Documentary CR

 In our piece "What do you Think of the Documentary?" My partner Martina Schmied and I attempted to portray each other's art work, and explore our differences in perception, self esteem, process, etc. 

Martina and I have both been making art for a decent amount of time now- her as a traditional artist, and I as a filmmaker. Upon being found with the obstacle of not feeling passionate about any documentary subjects, we decided to take a more personal route, one we knew we could be passionate over. 

We wanted to represent both each other as artists, and in the process, demonstrate our relationship as best friends. So we separated the documentary into two: Martina and Virginia. I would do a half on Martina, without her input, and Martina would do the same for me. We wanted both pieces to feel different, contrasting, yet lay harmoniously with each other, and create a cohesive piece. 

We took great inspiration from the documentary "American Promise." The people making the documentary had a very direct connection with the subjects of it, and the indirect, candid interviews reflected that. Thus, we decided it was imperative to incorporate candid interviews of both of us working on our art, that way we could get a more raw answer, that stemmed from the subconscius. Nonetheless, we still included other types of interviews. Our main interviews were filmed with the subject framed centrally, since it creates a deeper connection with the viewer and the  interviewee. Our secondary interviews, with people adding context on the subject, were filmed more traditionally, with the interviewee on a third, since we wanted to create a bit of a disconnect, and bring back the main focus to us two. Our b-roll consists of a mixture of candid b-roll, scripted b-roll, and extra pictures, videos, and paintings. I personally really liked the way "Abstract" included many types of b-roll like this, it made the film visually engaging, especially considering this is a film that talks about abstract ideas and feelings, rather than just events or facts. I really liked the end result, but I wished we had spent more time taking b-roll of me. I normally do not work on films often, so there was a limited amount of footage Martina could get of me working, and it was harder for us to figure out a way of scripting my b-roll, because my art does not result in a physical product like Martina's, but rather videos. We both want to record more b-roll with me, whether it be of me with projections on my face, or simply cinematic shots where we can play with lighting, scenery, and costuming.

The audience of our documentary is not very specific. I think people can watch and enjoy our documentaru. whether they are artists or not, because we discuss aspects that are general for most interests and hobbies. However, our idea of our target audience is teenangers of no specific gender, and especially teen artists. I think this piece could resonate with young artists such as ourselves, because it discusses ideas or self esteem, and the future that they maybe have struggled with as well. Unfortunately, the best reception has come from people that know us personally. Martina and I wish to expand on the documentary and add more context about us as friends, and us in general, because the documentary was lacking context on what specifically we do. 

Martina and I wanted to represent different types of artists. Not simply artists of different mediums, but different artists, and workers in general. Martina helps represents those who work out of the pleasure of doing so, and care little for the result, whereas I represented those who work and make art out of an internal drive, that almost prevents them from not doing so. We also really wanted to represent a geniune teenange friendship, one more positive than commonly associated with high school relationships in general. However, I think we did not completely achieve that, as we were missing a lot of context and shots of us interacting, and there is little where the friendship aspect could be observed, and was almost a distraction to the artistic part of the documentary. 

Nonetheless, Martina and I felt very emotional watching our documentary. This was truly a passion piece, not only because of the time and effort we put into it, but because of the experience that it was to create it. Our discussions on art and ourselves helped us understand each other in a much deeper and beautiful sense, and the finsihed product, we felt was a beautiful representation of each other. By changing up the end product a tad, we hope that audiences can feel the same connection. 

I hoped you liked our documentary, hated our documentary, was neutral towards it, or any feelings you may have had. Thank you for watching. 

Doc 1

My partner Martina and I began with completely different ideas.  We were planning on doing our documentary on imaginary friends, a topic neither of us really cared for, but thought could be interesting. After thinking about it, and talking to Ms. Stoklosa, we realized how little passion we both- very passionate people- held for this topic. Hence we changed our idea to fit us better. 

We had the luck on working on this together. Martina and I are best friends- we basically live with each other- so we thought we should use that for our advantage. Additionally, we are both artists of different mediums- Martina paints, and I make films. We wanted to make our documentary about that, but we thought of an interesting angle we could take. We would separate the doc into two distinct parts. The first part would be completely produced by me, and the second by Martina. Our subjects? Each other. We wanted to see how our art forms differed from each other, not only objectively, but personally. We both had an idea that the toll that our art took on us was different, and we wanted to explore on that. 

Filming was easy- yet exhausting. For about two weeks, I practically lived at Martina's house, and she in mine. Not only was I recording her interview and b-roll, but just her creating in general. I wanted as much candid footage as I could get in order to give the documentary a more personal feel. I was not sure until after I filmed, how I wanted to use my interviews- direct, indirect. But during editing, I saw that the indirect interviews added the person making the documentary into the story. 

