Day 10

 Name change has taken place. Our main characters name will be Aizen Smith, he is 6 foot tall, 185 pounds of all muscle. Why Aizen? in the spectrum of boxing movies we rarely get to see Asian characters taking the lead. In fact, only recently did "big" start having Asian lead actors. Our friend, Tanirkhan Beisekeyev will be playing Aizen as he represents the Asian community. Both Cyrus and I wanted to have some form of representation in our film but did not want to make it seem forced how one sees so often these days. With that said, thanks to movies like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings introducing Asian leads in action movies, we felt more comfortable with having Tanner come in and play Aizen as our main character. 

Day 9

 We have our first scene ready to go after much discussion. Floyd, our main character, walks into the garage ready to train. We follow him behind with an over the shoulder shot as he approaches his "gym". We then cut to a pair of headphones that he picks up from the bench and puts them on, he looks down at his phone and starts his music. Leading up to the music starting there is no audio. We wanted to show him as being like "in the zone", the song would then start playing and would stay playing during the remainder of the scene. 

We then use a variety of shots to show his training as he stretches, starts warming up, and punching the bag. We then would use a close up of his face to show his emotion during his training. For now, this is all we have got planned for the opening scene but we plan on changing and adding a few things in the near future. 

Day 8

 We started talking about scheduling and when we would start shooting our film. We decided that we’ll start to film in in like a week or two because Cyrus has been busy with soccer and I have had some games and tournaments recently as well. We plan on finishing shooting after like a 2-3 weeks after we begin shooting. This is because we want to be able to space out the content we shoot and ensure that we make it high quality. Hopefully all goes well and according to the plan. Then the editing process would take us ideally like 2 weeks so we’d be able to make it look the way we want and to fix things we need to fix. This schedule isn’t set in stone yet because we still have to decide and finish the storyline we want to do for the film. 

Day 7

 Today we met up with different people around the class to discuss about our openings and try to suggest ideas for each other. Turns out that me and Cyrus' plan sounded really good to the rets of my group that consisted of Lorenzo, Cindy, and Samantha. They had awesome ideas too. 

Lorenzo wants to make a Drama picturing drug addiction, what is cool about his story is that like the movie he referenced, (Beautiful Boy, he plans to show how drug addiction affects those around you rather than how it just affects yourself. He plans on showing his main character as a kid and then cutting to them in present time doing drugs to show how extreme the addiction has gotten. He plans on expanding further on this and we suggested to him to focus on his make-up and mise-en-scene elements since with the right choices he can really depict how addiction has affected his main character. 

Cindy is doing a fantasy and romance movie based on a not very popular Chinese myth about how people that are soulmates are connected by a string on their pinky. What is very cool about this story is that it has a mix of live-action and animation throughout her animation. She intends on starting with an animation explaining the myth and how it is supposed to work. The whole basis of the story consists of an anomaly to the myth and it dives deeper into why they don't have a string like everyone else, but they find someone like them. What I thought was very well integrated was the representation of mental health struggles that will be portrayed by the two main characters. I just think that the animation aspect of Cindy's film is so cool and think it plays in very nicely with her genre and her overall story. 

Last but not least, Samantha is doing a psychological thriller based on a new artist that is obsessed with everything about an older artist that has a sad story. The old artist was respected and admired by many but he was usually never the winner, he was used to getting second place. This causes inner conflict in the artist as he starts becoming obsessed with being first and a winner. This causes them to lose all they have and drives them to destroy all of their work, when this happens though, the artist collapses showing that they have destroyed themselves in the process. I was very impressed with Samantha because she is very ahead of everyone else, her color palette matches her story beautifully. She is worried about running out of time but we all talked about how she can try splitting the 2 minutes into 1:30 seconds for the old artist and 0:30 seconds on the new one. 

