Hey super awesome blog readers! The day has finally arrived :]
The project is dunzo! The entire thing! All ready for your lovely eyes to see! Go ahead and check it out right below ya :] My team and I are quite proud of our very kooky creation that we made with our own wacky hands, and we hope you enjoy them and get a good laugh just as much as we did!
Presenting The Scourge! A super duper silly, weird, absurdist dark comedy short film about a girl named Otto falling into the satanist religious crusade of a mysterious mad-man (in the words of our director, Joaquin) Check it!
These past two years of my life have been filled with change, so so so much change, and it was a pleasure being able to see all the change within my life and myself be shown through my creations made for Aice Media. This class has literally been everything to me ever since I stepped foot into Tstok's room for the very first time my sophomore year. From the One Word Film to The Scourge, every step of the way has been absolutely delightful and I'm so so grateful for each and every experience along with the friends I've made along the way :] I'm really going to miss this class next year, despite all the stress and doubt I went through, I still made so many good memories throughout my time in AS and A level and will forever and ever cherish them.
Special thanks to Renn who has been there with me since day one of media (love you bro)
Special thanks to Joaquin and Andrew who have been huge helping hands in the making of The Scourge
Special thanks to all my other media friends that I've made these past two years
And special thanks to you, super awesome blog reader :] I assure you all that I will keep creating more super cool and wacky things in my future and will maybe even make another blog dedicated to showing those creations! Be on the lookout, I promise this isn't the end of Emi and her blogs just yet, just the end of the Super Awesome Aice Media Blog :D
I'll be back before you know it! As for now though, take care of yourselves my friends, and remember to always forever and ever remain awesome :]
For this year’s Cambridge Portfolio Project, myself and my team, Joaquin and Andrew, decided to go on and make the kookiest, unconventional short film of all time. We had very ambitious ideas from the start and wanted nothing but to tell a story that would not only be important to us but impact those who watch it, more in a comedic way than profound.
I’d say for sure that our original idea which was having our main character, Otto, smoke weed as a fuel of power from the devil himself and then end up killing her girlfriend was WAY out of bounds of what I wanted to create. It was out there, which I liked, but at the same time I thought it was just way too much not only for myself to enjoy producing, but for us to execute well as a whole. Not all of us were comfortable with the idea, and it was made obvious, but luckily after a couple days of researching some media texts that shared our same genre of dark comedy, we came back and upgraded our story to be much less intense with no killing of lovers involved!
When coming up with ideas for The Scourge and developing its aesthetic and overall tone, research definitely played a really big role in solidifying what exactly I wanted within all of those things. Researching media texts sharing our same genre also helped us a ton with understanding dark comedy a lot better! We learned the basics of the genre, its conventions, and how to execute it well, especially since our short tackles the sensitive topic of religion and power struggle, we really wanted to know how to do this right without being downright offensive.
The productions that my team and I took most inspiration from were The Amazing Digital Circus, The Binding of Issac, and Dan Da Dan. There were many more but those are the 3 that were the most important to myself, Joaquin, and Andrew. Through our research, we learned that dark comedy combines elements of humor and tragedy and or darker themes. As said by IMDb, the genre often also touches on taboo topics like death, crime, dysfunction, and societal issues all while being super silly to spark some contrast in an amusing way. Dark comedies are to be handled carefully, as not doing so would take away from the meaning that is attempting to be conveyed. Taking that all into consideration, we then looked at specific media texts that fall under the dark comedy genre. All these texts focus on heavy subject matters while having a silly exterior.
My personal research mostly focused on The Amazing Digital Circus and how it dives into serious topic matters while also still maintaining a silly tone (most of the time). I was really interested in how the show handled Caine's character (the AI ringleader antagonist). It first introduces him as a goofy, happy go lucky guy who wants nothing but to entertain the circus members, to making him go insane and begin torturing each and every single one of them in different ways, the most significant being with their traumas. For Annie's character, I took inspiration from Caine's personality and aimed to make him go down the path of increasing insanity. The difference between Annie and Caine though is that Annie is PURE EVIL while Caine turned bad solely because he was malfunctioning due to not fulfilling his AI purposes well. Annie isn't an AI, he's the devil!
Other media texts that were significant in the development of our film as mentioned before were The Binding of Isaac, mainly researched by Joaquin, and Dan Da Dan, researched by myself and Andrew.
The Binding of Issac touches on religious themes while not being afraid to pull any punches as Issac is literally being traumatized by religion throughout the entire game. Joaquin took this as inspiration and as a result we ended up with an insane product touching on religious subject matter with Biblical references like Cain and Able, The Golden Calf, and The Binding of Isaac. We wanted to make our film a sort of an uncomfortable but yet amusing watch, similar to how The Binding of Isaac video game did it.
