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Showing posts from February, 2020

A Love Letter to The Florida Project.

February 29, 2020

I will never get over how beautiful this key art is.

The Florida Project (2017) is one of my favorite films. I fell in love with the story of Moonee, a little girl always looking for fun and adventure despite her circumstances with a single mother who struggles for money. Despite having been to Orlando at least once every year since I was 6, it was still eye-opening to see a new perspective of the people who actually live in Orlando, people who stay in there for more than just a vacation.

We wanted our story to have an adolescent protagonist, and this idea was actually largely inspired by the love Joey and I have for The Florida Project. However, what I wanted to specifically look into this beautiful motion picture is the mise-en-scene.

Like Moonee, our protagonist is to struggle financially, and should, therefore, be shown living in conditions that reflect that. We never want the financial situation our protagonist is in to be stated explicitly; there are so many visual elements we could utilize and actions that could implicitly show it instead, including the mise-en-scene.

✐ SET DESIGN ✐

Regarding the exterior of the buildings the children frequent, they were often a little run-down. As you could see in the picture, the walls and walkways were often stained. However, all the buildings and such were always really colorful to reflect the bright innocence of the children's perspective on the world, when in reality there was not much childish fun going on behind the scenes.

Moonee's Room

The interior set design is what I think would be most useful in our project. Moonee and her friend's hotel rooms were usually on the messier side. They often had an assortment of blankets and pillows with different patterns on them on the beds. There were typically little toys and such scattered around the rooms, as well as clothes. Jancey's room had photos and drawings on their walls and the fridge (pictured below). The most evident thing one could tell from the mise-en-scene is the space is occupied by a child. I mean, there are even stickers on the light switches.

Scootey's Room

Jancey's Room

✐ COSTUME DESIGN ✐

Another important aspect of the mise-en-scene, of course, is the costume design.

Moonee's mother, Halley, is not shown as the most mature or responsible person in the film, and her appearance reflects that. Tattoos (as cool as they are) are often associated with unprofessionalism. Halley is often shown wearing revealing and baggy casual clothing that one would not typically expect a mom to be wearing. Additionally, as the cherry on top, she has that trademark faded blue hair that shows she is truly young at heart.

The children had a fashion sense of their own as well. The girls often wore shirts and tank tops with cutesy cartoon graphics and patterns, as well as patterned or plain colored leggings and pants as well (with the occasional exception of jeans). The boys wore shorts or jeans, with buttoned-up shirts, tank-tops, or t-shirts with generic patterns like plaid and stripes. The children's hair was often messy.

Although their clothes at first glance seem like that of a normal child, what stands out about their attire was how most of their clothes never seemed to fit them quite well. Their pants or shirts were typically overly baggy on them. I'm not sure if the children just enjoyed wearing clothes a size or two larger, but their clothes not fitting them perfectly implies that they are old, stretched out, or possibly second-hand items of clothing.

✐ CONCLUSION ✐

The interior home we will film in should be a compact space that is not very organized. Obviously, with two young people living in it, it would not be the cleanest and neat place. On top of that, as the sibling will often be busy with work and I do not know of a single child or even a person my age that particularly loves cleaning, that would also be the reasoning for a fairly messy household. And, there should be props like toys and such that imply our protagonist's age. Any shots with the exterior should show some distress on the walls, sidewalks, and such.

Concerning costume design, our protagonist will definitely not be wearing any name-brand clothes; More likely baggier, generic clothing.

We want the sibling of our protagonist to be and appear more responsible than Halley is, showing how poverty can force someone to grow up faster than what is typically expected of a person the sibling's age. We will take Halley's costume design as a not-to-do guide and we're thinking that we could show them always in uniform, showing how busy and enveloped they are by work.

No Cemetery!

February 27, 2020

Joey and I are very... ambitious people (a nice way to say people who stress themselves out unnecessarily?). I mean, being ambitious at its core isn't a bad trait. Our ambitiousness has brought us far in some cases, leading us to create some great work we are proud of, but it doesn't always help. In most of our creative endeavors, we typically put too much on our plate for what we want to accomplish with our work.

Joey and I had a meeting recently and discussed all that we wanted to do with our project. Right before this, we had a great lesson in class on screenwriting. The essential takeaway from the lesson was that we should ask ourselves this:

Initially, the idea Joey and I had for our film was everything but surrounded on a central idea. He was attached to a specific scene he wanted us to do, which was of a child holding onto the fence of a cemetery from the outside. To include this scene in the story, he wanted to add an element that shows the death of the protagonist's mother and reflect on the relationship they had. And upon first hearing about this scene, I was hooked on it too. We also wanted our story to do with poverty, gentrification, love, family, just loads of other topics that would have made the story way too long or difficult to communicate with the amount of "in conclusions" we wanted to make of it.

Upon discussing the most important message of the story, the part that had to do with the protagonist's mother seemed unnecessary. We decided to build the story around the stealing scene when the child would steal a toy from a store to give to their crush on their birthday. Joey and I still wanted to keep the crush part because we thought it was a cute way to show the protagonist's innocence and still keep that sort of coming of age aspect of the story we wanted.

It was important for us to recognize the challenges that the production of our initial story had for us, and see which challenges are actually worth taking on. I'm glad we got to focus on what we really wanted to tell with our short film.

