Sound

On the Search for Sounds

Sound is something that my partner and I knew would be essential to our opener. Since we are showing a man driving, we need to incorporate all of the sounds one would hear while driving. This will allow for our opener to feel real and accurate. Throughout the film we want to play around with sound and the lack of sound. We believe this will help us with emphasizing some actions/ emotions.

Our first step with sound in making a list of all of the necessary sounds we need to make or find on a copyright free website.

Primary Sound List

• Car engine + car driving
• Radio + Radio Music
• Car keys
• Hands hitting steering wheel in frustration
• Trunk Closing
• Phone Call Conversation
• Heavy Breathing 

Secondary Sound List

• Background road
• Birds chirping 
• Air Conditioner
• Moving around in car
• Placing Car in park

We already have some sounds such as the phone calls and hands hitting the steering wheel recorded. The rest of the sounds we will have to find online or create through foley. We would love to incorporate some foley sounds for possibly the trunk closing and keys dangling. For the trunk my idea is to record a textbook hitting the ground. The key sound can be created by shaking up some change.

One of my favorite websites to find copyright free sound effects: https://freesound.org

Editing Part 2

Editing Dilemmas 

So Im not going to lie... I have a confession to make. The reason I am not blogging much about editing are because to two reasons. 1) My partner Leandro is going to be the main editor for the project (Of course I will still contribute) 2) We have been procrastinating.

Although we got the filming done pretty fast, we have not been so productive with the editing. I have already uploaded all of the film and we have started the editing beginning of the opener, however, we are working slow. To be fair, we do have this upcoming week in our schedule to finish editing. Leandro and I are in the process of overcoming this procrastination but we are reaching some dilemmas. The challenges that I have been assigned to overcome are the title and whether or not we should include some credits.

Title

We had no trouble choosing our film title "Dead End." We even figured out how we want to display the title very quickly. Like mentioned in a previous blog post, we wanted the title to mimic a license plate. The issue is that we haven't found the best service to edit this on. First, I tried editing the title on Mac Pages. I looked up a template of a plain Florida license plate which was pretty simple. However when tt came to placing our title, it was coming out slightly wonky looking. We also tried looking online to see if there was a "license plate maker" online. Unfortunately, most of the "makers" looked unprofessional or blurry. I think we are going to stick to editing our own title. This time around I may use Microsoft Word or download some new editing service I find.

Credits

Obviously a large portion of the opener consists of the credits. We have already established the fact that the credits will appear on objects placed around the car. A dilemma we're facing is whether or not we should place our "production company" logo at the beginning of the film as well. We placed the logo on an object in the car but we think it may look more professional if we also place the logo clearly in the beginning. We are also unsure if we should give credit to the copyright free music we are now incorporating. If we did so we would have to type it on the screen which wouldn't align with the rest of the credits aesthetic. As of now, we are leaning towards placing the "production company" logo twice and not giving credit to the song artists.

Music Update

*Queue the Sad Music*

So these last couple of days/ weeks have been kinda depressing. Well that might be an overreaction but its just crazy that for the first time ever I want there to be school. Its my senior year and as corny as it may sound I want to experience all my senior activities like Prom Graduation and so on (I know first world problems). However, the good news is that I have a TON of time to work on this project.

Ok but the real reason I'm kinda sad is that Brent Faiyaz never responded to Leandro and I's messages. We were really hoping to use his song "Natural Release" for the second half of the opener. However, we are going to take this lack of response as a sign to use another song. Luckily there are tons of copyright free music out there for our choosing.

Music Decisions 

So my teammate and I have decided to place music in two parts of the opener. This is something we finally decided after a couple of weeks of contemplation.

First Song

So the first song we want to place in the opener is going to be an instrumental rock song. We want the music to capture the characters aggressive and overwhelmed feelings. The song is going to be a diegetic sound that comes from the radio while he is driving. Fortunately, rock songs are sort of easy to find. When I was editing I put a rock song that came along with the WeVideo editing service and it honestly fit. Its strange that I found the song so fast but it honestly fits. If I do not find a better song I will just keep this one.

Song: Hard Day- BaltaZzar

Second Song

The second music will play for less time than the first. This song will fade in towards the end of the opener when things shift from an angry to sad tone. This will be a non-diegetic sound. The song needs to be slower and give off a mood of sadness and reflection. It can have lyrics or just be instrumental (whatever works). I have not found the right song for this yet but I will continue to search. This song has definitely been a harder one to find. Since we were planning on using "natural Release" for most of the projects duration, it has been hard to find another song that will fit the vibe as well as that one did.

Editing + Updates

The Corona Virus 

So this week keeps becoming more and more hectic. I continue to reach obstacles that I didn't expect to come across. The biggest obstacle being the Corona Virus or COVID-19. This illness has caused schools in my area to shut down for at least up to April 15. This is an issue because the project was due on on April 5. This would mean that Leandro and I wouldn't be able to meet up like we had hoped. "Can we just meet up outside of school?" one may ask. Well we could but it is extremely difficult considering every place is closed and we are supposed to be practicing "social distancing" and staying home.

However, at the end of the day health comes first. It is important that we follow our given instructions to stay safe. The only down fall is that Leandro and I are no longer going to have time to edit in class together, which is something we had hope for.

Solutions

Now enough of all the negatives. Luckily we are good at solving problems and we now have a set plan. A couple of days back my teacher Mrs. Stoklosa informed us that the due date for this project would be moved back to April 12. This is actually a relief for Leandro and I. We thankfully filmed before the Corona Virus got worse. Which means we really only have to edit and complete the CCR in these upcoming weeks. I honestly believe this is more than enough time to do everything.

Now for the editing problem. We had originally planned for Leandro to be the main editor for the opener. However, we also planned to do most of the editing together in class so that we could both contribute. Our solution to this is going to be to use WeVideo. This editing service (provided by our teacher) allows us both to edit the film. This is not exactly what we had envisioned but its as close as we will get to "editing together." Additionally, we may have to FaceTime or Skype to figure out some last minute concerns with the project.

At the end of the day I'm grateful that we were able to adapt to the situation. I have heard many other of my fellow peers be in situations much worse where they had to change the entire topic. Hopefully all goes well for them and Leandro and I.

Updated schedule

03/23-03/29 blog + edit

03/30-04/06 blog + finish editing 

04/06-04-12 blog+ CCR + figure out distribution 

Deciding Our Target Audience

Who's Our Target?

Now that we have done target audience research, representation research (a lot of it may I add), and even finished filming, it is time to decide our target audience. We must decide if we want to stick with the typical drama target audience or take a different approach. Luckily Leandro and I were both able to agree on something fairly easily.

Figuring out who and what we were representing was necessary in deciding our target audience. Through research, I have found that representation plays a big role in deciding the target audience. A film representing women as powerful will attract mostly females. While a film representing the struggles a person of color may face, will attract many African Americans. That being said we don't want our target audience to be homeless people (that would be extremely unrealistic), instead we want to target people of the same age and background as the actor.

Age

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Our opener portrays a 'young adult' male living in his car. We thought it would be best for people around his age to hear this story and become informed about the situations people their age are living in. The target audience of most dramas are usually between 17-50. This means we would like our target audience to be slightly more focused on the younger end of the spectrum. Of course the "film" could be enjoyed by someone older, however, we want to make an impact on this age group specifically (17-30).

Ethnicity

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This year films portraying different races/ ethnicities are finally gaining popularity. It is so empowering that some non represented groups are finally being shown in film. We wanted our film to have that same energy. Like mentioned in a previous blog post, latinos are rarely shown in the film industry. We want our film to go against this and have our lead actor be Puerto Rican. By doing this, we know our film is much more likely to attract latinos. This caused us to make the decision to target to latinos as a whole (not just Puerto Ricans). We believe this is also smart considering a large majority of  U.S. citizens have some latino in them.

Gender

As for gender, we want to target both male and females equally. We know that mainly women go to see dramas, however, the fact that there is a male lead and a more "masculine" theme, we believe men would enjoy the film as well. We want our target audience to not be limited on gender.

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Economic Status

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Like I mentioned earlier in this blog post, we don't want to target to homeless people because many would not go to see a movie. However, in terms of economic status we would want to target middle to high class since people in these categories are often the ones who go see movies anyways. By doing this we would hope that the middle to high class people are able to become less ignorant of the situation homeless people endure. We want the stereotype that "all homeless people are bad people" to break.

Further Representation Research

Representation Returns

Representation is such a wide scope category that it needed a second posting. However, this time I want to investigate representation in a more specific way. Instead of looking at the film's industry representation as a whole, I want to delve into how this would apply to my project. That being said, I want to research who makes up homeless people. Leandro and my goals are to know the group we are representing well. We want to see how our film challenges or represents the group.

