This Upcoming Week

For this new week, there is a lot that we still have to do. For starters, we still have to come up with a name. I already gave my own opinion on the name, but we still have to decide what we want our final name to be. We also have to get all of our foley done as well as getting the music and the news commentators that we want. I sent the script to see newscasters but have still gotten no response. I think that we will be using a friend of Tomas called Marcus that does a lot of reporting for the school news program. Personally, I still have to begin writing my CCR script as that is something I have to do on my own. I also need to do this with time as I am not as experienced with editing, so anything that I need to do or any questions that I need to ask, I can direct them to Tomas who is very knowledgeable with editing. I will be posting about all this next week in my blog posting long with my final project and my CCR. It has been a long road since the beginning, and a lot of ideas have changed, but I think that we will have a great final product, and that what we have done and all the bumps in the road have been worth it, and that our product is going to be great.

What We Have Been Up To

We have not been up to much lately. Not much at all actually. Tomas and Arianna were at their trip in Seattle, and are now on their way back. We spoke about all the foley that we have left, and that we have to do it as soon as possible to be able to finish the video to submit and do the CCR too. We are cutting it a bit close, but we had a very heavy weekend of filming a couple of weeks ago, and have used these past two weeks as more of a chill period. We will be done in time and Ariana and Tomas are pretty good at editing and can do a very good job in little time. Plus, we already have two drafts that are pretty much almost complete, all we need to add is the sound, and come up with a title. After this, we should be done for our CCR and done for the project overall. At one point, I was a little nervous that I wasn't going to have time to do the CCR video and Tomas decided to mess with me that we weren't going to have the video done in time, so I began to panic a little bit more, and I kept on assuring him that we would be fine and he would keep on saying no and that he couldn't find time to edit, and that Arianna outdent either. It was a pretty panicky moment not going to lie. I did begin to doubt at on point that we wouldn't finish until Tomas finally said he was kidding. That gave me a sigh of relief and confirmed that we would get it done. Next week will be a tough week with a lot of last minute things to finish. I will be talking about all the stuff we have left to do in my next post as it is a lot to go over.

Roles as of now

As we are almost done with the video and only have a few things to do, and our roles have been pretty balanced as of now. We all had pretty equal roles in the production of the film opening. For the creative aspects of the film, we all had pretty equal input, all imputing our own opinions into what we believed would be the best version of the movie. For the actual filming of the movie, we all also had pretty equal input on how we wanted the shots to look like, and how we wanted the camera to move. While the camera was moving though, I didn't have much input since I was the one in the shot. But that is whatever, if I didn't like the shot, we could reshoot it until i liked it. This actually happened a lot for example when I would laugh if something funny happened in the shot. Post production, we all also have separate roles that we are each responsible for. Tomas and Arianna are both in charge of editing as they are the ones that are most familiar with the the editing software. Tomas and I are also going to be the ones trying to gather all the sounds so they can use it in the editing. This is because Tomas is the one that is most familiar with the footage and is the one that filmed it. He is also fairly familiar with foley as he has done it before. Im super excited to get this done and see the final product. I know it's going to turn out great, and that as a group, we have found a way to balance all of our skills to get the video exactly how we envisioned it. We are all really creative people with our own skills that allow us to do our best work and making it super creative as we assemble our final product. The past blog posts have been super short, but we haven't been up to much the past days as we just did a couple of weeks of a lot of hard work.

Complications

We have one very big problem that has no solution. That is that Tomas and Arianna are going on a scholastic's trip this week for spring break. It would be fine if it was there own trip with their family, but they are competing in a production competition in Seattle, so they most likely will have no time to do any work on our project while they are competing. At their competition, they are competing in events in which they have 8 hours to come up with a video, film, and edit it. Of course, they won't have any time to work on our project. that basically leads me and Jonathan here alone to do any work that has to be done. The problem is that Arianna really wanted to edit, so we want to leave that to her. Moreover, Jonathan has to work during spring break and has a very tough schedule to balance. I also can't work too much as I am volunteering here at the Miami Open, so I won't have that much time to do anything anyway. This has been on ongoing problem throughout the project. We all have different schedules that don't coincide at all. Jonathan works almost everyday, I have practice everyday, and Tomas and Arianna are always busy with their school work and family stuff. Moreover, It has been a struggle for all of us to be in class as Arianna was involved in a car accident the other day, and Jonathans grandma passed away. This has prevented them from coming to class the past two classes, not allowing us to plan for the upcoming weeks and to complete what is left. We do have a group chat in which we talk in, but it is hard to get a consensus on what we are each going to do and what we have left to do.