From Paper to Screen

February 23, 2020

Before I was making films, I was making two-dimensional art. As a visual artist, I am a huge sucker for good composition. I take my love for the two-thirds rule from the drawings and paintings I've done on paper, to the screen.

As we have our main protagonist as a kid/someone in their adolescence, the 21:9 ratio actually carries meaning in an odd sort of way. I feel like, when you're young, you're seeing so much so quickly. You're discovering a lot of the world, and widening your perspective. Although it would have made an amazing pun to have a widescreen ratio, we made the decision that cinemascope is the way to go. As the widest popular aspect ratio for film (pun still worked somewhat!), I believe it will better show the perspective of our main character in that sense. On top of that, although we are learning so much about the world when we are young, that is because there's a lot we don't know; the lack of space vertically reflects that. Where we gain knowledge in one sense, it is because we lack the knowledge to begin with.

Could this be a weirdly convoluted way of talking about an aspect ratio choice? Sure, it definitely could be. But, also, it's important for every part of this film to carry meaning, even in little details like this. The most beautiful thing about creating is that we have the power to create meaning through what we make. We can create something with substance, something that can make someone smile, something that can make someone cry, or laugh. It is amazing that our creations can have an effect on someone and their life. Just for that whatever amount of time someone experiences our work, we have an impact on them. I think that's pretty cool, and I want to make sure that our impact on our audience is maximized by having a purpose for every decision we make.

And, all the talk about being able to create meaning aside, I just think it makes for better, more interesting compositions. What's a visual medium without nice visuals?

Watching Children! (But Not in The Creepy Way)

February 21, 2020

I am totally aware of how the title of this post sounds, but, hear me out.

I must admit, I, like many others, have a phone problem. I often catch myself cycling through the same three social media apps, laying my eyes on an eye-catching photo or video for no more than 30 seconds, then diverting my short-lived gaze to the next. However, in times when I know I must divert my attention to anything other than my phone to think of ideas, I go on typically the most important part of my creative process: my idea walks.

Just as I pace from one end of my house to the other when I'm on the phone with my friend, I like to walk while having conversations with someone in real life too. Idea walks also enable me to take inspiration from my surroundings; sometimes the littlest thing can spark something in my mind that turns into a story.

This is a picture I took on a walk I went on during my first trip to LA. Right when I looked at this picture, I imagined the two dogs had fought over who the "Beware the Dog" sign was about, and were on opposite sides of the same fence because they were angry at each other.

So, Joey and I had set off on our trek for ideas. Although it would have been practical to document this using our phones, it was essential to put technology aside and our thoughts first for a little bit. To give you a short recollection of what brought us our idea, here's a short comic below I drew trying to show how it went as best as possible.

So, with the initial thought about a child/adolescent protagonist, Joey and I reviewed the idea of a story we had talked about back in August. The story of a kid who dealt with a loss they don't even know, and tries for a meta-narrative based life that doesn't keep their struggles in mind. In fact, Joey had simply come up with part of the premise while staring out the car window when he would go to work as he was passing a small local cemetery.

Boredom could be such a useful tool sometimes, and I'm glad we got a solid foundation of a story from our walk to the neighborhood park. Once we discuss a little more, letting our mind roam free from designated distractions, I will give you a description of our story! For now, I'll be doing some genre research and case studies of films we may be inspired from.

Looking at the World Through Baudrillard's Critical Eyes

February 20, 2020

So, fairly recently, we had our postmodernism unit in class. Before we delved so deep into the theories that attempted to define our "condition" that we reached a mental point of no return, the only mention of postmodernism we had in class was a brief description of the topic in AS level during our media theory lesson. Little did my classmates and I know, our entire view of the world was about to change.

At first, the theories and the wording of them were so convoluted to me that I had a killer migraine, but eventually, I understood what each theorist was trying to say about our contemporary period, and had an even worse migraine because I started questioning the meaning of my existence and if I even existed at all.

Anyways, existential crisis aside, one part of the postmodernism unit in particular that stuck with me was the concept of the metanarrative. We had discussed specifically the metanarrative of the "American dream".

The discussion of the American Dream really stuck with me, because, well, this was something I thought I should aim to achieve in my life. Even when I had second thoughts about parts of it like getting married or having kids while thinking about my future, I always ended up shutting my doubts down, in fear that by not doing those things I wouldn't be living a "full life". But, what does living a "full life" even mean? And why do I think that living the "American dream" is the only way for me to live a "full life"?

I had even met up with a couple of my classmates during lunch at school to discuss all of the realizations we had made about our postmodernist world after we had learned about the theories, and we had come to a discussion of high school prom. A lot of us weren't sure whether or not to attend prom, as it cost a hefty investment for maybe up to three hours of fun. We discussed how much we'd rather be doing other things, whether that be just staying home or using the same amount of money for a trip to Disney World (we also discussed how odd the concept of Disney World was, but that topic is better suited for a different blog post). But for some reason, we felt that we would be incomplete without going to this overly-glamorized event. Why do we feel obligated to experience certain things? Anyways, long conversation short, we collectively decided we should probably not go to prom.

Postmodernism is characterized by the defiance of the meta-narrative. In reference to one characteristic of postmodernist media that Linda Hutcheon had included in her theory, postmodernist media rejects the grand narrative. As a creator in the postmodernist era, I think it is best I do just that with what I create. I want my piece to discuss the idea of the metanarrative and how the metanarrative can skew people's view of life, themselves, and the world. I will update you soon on what I think of!