignment were: one to two minutes; horror or horror hybrid; a film opening rather than a finished product; minimal dialogue (mostly music, sound effects/ambience); no wall-to-wall music; no long takes; start in black with ident and/or logo; minimum of three crosscuts between actor and nightmare; edited/shot/uploaded by student; accompanying blog post. The film should also include: close up; one Dutch angle;  one high or low angle; one low key light set up or one silhouette; one pan or tilt or track/push or spinaround; one zoom or dolly zoom;  one subliminal cut or multitake or smash cut; one match cut; one  J cut or L cut; one use of slow or fast motion; one intentional use of color for story/emotion; one instance of intentional use of costume/hair/makeup; one instance of visual complexity in setting choice (color, texture, depth, lines, shapes, etc.); three sound effects; one piece of incidental music or one sound motif repeated three times. We could get extra credit by including the following: quick cuts; montage; wide establishing shot; split screen; POV shot; reflection shot; intentional break of the fourth wall; intentional break of the rule of thirds; rack focus or pull focus shot; intentional use of handheld camera work; use of color filters to create a dream like quality; fisheye lens or fisheye effect; company logo with high quality graphic.

While recording the film, we all had to adhere the conventions, codes, audience expectations and engagement. In my film, I adhered to conventions by recording clips with lowkey lighting, low angles, and try to make the audience confused when they are watching it. The sound effects, also played a big role since that gives you jump scares when you are waiting for something to happen. For horror movies codes we typically see quick shots, young children, large family houses and what I tried to apply to my film was the quick shots, my author was one of my closest friend which is young and in the nightmare he had was him repeating the same actions over and over again, audience expect to feel confused, scared, disgusted to see what is going to happen in the next shot. I believe that I addressed some of that by making the audience confused with how the dream worked in the characters head. On the other hand, I believe that I broke those codes/conventions, and audience expectations by not doing the usual in my film. Which is not bad at all but, the audience could feel bored while watching it since it doesn't have the usual prompts horror movies apply. One of the things that highlights my movie is the fact that is not the usual, I represented more the confusion of the character than the fears and desire urges.

The journey of recording this film was hard but ended successful, I believe that one of the things that I did good was incorporate each of the angles required in different clips or in the same one, and not make it a list so it wouldn't have been too consistent. Also, the idea of the beginning a horror movie brings a lot of confusion which makes the audience watch it more. However, it could be a lot more confusing to understand where is the nightmare and when is real life since I recorded the nightmare and real life in the same room, which I believe was a mistake. The software that I used was Adobe for the editing, I recorded the whole thing on my phone and then transferred to the laptop to record. For sound effects I just searched up sound effects in google and decided to incorporate a few of those, since I used a lot of music. One thing that I learned was how to edit videos, I have never done it in my life and it was challenging because I could be perfectionist in some ways, so not knowing how to do it frustrated me, this film was a process of me learning how to incorporate all film techniques for the future.

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In class the genres we studied were: Thrillers, War, Animation, Comedy, Musicals, Mystery, Horror, Superheroes, Romance, Sci-Fi, Sports, Drama, Crime, and Adventure. As a class we studied and explained the convections, codes, and audience expectations. For each presentation of genre we watched three different movie clips from three different time periods. Some of the movie clips we watched were identified as hybrids which are different type of genres combined to form a more convincing film.

In my previous group, we created 2 different films. The first film my group and I did was called The Golden Adventure and was determined to be a hybrid genre. In this film we included adventure, drama, and a little of action. This film was about of group of teenagers trying to find the hidden gold. The majority of our shots and camera work were two shots, the setting was wide most of the times, track in and outs following our actors. In terms of audience expectations the audience was expected to feel interested and entertained while watching the film. The second film we created was a remake of a film of a different group. The genre of this film was a hybrid too, including romance and drama. It was about a cheating boyfriend that ends up dying at the end from embarrassment. Most of our camera work was track in and outs, close ups of the reaction of the actors when they found out about the cheating and a lot of two shots. The audience expected to feel excited while watching this film, sad, embarrassed, etc. In the second film we made the error of breaking the 180 degree rule which we hope to fix in future films.

We've been working with different type of genres and I feel like the one that I most enjoy out of all of them is Superheroes or Action. Orphaned high school student Samuel is bitten by a spider and develops super powers he is not aware of, then he is assigned different tasks that challenge him to fight with villains and save the city of Chicago. In superhero movies there is always a super power, a dramatic origin story from the heroes past, a supervillain, a goal they have to accomplish by doing many tasks. When I watch hero movies I always expect fighting, a love story, a human they are trying to save from the evil etc. I would like to explore how and why we pick certain shots when making a move. This is important because directors do this with a purpose and it is interesting to know why they did it and how it made the audience feel.

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We were assigned to remake another groups original film and we had to remake, improve, and rewrite the script using 10 different kinds of shots and camera movements. The original plot of the video was this girl getting cheated on by her boyfriend and tries to poison him using a coke, but the boyfriend ends up giving the coke to his bestfriend which eventually dies. Our group kept the same concept of a girl getting cheated on but the difference was that the one of the girlfriends friend recorded a video and sent it to her, which then she posted to embarrass her boyfriend and he ends up jumping from a balcony from embarrassment. The ten different camera movements we used were a close up, depth, high angle shot, three shot, wide shot, two shot, over the shoulder shot, pan left/right, track in/out, and a long shot. The role I played in this film was Camera woman and kind of directed a little of the film and my experience was not as bad as I thought it was going to be since doing these type of shots were going to be challenging with the type of film.

In this film they were multiple shots that were well received. An example of that was the wide shot we made in a classroom to embarrass the cheating boyfriend, an over the shoulder shot made showing the evidence/video, and the track in we made when the actors were walking towards each other. On the other hand, in one of our shots we broke the 180 degree rule when both characters were conversating and the cut ended up looking too weird. When the editor tried to make a cut between two different days it was not as smooth since we could not get the full shot on the same day. The sound continued to be an issue since the background was loud.

I believe that one of the shots that worked and seemed smooth when the film was finished was the over the shoulder shot because we had the ability to show the audience the video and they had context of the story. In addition to the first shot, a wide shot we made in the classroom where we showed a great amount of people laughing at one of the actors was good since it made the script more interesting. Overall they were not many shots that we thought were useless or did not work out as we expected, we definitely think we made an improvement of the original film.

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This was the first short film I recorded in my Aice Media Studies class. We got into groups and tried to create a story about students finding gold. The main actors were Gracie, Jack, and Liger, while Melanie was the camera woman and I was directing the film. Everyone tried to do its role the best possible so the movie would be amazing. The storyline was Jack being bestfriends with Liger and the Liger would end up double crossing him.

The things that looked good in the movie were how Liger edited, he made the film with transitions, 2x sounds, etc. Also, our storyline was think based and we tried to do the best of our acting to accomplish the goal. The sound wasn't really loud because we didn't have any mics but we tried to talk as loud as possible. I learned a lot of things during this film like controlling the characters, direct where they should be and why, and to edit some things. I believe it was good at the end but I am wiling to learn new things.