Picking a Location / Filming Outline

In class, we spent some time brainstorming where we would film. We also modified the storyline a bit in order to make it more practical when it came to producing it.

As shown in our brainstorming paper, we went through a lot of possible locations like our local town center, the clubhouse at one of our communities, dance competitions, our school auditorium, our own houses, and even a dance competition. We also created an outline of how much time each location would appear in the film.

In the first 30 seconds, it will start with a classroom setting, which could be easily done because we can just use our class time to film. It will also have a clip in the auditorium of Mia (our main character) looking up at the rehearsing theater class and wishing she could be up on stage.  Then, she will walk out and put her headphones on, which is when the music will start playing. 

Then we will show her walking back home, showing clips of her daily life in bits and pieces (walking alone in the hallways, doing small dance movements as she is on the sidewalk walking home, showing the small-town setting). Once she gets home, she'll open the mailbox and see a bunch of college mail, in which she throws away all of them when she walks into her house. To show how her parents are a bit negligent, she walks in, takes her headphones off (the music fades out), says hi to her mom but her mom says she's too busy to talk right now, so she puts her headphones back on (music starts playing again) and walks back to her room. [This whole section will be about a minute long]

The last 30 seconds or so it is her getting into her dance clothes, preparing to start dancing, and then at the end, there will be an action match to her dancing on an empty stage. 

Plot Outline

For our musical film, it will revolve around our main character - the internal struggles she deals with, pressures of being a teen, and her hopes and aspirations of becoming a professional dancer. She is a senior in high school, part of the LGBTQ+ community figuring out who she is, and wants to attend NYU to study dance. Not only does she deal with pressure from school, dance competitions, her parents, and her friends, but she does not get accepted into NYU. This is when she finds herself in a very down situation. The film explores how she gets back up and finds success - not depending on anyone or anything, but herself and herself only.

Attached is a voice memo of me kinda going through a very loose version of the plotline of Little Town.

Mood Board

To develop our main character, we decided to create a moodboard to represent her.

MOODBOARD

We included several pictures of dancing because that is really the main identity of our main character. Dance is her everything. It's all she thinks about, it's her escape, it's her therapy. This is what we chose to focus on while creating the mood board. Not only that, but we also focused on identifying her as part of the LGBTQ+ community, including pictures representing pride. We also included pictures of what looks like a small town and a picture of New York City and a Broadway show. The film will really focus on her internal struggle dealing with the pressures of a small-town setting like a judgment

from peers, feeling like she never fits in, and expectations from her parents, and how she deals with it through dance and her aspirations of becoming a professional dancer in New York City; she wants to attend NYU and be inspired by Broadway, the city lights, and all of the creative energy she lacks in her hometown.

Brainstorm

We spent a lot of time in class discussing what our film would be about. We brainstormed a lot of different ideas, throwing out plot ideas as well as ways to show representation in our film. We decided to throw out the romance aspect of the film - as we want to focus on other aspects of the musical. We haven’t completely decided the full outline of the story yet - but the best idea that we have so far is a musical called “Little Town”.

“Little Town” would be about a dancer who wants to make it big in the industry, but she is constantly held back by the small-minded people in her small town. We also wanted her to have some kind of identity crisis - she is a Christian LGBTQ+ character and she’s afraid if she embraces it people won’t accept her, not only in her town, but with her family, and her overall career. She has strict parents, and although they’re supportive, they don’t want her to go into a dancing career as they find it to be an unstable career. 

For our film opening in specific, I’d like to compose part of the main “theme song” for the film. We would have her walking through her daily life (hallways through the school, at home, before going on stage) and playing with the non-diegetic and the diegetic sound to introduce not only the main character but also the main conflict. The music and the film opening would reflect how she feels the most alive on stage dancing, and she wants so much more than just this little town. 

Here is what the brainstorming sheet that we made in class looked like:

Our Film Opening: The Romance

Our film opening will not only be a musical, but it will also be a romance film. Some examples would be La La Land (2016), Grease (1978), and Beauty and the Beast (2017). In this blog post, I'll be explaining the romance aspect of it. 

The romance genre revolves around a love story/affair, usually between two people, the main characters. Historically, the couple is usually a man and a lady. However, through the years, the world has become more accepting and that is not the standard anymore. For example, Call Me By Your Name (2017) is a romance movie about a gay couple, Elio and Oliver. Romance films often explore themes such as unrequited love, love at first sight, lust v. love, sexual/passionate love, tragic love, and forbidden love. 

Romantic movies can have a fairy tale happy ending, but they do not need to. For example, Titanic (1997) is based on a passionate but forbidden love on a cruise ship but ends in a tragedy when the ship sinks and Jack, the male counterpart, dies. 