This is sort of similar to how we also took inspiration from Dan Da Dan with the goofy, yet uncomfortable amusing tone. The anime also isn't afraid to pull any punches, especially the visual ones (ghghhhg). I mainly took inspiration from Dan Da Dan for the general vibe and aesthetic of our short film. I wanted our brand to be goofy while also making it quite ominous with the way we interact with audiences along with the color palette and all. I admire how incredibly weird Dan Da Dan is, so I really wanted to take away something significant out of it and do my best in making our short film a literal embodiment of all our weirdness, Joaquin, Andrew, and I!
Along with us, our target audience are also pretty unconventional. The Scourge mainly engages with audiences through its visual humor, snappy pacing, and general vibe and aesthetic. Our target audience consists of predominately young individuals that are fans of dark humor who fall under the alternative and queer categories. They are also mostly Americans who fall under the middle/upper middle classes with income, as our film is in English (lol required) and takes place in during the 2000s in suburbia south Florida.
As for our social media, target audiences are mostly engaged through the way we interact with them along with the aesthetic that we brand our film around. We used Instagram as we knew our target audience would be in the younger age range. Each one of my posts have a consistent, cohesive color palette that draw in members of our audience who are fans of art along with the ominous, occult vibe. Along with my page's color palette, it also maintains a unique brand through the font used consistently throughout. The font I've been using for each post is called Ghastly Panic and it does the job perfectly in making them stand out and setting up the tone for our film, both silly and goofy with a spice of profoundness and seriousness!
For the print component, our postcard maintains the brand I developed with the social media and our final film through implementing the same black and red aesthetic and similar fonts, which once more stands out to those in our target audience interested in our production's artistic direction and general vibe. Initially, we planned having our postcard look very similar to the one see in our final film as Annie gives he "card" to Otto after she makes the deal, the only difference being that we made the title of our film the largest text on the front of it. We wanted to have a nice little call back from our film's narrative to engage better with audiences and make them go all like "woahhh that's the thing we saw in the movie that's so cool! woah!! these guys are so awesome!!"After being close to completion of post production tho, we decided to scrap this postcard as the shot where Annie gives Otto his card is way too long and we didn't want to go beyond 9 minutes.
Now we made a new postcard and it looks pretty sick and engages with audiences wonderfully! It doesn't really look similar to our initial postcard but I think it's better that way because that allowed for much better visual engagement + better audience reception once we posted it on our social media. The inclusion of the important characters in our piece does a good job in reeling in audiences, especially those who are familiar with the individuals playing certain parts, like Isa with Mable! Some of the people from my school's band follows our social media and it has been made clear through their positive reception of Isa and Emi content, that they are looking forward to how we do with our roles in the final film! Along with the characters, we also engage with our audiences through the incorporation of a fun little (fake) QR code that will provide them with all the information they need about The Scourge's screening at AAHSFF.
Front and back of our postcard (made by urs truly ;D)
I am actually so proud of this postcard because of just how much care, precision, and feedback went into it :] This really looks so sick and fits the brand of our film beautifully!
Our short film itself especially engages with our strange peculiar target audience with an almost non sensical plot filled with power hunger, punk ass rock music in the beginning and the end, animated + hand drawn special effects, and a gritty, guerrilla filmmaking style. Also the jokes :D My parents were the first outside viewers of my film and what they liked most were the jokes :D They were all pretty funny :D One thing though that may disengage the audience from our final film would be the audio. We used lavalier mics connected to a phone and at some moments the audio came out a little too quiet. It isn't the worst audio in the entire world but it could have used some work so viewers could understand important plot points, especially when Otto makes the deal with Annie, better. Apart from that though, the rest of our film draws in audiences with its pure absurdity which I'm truly quite proud of!
a really cool shot at the end of our film that does amazing with engagement :]
SPEAKING OF BRANDING!
I was the one responsible for our projects branding, mostly with the social media and the postcard! As briefly mentioned before, our brand relies on dark, warm colors like reds, blacks, oranges, and some yellows here and there. The font we consistently used was called Ghastly Panic and it did a great job in adding a lot of flavor to our project's name, The Scourge. We aimed for using a font that looked hand drawn and carved since most of our branding has sharp elements like triangles and such that add to the gritty feeling of it all. This branding was specifically brought out the most within our social media page that I ran! Each and every single one of my postings embraced the color palette that we developed along with using the Ghastly Panic font and adding a bit of grain to each in order to create the gritty feeling that we also developed within our short film!
There were also some posts in my page that had the pictures all black and white, which I definitely thinks fits our brand a lot better. Looking back, I think for every single post that I made, having at least the covers be black and white would have created a stronger brand that'd be more recognizable. What really made me notice this was the development of our postcard. I initially had each character on both sides of the card be in full color but after sending it to my group for feedback, Joaquin and Andrew both in fact agreed that it would look miles better and fit the brand more if it was in black and white. After taking their feedback and making the postcard black and white, I was so pleasantly surprised by how much better that approach looked. Had my entire social media page been black and white with a lot of red and black along with it, it would have stood out a lot more, but I'm still really satisfied with it so it's okay :D
first draft of postcard in color
second draft of postcard in black n white (MUCH BETTER)!
