PRODUCTION POST FIRST SCENE

 SAMMY’S FIRST SCENE PRODUCTION

    Hi blog! Today we filmed the first scene of the film. As we had planned it was only the Sammy’s scene where she was finishing getting ready and then saying goodbye to her parents. Her dad also has a part in the scene where he talks and tells Sammy to not get in trouble making him another character of the film. That was something that came out as last minute but worked really well. 

The short dialogue between Sammy and her dad gives the scene a little sarcastic or funny vibe because of the way he says things and how she responds.  The scene shows also how she has a good relation with her dad because they hug and tell each other their love when she’s saying goodbye. Those are little details that are important for the plot.

Sammy’s room is very unorganized as part of her personality she is not someone who really cares about her personal appearance or  the space where she is constantly remaining. 

There’s also a short scene in the bathroom where she’s putting some make up on after switching her clothes forcing herself to change in order to be as the other girls she consider her friends but are not really her friends. 

FILM PLANNING OF SCENES

 SCENES PLANNING

Hey blog! For this time this is my last entry before I start filming with my group. Our plan is first to film the scenes were Sammy is finishing getting ready and then she’s saying goodbye to her parents. She has a clothes changing because she realizes that her friends are going to the beach with tops and shorts and she was just wearing a hoodie and jeans. The purpose of that scene is to show the personality of Sammy and how she develops herself interacting with other people. 

The next scene we are going to film is at the beach all together with the rest of the characters where they’re enjoying the time there and the development of the film happens there. First we are going to film a long shot showing the place and followed to that the scenes where Vicky and Sofia force Sammy to start drinking. 

That is mostly the plan for the filming scenes process. We are also planning on first get to film the scenes with Sammy on Brianna’s house in one day, then, another day the scenes on the beach and just in case we don’t finish then finish another day also in the beach because we want to have everything well done and produced. 

Planning post focusing on audio

 AUDIO PLANNING AND IDEAS 

For our audio ideas we were thinking on playing some indie music from 2016. My group created a playlist on Spotify in order to every time we had an idea of a song or we listened to something we liked we put it there in order to add it into our project. 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/28rweqnmUalxoZKwgVLG28?si=KAF9Nhg-TBufSf12wSFPvw&pt=d7d089526f53001c13214df9874c564c&pi=7eRBfziBQo6Qe

For the scene were Sammy is finishing on packing her things, we are going to play a little bit of “Formations” by Mild Minds. 

When they are in the car all together on their way to the beach, “We are the people” from Empire of the Sun is going to be played in order to give a sense of joy.

When Vicky and Sofia start forcing Sammy to drink, “Could you be loved” by Bob Marley and The Wailers is going to be played to give a nostalgic and tragic feeling in the moment.

Each scene has its purpose and also each song and sound, we are going to talk a lot so it is not a lot of music because we are going to be talking most of the time. 

planning post focusing on mise-en-scene element (Setting)

 MISE-EN-SCENE SETTING DEVELOPMENT 

For my project we’re going to be filming one scene on a house where Sammy is finishing to pack her stuff for the beach. Then there’s also a scene where her friends are outside of her house ready to get into the car and go to the beach. The car is showed but not as the main thing because the real plot is going to be at the beach, we are going to film some scenes in the morning and then in the sunset where the sky is turning orange so it looks like the characters spent the whole day in the beach enjoying.

We are going to use a tote bag where there is sunscreen, oil tanning, coconut body cream, coconut splash and some make up so the characters can retouch their make up. There’s also going to be alcohol drinks but as we are minors we’re not going to be really drinking alcohol but we are going to act like we do, covering the bottles with paper bags and only showing the top parts of the bottles so it is more credible. 

There is going to be some food like; fruits, chips, snacks and also we are going to have towels in order to make it as a real beach day. We are going to be filming the entire day to make it as real as possible starting from our outfits to the setting and decorations we use. 

For the lighting we are going to use natural sunlight as the most we can because it makes it look better. The beach we are using is a beach that is not so popular so there is going to be less people and it can be easier for us to film. 

focusing on mise-en-scene element (costumes)

 SCENES COSTUMES

For Sammy’s character we decided to make her as a curly hair girl that always has her hair tight but when her friends are around she takes her hair down. She is going to be wearing jeans and a hoodie but then she’s going to change to some kind of top and shorts as the other girls, showing that she’s trying to fit into the group of friends. She also wears glasses but look cuter she uses contacts. Sammy is very natural she doesn’t use a lot of makeup and when does is only because she wants to fit into the group.

For Vicky and Sofia, it’s going to be matching outfits they are going to have the same outfit during the entire short film. Vicky is more of purple colors and is going to wear some purple top with white shorts and a necklace with her initial on it. 

