Costume Design

Last class, we decided on our main character's name: Mia. We had only referred to her as our main character, so we decided to finally give her a name. As we have created her persona and a mood board that describes her, we thought it was time to create her outfits and fashion style.

To create her outfits, we used an app called ShopLook that allows you to pick out pieces of clothing, from shoes to earrings, to create a whole outfit.

Our film is heavily focused on representation and the fact that our main character is proudly part of the LGBTQ+ community. We also did some light research on similarities in fashion style throughout people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. Therefore, we wanted the pride colors (rainbow) to be present throughout her whole personality, including her wardrobe. Not only this, but we envision Mia as kind of an "old soul" in a way, as she has a very 80's and 90's style - including lots of graphics, cool ripped jeans, and hightop converse. The film focuses on her identity struggle as she often feels separated and different from the rest of the people at school; having Mia not follow fashion trends and rather have a whole different style from the rest of the girls at her school will emphasize the gap she feels between her and them. After taking all of these factors into account, we created a sample outfit that would scream Mia. This is what we came up with:

Racing Against Time

THE SCHEDULE: In order to be able to have enough time to finish our project, we realized we needed to have a clear schedule since we all have busy schedules. We decided the best way to do it would be to create a google calendar that we could all share. On the right, one can clearly see what our next 8 weeks will look like. We marked all of the days we would meet in class as "A days" in pink when our blog posts were due in green and everything about the production in purple. Our filming will start tomorrow, March 2nd, and we will film until the 18th. We have to keep in account that our spring break will be March 23rd-March 27th. We hope to get most filming done during class time, but we will meet 2 or 3 days outside of school to get the shots we need that take place at an out of campus setting. We will edit from the 18th until the end of spring break; we hope to get some work done during the work as well. We also allocated time from March 30th to April 5th to do our final touches make sure our project is perfect before submission.

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.