Luckily we did some minor research during one of our brain storming sessions (aka a couple of google searches). We looked up the race/ ethnicity that makes up most of homeless people. We saw that white males were most popular. This is when Leandro and I got the idea to add some Hispanic elements into the film. Of course our actor Leandro is a white male, however, we know that the film industry is already crowded with white male actors. So we decided to have the character speak some spanglish in the film opening and we also incorporate some Spanish snacks and even a Puerto Rican Flag (luckily Leandro is also Puerto Rican). We think this was a smart idea because it allows us to stay true to the group we are represented but also stepping out a little.

Additionally, we want our film opening to take place in South Florida. This place (also where we live) is made up of many latinos. So having the actor be of Spanish origin just made sense.

Common Puerto Rican Snack we
featured in the car.

Phone accessory that has the Puerto Rican
flag on it. (Placed on back of phone
while making phone calls.

When coming up with the idea for our film we also considered having a family live in a car instead of just one person. Although this may have been a unique concept, we thought it would be difficult to find another committed actor. Luckily the majority of homeless people are on their own. According to  The 2018 Point in Time Count , individual men make up 67% of the homeless population. This means that our film opener would represent the majority in this category.

From rampages.us. Shows demographics of homeless people.

Obviously, we did decide to have a male actor. This was more because Leandro is a better actor than me, however, again is true to most homeless people. The majority of homeless people are males. So call it coincidence or planned but it works.

Overall I would say that Leandro and I don't mind going against some of the film's industry stereotypes. We want to take a different approach and show homeless people in a different light. However, we also want to ensure that our film is representative of homeless people as a whole. We don't want to further our film too much from the norm. By creating a hispanic white male, we believe we are reaching this happy medium.

Sources:

“Demographic Data Project: Gender and Individual Homelessness.” National Alliance to End Homelessness, endhomelessness.org/demographic-data-project-gender-and-individual-homelessness/.

Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Health Care for Homeless People. “Who Are the Homeless?” Homelessness, Health, and Human Needs., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Jan. 1988, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218239/.

stephanieps21. Univ 112 Stephanie Saavedra, 29 Aug. 2015, rampages.us/stephanieps21/2015/08/29/why-the-homeless-need-stories/.

Filming Day

The Big Day

Today was finally the day that Leandro and I meet up to film our opener. The good news is that filming went pretty smoothly. The bad news is that besides this project, a lot has been going on. School has be temporarily cancelled due to the corona virus becoming a larger issue. This is somewhat stressful because that means we have less time to meet up and edit the project together. However, we are going to try and stay optimistic.

How the day went?

Well Leandro and I kept our decision to film today. We did not let the virus or school cancellation alter our plan. However, we did decide to push our filming time earlier and also switched locations. Originally we had wanted to film around 1 pm. However a couple of days ago, we decided to start around 10 (a little ambitious looking back at it) because we wanted to make sure we got a lot of sun and had enough time to film. We actually ended up starting at 11 because we had to gather some last minute props. In terms of location, we were debating going to film at a church, however, it is Sunday and we were unsure how crowded it may be. Instead we filmed at the Home Depot parking lot which was perfect. Not many people were out due to the virus and the Chick-Fil-A next door was empty because it was a Sunday (a blessing because that Chick-Fil-A is always crowded).

Filming Obstacles

Overall, I would say Leandro and I did not face many obstacles while filming. We were able to film it all relatively quickly. Setting up the set design took slightly longer than expected. We had to ensure the car looked lived-in so we spent extra time debating where to put everything. In the end, we were satisfied with the look.

Leandro and I setting up the car.

Probably the main issue we faced was trying to film in the car. My car is pretty small so it was difficult to get Leandro in the frame at times (especially when I had to film him driving). Additionally, it was hard to get a variety of shots in the small car. We are hoping that we filmed enough for the 2 minutes and that the shots don't look redundant.

We even had to push the seats forward to even get some of the shots.

Our last issue was trying to get the final shot. We want to incorporate a shot of the homeless man closing the trunk. The only issue with this is that my reflection kept showing up on the side. We know that if the "cinematographer" is visible in the film it will seem unprofessional. We are pretty sure we got a good shot without me in it, however, sometimes we don't notice mistakes until editing.

Filming in One Day?

Yes I know it sounds crazy but Leandro and I were able to film in one day. In just a couple hours we were able to get every shot we needed. We thought this was a smart idea because it ensured the set design was consistent throughout. We also found that it was simple to film all in one day. We did not have to change location or costume so it was simple to do it all.

Now onto editing...