Sofia is going to be matching Vicky but instead of purple colors, Sofia is going to use more pink colors also white shorts and a necklace with her initial too. They both are going to be wearing a lot of make up and her hair very straight making them look really cute and giving an appearance of popular girls. 

The outfits of all of them are going to be for the beach, the purpose is to show how Sammy changes her own style and forces herself to like the same things as her other friends just because she wants to fit into the group. What Sammy doesn’t know is that they aren’t really her friends because they are just making her do things she doesn’t want to or are not good at all. 

CHARACTERS DEVELOPMENT

 CHARACTERS CREATION AND DEVELOPMENT

        For creating the characters of our project we had to think on every detail to make it as best as possible. Me and my group created a Microsoft Word document where we specified the characters, their personalities and their looks. 

Protagonist: Sammy – shy and acted by Brianna Federicci

Antagonists: Sofia acted by Ana Sofia- Part of the mean friends

Vicky acted by Veronica- Part of the mean friends

*When getting ready to leave Sammy kisses a framed picture of her mom on a hospital bed and says bye.

This is the framed picture we are going to use:

Sammy: 

-Curly hair that she puts up at home and once she is in the car and sees the other girls with their hair down she takes her hair down.

- Has glasses but uses contacts to fit in 

- Mom’s dead (reason why she is kissing framed picture) 

- Changes out of original clothes into clothes most girls would wear to the beach 

- Very shy 

- doesn’t try to talk much 

- introverted 

- og outfit is jeans and a hoodie, changes into shorts and a tank top 

Sofia and Vicky: 

-popular girls 

- bright colored clothing 

- talks about guys 

- kind of mean 

- daddy’s money 

- straight hair  

- spoiled 

- outgoing 

- bubbly 

- jean shorts and tube top over bikini 

- blonde and brunette duo 

- kind of leave out Sammy 

STORYBOARD

 STORYBOARD CREATION 

Heyyy blog! Today I’m going to talk about my group’s story board. We elaborated it in class in order for all of us to be okay with the result, the plan of different shots, angles and the different scenes created. 

This Storyboard shows the plan we created for filming and a sequence on the events of our story for our project. It has drawings and a brief description for each thing that was happening on the plot.

PROJECT IDEA

 SUMMARIZING MY SHORT-FILM IDEA 

Hello Cambridge people! For my group project I decided to work in a group of 4 people, me and 3 other fantastic girls. We have worked in past group projects before so it is really easy for us to understand and complement each other. We shared our ideas and got to one idea of what our project can be even though we are always open to add, quit or change whatever we want in order to make our project so much better.

We wanted to do a coming-of-age/horror short film where a teenager girl just turned 21 and she was going to the beach with her friends in order to celebrate her birthday. She invited her best friends and other friends knew about her party at the beach so they also went although they were not invited. The first scene that we are going to film is the girl in the car with other friends on their way to the beach singing and enjoying the time while they were getting there. 

When they get to the beach they start to play music very loud and more people gets there to celebrate with her. The amount of alcohol that was there was a lot, and as it was her birthday she was the one drinking the most until the point that we was unconscious and was just laying on the sand in front of everyone. 

She was convinced that she was going to be fine and safe because she was around her friends, but unfortunately she was wrong. When the girl was laying on the sand, one of her best friends took a picture of her completely drunk and posts it on Instagram where everyone could have access to it and everyone started making fun of her on social media and reposting the picture.

It got to the point that the picture was sent to the girl’s parents and they called the police because they knew that her best friends were still minors and they weren’t legally allowed to drink alcohol. The short film ends in the beach where all the teenagers are worried to get in trouble, the girl is still unconscious laying on the sand and the parents on their way to pick up her daughter and wait for the police to get there.

That’s basically the idea we have of the plot and the start of the short film. We think it could be interesting and also could make the viewer wish to watch more of it. 

MEDIA THEORY

 VLADIMIR PROPP’S CHARACTER THEORY 

Hi blog! Making my research on different theories that me and my group can use for my project I chose the “Vladimir propp’s character theory”. It suggests that characters in narratives can be categorized into a set of archetypal roles that fulfill specific functions within the story, like the hero, villain, helper, donor, dispatcher, and the sought-after person, allowing for analysis of how characters drive the plot through their actions and interactions. 

Here is where I found the information from: https://media-studies.com/propp/

    Also, my teacher for Aice Media Studies gave me this paper with information on different theories and techniques used in media. My group and I studied this information in order to decide which theory could fit better with our ideas, genre and topic we were using. We decided to choose Vladimir propp’s character theory because we can assign roles to each of the characters involved in the movie. Giving the protagonist a characteristic, the friends of the protagonist another role, etc.

“Propp argued that stories are character driven and that plots develop from the decisions and actions of characters and how they function in a story.”

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zgydhv4/revision/1#:~:text=Propp%20argued%20that%20stories%20are,roles%20that%20progress%20a%20story.