Title

We have not yet come up with a title and it really sucks. We want to do something meaningful that has a lot of meaning but is also really short. Most boxing movies have the names of the boxer as the title, but we find that to not be very creative and very common. Instead, we want to have a meaningful and impactful name that sort of tells the story of Vincent coming back from his recovery. I was thinking something more personal about him being great and coming back from a fall. In my opinion I like the title “The Return” since it tells the story of him coming back and returning back to his formal self if not better. This title can also make the audience think that its going to be a long return and that he might face some tough complications along the way. It is a very simple title, but it also gives a gist of the movie without giving too much away. All the viewers will know is that it involves something returning, in this case the boxer returning to his former glory. In class, we got together in groups to get input from other people from other groups. When I asked about the title, they all said that they liked the name, but that we could get a bit more creative with it. This was on Thursday, and only me and Tomas were in class, and now it is spring break, so it is going to b kind of hard to come up with a name now. While in groups, we were also told a lot that our video is really good, and that once we add the sound, it will be perfect. So as of now, we have to finish editing, adding the sound, and coming up with a title. It sounds like a few tasks, bit it will still take a long time as they are all very time consuming tasks that require a large group effort. Something that has been hard to find since we all have different schedules. 

Foley

As mentioned in my previous blog, the audio that we had in our raw footage wasn’t the best. The audio was very low, and we couldn’t hear much due to not having an external microphone. The footage was all really good, but it was hard to distinguish what was a punch, what was a dodge, and any of the engine sounds, grunts, and feet shuffling that we wanted to include. When Arianna began to edit what we want our final project to look like, she added on a bunch of royalty free sound effects, but we all agreed that they sounded too cartoony and not real at all. She also couldn’t include any of the diagedic sound that we wanted to include like the sound of the engines, the feet shuffling on the ground, and the crowd cheering. All these sounds aren’t payed much attention to by the viewer, but they add another layer of intensity and deepness to the scene. To create all these sounds, we want to try to do foley for as much as possible. For things such as the engine noises and the crowd cheering, we plan on getting the actual audio since it is very hard to make a foley noise like this. For the cars, we plan on taping a bunch of cars and layering all their sounds on top of each other to give it the right effect of a lot of cars. For the crowds, we plan to either tape at a soccer game at a local park, or the Miami Open, a tennis tournament is in town these next two weeks. 

For the foley sounds, we talked about getting a textbook and wrapping it in duct tape to dropping it on the floor or punching it. We hope that this will give the best effect of an actual punch. If that doesn’t work, we will try to punch the textbook instead. If we aren’t satisfied wit that, we will try bunching actual cuts of meat and seeing if it gives the same effect. I already tried it at the supermarket but wasn’t very satisfied since it had the plastic wrapped around it. If worst comes to worst, we will actually punch each other and get what the real sound sounds like. For the dodges, we will most likely get a long flexible stick, like a PVC pipe as swing it so it sounds like a “woosh”. We will try this multiple times to get a variety of sounds that we can add. For the feet shuffling we will record our feet shuffling on wet asphalt and synchronize it to what is seen on screen. The only sound that we think is left is the grunts, which we will record our actors doing certain grunts at certain times to match what is on screen. After we have all the sound we want, we will distort and layer it to make sure the volumes are at the right volume, and to make sure that it sounds how we want it to sound. We will probably get together and tape out sounds in the coming days when we can all get together.

Sound

We had Tomas edit the footage as sort of a first draft to see how the footage had turned out. We were very happy with how the footage had turned out. We did find though that we have to record sound to add more effect to the fight scene. With the hospital scene, we recorded the sounds of the heart monitor to have a background noise and set that over the footage to add more of an effect that we were in a hospital room. We still need to get someone to record their voice to be the news anchor and tell the story of Vincent Montoya. For the fight scene, it looks really funny without the sound effects we want to add. I've attached some videos that have a similar effect in famous movies. There is also one that shows how different musics can change the message/feeling of the movie. 

This video shows the trailer of the movie The Mummy, where there is no sound effects, and you can hear just the actors scream.