As for the branding of our video component, I think it could have been done a bit better. In the end, Joaquin and I decided to progressively make the colors in our movie darker and darker as it gets more intense and near the insane ending to really bring it out and just make said finale unforgettable. And I do have to say, we did pretty awesome in bringing out the finale and will forever say that it is my favorite part in the entire film cause it was just so hilariously gnarly! Howeeverrr, even though we decided against it, part of me wishes the entire film could have been like the finale, or maybe if the finale was a bit longer, our entire piece as a whole could have aligned with the brand's color palette a tad better.
Having the entirety of The Scourge take place only at night though would have taken a bit away from the progression of Otto's insanity and such so I'm glad we didn't end up doing that but just having the entire film with the finale's color palette would have been 2000x cooler. Again though, this is just a me thing. When it comes to branding and colors and such, I want nothing but to keep everything nice and consistent but obviously having our entire film take place at night would have been very hard to do. We also used the Ghastly Panic font a whole ton within our video component to keep that brand identity developed both in the postcard and social media and I'm really glad we did that, because even though the beginning was all nice and blue, we still used it and looked pretty good :]
love this shot :]
Beginning title card!
Ending title card!
As for representation, we created The Scourge with the intention of not only being super duper funny, kooky, and wacky, but also to comment a little bit on religious power struggles and how ridiculous going through a whole ton just for that can be. We represent the goals of those who have the hunger for power and would stop at nothing to get it as worthless. Although I would have loved to have more time to develop her story better in our final film, throughout our piece, Otto goes through some really crazy stuff all in the name of self gain and power for herself. She argues with her sister for a little bit, gets her nose broken by a priest, accidentally runs an innocent passerby over, shoots Issac, and ultimately kills her very own sister in the end.
By then, Otto is long gone and her soul completely belongs to the devil, with only some humanity and "what the helly did I just do" left in her as she's looking down at the portal. Despite all the silly and goofy elements of our production, there is still some tragedy in it, and that is the loss of Otto's soul to power struggle. Obviously how we portray this real life issue is not realistic in anyway whatsoever, but such an exaggerated statement, even if not fully developed in our case (rip 10 minutes), can make a powerful statement if understood correctly.
Had we had a bit more development on Otto's loss, I think the statement we were trying to go for here could have been a tad more impactful. But the fact that she gets progressively worse and worse as the film goes on is pretty clear :] Making a film basing off of the sensitive topic of religion was really no easy feat, especially for myself, a Catholic. We changed a whole lot of things that would cross potential lines for some viewers and to make the story we were trying to tell a bit clearer. This film is more so anti-religious in the way of saying that joining religion for power and self gain is bad, essspecciallly if it involves the devil. Our short can be interpreted in many different ways, but a critique of power struggles and getting into some deep dangerous stuff for virtually nothing is what we were going for.
After analyzing our piece and reflecting on it a whole ton, I can admit I had many many doubts going into this and going out of this. Like I stated in my reflection blog post, the expectations I set for myself are INCREDIBLY high, and even though I'm working on being kinder to myself in regards to that, it seriously has been bringing me down throughout the entirety of this project. This time, I'm not working with filmmaking pros, and this time I'm not being absolutely carried.
As much as I adored it, last years Portfolio Project only had a bit of myself etched into it. This year's production is different. Even though it isn't as jaw dropping visually and such, it is still an amazing reflection of myself, Joaquin, and Andrew, both our personalities, and this current time of our lives. I contributed A LOT this time around, from revising the screenplay, to doing the line edit, to taking on the social media and postcard components. Even though we were carried a bit by Joaquin and their experience + skills, this piece just feels so raw and true to myself and I could not love it more for that. Sure, there are SO many things to improve, but I'm pretty proud of what we ended up with :] The gritty, guerrilla, alternative look is definitely what we were going for and it came out awesome :D
I'm looking to pursue media production in my future, and The Scourge is now considered to be my first ever short film! It's gonna be pretty cool like 20 years into the future when I'm super cool and awesome and super experienced with media production and filmmaking, looking back at the silly goofy wacky short film I made when I was 17 years old and realizing just how far I've come. I'm proud to say that The Scourge is my first step into my media production life, and I am so excited with what else I'll create in the future! I have learned SO much about filmmaking, it's honest difficulties, and fostered new friendships, and for that, I could not be anymore grateful right now. I hope you guys enjoy and get a good laugh out of The Scourge, my first ever honest, raw, piece of Emi slop :]
Heya super awesome blog readers! As you all may know, this project is beginning to come to an end! Time has never seriously flown by like it did for me these past few months, it was a little scary just how quick everything was. Now it's suddenly time to reflect! Even though we're not completely done yet it's definitely well worth to just take a breath and look back on everything that happened for this project. My journey, even if it went by fast, was truly a significant one and I have a lot of things to say :] So sit back, relax, and enjoy one of my last couple posts on this blog :]
THE END OF MY DIGITAL DAYS
I am definitely NOT the same person I was when I first started this project back in late February. I have grown, I have changed, and I have learned a couple new things that I'll take away for a very long time.
