let this white boy and his camera shoot?

              BANGER SHOT ALERT!!! BANGER SHOT  ALERT!!! BANGER SHOT ALERT!!! 

(mise-en scene pt2: shots) 

We have a banger storyboard and we filmed

Said Banger Storyboard

With my very cool Sony A74 (thank u mom and dad), we filmed today. I'm genuinely very happy with how our shots turned out. In our research, we found that a lot of Westerns began very slowly, often with extreme longshots that faded into one another. We aimed to mimic that. The lighting was nothing short of heavenly, which gave us the opportunity for some insane shots that I am very proud of. 

Still from one of the long shots that

 begin our opening

Renn and I switched off filming (he filmed for the most part). I'll share some of the shots that I love. A lot of them are low angle shots we implemented to show a power imbalance of Emi character (now named Charlotte) over the man she killed. Some of the other ones I loved are shots where we had dirt or flowers in the foreground in focus, and the subejct (Charlotte) out of focus doing some sort of action. Keep in mind these are not color graded or edited so some of it might be a bit off.

                                                          Charlotte looks out over the horizon,       

                                                                      ready for what's next         

Charlotte plants a cross at the burial site

 

Charlotte ties the cross while standing over the dead body, projecting power

Charlotte buries the body. 

We focus on a flower in the foreground, contrasting life and death

Charlotte grits her teeth while digging

Shots are insane and so am I. I leave on Thursday for STN in Tampa. I will win. I will win. I do not like Christopher Columbus 

mise en scene? more like miss and some... im sorry im rlly tired

Colors

Western in desert so Western yellow. That about sums up the extent of the color theory I'll do for the openings' location. Costuming is a bit more interesting, however. Our main character is wearing a red vest because we felt it was the type of bold color an independent woman like herself would sport (and not because it was the only thing we could get that we didn't have to pay for). 

Costume

For props, we went with a very dry brownish yellow color for rope and potato sacks (used to hold the body). 

da rope

This Kendrick Lamar song is really good sorry I just needed to write that.

Since I know you're probably begging, I'll elaborate more on the location. We're filming at Vista View Park, the only place in Florida that hasn't been viciously absorbed by developers (thank u Henry Flagler). It's a dry place because we've gone a few weeks without rain. It looks dead, perfect for the vibes of the old West we want. 

park but it looks more dead right now

I'm gonna saturate this and warm it to hell to make it look yellow, and we should end up with a pretty accurate Western vibe.

I got a haircut what do u think Cambridge do u like it 

Works Cited

Flame (Leah), Working the. “Clothing & Fashion in the Old West (What Was Worn?).” Working the Flame, 13 Aug. 2023, workingtheflame.com/old-west-fashion/.

Formichella, Janice. “Pioneer Clothing: What Women Wore in the Western Frontier.” Recollections Blog, 4 Feb. 2020, recollections.biz/blog/pioneer-clothing-what-women-wore-in-the-western-frontier/.

character development ( life... amiright)

    Character development within a 2-minute excerpt of a film is hard to manifest in reality, so we have to hint at a change that would come later in the story. The main character of our story (name TBD-I will refer to them as Emi's character) is a woman in a man's world. Disguising herself as a man is the only way to survive and live. In our open, we hint at this by showing her in a fairly male outfit. The audience cannot tell she is a woman. In our sequence, she removes a hat, revealing her long, waving hair. This is a significant moment in our opening, the climax of a cinematic story. 

    The character kind of developed out of nowhere. We wanted her to be an independent woman from the start, and the more we talked about our unnamed character's attributes, the more we thought of Disney's "Mulan", a character that disguises herself as a man to fight in the military. It was her strong will and determination that drew us toward that character archetype, and I think we reflect it well within our own open. 

Mulan (1998)

We do have another character, but he is not seen in this open, merely mentioned. It is the son of the man Emi murdered. The plot of the story revolves around her making amends to the son. He is not that developed simply because we didn't see a need to make his character that large of a focus in our already busy schedule. 

Nico (the other character)

I leave for Tampa in 8 days to Direct a short film, and the next week is hell. Will Emi's character develop more than mine this week, we'll see. 

I hear... therfore I am ?

 "Audio makes the world go round" or something like that. Honestly, audio in productions has kind of become second nature for me ever since I won best short film at the Student Television Network National Convention doing audio for my team (slight but needed flex).

Me with my 2 (two) 2 first place trophies

Me on the set of a short film doing audio

   

 But this production presents a new challenge...planning. Unlike past productions, I actually have time to think about the soundscape and auditory elements I want to incorporate within the film opening. Because it's a Western, I want to incorporate lots of nat sound. This includes sounds like the wind whistling, footsteps crunching along the hills, birds chirping, dirt flying, and shovels breaking ground. 

    I want to play into the Western motif, so I plan on incorporating strung, acoustic instruments as a backtrack to the scene. These elements would create a tranquil yet mysterious vibe around the first 2 minutes of the production. I'll use my nice Lavalier mics to capture the audio and sound effects databases like pixabay.com or bulletproofbear.com  to fully enthrall the viewer within the world of my production.