This, similar to the video above, is Star Wars without any sound effects, instead, it is the raw footage.

This is Pirates of the Caribbean with different types of music in the same scene, to show the different effects that music can have on a scene.

We are planning on making foley sounds, or finding different royalty free sounds online that we can use to make up the different sounds that are shown, such as the showts and cheers of the crowds, as well as the grunts of the fighters, and the punches of the fighters. Below are both clips. The hospital scene has the beeping sound, but not the newscast sound. The fight scene is the raw footage, and doesn't have any of the sound that we want to use.

Fight Scene

Hospital Scene

Fight Scene

Saturday was the day to film, and we couldn't be more excited to film. We got to the park at around 7, and people began to get there a little later. As the cars arrived, we began to set them up in a circle to begin filming. We started filming at around 7.30-7.40 when we had enough people to make it look like the fight was full. We had our friends apply makeup in which they used vaseline and coconut oil to make it look like we were sweaty. We got our first two shots in before the park security came to kick us out, exactly what I was scared of. Of course, we packed all of our stuff and left in around 5 minutes. We planned on going to an empty parking lot that does not receive much traffic. This scared me a lot though. I felt as if the cops were going to come because they would think that it was a real fight.  Then, I was saved by the bell when it started pouring rain. Of course, it sucked becasue we wouldnt be able to film that day, at least at the location that we wanted to film at. We talked really quickly and decided to cancel the shoot for the day. We all then went our separate ways, me going to Armando's house (the actor from the hospital scene). When I got to Armando's house though, I had a revelation,  when I saw that Armando had a fairly big driveway, that had a roundabout in front of it, I Thought that it was the perfect place to film with just enough space to fit all the cars. I called Tomas to see if he was still up for filming. Of course, Tomas didn't answer the phone, so I went to his house to talk to him in person. Yes, I was desperate to film. We then texted in the groupchat with all the extras, and some of them would come. Not all of them would come, and we lost our other fighter. That was a huge bump in our production. We then found one of our extras to be the other fighter. I found him to be a better option than the other fighter as he was more serious and excited to do it. We then set up the cars again, which was a bit of a problem as Armando's little sister had a birthday party at her house, and there were parents with their cars there, so that took a little while for them to leave. After we set up the cars, we waited for almost 30 minutes for our hair and makeup to come so we could start the shoot. They didn't come in time, so we started without them. We spoke to the neighbors to tell them that we were filming and if they had any problems to tell us before they called security or anything. We used Tomas's camera and his stabilizers to film all the scenes. It was still pouring rain on and off, so we covered up the camera with a plastic bag, and followed Tomas with an umbrella while he filmed. it was a very unique experience. We also had a bit of a problem with lighting, so we had someone else follow Tomas with a work light to light the scenes how we wanted them.  It eventually stopped raining and we were able to shoot without the umbrella. We had a pretty funny interaction with the neighborhood security when they were doing their rounds. We expected the guard to shut down the production since we were blocking half the roundabout with our cars. Instead he told us to stop acting and actually hit each other. He told us to be safe and left, so we were super happy with that.  We then wrapped up filming and were very happy with what we had done. We then went to Tomas's house to go over the footage and see ho we were. We were very happy  with what had come out.

More pictures: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S4zm2WB7H7uOuF00pHPinCBiLcBPRI0P?usp=sharing

Raw footage: 

