Back to Characters

In all of this chaotic planning, I've decided to talk about one of my characters a bit. I may or may not have mentioned this in a previous blog post, but the three characters in this movie are all extremely exaggerated parts of my personality... if that even makes sense. It probably doesn't. Anyway.

Right now I'm talking about Sam (I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I've altered the characters' names so that they all don't have three syllables and end with 'a').

While I was creating my characters, I had to go through this long and annoying process of writing full biographies. For each. Single. One. Good thing there are only three characters, right?
Anyway, I had to talk about their "interior life" and their "exterior life".
The interior life just included the broad story -- born here, went to school there, lived over there, has three brothers, all of that. Things that other people who would meet this character wouldn't know off the bat.
The exterior life included three categories. Private life, professional life, and personal life. Private life is more of what the character does when they are alone, professional life includes school and/or work, and personal life talks about the character's relationship with people.

I've decided to share a bit of each life in this blog throughout my process.
Whoever reads these little biographies then watches my movie, or vice versa, might appreciate the film a bit more, with some of this "secret" information.
So here's Sam. (All of this is just snippets of my character notes)

Interior life:
"Female, born and lives in New York. She had one brother, but passed away as soon as he was born. Her mother and father were distant in her late childhood because they had to work all the time. Her childhood was ok, not happy or sad. Her schoolmates picked her on sometimes. She won’t admit that being teased hurt her, so she pretends to be strong and apathetic. Her outgoingness was part of the reason why she was teased so much, so she started to become an introvert in her late elementary years."

Exterior life:
Professional life: "SAM is a junior in high school. She keeps pushing this fact away, but she’s not very content with her life. She wishes that she could just start over. She never has arguments with anyone, because she is just a presence, not actually talking. She is an extreme perfectionist, and she thinks everything she does isn’t perfect. She’s afraid of failure most of the time."

Personal life: "SAM has never had a boyfriend before, even though there are boys who admire her. She thinks that being in a relationship would ruin her for life, because she doesn’t trust boys. When SAM is home, she does homework, reads, and writes. Sometimes she plays the violin. She doesn’t really like the violin, but her parents do."

Private life: "When SAM is alone, she does the same thing when she is home -- homework, read, or write. She listens to music when she does all of this. She listens to alternative or rock, anything really, except for country. She despises country."

Things Change.

Wow, there were lots of things going on in January. So here's what has been happening:

• I thought I found a car I would be able to use to film in. 
• I thought I figured out a date I'd be able to film on. 

Unfortunately,  things happen, schedules conflict, and life gets in the way. SO, I'm back to where I was in the beginning of January. Car-less and date-less.

On the bright side, I've been working on Excel to organize my storyboard and shots (who knew Excel skills would be used for anything other than math?). Why do I have to do this? Because there are more than 100 shots that I have to film. There are lots of angles I want to get to. And with all of those shots, I might drown in post it notes.
Here's what my ""'organization'"" looks like:


I'm going to do this for the whole screenplay. Yay. Organization.

On a completely different and positive note, while I was working on this chart, I started thinking of names for this unnamed movie.
Two possibilities:
"Stuck in Neutral"
or
"Life in Park"

But who knows? Things change.

Good News & Bad News

Good news: I have found my actresses for my movie! I'm SO happy with these people, because I think they really fit these characters well. To be honest, I'm not sure if I can reveal their names. I probably will when I start filming. I'm excited to actually start the filming process. It's going to be great.

Bad news: Location and weather aren't going as planned. I was planning to film in a CVS parking lot, because they're always not too empty and not too full. Then I realized that I would probably get in trouble if I didn't ask for permissions from certain people and I just don't feel like getting kicked out of a parking lot. So I'm just going to find a parking lot on campus and go from there. As for weather... I was thinking of a snowy day for this film. Of course, the one time I want it to snow, it doesn't. I heard that it's going to start snowing after winter break is over, so I'm just hoping for that. If not, I guess I'll have to deal with a windy/rainy/not snowy day.

I suppose that's all the news I have for December. I have my script, my story board, my actresses. I'm ready to go.
Pity how there seems to be more bad news than good. I can make all the bad news go away, I'll make it work.

Auditions and Cookies

Tomorrow is the day I hold auditions for my movie!

I am quite nervous, but I know there are at least a few people coming to audition for sure. I'm going to be filming each audition so I can really look at how they are in front of the camera, and also so I can look back at everyone's auditions while I'm deciding who gets what part. 

One thing I'm worried about is the actual decision making. To be honest, I don't know what makes someone a good actor. I guess this is going to be a very interesting learning experience. 

My plan is to have them read parts of the script that I have picked out. If I think that they would work well with someone else, I'm going to have those two read. I guess I'm going to shuffle people around and see who works best with who and what part.

I baked cookies for this audition, by the way.

Here is the flyer that I created and posted around the school. 

 

Onwards!

I have finally finished drawing out my storyboard!

I don't really have a nice picture because all ninety-something sticky notes are in a pile in my suitcase. 

I can't wait to put them up!

My next step is the casting portion, and I'm very happy that I'm right on schedule. I still have to advertise the fact that there will be auditions... I'll be putting two or three flyers up. I'll also send an email. My goal is to get these parts finalized before Revels Week, so that gives me two weeks or so. Kind of. 

I'm very excited because this is the part where I get to see my characters come to life. 

I'm also slightly nervous.

Yay progress! 

Thanksgiving "Break"

It's Thanksgiving break. When I say "break", I actually mean "time to work on my movie". I'm still working on storyboarding. It's taking a bit of time, mostly because having to think of every single angle and every single scene for this movie in my head is very time consuming. I know what I want, but actually drawing it out really challenges me to have these little images in my head a bit more detailed.

If that makes sense.

Here is what it looks like:

Annotated Bibliography

"11 Essential Camera Techniques in Filmmaking -- With Animated Images." Free Online Film School: Learn Filmmaking. N.p., 10 Nov. 2010 Web. 02 Nov. 2015.
This article gives me the basics of what kind of camera shots there are. It explains when and how I should use them.

Field, Syd. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. New York, NY: Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2005. Print
I trust this source with my life. Without this book, there would be no screenplay at all. This walked me through the steps of creating a character and developing the character. It helped me go through the stages of writing the story, and it told me the do's and don't's of screenwriting.

"Film Studies 101: The 30 Camera Shots Every Film Fan Needs To Know." Empire. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2015.
I love this article because in addition to the thirty camera shots they explain, they also have video examples for each one.

Landau, Neil, and Matthew Frederick. 101 Things I Learned in Film School. New York, NY: Grand Central Pub., 2010. Print.
I stumbled upon this book while I was in a bookstore. The title caught my eye, and I'm so glad I found it! It gives me little illustrations and small but helpful tips. It's a nice book to refer to once in a while.

"Storyboarding Your Film." - For Dummies. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2015.
The questions they ask is very helpful for me to consider what to sketch on each post-it note. Right now this it the most important source I am using.