this reflection is NOTT creative

 guys for some reason i like roll my eyes anytime i see the word CCR plastered on my to do lists. why does it make me mad? what about it makes me go like UGHGHHGHGHGHGH? I DONT KNOW. LITERALLY MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE CCRS LAST YEAR AND THIS YEAR WERE JUST FINE BRO 

emi calm down

this ones gonna be easier

u have time

CALM DOWN

today im gonna be digging in a little bit on questions 1 and 2 to get a nice lil head start :D LETS GOO

THIS REFLECTION IS NOTT CREATIVE: DIGGING IN (QUESTIONS 1 AND 2)

k wait thumbnail

me and twin when we see a supernatural monster on the streets

QUESTION 1! MORE IN DEPTH! (emi this is a rough draft do not go insane please u have so much to do right now)

HOW DID RESEARCH INFORM MY PRODUCT AND THE WAY IT USES OR CHALLENGES CONVENTIONS?

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 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 Issac, 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. 

PHEWW OKAY NEXT ONE

QUESTION 2! MORE IN DEPTH! (emi once again this is a rough draft pls do not go insane)

HOW DOES THE SCOURGE ENGAGE WITH AUDIENCES?

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. 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!

Our postcards maintain the brand I developed with the social media and our final film through implementing the same black and red aesthetic and similar fonts. Obviously the font being used on there isn't as spooky scary looking as we want it to be as clear and legible as possible to people interested in our film but it will still strive to achieve a bold look. One of our postcards is very similar to the one seen in our final film as Annie gives his "card" to Otto. We wanted to have a nice little call back from our film's narrative. Our other postcard will be the same as the first but with some nice key art on the back featuring each important character shown in The Scourge. Our final film STILLL (kudos) maintains the brand identity even while strictly not having red and black colors plastered all over it. Each shot has a warm, dark tint to it that is synonymous to the brand we developed in our social media and postcard, especially the night time scenes, they do an amazing job with branding!

front and back of our in-universe postcard :]

nice night time shot of mable :D

OKOK THATS IT FOR NOW! I HAVE TO GO OUT A FILM ONE MORE JUST ONE. MORE. SCENE. AND BEFORE THAT I HAVE TO WRAP UP THE LINE EDIT. GUYS WE ARE GETTING THIS DONE WE YES WE!!

CHAUUU LOS QUIERO MUCHO MUAH MUAH