Hospital Scene

On Friday, only me and Tomas went to class. On this day, we also found out that it was a perfect day to go film in the hospital. We told Paola(our intended actress to be the visitor) and she was super excited to come film with us. We planned to go around 11 pm as Tomas was doing a project for another class, and the hospital wouldn't be too busy at that time. For this, we planned for Tomas to bring all the camera equipment, and me to bring my clothes that I would be wearing during the fight.
At around 11, we told Paola that we were ready to go shoot, and she canceled on us last minute. we began to panic and ask around to see if we could get another person to be the visitor. We found our friend Armando who said he could be there for the hospital shoot and the fight scene. The problem with him is that he couldn't at that time, but could at around 11.30. He said he would bring a friend, but we didn't need her for the shoot, so she would stand in the back and not play an essential role. This is where things began to go downhill. When Tomas and I were ready to leave, Armando had told us that his friend couldn't come, and we didn't mind much. The problem with this is that he had to take her home first, which wasn't that big of a problem until it took him 45 minutes to take her home. Here, it was around 12.15 and neither Tomas or Armando could drive to the hospital because of their curfew at 1. My car is only a two-seater, so we had a little problem on our hands. The solution I found was to go pick up my sister's car who was at my mom's house who lives around 15 minutes away, and then drive another 15 minutes to go pick up Armando and Tomas. I got to Tomas's house at around  12.45 and to Armando's house at around 12.50. Armando took around 15 minutes to get ready and change from the party that he was at. At this time it was a little past 1, and we embarked on our adventure to the hospital that was around 45 minutes away. Of course, we got there at around 2 in the morning, and my dad was obviously mad at that I had told him that I was going to get there at around 11 and that it was now 2. We got in the room, and I'm not kidding, at the moment I sat down on the bed, he got a call that there was a patient coming in that needed the bed. My dad got even madder because all he wanted to do was get some rest. He made me go to his office and wait until he checked out the patient and sent him on his way. At around 3, he called me that he was ready for us again, so we headed back to the room. My dad supplied us with a hospital gown, a neck brace, and an IV that I could tape on my arm. At first, we shot with all the lights on, but found that it wasnt that dramatic. We then turned the lights off and turned on an adjustable overhead light(shown below) that was very bright. Too bright in fact, that when I would open my eyes I couldn't see. We finally got the perfect shot with the perfect lighting and were on our way at around 3.45. On the way back home, we were starving and decided to stop at a Waffle House as it was the only thing open at this time. The waffles were very good and necessary for filming. At the end, I ended up getting home at around 5 in the morning. It was a very successful and fun film

Footage: 

Planning for filmimg

We planned to film on Saturday night. We made a group chat with a bunch of extras in which we advised them that we wanted to film and told them the time and location. We planned to film around 7.30 at Markham park in an empty field near a runway for RC planes. The problem with this is that Markham closes at sundown, but remains open for people that are camping there, so we thought that maybe they would be a bit lenient with us filming there, so we decided to film there anyway.
In class, we were super excited to plan for filming. We discussed cars(pictures of cars we planned to use are going to be below) and what we were each going to bring to the shoot. In my case, I had to bring my car(which we weren't sure we were going to use), work lights, extension cords, boxing gloves, and my clothes for the shoot. We also discussed roles for the shoot. Tomas was going to shoot, and direct, with input from all of us of course. My role was to be one of the fighters and put my input into the boxing and the shots that we were going to film. Arianna and Jonathan were both also going to provide input in the shots, but also be extras in the film. We also tried looking for people to do our make up and help with the set design. a girl in our class, Emily, told us that she was really good at makeup, but she wasn't available on Saturday, which was the only day we could film. Because of this, we began to look for alternate options, and found some of Tomas's friends that could help us.
In regards to the hospital scene, my dad had confirmed that we could film in the hospital, but that it would most likely have to be pretty late at night and on a day that he worked. The other thing with this is that we didn't want to bring too many people since it is a functioning hospital, and we didn't want too many people making too much noise, so we decided that only me and Tomas would go, along with the actor that was going to play the visitor. With the actor, we planned on using Paola, a girl in our class, as she really wanted to have a part in our project, and visit the hospital at the same time. With all the discussion we had in class, we felt fairly confident that the shoot was going to go well, and that everything was going to turn out great. We were happy with all of our progress.

What is left

I feel like we have been making a lot of process, but there is still a lot of planning that we have to do. We discussed materials and things that we still need to buy. We want the Mise-en-scene to be great, and really add the feel of a fight scene. To do this, we have found that we need baby oil to make the boxers look sweaty and to make them look more muscular and in shape. We also need boxing gloves to put on the fighters. Both Tomas and I have boxing gloves that we can use for the fight. We also have another friend, Armando that has boxing gloves that we could borrow. Armando also has a car that we can use that matches the vibe that we want to add to the fight scene. We also need my dad to confirm that we can use the hospital as a place to film the hospital scene. We also need to find a person to be the voice of the news reporter. Tomas says that he knows a person that has a “Majestic voice” I would really like to be able to get a famous person like Lester Holt to be able to send us a recording of him saying what we want the news reporter to say. I think we will try this by sending twitter DMs to famous news anchors and see by if any luck we can get them to say what we want. It might not happen, but it would be a really cool addition to our film. One of the hardest things that we still have to do is coordinate the fight scene. None of us have much history in boxing, but we will use YouTube videos and examples of fights to inspire us what we want the fight to look like. As of now, we are going to label the different types of punches with numbers so it will be easy to remember and be consistent throughout. This sort of like the different positions in ballet. Yes, something super relatable to boxing. We will be discussing this in the next class that we have together. Tomas has a lot of filming equipment that we can use to film. What we still need to find are lights to improve the lighting conditions of the park. We also need to get some mics to capture good audio of the fight, the punches, the crowd, and capture the overall experience. There is still a lot to be done, but I am super excited on what is to come. I feel that our final product will be great.

