Failing to master the Adobe cloud and a fun college update :)

Thanks to Sil's email and my sister's .Edu, I have been pulling a Bong Joon-Ho on Adobe and being a Parasite to them. Which is why I wanna master more than Premiere and After effects.

Unfortunately, my computer is old as heck, It's from like, early 2015 minimum. As a result it can't do anything right. It almost accessed photoshop but it fell apart and almost destroyed my laptop so in order to move on w my life in college I will be getting a new laptop.

Speaking of college, I have good options! I won't talk too much about them here cause this is -public domain and I don't trust the government to not snoop around my personal info, but I have gotten into a handful of schools and I can start choosing now!

Am I having near daily anxiety because I haven't committed to a college? YES.

Will that go away? Hopefully!

Stay tuned y'all! Please I am losing it in quarantine!

Things I bought that will now never work and a thing that does (hopefully) work

So a couple weeks ago I bought ~c a m e r a l e n s e f i l t e r s~

Why? you ask...well, it was to make it easier to shoot so I don't have to grade footage as much. I bought: 


A set that kind of looks like that from Amazon. However, the problems began when:
-the yellow filter showed up before all the others, I tried it and it looked -TRASH-
-The blue arrived second and it was broken
-The rest, thanks to COVID disruptions, are due to arrive May 17th...like bro come ON.

In my frustration, I hit up Jules and I asked her to add me to a Canva team so I can help her with the print component if she needs it. She said she will and I will try to update this post with that development once it happens. This collaborative software for print mediums>oxygen right about now. I need something to go my way these weeks.

Catch y'all later. This post will have the catchphrase of:

Miss Rona is ruining my life rn.

What's the deal with film festivals?

I had an interesting thought...

So today, as I was driving my Girlfriend Sil to and from shooting her AS-Level Project at a local restaurant, a woman who worked there mentioned how her daughter is married to Trey Edward Schultz, the director of Waves and a 2-time winner of South By Southwest's (SXSW) film fest.

Since most distribution will be done via festivals for our short film in order of viability, top 5 edition:

1. Sundance-

Pros: Super large and very well known/respected. Independently hosted so vert short film friendly. 

Cons: Super competitive :(

2. Cannes film fest-

Pros: Famous AF. No entry fees. Very lenient on time requirements.

Cons: Picky, arguably most competitive field.

3. TIFF-

Pros: referred to as the "most influential film fest" by TIME mag, Cheap to enter, most globally attended.

Cons: not many that I can identify.

4. Aspen shorts-

Pros: All short films, Oscar-qualifying event, cash prices, massive influence.

Cons: Expensive fees. Highly limited # of spots and very secretive selection system.

5. Palm Springs Short Fest-

Pros: Oscar-qualifying event, largest short film fest in NA, independently run and open to new creators

Cons: High competition

~ALTERNATIVELY~

All festivals are cancelled this year due to COVID.

Distribution will rely on:

Youtube+Vimeo+anywhere I can self-post like my social media-

Cons of this: Not as much exposure, followers can ignore me.

Pros of this: I am shameless, so I can self-promote with 0 consciousness.

Research links:

https://medium.com/@miniflixTV/6-film-festivals-you-must-attend-this-spring-to-see-great-short-films-f552e056d62b

http://resourcemagonline.com/2017/11/20-film-festivals-you-should-enter-your-short-film-into/82548/

Gus Lanz, the mental health research man

So while I sat here wondering "what do I blog about now that the world is basically on the edge of apocalypse/on pause", I decided "hey, representation research is a good move". So here I am with research on representation and some quick statistics for Y'all.

While it took me a while to fully embrace it, this piece is going to represent someone in the throws of a battle with their mental health. This problem is a growing issue amongst Gen Z, and it's one Film makers have been trying to address for a long time.

