Developing Other Ideas

    After a while of pondering, I realized I simply am not able to develop a story based on a (toxic) relationship. Though these situations and concepts are typically very interesting to others, I am not able to connect or really resonate fully with anything involving drama, romance, or something similar to these genres (though last year's project for my film opening was romance-based. I did struggle then with the writing). 

    I found myself more interested in the mystery and psychological genres while exploring short film examples and I came across some mystery films that made me realize I wanted to do exactly that. Mysteries are also good at engaging the audience, keeping the audience thinking and on their toes. I originally wanted to incorporate a morally gray main character to engage the audience, but mystery can do the same. I'm not too sure how to incorporate a morally gray character this way. I think I could incorporate the ambiguous nature of the main character, but it just cannot be the focus of the film as I was planning for my first idea.

    A good mystery typically involves a shocking crime with a crime solver and a suspenseful plot. These are known to be quite realistic (referring to the way characters would act as well as the crime itself, though it may vary depending on the narrative world).

    Some short film examples I thought may give me inspiration to write are as follows: 

 (A Short Detective Thriller)

- This piece is quite complex for me to pick apart upon my first watch, but after a couple more viewings I was able to understand. I like how the lighting was very dark and almost uncomfortable throughout the production, with a lack of sun to represent the lack of positive emotions, keeping the production's mood very dull and depressing to match the case that the detective cracks.

 (The Vision)

- This suspense kept me on the edge of my seat. There were so many questions that came up throughout the production, not that it was particularly confusing or difficult to understand the (well it was, but it was as if we were put in the character's shoes, especially being in a limited 3rd person point of view and not being able to see what truly is going on until the ending came up), but it was mostly the suspense keeping me engaged until the resolution was revealed.

 (Whittling Away)

- I really enjoyed how suspenseful the plot was, leading the audience to believe that something bad had happened to the daughter, just as her father was panicking. It was really interesting to me how they were able to completely make me think a certain way and make assumptions which were entirely wrong just by incorporating clips that conceal a bit more context. 

 (MISSING)

- I liked the mood set for this production with the color. It is dark and provokes peoples fears of the unknown, and it especially becomes prominent over the course of the production as it seems like the setting changed from afternoon or evening to dusk and night. The overall production is very eerie, especially with the incorporation of the crackling radio and the mysterious figures flying around and finally the sudden disappearance of our protagonist in front of our very eyes.

I'm also thinking of using these productions for my social media research, which will be discussed in the next post. 

Building a Story (iii)

Here are some characters I am planning to use (or maybe not, it's just to choose from)

Sabotage is essentially preventing one from success.

MC: Controlling, manipulative; genuinely for LI's own good because of the way LI is

Love Interest: Gullible but kind, falls for tricks and such (catches on late, or doesn't at all)

Sabotage 1: Lie about the character

Sabotage 2: Expose the character

Sabotage 3: Destroy something of importance of character

Sabotage 4: Manipulating the character to do something bad (illegal, immoral)

Sabotage is to get the LI to stray away from those characters, being that they are harmful to them but they are still unaware of the damage, which MC notices.

This is all for story idea 1, I am planning to make an outline of this but if it doesn't turn out well I must create a few more ideas or outlines. 

Additionally, for this particular idea of sabotage, I'm thinking of using a game, Yandere Simulator, for some of their sabotage ideas for inspiration. Though not entirely of course, especially since their main character is more evil than I am creating.

Building a Story (ii)

So here is a general story idea (which I'm not sure if I will introduce another idea to choose between, but I labeled it as #1 just in case):

I still have more to elaborate on this of course, as you can see. This is a general idea or outline of the story. The words I used to describe the main character and their intentions have a more negative connotation than what I was striving for, so I would need to improve on that to ensure I don't go off track with a different view or bias as I am striving to make the character more ambiguous.

I initially was planning to have the main character kill, but it may be too excessive and lean more towards the evil side rather than anything, so I stuck with sabotage. Sabotage can range from something that just makes things more annoying to deal with to nearly life-threatening, so I think the flexibility of that can help.

I also want to make the love interesting pretty morally ambiguous as well. But since the short film will not be centered around them, it needs to be more obvious so that they don't turn out to just be plain annoying.

⁀➷ Building a Story (i)

After a bit of thinking, I came up with a genre I wanted to incorporate to the story: Psychological. I think I might end up going for a Psychological Drama (subgenre of Drama) based on a vague story idea I have (will be discussed in the next post).

But first, I want to gather and evaluate the research I have done so far:

Psychological Dramas focus on the emotional, mental, and psychological development of their main character/subject. I want to portray a dysfunctional relationship between, with the main character being the initiator.