Planning

We had class time the other day to plan out a little bit more of our project and the logistics behind it. We have confirmed 100% that we will be filming on March 16th as it is the only day that we can all get together. We also talked about locations. I had talked about shooting behind a store many posts ago. We found this to be almost too sketchy, and we are scared that the police were going to show u, thinking it is a real fight. Yes, the cops in our city have nothing else to do. We then thought that it would be a better idea to shoot at a local park that has a lot of open fields to film on.  In a previous post, I mentioned that we were going to discuss the problem with our extras. We decided that we would use a group chat through text to reach out to all of our friends to see if they would like to participate in our film. Tomas started the group chat and sent the message “I’m Shooting my film opening on Saturday March 16 at Markham Park and I need extras for the scene that I’m shooting. It’s a film about boxing and this is a fight scene. The boxing ring is made by four parked cars that form a square, the lights of each car shining in the middle where the fight is taking place. I need extras to stand by the cars to serve as the ropes of the ring (fighters will not be on any extras) and cheer on as the fight progresses. It should be a fairly simple and quick shoot once everything is set up, please let me know if you can make it ASAP, remember it’s MARCH 16 THIS COMING SATURDAY” to this message, we had a bunch of people reply that they can come to the shoot. I feel that we will have a great turn out and make it exactly how we want it. We also began discussing main roles. As of now, I am going to be one of the fighters, and our friend Neil is going to be the other fighter. We are both of similar body types, so it would actually look like we are of the same weight class.  We also finally finished our storyboard, pictures will be included below. The idea is the same that I mentioned in previous blog posts, the story board just gives us a better visual representation of what we want along with the audio and the action going on. I like the way that our project is looking, and think that we will have a great end result if we continue on the same productivity level that we are on.

Names

 One of the biggest discussions in the group was what we wanted the fighter’s names to be. In the script in a prior blog post, we had the main fighter as Jesus Montoya and the bad guy as villain. Tomas and I were very concerned about the names as we wanted something that not only sounded cool and matched with the vibe, but we also wanted something with meaning, so we began brainstorming cool names and looking up the meanings of the names. The names we came up with were Vincent Montoya for the main fighter and Booker Cannon as the second fighter. We felt that these matched the street fighting vibe, and when we looked up the names, we kind of fell in love with. According to Behind the Name, Vincent is “from the Roman name VIncentius, which was from Latin vincere ‘to conquer’. This name was popular among early Christians, and it was borne by many saints. As an English name, Vincent has been in use since the middle Ages, Though It did not become common until the 19th century”. We liked this name because it was cool, had the meaning to conquer behind it, since the idea of the movie is that he comes back from his loss. We also liked the history that it has been used so long, to represent that he has been a fighter for a long time. His last name, Montoya, “is a Basque surname. It originally comes from a hamlet near Berantevilla in Alva, in the Basque region of northern Spain. During the Reconquista, it extended outwards throughout Castille and Andalusia. The name roughly translates to mean hills and Valleys”. We really liked the name and the meaning of hills and valleys. We felt that this represented his story as he reaches many ups and down, the case of this movie being a low in his career. With the name Booker Cannon, we thought it would be a cool idea to include Cannon in his name, as his punch will be like a cannon to Knock out Vincent. In regard to the first name Booker, Booker sometimes comes from Americans that changed their names when they migrated from Germany from Bowker to Booker. Bowker, is the Americanized form of German Bucher. We liked that this was like Butcher, since he is going to butcher Vincent in the fight. Overall, a lot of thought went into the naming of these characters. Almost too much work. This makes it feel like the characters are ours, almost like our children. Even though it is something that no one will notice, we feel that for us it adds a cool effect.