Wether it's Donnie Darko or Joker, mental health conversations have appeared in some form of mainstream film media over the last 20ish years with varying takes. Joker portrays a man spiraling due to external forces, while movies like Donnie Darko place more emphasis on the internal machinations of the protagonists manifestations, best embodied by the weird creepy rabbit thing: Frank. No, I will not be linking a picture of Frank because it's like 2AM as I write this and that bunny thing freaks me the hell out. No thank you sir. Joker, while it did HAVE a conversation regarding mental health, I feel like it was too all over the place to give a coherent conversation.

Anyways, let's talk Gen Z and our mental health crisis! BOOOOOOO!!!

* a 2019 study found that among undergraduate students, “rates of depression, anxiety, … and suicide attempts markedly increased [from 2007 to 2018], with rates doubling over the period in many cases.”

*Suicide is the 2nd-leading cause of death

*Millenials+Gen Z face highest rates of burnout ever recorded

*Destigmatization efforts have largely failed worldwide

*Overall, are more prone to anxiety, depression, and feelings of loneliness.

Wow those are all horrible things. However, it's those things that my short film allows commentary on, as it revolves around someone sinking into harmful ideation as they're burned out from day-to-day life. Since stigma is still around globally, our scenario of someone going to extreme lengths to retain appearances stands true, and worthy of analytical commentary on the nature of happiness and modern monotony/loneliness.

Anyways, Still can't sign off well, but I'll see y'all next time.

Research links:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-act-be/201912/why-young-people-face-major-mental-health-crisis
https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-teenage-gen-z-american-suicide-epidemic

It's Corona(cation) time AKA the world is ending

OK so Imma keep it short and sweet here. There's not much explaining so much as there is analyzing how annoying this is going to be. COVID-19 has decided to destroy the world as we know it and suspend school indefinitely...whack.

Which raises a bajillion questions:

1. What am I going to DO! Me and Jules have decided to split work so she works on website, I work on film, and we work together on the postcard via Canva (with her taking the lead in it tbh). But even still, cooperation done largely via email cause she's quarantined is rough, AND our actors (specifically the actress from Mirage) are also all quarantined so I have 0 clue how to fix that right now.

2. How will impact supply lines if I decide to buy things for my production?

3.Am I an essential worker?

4. How am I gonna get back on/create a brand new schedule?

And that's barely scratching the surface. Miss Rona is a WHACK gurl, and I am very upset she is derailing the heck out of my project AND school year.

She's FIERCE

Until I can figure out who I can get casted, what I need to buy, or even how I can move on, I will just see what I can get going on.








Anyways, I hate COVID-19.

Here's to hoping for the better,
Gus Lanz (this is the closest I'll ever get to a sign off).

When plans collide (Storyboard ft. final outline+Radio Script)

What's good everyone?

So today was actually a very productive day. I asked Tstock for Storyboard paper. Given that we already had a final outline, I just sketched out the first scenes that are honestly just going to be repeated a bunch of times and help make up the bulk of the exposition of this shirt film.

The actual storyboard

This series of sketches I made for our storyboard also feature some minor instructions for myself. If the actual content of the shot's changes slightly that's a-ok, so long as the bulk/premise of the actual scene stays the same.This came at a perfect time, because Jules and I just wrapped up our final outline COMBINED with the Radio script, which I will feature below.

This post, while admittedly kinda barebones, is just a reflection of the fact that we're gonna be kicking into high gear next week and get this bad boy shot and edited during spring break if all stays on schedule, so I cam trade one bareish post for one great project.

Later y'all, still don't know how to log off in a cool way!

"

Outline

• Man wakes up to the radio. House is very bare but very bright. Cant see face yet and is avoiding.