My experience with media production increased by a LONGSHOT during last year's project but this year was different..way different! This year I was no longer surrounded by only CBTV kids and even though they were amazing people to work with, it meant that I got CARRIED. Like CARRIED CARRIED. I made up a term for this while talking about my project to my bestie westie Isa, and it's called "CBTV buff." It's real! And it's a huge bonus! This time around I no longer had the CBTV buff (although Juaco used to be in tv and has good media production experience but still :D)!Throughout all of our filming days I did some other things that were very productive instead of just acting and I'm really happy I got the opportunity to do so :] It was exactly what I was striving for in the start of this project. I had to take care of revising the script, positioning the camera for some shots, and even doing the line edit!
It's also very worth mentioning that I wore the pants in my group :D
I like being honest even if it's hard and since this post is all about reflecting honestly, I am going to be honest now. During spring break, my group procrastinated. And HARD.
Throughout the week I really wanted to get things going with the social media, the postcard, the script, the storyboard, the costume design, and figuring out what days we wanted to film. By the end of it, I had a couple social media posts out with more in the making, a name for our film, a bit of a postcard, nice costume desgin.....buttt no script. Or film schedule. Orrr storyboard.
I was very disappointed and worried to say the least (!) Again, and I will say this till the day I die. My group is lovely, they're my friends and I'm happy to have gotten closer with them throughout the making of this long project. However, had they not procrastinated, had we a had a script done and ready to go during spring break, had we made good progress (from all of us) during that week, we would have been in a much better place during week 7. I was INCREDIBLY busy during spring break too. I had not only this project to take care of, but also my C3 presentation to finish up for AICE Global. Not only that, but during the middle of the week, I had to fly up with my mom and brother to NYC and then attend a State MPA performance on Saturday all day back here in Florida. I got some nice breaks here and there, but other than that, spring break was EXHAUSTING.
It just felt not so nice coming back from the break with a good amount of work done from my end for this project after being SO BUSY with so many things and seeing my group have not much to present during our group meeting. There are no hard feelings at all, I just wish it all went differently. I was very frustrated, and it was just hard expressing those feelings to my group since I don't like being confrontational and find it hard to be completely utterly honest to people I care about. You guys know me though, and I will also keep saying this until the day I die! I am the physical embodiment of perseverance! Despite everything that happened, I kept on going and kept my faith up for this project!
It honestly took me a long time to actually get accustomed and comfortable with the story we were making since I didn't want to make anything that could cross a grave line or anything that didn't align with my morals. Because of that, I made some edits throughout pre prod and I'm glad I did because it made producing this thing easier for all of us :] After making those edits and after taking a chill pill and reminding myself that we aren't making anything too serious, I began to feel SO much better about this project. I began to feel attachment and love for our characters and got pretty excited when seeing everything start to come to life! When I actually started drawing Otto and Annie and building up the social media, that's when things really clicked for me. What we are making is pretty dang cool :D
I unfortunately didn't keep that attitude all the way through the making of our project as there have been so many moments where I was just so incredibly anxious and stressing over our video component since I really wanted it to be the best it could be so we could all end up with something we'll stay proud of for a long time. This anxiety is something I haven't ever really felt when creating videos for this class and it threw me off a bit. I think I felt it so dang much because we have so many followers on our social media page anticipating our film's release along with the fact that this project will be seen by my dearest friends, my lovely partner, and my family.
As a creative, there's always a huge need to make everything PERFECT not only for yourself but for those that will consume it, and I get that need SO OFTEN. You'll never catching me creating art unlocked. I am ALWAYS LOCKED when it comes to that stuff and given the fact that my name is VERY MUCH on this project, even more than it was last year, the anxiety really really skyrocketed more often than not. This is also my last big project for AICE Media. Like ever. This class seriously means so much to me and it'd be great to go out with a bang :] We still have yet to submit, but I hope that future Emi will be happy with her final creation. SOSO much time and dedication went into the making of this project and I know it will pay off one way or another.
I think in comparison to the other groups in my class, my team definitely had the most filming days. Some groups I know had 2, others like 3, but us?? WE HAD 7. SEVEN. SEVEN DAYS OF JUST PURE FILMING WITH LITERALLY NO BREAKS IN BETWEEN. Welll I mean maybe there were some here and there but we never had actual actualll cut out time intended for breaks. You'll always find yourself goofin around on set with your buddies no matter how locked or unlocked you guys are :] During our first day of production, I was honest to God so incredibly nervous.