To be frank, the process of filming and interviewing was not very tedious. It felt as though my friend and I were having deep conversations about each other and with each other, and the camera was just recording, hence why it felt so special. The original interview with Martina is so much longer, because we just kept conversing about art, and going deeper. We really bonded during this time. 

For b-roll, I knew I wanted to take advantage of Martina's beautiful art. I decided I wanted to make a "gallery" of sorts. Pin up her work(in her bathroom) and take diverse shots of just the art, and Martina interacting with it. It felt scripted, but it was my full intention. I also just took shots of her painting, not even speaking to her. I would just let her do her thing for a couple of hours and record it, that is where I got my best footage from. 

I edited my part of the documentary on premiere. I also put Martina and my part together, which was stressful because I had to take two disconnected pieces and make them linear. However, Martina's part, although different than mine, fit well with what I had. We both had very similar visions, as we had discussed before how we were putting this together. 

CCR

 Here's my CCR

CCR

STEVE

STEVE

 Welp, here it is. 

Almost Almost my last PP blog. PP#23

 

Well, and here we are, a couple months later, and lot of work later, we're here, my almost almost last blog. I have definitely learned a lot about myself during this excursion, that being, making a film within a month. I have a lot more confidence in myself now as an editor, a writer, and a creator in general. I personally have made some changes my to CCR, and general analysis of my piece. For example, I decided on adding the detail about Lolita and the correlation it has to Dainty, since I find it the most telling, and I figured Cambridge could stomach it. I also added more meaning behind the music that I had not explicitly talked about. Finally, I finally delved into the target audience and distribution methods. That being, that since our film would be distributed through film festivals, most likely the film would be consumed and enjoyed by film festival attendees, mostly film students and adults. 

I have nothing more to say about this project, I am still exporting my CCR, so I'll end it with this. I hope you loved Steve, or hated it, I hope at least you felt like you needed to watch the rest.

I have enjoyed blogging here a lot, and will most likely continue to do so after school, but in a more personal matter, talking about my ideas an my growth as a filmmaker. 

So follow me along my, Vee's, Picture Talk.  

CCR script. PP#22

 

Here is my script for the CCR. I've highlighted the different sections of the script and added labels. 

CCR

Hi, my name is Virginia, that’s V-I-R-G-I-N-I-A. Today, I’m here to talk to you about my newest project that I worked on with Nicole Borman and Kai Amarante. We created a short film intro centered around the people and conflicts surrounding one man, a man named (STEVE). We started this project with the prospect of it being a psychological horror. At first sight, this film does not resemble the typical image of horror.  Usually, the big tropes of horror involve either a lot of blood or some scary monster jumping out in front of the screen. You see these a lot in movies like IT, Scream,.and the Conjuring. And while that’s a good way to deliver scares to the audience, it’s not the type of horror we intended on making. - INTRO

We moreso wanted to create a “Psychological horror”. In this genre, the scares usually come from the character’s psychology and societal commentary, rather than from something more physical. Dr. Glenn D. Walters said that "Psychological horror ...  explores emotional and psychological vulnerabilities over primal survival fears."  This genre can’t be mixed up with the similar yet very different “psychological thriller”. The difference between the two is that in psychological thrillers, a lot of questions the audience may have are answered, usually in a scene near the end known as “The Big Reveal.” In psychological HORRORs, however, viewers are left very much in the dark. Films like The Killing of A Sacred deer, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and American Psycho are good examples- American Psycho in particular still sees plenty of discussion surrounding its nebulous ending. In our case, this off-screen character Steve is said to have done some bad, bad things- but we never get an answer to why exactly he did them. The way the events of this film are presented are off-putting, confusing, and even senseless, and even weirder, none of the characters acknowledge the circumstances. Our protagonist wakes up in a huge, empty field with literally no questions about where he is- instead, his first line is “Hi”, spoken to a character named Dainty. He still has no questions when characters start appearing out of nowhere. It’s in a sense, surrealist. Surrealism is a cultural movement … which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself.We didn’t use gore or jumpscares to disturb the audience, we use uncertainty. The lack of explanation.  