I was pretty satisfied with the feedback I got back from them, they also agreed that the parallel story idea was the better option. They also agreed on the location for our main characters' "gym" being the garage. I pitched to them some shots Cyrus and I want to integrate which includes a slow motion medium shot of our main character training showing the hard work he's putting in as drops of sweat come off his body. I also mentioned the way we wanted to end the opening with a two-shot of our characters ending their trainings, hinting to them possibly meeting in the future.

Day 6

    What is the target audience of something? Your target audience is the exact set of customers who are most likely to want your product or service, and who should therefore see your advertising efforts. Age, gender, wealth, geography, interests, and a host of other variables might all influence who your target audience is. As we are making an action film, our target audience will be men in the ages of 13 to their mid 30's.  This is because generally speaking, the techniques and content of action movies appeal the most to that audience.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, action movies consist of easy to get plots, quick cuts, visual effects, etc. We would be integrating these into our film to better target our audience. What our movie is about would also attract more men in that range of age since the sport of boxing is also targeted to a very similar audience. 

references: Evolution, M. (2022, July 20). How to find your target audience: Marketing evolution. How to Find Your Target Audience | Marketing Evolution. Retrieved February 22, 2023, from https://www.marketingevolution.com/marketing-essentials/target-audience#:~:text=What%20Is%20a%20Target%20Audience,a%20myriad%20of%20other%20factors.

Maxgrahl. (2022, September 23). Action genre: How to tell an exciting life and Death Story. Story Grid. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://storygrid.com/action-genre/

Action films. (n.d.). Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www.filmsite.org/actionfilms.html#:~:text=Action%20films%20have%20traditionally%20been,Great%20Train%20Robbery%20(1903).

Day 5

 We discussed about locations today. Since we are going to be doing the boxer vs. boxer storyline we need to come up with different settings. One that will be used is Cyrus' garage. We are going to be using it for the training with punching bags part of the opening. Cyrus owns a punching bag so we'll make the garage the place where the main character trains, we'll move the punching bag into the garage and will try to keep it with a good amount of lighting to prevent it from being dark in the garage since that could symbolize something else about our character. We would use a punching bag like the one below.

We chose the garage because in previous boxing movies like Creed (2015) and Rocky II (1982) the locations used for the gyms look very similar to warehouses so we think a garage could be used to represent how our main character is building himself up from the bottom. Since we want to portray him as someone that is building their career up, we want to try and keep it minimalistic with the bag and some gloves that Cyrus owns

Day 4

 So we talked a little and we will be doing to boxing movie 100%. We’re still thinking about who will be the main character (maybe either me or Cyrus). But, we do have someone in mind that could do play the antagonist, our friend Tanirkhan. He is from Kazakhstan and speaks Russian, so we might try to implement that in with some subtitles. This was just an idea we threw around that we actually really liked. Another possible cast member could be my friend Joaquin or an older friend called Joseph. Joaquin could be the main star but we still have to talk more about that but Joseph could come in as the role of the coach of our main character. Our story isn’t set yet so we’re still trying to focus on that so we can solidify our cast but since we couldn’t meet during the weekend because of soccer (we’re both at tournaments) we might start finalizing our ideas maybe on Tuesday so will definitely be posting about that on Tuesday. For now, that’s mostly as far as we have gotten in terms of casting, but there’s still time and considering I couldn’t go to school for a majority of this week, communication wasn’t the easiest but we’re both excited to do this opening so I’m very optimistic about this. 

Day 3

    Some rough ideas have been thrown around and we both think we know what direction were going to be headed in. Since we both wanted to do sports related things, we came to the conclusion that boxing might be our thing. One of Cyrus' favorite movies is Creed and Rocky is one of mine so we both thought it'd be a great idea to do a boxing style film like the previously mentioned. We threw around different ideas for what the movie should be about and the approach we should take for it, Cyrus was really into the idea of making it like a one vs. one type of movie where we see both perspectives of the story with two main characters, while I wanted to try to focus on the struggles of one main character. We've discussed about possible settings where we could possibly film the opening and we pitched our homes' garages for a possible training scene but nothing is set in stone yet. There is still a lot to be discussed. 