That same day we had a group meeting with Tstok and it was quite frankly incredibly disappointing knowing just how behind we were, especially because we did not have a script yet and got it literally the day of production day 1. Thankfully, we only got the first few opening shots and truly came back again to film more during the weekend. Because the script got sent late, we didn't have a storyboard on that first day, so on the days leading up to the weekend I worked my BUTT off to finish up a storyboard (especially for the scenes we were planning to film) to make our lives A LOT easier. We constantly referred back to it when planning out shots so I'm really glad I ended up doing that. We were going down the improv route, and I knew if we kept going that way we would have crashed and burned, so yay for the storyboard! :D After having a ton of storyboard done, the rest of the filming days felt a lot lighter and I began to feel a bit more confident in our video component and how it will end up turning out :]
I'm a very positive person but with this project I've literally only been thinking about the worst scenarios possible. I have truly learned that when it comes to making something so high stakes and so important to myself and the people I care about, I turn into an anxious, pessimistic, stressed out chud of a person. This phenomenon I felt, is truly out of character because in reality I'm quite literally the opposite of all those characteristics I just mentioned and I never really truly stress SO MUCH about anything most of the time! Anxiety kinda comes with everything I do but never have I once CARED so much about anything I was making. Never once have I turned into a nocturnal monster wanting every single bit of her project to be absolutely and flawlessly perfect, and never once have I been late in writing a blog post for the week because I'm too busy producing the video component!!
I'm still working on it, but through a lot of self reflection over the past couple months and year of my life, I have found that I am a person with VERY high expectations, especially on myself. Any minor F up would usually have me in SHAMBLES. It's not quite like that anymore but on some days it hits worse than others. These incredibly high expectations have leaked all over the production of this project and I just needed to constantly remind myself that IT'S NOT THAT DEEP. Sure it's for a very important school grade and college credit BUT EMI. CHILL. We are literally STUDENTS making a 5 MINUTE film about silly devils and stuff, you are NOTT looking to be nominated for an Oscar and YOURE NOT making the Godfather. You can chill!! PLEASE.
Just chilling has been really hard these past couple of weeks and even though I do indeed set my time aside for other priorities in my life, most of my free time has literally been SOLELY dedicated to this project. I have entered tunnel vision, I entered it last week, and I am not leaving until The Scourge is up and available for you all to see!
My expectations are still high, but I have learned to chill them out a little bit and just have fun along the ride. And I must say! The ride was very fun :] Sure at some moments it was incredibly stressful, painful, frustrating, and just overwhelming, but it was still the most fun I have had making something in Media Studies A level. And that's something I am just so happy to say. I already expressed this a bit ago a couple posts back but one of the hottest takes I have is that I enjoyed AS Media significantly more than A level. Not to say that A level is awful or anything! I just really miss the magic of stepping into the art of media production and studying it in depth for the very first time.
This has genuinely become a passion of mine that I’m looking to pursue but A level, while it felt like a nice DLC (deluxe content) of AS, had a different type of spark and magic than AS did. It had a more mature spark, and that was something I wasn’t really ready to handle when first stepping into the class. I think I’m just growing up and my hyperness and excitement for absolutely everything including media is growing a backbone just like I randomly grew one at the end of my sophomore year :D It’s a bit sad to know that loud annoying Emi has never been seen since then. But hey, I legally become an adult and will be on my own a year from now so it’s about time I grow up :]
In complete summary, this project has truly affected my life, who I am, and how I see myself a pretty significant amount. What I enjoy most about these things is just looking back and realizing how much time has passed and just how much I have grown since the beginning. I have learned the absolute importance of time management, creative integrity, and most of all friendship :] It was a pleasure fostering meaningful connections with people I haven’t normally worked with.
I thank this experience and everything AICE Media has given me these past 2 years of my life. I’m saving a bit of the sap for my final blog post for forever and ever and ever but I just want to say thank you super awesome blog reader for following me along the way :] You literally have watched me grow up a bit! Isn’t that so beautiful? :D
Goodbye for now my flying cupcake monkeys! This isn’t the end JUSTT yet and I’ll be right back with two more posts this coming weekend :] Chau chau!
Guys we did it. WE DID IT. WE FINALLY. FINALLY FINISHED FILMING. Oh my goodness im telling you now the entire thing has been a very fun, overwhelming, enjoyable, crazy mess of an experience that if I had to the opportunity to go back, I would NEVER do so. Being with my friends and making an insane movie with them is cool but Emi can only take so much cortisol. I am so ready to get this over with. And not even in a mid way NO NO this is going to be PEAK. 4 days left? STFU! IVE BEEN THEOUGH THIS BEFORE IVE PLAYED THESE GAMES BEFORE I CAN GET THROUGH THIS. WE CAN GET THROUGH THIS
GGRHRGAHAHAHAHAHAHAGATDTTNYTJGHRTKKREOJSWJ WE’RE ALMOST THERE EVERYBODY.
thumbnail :D
i LOVE this shot
This entire long weekend that I had we have spent FILMING FILMING FILMING AND FILMING. We reshooted scenes, we re did audio, and we shot and finished up a whole 3 other scenes. ALL IN THE SPAN OF 72 HOURS. I AM STILL EXHAUSTED AND WILL FOREVER BE EXHAUSTED. HERE'S A QUICK LITTLE RUNDOWN BEFORE I DIE
HOO HA: FILMING DAY WHATEVER PART 1 (FRIDAY)
You may remember this little fact from a couple posts ago, but the car shots that we had for Otto and Mable at the beginning of our film were kinddaaa poopoo! Especially Otto's! She was out of focus! And so, to fix this up and make our lives easier while editing, myself, Joaquin, and Isa met up at about 6pm on Friday at the Indian Trace Plaza to reshoot the scene and then move on to Joaquin's house and get some Mable shots for the finale since the time we had with her left was limited and we need to squeeze out as much of it as possible :D! The reshooting of the car scene went pretty quick and we got it in done just in time as the sun was already going down and inviting us to film some of the finale scenes! Here are the brand new car shots compared to the old ones for you folks that haven't seen my editing post yet!
oldd otto shot
newww otto shot
olddd mable shot
newww mable shot!