• Amore Mio Aiutami-esque music playing
• Intermittent radio chatter “remember to smile” “always be happy” radio gets progressively more aggressive 

1. Feet on floor

Good morning! It's October 4th, it's gonna be sunny remember to show the world those pearly whites at all times->fade out 

2. Walk to kitchen
3. Make coffee
4. Take showers
5. Brush teeth in fogged up glass 
6. Get dressed 
7. Look in mirror 

You look great! Ready to take on the day! Forgetting something? *sound* You look GREAT! And remember, don't stop smiling

• Man smiles a toothy grin at himself and and turns around 

1. Feet on floor

Good morning! It's November 5th and a brand new day! Now go get ready to give the world the smile of a lifetime>fade out 

2. Walk to kitchen
3. Make coffee
4. Take shower
5. Brush teeth in fogged up glass 
6. Get dressed 
7. Look in mirror

• Man looks in mirror smiles without teeth

Come on now, don't make me force that smile out of you listener…there we go! Another bright set of teeth! Don't stop smiling, this has been sound o' smiles

1. Feet on floor

Good morning!

2. Make coffee
3. Take shower

 It's December 6th 

4. Brush teeth in fogged up glass 
5. Get dressed 
6. Look in mirror

• Man begins to play with his face to try to contort a smile. Takes out a marker and draws a smile 

Not feeling it today? That's ok! Everyone, and I mean everyone, has those days. You know what I do when I feel down, listener? I do what I can to fix it. Now you do what you can and SMILE!

1. Feet on floor

Good morning! It's January 7th and it's time to get up and be in the world one more time!

2. Walk to kitchen
3. Make coffee

The president made some announcements

4. Take shower in dark 
5. Brush teeth in fogged up glass 

Meaning the Cubs are on their way to the world series

6. Get dressed 
7. Look in mirror

That's far from the best you can do. Are you even trying today? You can do much better than this sorrow...you know what you have to do...There we go, no more frowns! Keep it up champ, you look GREAT!

• Man twists coat hanger to try to make himself smile

1. Feet on floor

Wake up, or can you not even do that anymore

2. Walk to kitchen

You haven't eaten in days, why do you even do this anymore?

3. Make coffee

No one want you around anymore now that you can't smile right

4. Take shower in the dark 

Try harder Champ, you know what you have to do

5. Brush teeth in fogged up glass (cuts on side of mouth)

Come on tiger, do it *faint at first, then loud* do it, do it…*devolves into screeching mess full of expletives*

6. Get dressed 
7. Look in mirror

• Man cuts a smile in the side of his mouth (think joker) 

1. Man doesn't like what he sees
2. Cuts again, this time deeper and more erratically
3. Stares at f-ed up face, which is now half blood/half skin
4. Puts down knife and gets dresses->gets blood on clothes
5. Gets in shower to wash blood
6. Puts on clothes
7. Greets other person at door, their face is also scarred over/deformed

• CUT BLACK"

Eyo, Progress check....

Like the TikTok reference in the title? No? That's ok, me and the Chinese government agent assigned to me when I downloaded it enjoyed it. Anyways, I decided to stop doing the other language title thing cause it was enough of a dose of being pretentious for me. I have been pretentious enough now to last me a lifetime. As a direct result, back to english.

Thing I did yesterday: finalize the outline for the short film. God bless. I think finalizing this was important because I am really looking for a scheme of beats to really stick to once I do get directing the movie. Anyways, lets dive into this outline:

I repeated the scenes, or at least their structure, to really hammer away at the fact a lot of the plot is gonna revolve around c single person's routine and descent/downward spiral. The beats highlighted in blue signify the start of a new day/scene and important visual repetition points that I wanna maintain consistent to flesh out the routine.


 After, there are often descriptors of how I want the character to behave. IDK what the script will look like since Jules officered to write that, but I wanted this to have a similar feel that so I could only rely on this if I needed to.

What I was apprehensive about was wether or not this was going to be visually interesting enough for an at least 5 min. short film, which is why I don't wanna do a shot list I want things to still be dynamic. As result the likely outcome of me not wanting a shot list will be a storyboard.

While I was in my creative swing, I also went ahead and used Google docs to script out the Radio narrator! I wanted it to go from this cheerful, happy anchor to one that's unhinged and aggressive, reflecting the protagonists POV an inner thoughts.

