Our Storyboard

Last class, we finally finished our storyboard. Although we learned how to storyboard previously in the year, we decided to look some extra researched. We used this website to really get a better idea of how we wanted to use our storyboard to create our film. Rather than having it be really specific, we wanted it to be more of an outline so we could be flexible if we needed to change anything while filming, especially since we have a music element to it.

Creating a storyboard was super useful to us while filming our last project, the "Trouble" music video, as it helped our ideas all come together and it made the filming process a lot smoother. It led us while filming and we kind of used it as a checklist to make sure we got every shot we knew we needed.

Below are pictures of our storyboard:

Now that we have finished our storyboard and have everything set in place, we are ready to begin the filming process next week! We will use our last A day before spring break to get all the filming at school done, and then over spring break do the flash mob scene as well go through the editing process.

Embracing The Musical Genre and Its Challenges

Hi guys!

After our team meetings, my group and I came to realize we were the only ones in our class that chose to do a musical. I got so excited because this will really give us a chance to stand out from the rest of my peers! I love music so much and being able to incorporate it into my school projects makes me so happy. Choosing the musical genre was the perfect choice for us.

The musical genre has a lot of different elements to it (as explained in my previous blog posts) and one of the conventions we chose to embrace was a flash mob. Flash mobs are when people randomly join into a song in an unusual place/setting. This is very common in the musical genre and can be seen across many movies, such as La La Land. This is what it typically looks like:

Here is the link to the film opening of La La Land, in which a flash mob is included.

However, this comes with many challenges. We will need many cameras shooting at the same time to get that flash mob scene perfectly edited, as we will need a lot of footage. Not only this, but we need a lot of people involved in this scene. Thankfully, Janey put out a casting call for her dance friends to be featured in the film opening, and we have gotten a lot of responses so far. We also have asked a couple of friends to help us film and they thankfully have agreed to help us! Filming the flash mob will also be complicated as it will be outside and the lighting changes often because of the sun - but we will make sure to have practiced beforehand in order to make it the best we can in only a couple of run-throughs while actually filming.

Another challenge we have to deal with is the soundtrack. I am 100 percent in charge of this part so it is a little nervewracking. I am continuing to work on the soundtrack this week and am estimating I'll have the finished version by the end of this week if not early next week. With school and everything else going on, life has just been a little hectic. However, I do want the music to be perfect to really make our film opening the best it can be.

Our Screenplay

Hey guys!

We just finished writing our screenplay for the film opening. The website we used was Celtx, a resource that was introduced to us earlier in the year. It is the perfect website as it is super user-friendly and makes writing screenplays a lot easier than manually doing it. We started on the storyboard but did not get to finish in class. The screenplay is really short and simple - since there is not much dialogue rather than the music playing in the background. The only dialogue we included is when Mia gets back home to the "real world" and walks into her house and says hi to her mom. Our screenplay is basically like an outline of our story and what the characters are doing, rather than more script-like. Here it is:

Composing the Music: Part Three

So, I got some demo vocals on the project. These again are DEMO vocals, so I will be redoing them. Also, the mixing and mastering are not done yet. By the end of this following week, I hope to have the demo finished! Here is an mp3 (linked) of what I have so far:

→ Little Town ←

I showed it to my mom and she said she got Disney vibes. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but the fact that she did think it was part of a musical of some sort reassured me that I'm heading in the right direction. As said previously, recording my music by myself is very new to me and writing for a musical is something I had never done before.  The music aspect of our film is so important which is why I'm spending so much time on it and why so many blog posts have been made about it. There's still a ton of things to fix and get done, but I'm proud of what I accomplished in the past 48 hours!

Composing the Music: Part Two

Hello! Day 2 of creating the music. Instead of writing out a blog post, I thought I would film a mini vlog!

Composing the Music - Part One

Hello everyone!

Today I spent 6 hours in my room composing the music... and have only gotten the piano and vocals recorded... so that's that.

I am in charge of composing the music for our film opening, as I sing, song write, and am starting to learn how to produce my music. However, I am fairly new at the recording (especially mixing and mastering) portion of it. A struggle I faced is that I don't really have a "musical theatre" voice - rather I have more of an acoustic songwriter voice (which makes sense since it is what I primarily do). I may have someone else sing on the track if I am not convinced by the time the demo is finished. Also, I have never composed anything for musicals nor participated in any musicals... so that explains why it was difficult for me to get started.

To get inspiration I listened to a lot of music from musicals and Broadway shows. I wanted to create an original song but had to somehow use similarities from what I found in these songs. I noticed that a lot of them use major chords and change keys somewhere in the song. In the demo I have made, it starts out in the key of D major, but when it gets to the chorus it switches to A major. The chords in the chorus are all major - a I IV V progression that I noticed was common among the songs I listened to. There is also a tempo change that really makes the chorus (where the flashmob will happen) stand out from the verse - it goes from 4/4 time to 6/8.

The lyrics came pretty easy, and I took inspiration from songs from musicals that are centered around the individual and personal struggles/aspirations, like "A Million Dreams" from The Greatest Showman (2017),  and "Waving Through a Window" from Dear Evan Hansen (2015). I began the song with an instrumental focused on the piano like these two songs. I also centered the lyrics around Mia and her desire to get out of her suburban town and be something more. I decided to title the piece "Little Town".

I am not ready to show you guys the demo yet, but I can give you a sneak peek with the lyrics! Here are they are - straight from my notes which is where I wrote them this morning. Tomorrow, I will try to finish the demo and hopefully upload it on here for you guys to hear!

Target Audience

For our film, our genre, musicals, will be a large factor in our target audience. Since our film is based around teens, the age range will be teens (from 12-13 years old) to young adults in college or recently graduated from college (23-24 years old). We are not only targetting them, but by adding the musical element to it, we will appeal to fans of Broadway, musicians or people passionate about music, or just musical super fans, which will be targetting an older audience, according to statistics.

In the demographic of the Broadway audience of 2008-2009 (linked here), it showed that the average age of the Broadway goer is 42.2 years. Although our film is not Broadway, the fact that our film is a musical will appeal to an older audience as well. In the demographics, it also shows that 66% of the audience was female, and since our main character is female, we will be targetting a predominantly female audience.

By making our main character part of the LGBTQ+ community and making her support of PRIDE dominant in the film, we will be attracting a large number of people who are fighting for equal representation in films for the LGBTQ+ community. The LGBTQ+ community has been known to support LGBTQ+ films, like Call Me By Your Name (2017). While it was a small film, with a $3.5 million budget, it made a box office profit of $41.6 million. Therefore, including lots of representation in our film will attract a wider audience.

Works Cited

“Call Me by Your Name (2017) - Financial Information.” The Numbers, https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Call-Me-by-Your-Name#tab=more. Accessed 7 Mar. 2020.

“Queer Representation in Film and Television | MediaSmarts.” MediaSmarts, 7 Mar. 2012, https://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/media-issues/diversity-media/queer-representation/queer-representation-film-television.

“The Demographics of the Broadway Audience - SeatUp, LLC.” SeatUp, LLC, 28 June 2019, https://seatup.com/blog/demographics-of-broadway-audiences/.