 This allows the audience to make inferences on what is happening without the limitation of logic, and tells them that they should focus on the characters, rather than the situation. This field could be anything, but a field. Purgatory, his subconscious mind, anywhere where our protagonist has to encounter dilemmas, inner dillmas. We decided that we were going to make this movie bright and daytime. Originally, we were going to film in a white room, but after struggling to find one, we settled on a field, since we felt that if gave the same sense of isolation and added a sense of vastness. Most horror films are very dark and include creepy music to go along with them, yet we decided on a bright setting, making the film more off-putting, such as they do in Midsommar, and a score of classical music, that no only helped us better pace the film, but also separates the film from being in a field, giving it a bigger sense of “grandiosity”, and helps us focus on the very odd circumstances. Also there is a sort of creepiness that stems from classical music, we took advantage of the crescendos and pacing of the songs, and took great inspiration from directors such as Darren Aronofsky, who does not stray away from correlating horror to classical music. - Genre and genre conventions

 Now I’m going to give you a bit of a spoiler alert otherwise this analysis is not going to make sense, and considering the rest of the film doesn’t exist, you’re just going to have to take my word, or my blog, for it. The protagonist is Steve. So basically, this character has to, blindly, acknowledge all of his wrong doings and all of the people he’s hurt. With that being said, let’s transition into representation. 

Dainty could be considered the most interesting character in the film. There is a sort of ambiguity that stems from her. While we know Maria is mad at Steve because he cheated, we’re only told Steve stole from Dainty, and to leave it to Steve, “STEALING IS NO BIG DEAL”. In comparison, adultery is a much more serious crime than stealing, since you are hurting someone personally, so what did Steve steal from Dainty? Is it a physical thing or a personal thing? Let’s look at Dainty. First of all, Dainty says she is a little child, but our actress Nicole is 18, and Steve even acknowledges that her clothes are too childish for her, to which Dainty replies that she is a little girl. She is repressing at a younger age. Dainty wears heart shaped sunglasses and red lipstick, something that has been correlated in culture to Nabakov’s character Lolita, a young girl who is taken advantage of by an adult. And that is a possibility to what happened between Dainty and Steve. We wanted to represent Dainty as a traumatized child, someone who was hurt or stolen from at a young age, and remained at that mental age as a form of protection. Her name is Dainty, for two reasons. The first one being that she is the protagonist’s  leader throughout this quest to find Steve, as he gives him context on who Maria is, such as Dante does in the divine comedy, giving us more context that this might be purgatory. Also she is Dainty, fragile and hurt. Dainty represents those who were not allowed to grow normally, and who were repressed from a normal relationship with an adult. Now for Maria, she is Steve’s wife. Her name comes from the Virgin Mary, a woman who was forced to conceive and birth, while not receiving any credit. She is supposed to remain quiet when something crazy, like adultery, happens, and who is called a psycho when she protests. She represents  the classic housewife who has finally lost it. Now for Steve. There are two sides to this, Steve as a person, and Steve in the film, once he lost all of his memories. The person steve, is a sexual deviant, who puts others below his desires and seems to have little remarks for them. He represents the classic alpha male, a businessman who always wins. While the protagonist doesn't represent much, he doesn’t know anything about himself. The only thing he represents is a compromising male, who sees other men's actions, such as cheating or stealing from a child, as ok. He puts the blame on the women and calls Maria a psycho, acknowledging that women should remain silent. - CHARACTERS AND REPRESENTATION

This film would not be consumed by teenangers. According to IMBD, teens enjoy more coming of age, action, and comedymovies, with a couple of splasher horrors thrown in there.  Our market would be more young adults, to adults, with them our film being a film where the audience needs to be ok with not always knowing what is happening, which teens don’t tend to enjoy. Considering we would distribute our film through student film festivals, such as nffty, Indieyouth, and foothill, as well as some regular indie film festivals, so that every type of film fan can enjoy it. I would as well distribute this through my film social media, @moisemonasterio, since mostly other film focused accounts follow me there and could watch it and spread it. - TARGET AUDIENCE AND DISTRIBUTION

The start of this film came from my personal love of creating weird movies. Movies that do not really make a lot of sense, and that have odd and unnerving visuals. I have delved into the genre of psychological horror before, but it was always with blood or traditionally creepy elements. I have always had the idea of a white room being the creepiest of locations. To look around and not be able to deduct anything out of somewhere, could give someone a sense of isolation, and a feeling like they cannot do anything to help themselves, hence why I originally picked this location. However, this was a very unrealistic idea, since it would’ve been impossible to get a completely white room, without at least spending a good dollar. So then, we settled on a field. We thought it conveyed the similar sense of isolation, while adding a certain vastness to it. Although we filmed this about 200 steps from a vending machine and a parking lot, the film feels as though everything is the field, and no matter how much you walk, it will always be the field. It also gave me more opportunity to color grade in fun ways. I was able to take a normal green scenery, and turn it into something that seems almost dream like. 

The research of this project began while I was researching horror tropes and noticed that my favorite horror films all fell under the same trope. You see, There are three classic tropes to horror, The Classic: Story beats build up suspense and tension until something jumps from the shadows. 