The target audience for romantic films is usually young adults and adults. They are usually more appealing to women as well since they tend to be in a woman's perspective, and women are more drawn to romance in general compared to men. There is some color symbolism in romantic films as well, usually red. Red is sneaked in through mise-en-scene elements or even the woman wearing a red dress or receiving a red rose. Red is representative of love and passion. 

Our Film Opening: The Musical

Our chosen genre is musical and romance combined. This blog post will be exploring the musical aspect of it. We chose this because we all found elements that we liked: the music, the dancing, and the overall happy tone that musicals tend to have. I was inclined to do this genre as well because when we watched film openings in class, the one from the movie La La Land (2016) really stood out to me. I have also done a lot of research on musical theather films, such as The Sound of Music (1965) and Grease (1978). It usually has a protagonist chasing after some big dream - usually in the show business, but not always. The target audience for a musical really depends on the plot, since musicals could appeal to kids all the way to full-grown adults. Mamma Mia is a good example of this; the musical not only appeals to today's generation but also Gen X and Baby Boomers since they are using songs sung by ABBA - a famous pop band from the '70s. Musicals also seem to be in a "fantasy world" since characters randomly break out into song. The songs used in musicals are often used to further the narrative accompanying the dialogue. They are usually "Broadway Style" songs, using powerful voices, and musical motifs/phrases are often used to identify characters. 

Music Marketing Campaign

BEAUTIFUL ENTROPY - MARKETING CAMPAIGN

During this marketing campaign project, I learned that research has a lot of impact on the

choices one makes while creating the campaign. I definitely could have done more research regarding the genre and the target audience. I am an artistic individual so I put more of my thought and energy on the aesthetic of the band as well as the music video. Looking back, I realize we did not address the target audience and the genre enough. Since we had done all the research and we already knew about it, we overlooked sharing more details about it during the presentation. Next time, I’ll make sure we’re addressing age range, gender, socioeconomic status and clearly stating why our marketing techniques work for the audience. The genre could have also been more clearly addressed, again we overlooked details during the presentation.

https://www.cagetheelephant.com/home/

https://halfalive.co/

We definitely assimilated our marketing techniques to our case studies, Cage The Elephant and Half Alive. They both had simplistic websites with tabs for social media, newsletter, tour dates, etc. We found this was common among the genre so we chose to do the same.

OUR WEBSITE

Same with social media - we found that both these bands were present in social media

such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. They mainly posted aesthetic pictures and

pictures of the band members which is what we chose to do as well.

The meaning of our band name “Beautiful Entropy” sends out the overall purpose of the band - to

encourage an audience to embrace chaos rather than fight against it; to find beauty in the

disorder of life. We chose this theme as we found, through our research, that our target audience (mainly teens and young adults) relate to having struggled with stress, anxiety, and even depression. We wanted our music to be inspiring to this audience to learn how to cope with the ups and downs of life. We also chose to do a symbol for our band - the dripping rose - to send out our overall message of “The Beauty Of Chaos” - but also because we noticed a trend with the other bands.

Half Alive is identified for its use of colors, for example. This is why all of our branding - website, logos, social media - uses the same color scheme of dark red, black, and white. The rose is constantly present throughout our branding - from the music video to the website to the social media - as a symbol of beauty; finding the beauty in chaos. We had a clear reason for all of our choices; however, when we presented we overlooked sharing all of these details and focused on our main points.

Another thing that we focused on that we did not see these bands do is our heavy social media influence on TikTok. We found that TikTok currently has over 1.5 billion downloads, outperforming Instagram, and that most TikTok Users are teens which are a large portion of our target audience. We chose to create a hashtag with a dance challenge (a trend on the TikTok app) to encourage people to listen to the song and widen our audience to all teens, not only the ones who choose to listen to alternative music. The hashtag was #TroubleChallenge and we included a sample of what the video would look like made by a fan.

For our music video, we did a mix of an artistic music video with a storyline. I learned that it is very important to take many shots and have a lot of footage, as it will make the editing process way easier. Also, planning ahead is very important, especially when it comes to shooting in order to have continuity in the video. Looking back at it, I wish we had had more time to edit the video as it did not come to life the way I pictured it in my mind. Also, we could have taken more risks and been more creative with this project, yes. However, we were under a time strain and did our best and I am proud of what we made and what we learned. We are all busy students with a thousand other things, projects, and work to do so it is unreasonable to expect so much for a  single class. I think that we did our best - we put clear time and effort into this project; we did the research, we just missed a few spots. Now that I have a clear understanding of what a marketing campaign is expected to do, as well as the importance of taking more creative risks, I am sure I can learn from my mistakes and do a better job next time.

TROUBLE - OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO