Difficulties and Changes in Plans

In the past week, a lot has happened that will drastically change up our plans. Firstly, my boyfriend is no longer available to film with us for personal reasons. This is a really big change in our scripting and shooting as we are now down a cast member. As it is too late in the process to scout for another male actor, we decided to change the scripting and have Nathalie essentially take up the role as my character's "boyfriend," Since we had gotten so far in planning, we decided to keep literally everything the same, except now Nathalie was the character meant to be Liam. Another big speed bump was that Olivia now does not have access to the camera we were planning on using. We decided to not overthink it and just use her iPhone, as when she had previously sent the practice shot using the cinematic mode, it had came out clear and honestly up to our standards. Now that all of our situations have been sorted out, we are still on to begin filming in the next weeks. 

Outfits and Makeup Planning

Now that most of our behind-the-scenes situations have been sorted and planned out, we wanted to focus on the visual features. This category of planning was more in Nathalie's forte, so she guided us through her ideas while allowing for our input. We all agreed that the outfits of our characters were going to remain neutral and fit the stereotypes of a regular, normal teenager of our age. This isn't a period piece or a Sci-fi so we wanted everything to look like a normal, young adult life. For the makeup, we again didn't want anything crazy. Initially, I said I would wear a little bit of makeup, but Nathalie brought up the idea of no cosmetics to give our opening a feeling of rawness and down-to-earthiness. I agreed with her because my character is supposed to be very naive as she has no idea what is happening behind her back, and being bare-faced would give a perception of innocence. For the outfits, we honestly just decided to wear whatever we had chosen to already wear to school that day to give it the most real, natural feeling. 

Music Research

The vibe that we want our film opening to portray moves throughout the piece. We want to start with a mellow, unsuspicious mood that gives off no warning signs to the plot twist that is soon to follow. We wanted music that fit the feelings of saying goodbye to your loved ones before heading off to college. This task was difficult as the music needed to not have lyrics so our dialogue could be heard, but all the music without lyrics was generic and didn't fit the exact vibe we were searching for. We tried instrumentals of songs we liked, but they were too distracting from what we planned for the scenes. Nathalie brought up the idea of meditation/ambient music with solfeggio frequencies. We were all on board with this as it totally fit the vibe of reflection, longing, and love that we needed to convey in the beginning clips. We wanted the music to shift before the plot twist occurred to start hinting to the audience that something is about to completely change and get them on the edge of their seats. We used the same sort of frequency type of music for continuity, but instead of calming and peaceful frequencies, we chose harsher, unsettling ones. This will subliminally put the audience in a feeling of unease, preparing them for the plot twist. 

Planning for Production

After figuring out the basic, surface-level details before leaving for winter break, we are diving into the minute details of our plan. For starters, lighting has been a concern as we want to film indoors but do not have access to proper equipment. We have gone back and forth about this as we want the shots to look good but also don't mind unprofessional lighting as the mood of the opening scenes is supposed to be very natural before the plot twist. Olivia told us that she would take a few practice clips at home and send them in the group chat for us to give feedback. Since she didn't have access to the actual camera yet, though, this could only be done on her iPhone. The videos came back okay so we decided that natural lighting would be fitting but are planning to still test it out when we have the actual video camera available to us. We also decided to add another role to the plot. Olivia's mom would play the role of my character's mother saying good bye and sending me off to college. We felt that this addition would add more depth to our opening and be a nice touch. We also decided on a schedule for our filming, but we knew that there is no way to plan out how many days of filming we would need so we only set our initial first date of shooting: February 12th. This gave us enough time to iron everything out, get access to our camera, make sure our schedules were cleared for the day, and work around prior commitments we all had. For example, my boyfriend was going on a trip for a week towards the end of January that would make filming unavailable for those dates. Also, my final for Aice Global Perspectives was in the beginning of February so I asked for some time to focus on that class instead of devoting time to filming.