• The Full Version: Nothing is happening at all, which makes the audience fearful of what they imagine might happen. 

• The Empty Version: The audience thinks that there is nothing there until they realize there's been something there the whole time. Usually delivered as a reveal.  

Mind Screw

This trope is a combination of symbolism and surrealism. The idea here is that the audience is never quite sure what could be happening. We never have a definitive grip on what is actually going down, until maybe it's too late. 

Here's a list of these tropes compiled by Harriet Moore and Sheldon School:

We went with mind screw. 

Specifically, these are the tropes we wanted in our film

• Due to the symbolism or surrealism, the film appears "weird."

• Even when symbolism is used, it is not explained.

• You have to pick up "pieces" throughout the film to get the whole picture.

Now, you might have noticed that the character Dainty wears a cast-thing. And it is not very well explained. Let me tell you, this is where we encountered our biggest issue. We had planned to film this throughout spring break, however, Nicole, got into a very poorly timed car accident, which made her have to go into surgery. This made it uncertain how our project would progress, but I rewrote the script to include her cast. Due to the circumstances, we had very little time to film, since nicole was in recovery, which is why there are a lot of differences in lighting throughout, since we filmed in one day. However, since we filmed linearly, this was no issue, since I wanted the first shots to be brighter and more overexposed, and all of the other issues I fixed in post. - research and challenges we experienced. 

Editing brought me with a challenge. I rarely edit all by myself, since I find it extremely overwhelming, and stressful. In a way, I was rewriting the script, since some shots did not fit well together, and some dialogue had to be cut. Yet, I’m glad I did it on my own. This project was the first time where I really felt like an editor. Having to edit together so much dialogue, having to create so many J- cuts and L-cuts, helped me become more comfortable with myself and my skills. Also this was my first time where I’ve been given an ample amount of time to create a film, since in my previous filmmaking endeavours, competitions, I’ve had a maximum of a week to make a whole film, and let me just say, it was nice. Having a whole week to edit, and almost a month to write, felt like an indulgence, and made me realize how necessary it is to go back to my work and give it a pair of fresh eyes. I also was able to problem solve, and realize, that I the resources that are provided to me are more than enough. Even this, the CCR, allows me to truly delve into my ideas, and well, it is nice to talk about them. It made me realize how, even subconsciously, our mind puts things together in a way that makes sense. When I first grabbed the heart shaped glasses I did not even realize the correlation to nabokov, and well I’m sure glad I grabbed them. -personal growth 

Now finally, I get to tell you about the tech side of this…yay. If you are wondering why the quality of my video went down, well its so that I can show you the equipment I used. To start off we used a sony a 7 III camera, I think that’s what its called, it might be Sony a 7 three roman numerals, anyway this camera. I chose this camera due to the quality of the video, and because of how little the quality of the video lowers when raising the ISO, and lowering the aperture, basically, it can receive a lot of light. I accompanied this with a 50 mil lens for wide shots, and zoom lens that went up to 85 mils for other shots, both sigma, I know fancy. Additionally, I used this boom mic, the SHURE LensHopper VP93F, in addition to a boom pole and a dead cat, don’t worry it’s just this little fuzzy thing, it helped us block out the wind. Additionally we used a slate, and a tripod. We rented all of this from BECON, a student news channel, that rents out equipment to all media and tv south florida students. (Wink). -equipment

I edited this on adobe premier pro. I have premiere certification I received my sophomore year and I have been editing for over two years, which definitely came in handy. Oh, and if you haven’t gotten the memo, I color graded the absolute heck out of this. Just check out this shot before, and after colorgrading. I find the coloring section of premier to be a little complicated, but overall very useful. Additionally, I used adobe after effects to create the graphics of the film. Using the font soft spirit, and the effect, “quiver”, I very simply was able to get the creepy credits you see in the film. -softwares

 

I loved doing this project. Although it presented at times as stressful, and annoying, and, you get me, I am very proud with out outcome, and I simply cannot wait to make a much longer film in A level. 

I hope you enjoyed steve just as much as I enjoyed making it. Im Virginia Monasterio, thank you for watching. -final remarks 

 

 

 

 

Now, for the CCR. PP# 21

 It is time to focus on my CCR. In class we took many notes on what to have on it, and we say examples. Here are the notes I took. 

From the examples we saw, all of the videos are very personalized to either the person making them or the film. Upon thinking, I've decided that I will make my CCR a talking head video of me, with shots and pictures of the intro and other sources. I additionally will be creating graphics, either on CANVA, or After effects to depict my research, which is mostly genre conventions and intended audiences, and the sources. In the next blog I will be posting my script for my CCR which is almost completed.