By the time we got to Joaquin's house it was like 8PM which meant we had one more hour left to get a lot of Mable shots before she had to boogie at 9PM. That day we focused mainly on the shots after Mable shoots the devil with her TOTALLY NOT NERF GUN THAT EMI JUST PAINTED BLACK
lol i forgot to mention that
i keep thinking we're like not allowed to talk about guns here and stuff but uhh cambridge! I made a nice lil cool gun! :D By only using an old nerf gun owned by my brother, putting a lot of black construction paper over it, taping it all, and then finally completing everything with a nice fresh coat of black paint! It wasn't perfect of course, but it looked real to the point my parents were like "emi BE CAREFUL bro" so it was a success :]! If you're concerned about what my parents said to me, do not worry your little self my lovely flying cupcake monkey! Throughout the entire Mable shoot, we made it very clear to Joaquin's neighborhood that the gun we had out WAS JUST FOR A MOVIE. We yelled it, we danced around, we jumped up and clicked our heels, ANYTHING TO NOT GET INTO TROUBLE!
Then we filmed and got some really sick ass shots :D I cannot thank my bestie westie Isa enough for taking on the role of Mable and mogging the ENTIRE time. This isn't something she normally does, and the amount of care she put into her role surprised both Joaquin and I! Isa, if you're seeing this, you're the GOAT. G-O-A-T. THANK YOU SIGMA
THIS IS SO SICK.
After a couple really cool shots, it was already like 9:20PM so that meant Isa had to book it! She didn't have a car available for her to use that day, so I took her home and eventually got back at about almost 10PM :D Friday was a success! We got some really awesome reshoots and some GREAT finale scenes that will take a while for me to get over.
HOO HA: FILMING DAY WHATEVER WHATEVER (SATURDAY)
We got Mable for this one again to fully complete her night scenes along with reshooting some Issac scenes and redoing some audio for it :D! I don't think I've ever told you guys yet, but the day after I believe filming day 3, I checked and listened to every single piece of audio to ensure nothing was tweaking out but then found out (to my despair) that some audio was MISSING! THE BATTERY FOR MY MICS WENT OUT! DUN DUN DUNNN! I obviously freaked out a little bit over this but knew deep down that it would be okay in the end cause it's just audio and can be fixed easily with enough care and precision :] So with this in mind, Joaquin and Isa came over to my house at about 5PM to reshoot and re do audio for the Issac scene!
I bought out my computer to show Joaquin what I had for the line edit so far and show what shots specifically we needed to reshoot to make the scene even better and eliminate any bad, boring shots. I say the shots that we ended up getting came out pretty awesome! :D I like them 10x better than how they were before. There's more movement, better lighting, and better composition so this was a win in my book! Here are some of the shots I'm talking about:
what the helly is going on here
kane and mable
gahhh my nose gahh
After we got all these lovely Issac reshoots, we went to Joaquin's car and just chilled there for a bit until the sun began to go down! Once it did, we revved up the car and went on our way to Joaquin's house to finish up all of Mable's shots ONCE AND FOR ALL! Isa's official last day of acting in The Scourge was beginning to come to a lovely close, and once I released that I got a lil teeny tiny bit sentimental cause man bro filming this thing with my bestie westie by my side has been SO fun. Genuinely, I don't think I would have enjoyed filming this project as much as I did if it weren't for my best friend being there :] We finished off the day by filming the shot of Mable getting dragged away by Annie after Otto kills her with her gun.
We also got a close of shot of Otto holding Annie's glasses to add to the coolness and context of the scene :D I really love this shot and how dark it is, it definitely holds up with the aesthetic and brand that we aimed to create, and with color correction it'll be even more awesome! After this entire shoot, we could confidently say that we had half of the finale done along with the entirety of the Issac scene 100% complete! All we need now was to finish up the finale with the Otto, Annie, Issac parts and film the Otto and Annie interaction scene at the beginning of our film. Things began to really look up, and we were SO excited to be near to completion and finish everything off once and for all on Sunday!
ok lol thats funny cuz
HOO HA: FILMING DAY GAHFAHHAHGFAHFGAFHAHGAHGHA (SUNDAY)
This day was expected to be the FINAL day of shooting and obviously because of that we all pulled up to Joaquin's house excited and SO ready to just FINISH THIS. FOREVER. This whole thing was so exhausting for all of us so we were seriously expecting a huge sense of relief and joy after the filming day. And I'll say! The day surely had its ups! Joaquin told me some good news as soon as I got to their place, telling me that they got Renn to be the passerby that get's run over by the car in the car scene! YAY! It was nice having my best buddy over to help out, it was very fun :D We finished all of Renn's scenes at approximately 5:30 and sent him on his way to go to a friend's house since he needed to be there by exactly 5:30 BAHHAHA that was funny.
