Genre Research : Our Final Genre ( Comedy )

 My partner and I have decided on a genre. That genre is comedy. We decided on comedy because we like it better then the other genres. We also had more knowledge about comedy then the other genres. We thought it would be the easier to create a comedy film then say a horror film. Comedy allows us to be creative and have fun with it. That is one the things I like most about Comedy ; the fun aspect of it. These reasons are the main reasons we choose to create a comedy film

Genre Research : Horror and Romance

 Genre 1
 Horror

Camera movements : The most popular camera movement in horror is zoom.
Camera shots : The most popular camera shots are the reverse shot, the close up shot and the tracking/ pan shot
Costumes : Most costumes include some sort of mask such as the mask from Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Friday the 13th
Lighting : A lot of horror films use harsh or hard lighting to add to the effect. Also often used is Silhouettes or shadowing
Acting :  Some of the most popular horror movie actors include Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and Lon Chaney
Makeup : Majority of the makeup in horror is very gore and usually bloody
Props : Horror items used for killing such as knifes or guns
Setting :  Many horror films take place in a small town or abandoned house/ building.
Editing : The most common editing techniques used in horror is splicing which is used in most trailers. Transitions and fading are also very popular.
Sound : Sound is crucial in horror films. Sound is often used as background music and is usually used to add suspense to a scene
Elements :  Many of the elements in horror include evil or nonhuman like characters, a feeling of fear/ shock/ disgust. They are usually intense and they usually incorporate death in some way.
What I like : I like the intensity in the moment.
What I do not like : When the "scary " scenes are way too intense.


Genre 2 
Romance

Camera movements - The most popular movements are zoom and the tracking shot.
Camera angles  Close ups, long shot, establishing shot, and two shot are the most popular shots
Costumes - Most of the characters wear normal everyday clothes.
Lighting - High pitched lighting, soft lighting and warm colors are most commonly used in romance lighting
Acting : The most famous romance actors include Julia Roberts, Nicholas Sparks, and Richard Curtis
Makeup : Just normal everyday makeup
Props :  The most common props  are items that signify love such as flowers, rings, and jewelry
Setting :  Usually the setting in romance films is a urban setting such as a beach or a school

Things I like : I like the aspects of love and when the characters fall for each other 

Things I don’t like : When one of the main characters dies 

Genre Research : Comedy

      This is a genre power point I worked on early on in the school year.  This was my first project in AICE media class. This was our first dive into the process and elements of movie making. For this project everyone was assigned a movie genre. Me and my partner , Kol, were assigned the comedy genre.  This is the power point we created.

Picking our final pitch

             In this blog we will be narrowing our three final pitch ideas down to one. In my previous blog I talked about our pitch ideas. I am going to  quickly recap our three original pitch ideas. One of our pitches is about a stalker story. Another pitch is a robbery idea with a house maid. And our final pitch idea is a romance between two best friends. We have decided to get rid of our stalker pitch idea. This idea isn't as strong the other choices in our opinion. We just came up with the stalker story as more of a backup choice. We believe we can create a much better film with the other two ideas rather then this one.
            One of our pitch ideas is a robbery story. Here is our pitch, a very wealthy family hires a new house cleaner. She ends up stealing all of the families wealth, but will she get caught? It sounds like a very simple and boring  pitch but, the film will be everything besides boring. By the end of the two minutes you will be hungry for more.  This concept kinda just came to us naturally. We were bouncing a lot of ideas off of each other and I said what about if we did a robbery. After a lot of discussion we thought of the maid idea and decided to stick with it. It was very challenging coming up with a concept that hasn't really been done before
            Another pitch idea is a romance story. Here is our pitch, two best friends since birth but, one of the has secret crush on the the other. Will she confess her feelings or keep them a secret.  We came up with this idea because we thought it might be easy to create. This was the final pitch that we came up with. We already had the robbery and the stalker idea thought of. We thought romance would not be a genre many people would use. Since romance is such a broad topic we were able to think of many different ideas.
             We decided to go with the robbery pitch. We decided to go with this one because we believe we can make the best movie with this. Better then the romance one. This pitch is simple but yet intriguing. We can dive deep into this pitch.