That's the script, I wanted to feature the whole thing because I enjoy it. Since I will be the one delivering it, I feel comfortable saying all those lines and if I wanna ad-lib an extra line, I trust myself to stick to the script for the rest of the script.

Anyways, I feel goof about those progress updates. I'll be back with more soon.

See y'alls later with maybe a proper catchphrase.

ensembles et leur look

*AAANNNDDD today's pretentious title is brought to you by french, the ultimate wannabe Spanish* 

Yo, Yo, it's me back with more!

This will be kind of a quick post since costumes won't be final until me and Jules settle on who to cast for the film. However, after the color posts I have a more clear idea of what I wanna do for specifically outfits. (ensembles means ensemble in french..shocker I know).

ANYWAYS:
I want the core outfit to be yellow, because yellow is the most easily associated color with happiness. Hence, the shirt of our character will be yellow. Their pants are likely to be jeans because they're not a very distracting set of pants and don't really "pop" out, but preferably a shade that is inconspicuous enough that little to no attention is brought to the pants and away from the shirt. I want to use this burnt orange/pink robe my mom owns, a color that usually connoted warmth and safety, which would make sense on a robe as it's something people wear while they're at home, and inherently intimate space to a person. To try and put a pallate to this, I went on this website:
https://coolors.co/f37a5e-ede6e3-dadad9-36382e-5bc3eb
And found cool shades that, personally, encapsulate what I want our dominant COSTUME colors to look like:

F4D35E

0F37A5

F5A5B6

As for the camera tints, I've chosen two:

992CEB

80FF7F

What this palette looks like is essentially this:

Costumes would essentially be:

This is a very close color but lighter and make the jeans a very deep, neutral blue. I think this would be a sick costume shirt if we cast a female lead because my mom has  a shirt very similar to this one. 

The idea, however, is the general palette I want the movie to have. I am not touching any colors with inherent associations with sadness about blue and that's only due to convenience. The goal of the palette is to emphasize happiness and contrast with yellow or the actual content when the time comes to create visual intrigue during post-production. 

Anyways, that's been it for this post. I think I've gotten the color out of my system..

for now at least ;)

Farbe im Film

**This post's pretentious other language title is brought to you by German**

The orange/yellow haze serve to represent danger and mystery
"Why?" you ask, well read this post to learn.

Oh mise-en-scene. That curious thing Wes Anderson owes his entire career to. The thing that every Instagram Film page won't shut up about, especially in regards to this scene (featured to the side) from Bladerunner: 2049, which I have yet to see and by this point I am just too ashamed to admit it to others because they would definitely judge me for. 

But I digress about my cinematic insecurities. What I have essentially acknowledged is that color will be a crucial party of this film. Everyone, from Tstock to my peers has told me that I am going to need to tightly control the color palette. The problem, as you may imagine, is that I have a very ok understanding of color language in film. It's not awful, and it's by no means basic (not to toot my own horn too hard). With that said, it should be a lot better if I am even thinking about an art house film, especially something like a psych. horror.

So as I sat here wondering: when am I gonna include the "Color palette" picture? I decided: why not at least get to know the basics and history of color at the start and use it as a segue to the rest of the blog post.

Credit: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-use-color-in-film-50-examples-of-movie-color-palettes/

See that bad boy up there? That's what's known to those in the industry (or with Google access) as the color wheel. At it's most basic level, it serves as a tool for artists of all visual mediums to display and understand the relationships between colors and how the colors relate to each other in terms of proximity in hue. Aside from letting you know the primary colors one can utilize, it lets us in on three terms I want to define before we dive into anything else:

1. Complementary: Contrasting colors that serve to highlight one another; the color directly opposite of a specific color on the wheel (example: red and green).