After Renn left, Joaquin, Andrew and I, finished up the rest of the car scene shots that included Otto and Annie talking to each other about actuall bullcrap. I'd say we wrapped it up pretty quick and I'm happy with the results that we got but one very small minor issue was that we ended filming the car scene at about 6:45PM when we knew we had limited time to head over to the church before the sun went down to film the Otto and Annie talking scenes from the beginning. GAHHH IT WAS A WHOLE THING. First we had to go to my house to print out a better version of Annie's in-universe postcard which took a little bit, I'd say up until 7:30, then we had to go back to the church and find a good parking spot which also took a little bit because it was the lovely holiday of Easter and that meant the church was packed. Once we finally found a spot, we began to immediately gather everything to quickly head over to the outside of the church but to our demise, Joaquin forgot Annie's black blazer.
The rage was REAL. This all meant that we had to meet up again tomorrow at about sundown hour to film the scene, which was really a huge frustrating moment for all of us. With anger and a smidge of sadness running through our veins, we decided to just go back to Joaquin's house, with Claire De Lune playing on their car speaker, to pick up their blazer and then went back to the church to film the beginning of the finale, which takes place outside of the church at night. One thing though that really set us back was a really silly mental blockade that we all unanimously created which, looking back, is hilarious because it wasted so much time and energy. When we got back at the church, we noticed that everybody was leaving the last mass of the day and because of that we were all like "oh no what if the church closes their gates and we can't get out?" and so because of that blockade, we came to the conclusion that we had to park all the way in regional and walk THE ENTIRE MILE to the church.
I was so insanely tired and exhausted to the point where I just took it, but obviously that entire time something in me was like "GHHRHGHRHGH THIS SUCKS I DON'T WANNA DO THISSSS I WANNA GO HOME I WANNA BE WITH MY PARENTS I MISS MY PARTNER I WANNA GO HOMMEEEE" but you Cambridge people know that for this class I do ANYTHING to end up with something awesome. I jumped into an ice cold pool and sweated buckets for last years projects, and now I'm destroying my back, my face, and my feet for this year's portfolio. I do NOTT back down without a fight. If we HAD to walk all the way to the church, then heck, whatever dude let's do it.
Once we actually parked in Regional Park though we began to doubt and tried to find another location that is closer to the church that we could walk from, and to our luck, Andrew found a place called Weston Public Works that was right next to the church and we thought that it was worth checking out.
Very funny thing though, once we passed by the church we noticed that the gates didn't close yet and in reality, everything was just fine and will probably be open for a longer while, especially considering the church officials in there that had to clean everything up and stay there for give or take a couple more hours. HOW DID WE NOT THINK OF THAT??? I don't know, I'll just give us the benefit of the doubt and say that we were just way too exhausted to even think about logistics.
Being so for real, all of this wouldn't have happened if some of us didn't procrastinate, I love you my friends, but we really should have stayed locked since the beginning, and I should have pushed things more than I have. I pushed and pushed and PUSHED but most of the time it just didn't get through. But enough of that spheal, I'm saving it for the reflection later this week :] We then parked outisde the church and got out of the car immediately to go outside the gates and begin filming the beginning portion of the finale.
Luckily we did it pretty quick, and even though the shots were simple, the fact that it was a convo scene made up for it. By the time we finished, it was almost 10PM. We then went back to Joaquin's house to finish up the finale and stayed there UNTIL 12AM. WE STAYED UP. A whole 2 hours later, we completely wrapped up the filming of the finale and could not be anymore relieved by the end of it all. Of course we still had one more scene to film the very next day, but we had EVRYTHING ELSE done and ready to go so THANK GOODNESS for all our hardwork the past 2 weeks. I am seriously still very exhausted from it all.
As for the next and final filming day, Monday, we wrapped up the one scene we were still missing and felt the biggest weight come off our shoulders after we were done! Filming is now officially wrapped up. Forever. And now all we have to do is finish putting it together, add some pretty colors and graphics, and get it going here for you all on April 10th :] We were pretty tight with everything but I have a good feeling about this!
As for now though super awesome blog readers, I must depart! I got a lott of work to do in order to get this done successfully and I’m going to do just that!
HIHI SUPER AWESOME BLOG READERS! So lol I don't know if I ever specified this but yk how you said there would only be like 2 more blog posts up on here and that would be it forever and ever :D NOPE! NOT TRUE! I MAY HAVE LIED TO YOU! IF I EVER SAID THAT! WHICH I DO NOT REMEMBER!! HELP!