Starting the final task

      Hello! My name is Julia M and I am reintroducing myself since it has been almost a month since my last blog. I am a freshmen at Fort Lauderdale High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I am in the Cambridge magnet program. I am in the AICE media studies class. This is my first time taking a media class. For this upcoming project I will be working with a partner, Kol B. Kol and I have worked together for the previous projects. Kol is also a freshmen in the Cambridge program.
We have worked well together in the past so we decided to work together again.
        Leading up to our final task project I have had some practice to prepare for this final project.  I have created a commercial and a music video. I have become comfortable with the equipment such as the camera and the editing software. I have learned how to come up with a plan and create a storyboard. I have learned to film with the video cameras and edit on Pinnacle Studios. I have also learned more about camera angles and shots. I have learned about what it takes to film a blockbuster movie.  I am excited to be able to actually make a movie. I will be able to use my creativity and think of my own personal concept.
         We are at the first step in the film making process right now. Creating a pitch. A pitch is a Hollywood term to describe an idea. The film idea is encapsulated into twenty five words. Kol and I have come up with three different pitch ideas for our film. Our first pitch idea is, there's a new neighbor and he sees the girl next door. They become friends overnight but the boy becomes overly attached and follows her every move. Our second pitch idea is, a very wealthy family hires a new house cleaner. She ends up stealing all of the families wealth, but will she get caught? Our final pitch idea is , Two best friends since birth but , one of them has a secret crush on the other, will she confess her feeling or keep them a secret.

editing blog

 This class I started to edit the music video. We finally finished filming all of the footage on Tuesday and were ready to begin the editing. When editing we faced many challenges. First, the school laptops are very old and super slow. It took forever for everything to load. From just turning on the computer it took almost twenty minutes for the computer to even start. Then after the computer finally loaded getting onto Pinnacle Studios was another challenge. It would always show the message that the computer could not load Pinnacle Studios. So after three computers of showing the same message we went to talk to the teacher for help. She noticed that we were trying to import straight from my jump drive rather then creating a folder then importing.
 So we made the folder and imported the footage into the folder. At that point we were finally able to start editing. For the first couple of clips of the video, everything was going smoothly. Then when we were nearing the middle part of the music video we noticed another problem. Some of the footage was blocked by Pinnacle Studios. We couldn't view the videos while we could see others. Once again we went to our teacher for help. She was very confused because she never saw that problem before. She thought that it was because we filmed it on our phone but every other clip that was showing up was shot on the phone as well. So we made the choice to give up on Pinnacle Studios and use IMovie instead.
Everything was going so much better with IMovie until we yet again faced another challenge. When we were done editing everything the music video was only forty seconds. It has to be at least one minute five seconds.  But we figured out some ways to add more time. We are going to add a title slide and an ending slide. These both will add more time. Also, if we still need more time we will film some more footage. These things should get us to the correct time. Although we faced many difficulties we got the music video done. It was a long process but I am happy it is finished

filming blog 2

Two weekends ago I started filming our music video with my group mates. We were able to get majority of the video filmed. We still have a little bit more to do. It should not take us more than an hour to finish the filming process.  I was unable to film during the Thanksgiving break. I went up to my grandparents house in Vero Beach, about two hours north from where I live. I got back last Saturday so we could have gotten together yesterday, but all of us were busy and it did not work out. We are trying to get together sometime during this week to finish.  It is very hard sometimes to make plans after school since all of us play sports and do extracurriculars. If it doesn't work out for us to meet during the week we will definitely get together over the weekend.

We are all trying very hard to meet up as soon as possible. If we finish the filming in the next couple of days I will have more time to edit. I will be able to use class time. Editing takes a while so the more time we have for it the better. I do not want to be up very late sunday night trying to finish the music video. Also, I will have to do the critical reflections questions so we are trying to get the filming done fairly quickly. If we have to film over the weekend we can, it is just easier during the week. Tomorrow in class I am going to dump the footage we have already shot and start editing that footage. We can always add the new footage to the older ones once it is filmed.

All we have left to film is the last fifteen to twenty seconds. Part of the issue last time we filmed was we kinda got distracted. We would get distracted or goof off when we should have been using the entire time we had to film. This time I am going to make sure we don't get of tract and focus. The editing process will be very similar to the commercial editing. The main difference is the music. Last time when we tried to add music we added a virus to the computer. This time I know how to do it better so that should not happen.