    Communication has been somewhat difficult because I wasn't at school 3 times out of 5 this week because of personal business and because there was a lockdown on Monday and my parents didn't want me to go to school after that. 

Day 2

    

     Action. I know, how generic that me and Cyrus are doing an action film. We know. With that said though, how could we not want to do an action film? We could take so many different routes and come up with good ideas and create a genuinely intriguing opening. We both are very much into action films and fair enough, we are the target audience. By definition and action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. Some of the ideas we have brainstormed would fit this description very well.  

    Action movies typically have several cuts, intense special effects like explosions, and follow a single character as they triumph against evil in a heroic manner. The main character in films like superhero movies typically discovers their talents by accident, which sets the stage for the remaining events in the film. Usually, the main character's opposite is the antagonist. The towering, muscular protagonist triumphs over everything in classic macho fashion.

    This major genre category contains movies with a lot of impact, nonstop high energy, plenty of physical stunts and action, maybe extended, racing, rescues, battles, martial arts, mountains and mountaineering, fights, escapes, nonstop motion, outstanding rhythm and pace, and brave protagonists. The action scenes are the heart of the movie, and they are all meant only for the audience's pure escapism.

    Action movies frequently cross over with other movie genres and have a lot of crossover potential. Both kinds of movies can be classified as sci-fi, space, thrillers, criminal dramas, war, horror, westerns, etc. Action movies sometimes have enormous box office success but lack critical appeal due to their two-dimensionality.

Examples of action films include: Die Hard (1988), Aliens (1986), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Creed (2015). 

Introduction/ Day 1

 Well, it's time. I have to start my blog for my film opening. I've been lowkey dreading this project because I usually underestimate my ability but I think I have a good partner being Cyrus. Honestly I'm looking forward to the next 2 months and I can't wait to see what our project is going to end up looking like. So we both play soccer so our weekends usually consist of having games so we plan on using our free time in an effective way. We're going to take our time with the planning and decision making for the opening so then our filming doesn't get in the way of our daily lives. Once we start the filming we'll try to target our shooting locations by weekends/week. 

We've had a couple ideas and I think that we might be leaning towards an action movie, maybe sports related. 

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

     Now that the project is finished and submitted, I can look back and really analyze and reflect back on how the whole process went. I was absent the first day of the project so I did not know who would be in my group so that was delightful, I would then meet my teammates the class after that one and it would be the first time that I would work together with nay of them so I was looking forward to that. They had already somewhat started the brainstorming without me; so no complaints. I would then pitch in a little with my ideas until we all came to a plan that we agreed on. We started to work on our storyboard as that would serve as the base for the whole project. 

    

    The research was fun for me as I researched one of, if not, my favorite artist, Mac Miller. It took me a bit to finish and find the information but I was very satisfied with how my research had come out. I also researched Silk Sonic which is another group I am interested in. Prodigy also did her part of the research and honestly it was superior to mine, I thought it was a lot better for information that we could apply onto our essays, projects, etc. 

    For our production, we wanted to pick a setting that was forest like. Unfortunately we live in Weston, Florida so we had to settle for some bushes and trees next to a main road in the city. Our schedules didn't mix well together so we decided to get all of the filming done in one day so we did. It was pretty fun to be honest and we were all helping each other and giving our opinions in order to get the results we were looking for. One of Mariana's friends, Ana Sofia, said she'd help us out by being our "star" and our bands face. 

    Shanttal had pointed out that she wanted to be the editor for the video so we granted her wish. Once we had finished all of the production we sent her everything she needed and she started working on how we all visualized this video to be like on the first and second day. The video ended up coming out great, at least in my humble opinion it did. We had visual effects integrated and the overall feeling of the video reflected what we wanted to portray. 

    I can't speak for my teammates but I was overall very satisfied with how the video came out. I also felt that it helped me develop teamwork, this will help me on my Cambridge portfolio as we are working in groups and the ability to be able to work together is crucial. I also learned with first hand experience how to invoke feelings through something like a music video which is definitely
 something I could apply in my portfolio.