My goal here is to build a story in which the audience would have trouble deciding whether the main character's actions are valid. I want to make the main character morally gray, where they have motivations of their own, carrying out actions that are morally complex (Source). I feel like morally gray characters are a bit more relatable generally because not a lot of people are morally black or white, evil or good. Collectively, as humanity, we are known to possess complex minds, thoughts, and feelings. Though certain fictional figures of morally white or good characters are generally looked up to, our complex nature refrains us from achieving such goodness, typically out of selfishness or yearning for something such as love.

Batman, or Bruce Wane, is an example of a morally gray character. Batman does things on his own volition, working as a vigilante. He does not care for social norms or whether his acts are of legality, but he does have the motive to combat to organized crimes. Though he carries out nearly criminal acts, he still abides to his moral code of not killing anyone, even malicious criminals such as the Joker. (Source)

Another morally gray character would be Tartaglia from the game Genshin Impact. Tartaglia is one of the executive heads of a powerful military force in which are widely feared and despised by the people of his world. His goals are to serve the Tsaritsa, the ruler of his nation, to make a living for his family. He treasures his family and would sabotage or kill anyone who gets in the way of his family's happiness.

Shown below is my brainstorming/planning paper. I found that writing things down makes me think a bit more than typing.

Generally, this is just questions that I felt I should answer as I developed the story and characters especially going the route of a morally gray character/psychodrama genre.

So far, the pattern for morally gray characters to do "bad" for a "good" cause seems to be prevalent. I think that it would also go the other way around, where characters may do "good" for an extremely selfish or "bad" cause.

I want to be able to incorporate this in my story allow for the audience to be more immersed in the story, trying to decide whether or not they would root for the main character or not based on their actions and cause(s).

彡 Project Timeline

I composed a timeline a while ago and just today did I decide to make a few changes to allow myself to work in a more efficient manner.

WEEK 1:

- Explore the different options for the project (music video, short film, documentary, trailers) and choose one

- research the genre, explore different media for ideas/inspiration

- begin to think about plot/world building

- blog

WEEK 2:

- continue research and develop a more cohesive plot

- blog

WEEK 3:

- research other components of the project

- develop outline, storyboard

- finalize filming dates with actors

- start social media posts

- blog

WEEK 4:

- continue research for other components

- start filming (remember to document this for SMS and blog purposes)

- SM

- blog

WEEK 5:

- continue research for other components/start developing ideas for print component

- continue filming, get extra shots in case

- SM

- blog

WEEK 6:

- start editing

- continue to develop idea for  print component

- SM

- blog

WEEK 7:

- continue editing if needed

- finalize print idea 

- SM

- blog

WEEK 8:

- finalize video component

- work on print component

- Start working on Critical Reflection

- SM

- blog

WEEK 9:

- continue CR

- SM

- blog

- make sure everything is working how it is supposed to

WEEK 10:

- reflection

- post all components

- post CR

◇ Film Distribution

Not long ago, I worked in a group with two other people, Beatrice and Ale, on a project called "Sincerely", which was our Film Distribution assignment where we worked with a work of a student in the Creative Writing Class. 

Link to Sincerely

My role mostly was to play support, helping provide materials, ideas, and helping film, as well was editing the teaser. I really enjoyed doing this project, but my favorite was likely the editing portion. We had a wide range of footage to utilize, so it worked well with what I had in mind for the teaser. I also helped put together the flashing slogan of the film "Nothing lasts forever" in the full length trailer because we took so much footage with that and I was able to smoothly edit it together. I think it looks really cool.

 I enjoyed working with my group to brainstorm how to distribute this, especially since we were all immersed in the plot.

☆: A New Project

    The upcoming portfolio project has me stuck between choosing to create trailer(s) or short film. We started off having four different choices: music video, trailers, documentary excerpt, and short film. I wanted to rule out music video since it's not really my kind of "thing". Maybe if I was in a group to do this project, I could do it. But I think the part that my work will be promoting someone else's work is scary for me, in the way that I'm afraid my skill set is not good enough yet. I want to improve with my own work before I work with others. For documentary, I really don't have any ideas for a topic. I wanted to do this choice initially, but there really aren't any topics I'm interested in delving deeper in, non-fictionally. So it's between trailers and the short film.

[Trailer]

    Pros: Pretty easy to come up with an outline since the way I think of a plot is built like a trailer in my head. 

    Cons: I need two different ideas for trailers

[Short Film]

    Pros: Sounds cool

    Cons: Requires a whole plot, but only for 5 minutes

I'm not particularly good at making an actual, whole plot or story, but I think I want to challenge myself this year.

I don't believe my pros and cons list is very effective, but at least now I think I know what I want to do.