Class Discussion

This week in class, we discussed with other groups the ideas and thinking behind our film opening. The class was divided into groups of 6, each composed of members from other groups. I used my blog postings as a way of sharing where we were with our project. They were all super interested in our idea, and think that it is going to turn out great. They think that we have a great team that each has great value to the project  YAY! That being said though, they did offer alternatives for the rest of the film. Lauren, for example, said that when he gets knocked out, he gets into the mind of another person. Although this is a cool idea, it would be hard to get this sense and idea into our audience within the first two minutes of our film. Another problem that arose was where we were going to get all of our extras from. I will be further discussing this with my group.  The other members of the table said that they really liked how we were trying to challenge ourselves with including a coordinated fight scene. And yes, it will probably be very hard to do, but once we get it how we want, the final product will be great. One thing I noticed from the other groups that I don’t want to happen in our group is the fact that most other groups had a problem that they didn’t really establish the beginning of the movie. Their ideas sounded more like trailers than the opening of a movie. Although their ideas were great, they resembled a trailer way too much. They had cool shots and great ideas for a movie, but they didn’t have the rest of the movie planned out. In our case, we do, we want the rest of the movie to be about the main fighter trying to get ready for his next fight. We will establish this through the newscast that we have at the beginning, where the news reporter will talk about the main fighter, his history, and then ask if he will be ready for his next fight. This idea was also very liked by the classmates. We all feel that this gives the best intro to a story that can go many ways, and attract the viewer to want to watch more. Before the group critiques, I felt a little bit iffy about the project, and felt that there were things that needed work. After, the people that critiqued made me feel like we were ready, and that the project is going to come out great.

Planing, Schedule, Location, and Materials

With the script we have now, we have a general idea of what we want and need for the project to come out exactly as we want it. It is not much since it is a drama and is supposed to resemble real life very closely.

It is very hard to get us four to find a good day in which we can all meet up and film and talk about the project. As of now, we are using class time as a way to plan out our project and the materials that we need. Outside of school, we are thinking the weekend of March 16 as a day of getting together and filming the fighting scene itself. This is the only day that we can all get together as Jonathan works almost every day, and Tomas and Arianna are going on a field trip the following weekend.

For location, we have in mind using the back of a hardware store for the scene of the fight. We like the loading dock, backstreet type of feel that the back of the store gives. We have to get permission first as it is private property. If we can't film there, we have also thought of the back of a supermarket or a big open field at a local park. all of them are viable options that work equally as well. For the hospital scene, my dad is a doctor, so I asked if he can see if we can use a hospital room to film. He said that it might be possible, but he has to ask, and that we would most likely have to film in a trauma room at night on a weekday; something that may be hard to do with our packed schedules. If we can't get a hospital room, we will make this scene in just a regular room in a house. We would like a hospital room though since it gives a more dramatic effect.

For materials, we are relying a lot on Tomas to use his equipment to film. We also have access to equipment that we can borrow from the school board that can come in handy if there is something specific that we need. The boxing gear and cars will all come from ourselves. Tomas an I both have boxing gear that we can use, such as gloves and mouthpieces. The cars we plan on using are Tonas' Jeep, our friend Armando's Jeep, my friend Maor's BMW, and my Mazda Miata. All these cars add the effect of backstreet, sort of retro feel that we want to give.

Storyboard and Info: Take 1

I think we decided ourselves on a drama, where it begins with a fight scene, where the main character gets knocked out and wakes up in a hospital room without knowing who he is or what to do, and where the rest of the movie, it is about him trying to find himself again and get ready for his next big fight. Below are pictures of notes and ideas we brainstormed along with a screenplay that we have been working on. 

 In this page, we drew what we wanted the first initial fight scene to look like. We included how many cars we want, where we want the extras, and how we want the drone to fly in to start the exposition shot. We also wrote down a person that might be able to do the makeup, and that we need to find someone who could help choreograph a fight. We also wrote down that we wanted to include a lot of low angles during the fight scene.

On this page, we included more of jotting down ideas on which we could work on. Our idea that we are doing as of now is not included on this page, but it does include a lot of the thought process of how we got to the idea we have now. We also have a simple list of things we might need to film. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OsIQyJwe2Bail_d-LovZYsf4whZIDTaS/view?usp=sharing 

Above is a link to our film opening script as of now. It is a very rough draft that Tomas and I worked on. The script includes not only the dialogue that we want to include, but it also includes the shots that we want to include when the specific scenes are happening.