My group needs to have a clear idea of what is going to happen in our short film in order to classify the roles for each of the characters involved in the story. Because that was the way Propp said, he claimed characters could be classified into certain roles that progress a story so we decided each character personality and role while also the plot story and progress.

GROUP MEETING

 GROUP MEETING 

Hey blog! Today my teacher made groups of 6 with the purpose of creating feedback on each of our projects process that we’ve done and also to give ideas on other things we can do to our projects. As a group we decided to create a Microsoft Word document where each classmate shared their blog postings link and talked about what their project’s plot. We also wrote some comments for each classmate so we all could improve. 

Here is a picture of all of us working on the word document. 

This is what the entire document ended in:

 https://gabeaicemedia.blogspot.com/ -Gabe 

Genre: Thriller 

Setting to film: Park, or any house 

Plot: Not sure about idea yet, has a couple options. Like relaxing at his house after a long day of work and he goes about his day. He then gets a phone call from a mysterious person, once he answers the voice says, “YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP! WAKE UP NOW BEFORE...” and then the man wakes up. 

No title 

Critique-Nicholas: Overall, solid idea, try to add more detail and make longer though. 

https://nickminds.blogspot.com/ 

My name: Nicholas 

Genre: Horror/Psychological Thriller 

As of Monday, my group does not know what we are going to do but we have some ideas and some films we are inspired by.  

Plot #1: One idea was a zombie apocalypse with 2 survivors in a forest running away from a monster on a dark, foggy night and they stop running after a couple seconds thinking they escaped. The 2 survivors start walking with the map they got of the park and then they suddenly hear the sound of something breaking but don’t think much of it. They suddenly hear a monster creeping up onto them and the scene would end with the zombie on top of the person about to eat them. 

Critique: -Gabe, minimal running. Running is boring, no one wants to see running. Terrible idea. 

Some films I am inspired by films like the shining, Halloween, and jaws as I really enjoyed these movies and would want to be created something like this 

https://superawesomekidcook.blogspot.com/2025/02/researchanalyzediscuss-three-film.html 

Name: Adil 

Genre: Thriller  
Plot: A godzilla inspired film, given by Stoklosa due to the fact that our group had no idea what to do. The setting takes place in a dark forest (Mark and park), story dynamic may be derived from Jurassic Park (T. Rex Escape scene) and how science will be humanities un-doing (Life finds a way) Take the new Jurassic world rebirth trailer for example, the new abnormality that is the main focus is a dinosaur called D-Rex/Deformed Rex (Image below)  This can be a mirroring towards my film as my monster escapes from containment as scientists got too full of themselves and thought they had full control over the monster. (That is all the information as of now) 

https://santinamp.blogspot.com/ 

Santina Moreno 

Genre: Drama 

Title: Dear Diary; 

Plot: The main character is a girl who is very isolated and doesn't have a lot of friends, so when the last day of school ends, she goes directly home to find no one there either. During her car ride home, we want some non-diegetic music in the background and start the credit sequence until she goes into her room and closes the blinds, and the title appears. When the camera pans into the bed, the girl is going to be writing in her diary until her mom comes into her room and takes her out for some ice cream. 

https://anasblogrincon.blogspot.com/ 

Name: Ana Rincon 

Genre: Thriller & Coming of Age  

We don't have any title yet 

Setting: At the beach during the sunset  

Plot: A girl who just turned 21 and went to the beach to drink and celebrate her birthday with some people who she thought were her friends; (There's also a scene where she is in the car with her friends getting to the beach) she gets really drunk and one of her friends takes a picture of her lying on the sand and posts it online. The picture becomes viral, and her parents found out that she was in a bad state and no one was helping her.  

 

  Critique- Beatrice: I think your movie examples are good but maybe you should offer more analysis and responses with depth. This way you can learn more about how to use things and what to add into your opening. Maybe try to research more recently produced films, to have better examples.  

 

Beatrice: my blog  

Genre: Horror 

-Plot: A girl gets cursed and is watched by a killer, she is trying to break the curse. The curse feeds on depression and can be broken with happiness and love. She is depressed because her mom passed away a while ago and ever since her dad has been taking out his anger on her, making their house unsafe and their relationship weak. When she gets cursed, we see a tattoo appear on her, its matching with the killer. The title will be seen when she's looking at herself in the mirror, distraught, after being cursed. 

-Setting: house of the family  

-Title: Haunted memories

Critique- Santina: develop how she got the curse with a flashback 

Gabe: add more depth on the curse 

The other classmates gave me an idea for my project where I could edit a scene and what apps I can use in order to make it really nice. Also, I gave a suggestion to my classmate Santina of a location where she could film one of her main scenes.

In conclusion I think this activity was very gratifying to all of us. I got to improve some important aspects of my project and I had other points of view from my classmates on things I could add to make it better.