I got something very important to talk about here though that I'm sure you Cambridge lads will appreciate since I haven't really touched on it much in the past :] OUR POSTCARD!! The production of our lovely print component has went through a whole lot of process ever since like week 3 of this project and I'm excited to share it all with you guys today! After this will be the critical reflection, promise :D
really cool aura thumbnail
WAIT I NEED TO TALK ABOUT OUR POSTCARD: THE BETA
So I believe even before spring break started, Andrew began designing the postcard! I appreciate the very early step he took into completing this thing, even though when we started Tstok didn't give us a lesson on how to make one and what's required out of it yet, it's still awesome that we got a nice lil head start on things :] On March 7th, Andrew looked around the web for some postcard templates and found this lovely little church card thingy that he thought would be perfect for the look we were trying to go for. I may have mentioned this briefly in the past but initially we wanted our postcard to look VERY similar to the card that Annie will give Otto in the beginning of our film. It would have been a nice little call back to the in universe happenings within early 2000s Florida-Kentucky :D (saying would have because it sadly did not end up happening BAHHAHAHA) but here right here we have the template that Andrew based the first draft of our postcard on! It's very business card lookin and thought it was pretty cool when they first sent it to us in the group chat.
Template! We love John Smith
Andrews very very VERY rough draft of the postcard
Again, this very rough draft was made before the lesson Tstok gave us about postcards, so there wasn't much that Andrew did yet in regards to what text had to be put on the front and back, but this nice first step had some pretty good potential :] After Tstok gave us the print component lesson, Andrew hopped back on Canva and began to make some tweaks to the very rough draft to align it better with the requirements. We had to have the title of our film, the director, the screening dates, and contact info, and that's exactly what Andrew put into this lovely version that you can see right down below us here :] He played around a bit with the colors, made a nice evil QR code, and all around made it look cooler and more on brand :D The feedback I had for this version though had to do with the fonts being used, as I thought Canva Sans wouldn't exactly match the brand and vibe of the kookiest short film of all time. But then again, this was only the second draft, so nothing's final and of course things will be changed around! Here is my lovely 2nd draft exhibition right below you super awesome blog reader!
2nd draft!
We are still going! BAHAHAH making this thing was like watching a child grow up into a functioning adult it's crazy how many stages our postcard went through. Now for the third version! After we got back from our detrimental spring break and locked back in like it was nobodies business once more, Andrew got to work on the third to last version of our postcard, which actually turned out to be the final postcard that was (supposed) to be shown in our short film! After talking to Tstok for a little bit (and when we were still planning to actually show the in universe postcard in the short), we decided to not have 1 but 2 postcards! 1 being an exact look alike to the one supposed to be shown in our piece and the other intended to look completely different from the in universe one! I liked this idea, and was excited to see the eventual final product for both.
After a couple lock in sessions, we came out with these two postcards, the front of the first, and the front of the second. As you can see, they look VERY similar because that's exactly what we were originally trying to go. Both cards have THE DEVIL IS ALIVE! on them but the difference here are the names presented in both. In the first it's Annie Christian and in the second it's my team members! I thought this was pretty cool, but definitely something was missing, and I figured that out later in production! We did end up using the first one that you see down here for the film though, and even though it ultimately got cut out to save time, we still appreciate its efforts :D Take a look!
front of the in universe card
front of the not in universe card
SECOND TO LAST IS UP BOOYAH! I made this version of the postcard quite recently, and decided to step in because Joaquin had a very specific vision for this one and I knew exactly how to execute it. At the time we were still thinking of making the first in universe postcard but obviously that will change in a little bit just you wait and see :D For this version of the postcard, I went out and dug deep into our footage and got some nice screenshots of each important character to put into the front and back. We originally intended to have all 4 characters on the back and have the original upside down cross design on the front, but after messing around for a little bit, I ultimately decided that it would be too much and not so nice on the viewer's eyes. Sooo I changed things up! I put the "bad guys" on the front of the card, Otto and Annie, and the "good guys" on the back, Mable and Issac!
After playing around with colors, formatting, and adding some artistic flare as you can see with Annie's little devil tail and Otto's emphasis marks, I sent this version of the postcard over to my group for some feedback! They told me that they thought making the characters black and white would elevate the postcard a whole ton along with aligning much better with our pre established brand. I was also recommended to make the background a dark crimson red! After playing around with a couple things again, I ended up with arguably one of the best things I've designed as of present day. I went ahead and made the characters black and white, trieddd making the background crimson red but decided to ultimately not keep it that way since I thought black brought out the reds in the text A LOT better, and changed the formatting up a tad! I added some nice spiky shapes that look like both devil horns and burning flames from hell, which I really ended up loving. Hurrah for Emi! YAYY! You can see our finished version right down here!
soso proud of this :]
Alright super awesome blog readers! That will be it for today :D! I hope you enjoyed seeing my postcard grow up into a nice functioning adult ready to be submitted real soon! As for now, I must complete my math homework and drink water or something! It's been a while since I've done that! (that was a tadc reference)