Overall, I think we are off to a very good start and have decided ourselves fairly quickly on what we want to do. Hopefully, there won't be much change to come since I am pretty sold and convinced that this as of now is going to be a great film opening.  

Research: Sci-fi

One of the options mentioned to us by our teacher was the idea of making the second part, the one after the fight scene, a sort of sci-fi type scene, where he is dead because of some supernatural, or weird phenomenon, but to the viewer, he is actually alive. This idea wasn't very liked by my other team member, but I thought it would be something interesting to research, and if I could come up with a good idea, I could influence or convince my groupmates to consider a sci-fi part of the film.

According to AMC Filmsight, "Science Fiction Films are usually scientific, visionary, comic-strip-like, and imaginative, and usually visualized through fanciful, imaginative settings, expert film production design, advanced technology gadgets (i.e., robots and spaceships), scientific developments, or by fantastic special effects. Sci-fi films are complete with heroes, distant planets, impossible quests, improbable settings, fantastic places, great dark and shadowy villains, futuristic technology and gizmos, and unknown and inexplicable forces." This means that for our film, we would have to create one or more of these aspects to be able to fully consider the film a sci-fi film; something that would be very hard to do, especially on our budget. 

Sci-fi films require a lot of special effects and a lot of post-production editing to reach the audience correctly. With Tomas' and Adriana's editing skills, this is completely possible, but it would most likely be very hard to get the real cinematic feel that we want to give to the movie. 

Some famous examples of Sci-fi movies include:

The Matrix (1999)

 RoboCop (1987)

 The Thing (1982)

 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

 Solaris (1972)

 Children of Men (2006)

 Star Wars (1977)

 Alien (1979)

 Frankenstein (1931)

 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

 Brazil (1985)

 The Fly (1986)

 Planet of the Apes (1968)

 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

https://www.filmsite.org/sci-fifilms.html

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/best-sci-fi-movies-of-all-time-ranked

Research: Dramas

We decided that we most likely are going to film the boxing movie. YAY! With this though, a couple of questions were raised. The most important one was probably what genre of movie we wanted to make. Was it going to be sci-fi? a drama? a comedy? an action movie? we truly didn't know what genre to make the movie. All we knew is that we wanted to have the fighting scene previously mentioned that ended with a bang and a knockout. The problem with that though was that we didn't know what we wanted to happen after the character was knocked out. In this post, I will be researching dramas, finding the common shots, angles, and content of dramas.

A drama is defined as a serious presentation or story with settings or life situations that portray realistic characters in conflict with either themselves, others, or forces of nature. Under the drama genre, there are a bunch of subgenres that can work with our film opening. These include: biography, courtroom, dramedy, historical, melodrama, period piece, political, romance, and tragedy. All of these all have the same principle that they deal with usually a main character or group of characters have a problem that they have to solve or confront. 

In our movie, there are many different routes that we thought about going with the drama aspect of the movie. We've thought about the character having faked his death, but we don't know a reason why he would have faked his death. We also came up with him using fighting as a way of raising money for his family and taking care of his children. Another option was to make it that he was being paid to lose his fights by another person that was betting on his fights. The idea that I'm pretty sure is winning, for now, is that he gets knocked out and wake up in the hospital with no clue what he is or what he has achieved, and the rest of the movie is him trying to get to where he was before, and him trying to become a better version of himself.

With regards to camera shots, angles, and editing, dramas can really contain any element at any time. A lot of two shots are used to show when two charters are having a confrontation, and are communicating with each other. There is also a lot of exposition shots that help set the scene by establishing a setting, the characters, and introducing what can happen. other than that, there is usually nothing that is truly specific that pertains to just dramas.

Famous examples of drams include:
Black Panther (2018)
Lady Bird (2017)
Citizen Kane (1941)
BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Moonlight (2016)
Wonder Woman (2017)
All About Eve (1950)
Metropolis (1927)
Dunkirk (2017)
A Quiet Place (2018)
Spotlight (2015)
Casablanca (1942)
Selma (2015)
The Godfather (1972)




https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/top_100_drama_movies/
https://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/952-drama/
https://www.filmsite.org/dramafilms.html