Audio is vastly more important than video, and I plan on making it worthwhile. 

Some samples of sounds I want to include: 

music options

Suprising- Local Man speaks in fluent gender non-conforming terms, shocks room of activists

Despite appearances,

me for reference

I am quite the progressive. When developing the leading character for my film opening, I aimed to inject within the character some of the same qualities and beliefs I hold myself. I aimed for the lead not to be a projection of myself, but rather a mirror to some issues facing society today. I felt that, since my opening will take place a couple hundred years ago, I had the unique opportunity to place some of society's contemporary issues in antiquity. This not only helps us put our problems in perspective but allows us to deal with them in a much easier and comprehendible fashion. 

The Media theory we chose to model our character on is the "Gender Performativity Theory". First developed by feminist philosopher Judith Butler, the concept posits that gender identity is not something inherent, but rather a "performance" one puts on through gestures, clothing, and language to fit societal norms and traditions. In other words, gender is only present in action, nothing more. 

Applying this to our film, we will feature a character, born female, diverging from societal expectations of her. She takes up the identity of a man because of a bounty placed on her, but finds her life completely different because of a newfound societal perception of her. She is perceived as male and is treated with more dignity, honor, and repute than she ever was as a female. Through this, we can explore the modern-day issue of gender identity in a classical era, giving the issue new light and perspective. 

The lead in our film

Works Cited

Allen, Paige. “What Is Judith Butler’s Theory of Gender Performativity? | Perlego.” Perlego Knowledge Base, 14 Feb. 2023, www.perlego.com/knowledge/study-guides/what-is-judith-butlers-theory-of-gender-performativity/.

Szorenyi, Anna. “Judith Butler: Their Philosophy of Gender Explained.” The Conversation, 19 Oct. 2022, theconversation.com/judith-butler-their-philosophy-of-gender-explained-192166.

Wamsley, Laurel. “A Guide to Gender Identity Terms.” NPR, NPR, 2 June 2021, www.npr.org/2021/06/02/996319297/gender-identity-pronouns-expression-guide-lgbtq.

BOO! A big scary haunted doll and my script

 It's been an arduous day, one where I made 2 separate short films, so here's my script because I have no effort to write something else. I hope you enjoy it.

Still from one of the Short Film's 

I directed today

Script 

Capitalism breeds the idea for my film open

     I have fallen victim to the venomous fangs of American consumerism :(

 While watching Super Bowl 59, one of the commercials that often pass me by caught my attention. The ad featured Harrison Ford advertising Jeep with a rustic old vibe encouraging viewers to live their lives (a luxury only afforded to those with jeeps, of course) to the fullest and freeest. The first line Ford speaks specifically caught my attention. He delivers quite a profound statement "The longest thing we'll ever do is live our lives". The line stuck with me after the game, and despite my best efforts, I could not get this stupid commercial out of my head. The ad goes on to highlight great American feats. The liberation of France from Nazi rule, chasing Nazis through the forests of Western Europe and down the Rhine. It highlights the triumph of returning from service, hugging your loved ones close as you finally reach safe hands. Ford gives advice to the viewer, pleading not to be boastful or prideful, as pride is a bad driver.  And while, yes, Ford reasons that freedom can only be attained behind the wheel of a Jeep, on a much broader basis he encourages the audience to write their own stories. 

Watch at your own risk of 

being propagandized 

    Now you may ask "Why are you discussing this commercial ad nauseam"? Well, dear reader, I, unfortunately, developed my story because I was inspired by this Super Bowl Ad. 

The day after the Super Bowl, I was still pondering this commercial. I was really bored in my AP US History class and may have been developing a fever, so I felt there was no better time than right then to start writing my open. 

The first words I put on paper were “I’ve started to realize lately that.. the longest thing I’ll do in life… is live. And the shortest thing I’ll do...Is die”

I'd imagine you can see the influence.

I developed my story from there. Along with my group, we set the character as sort of a trailblazing figure in the Old West. She hides the fact that she's a woman from the world to be taken more seriously as a cowboy.

     The story follows as the once fierce outlaw faces her most dire crisis yet: her own morality.

The cowboy we follow is notorious for her efficient work, but one job changes her. She kills a father, only to come in direct contact with his son. With her deadly work staring her right in the face, she must choose to end his life, and her problems, but continue her bloody trail. Or she can make amends, and face punishment, but be secure in her morals.

A stylistic Western is never easy, and one where there's this much contemplation about the nature of human morality won't make it any easier

God I love ethical consequences

It's an ambitious plot, but surely one that is doable by the right people, and I feel like I have just that around me.

So thank you, Harrison Ford, Jeep, The Super Bowl, Capitalism, The American Military Industrial Complex, and my incredibly fried brain for taking this commercial as inspiration. The world is worse for it.  Good night.