2. Monochromatic: Single, dominant color (see the Blade runner picture above for perfect example).

3. Analogous: neighboring/similar colors on the wheel (example: red and purple).

I highlight these two terms because my discussions with Tstock have centered around maintaining a consistency of colors, either in both how the footage is graded/how the character is dressed or at least the wardrobe. As a result, thanks to my color wheel knowledge, I know I need an e very narrow palette: a monochromatic wardrobe WILL be present, so I could choose to grade certain footage in a contrasting color at the climax of the film (which according to "No Film School", conveys mystery or transformation which is what I need for the climax). An analogous color could be the reds from the blood. With a full understanding of the color wheel, I can now more strategically select colors and learned some cool terms to throw around in college media courses. jokes aside, the color wheel is/will be useful to understand how to combine and tailer a color-based aesthetic, and that's just with the BASIC color wheel (for complex wheel, see below).

Since the introduction of color to film in 1939, the use and psychology of color has evolved with it. To dive into this, let's look at the facts a color scheme can:

• Elicit psychological reactions
• Draw focus to significant details
• Set the tone of the movie
• Represent character traits
• Show changes or arcs in the story

And that's just scratching the surface. Before applying these, let's learn about the three components of color in cinema, HSB. HSB, in essence, is:

1. Hue-The actual color

2. Saturation-the intensity of that color

3. Brightness-how light/dark a given color is.

Here, we see how each of these three aspects contribute to the interpretation of colors in films.

Now each  color can mean something and that would take me too long to list so I will let this video do it for me, as well as the links I paste below!

Anyways, after this post, I feel like I can more officially claim to be an authority on film colors in front of friends, family, or the occasional social gathering I will ruin by asking people what they thought of Kill Bill.
Anyways, see ya next time when I can properly say bye to y'all.

Research resources:

https://digitalsynopsis.com/design/film-movies-color-psychology/

https://nofilmschool.com/2016/06/watch-psychology-color-film

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-use-color-in-film-50-examples-of-movie-color-palettes/

Mi progreso y el dialogo

Hola y buenos dias!

See what I did there? I used a different language. This also brings attention to: why is the title of this post in Spanish? Two reasons: the first, I wanna be artsy and pretentious by having a few titles in different languages please let me live; the second is because this film has no real dialogue other than the fact I'll be talking with a radio voice. That's a dumb way to put it, it's more I'll be recording myself then turning my voice into one of those old radio announcer voices. I am very interested in THIS specific accent: 

The Transatlantic accent, the most FAMOUS of all old-time accents. I will look up how to make myself sound like this in post-production, but I honestly think we need to make more progress in the pre-planning process. 

But that's similar to the larger topic of this blogpost. I do not have enough progress. I need to:

*finish outline

*script
*Storyboard

I know I should have more progress and I think that honestly comes down to communicating more with those around me and hoping my classes get easier. Anyways, I have been spitballing script ideas for the radio voice with Jules. This is probably the most important (and only) dialogue, so I wanna make it as good as possible.

I'll update y'all soon.

big brain time-or 1:20 AM and happiness

As I lie awake writing this post named after the time I whipped open my computer to put pen to paper, or more realistically, aggressive finger smash towards keyboard..All I can think about is one thing: Pretending to be happy is physically exhausting.

FOR CONTEXT: I was out canvassing with my friends from DSA (if you don't know what it means, you're not missing out on much of an organization tbh) on behalf of my homie G, Vermont Senator Bernard William Sanders.

Bernard asking you for your weekly recommendation for the class 

I canvassed for about 6-9 hours and honestly doing your civic duty is hard. About a third of the houses I visited were completely fine with me visiting and were happy to see youth engagement in politics. A third did not want anything to do with anyone under 35, especially if they were there on Bernie's behalf. The other third was nice but all they did was say they hoped I turned out in October "if Bernie doesn't win".  While I have my gripes with 2/3 of those, I can't just exactly be rude and not be a good example of the campaign I represent. Which honestly by about hour 3 left me emotionally drained, and by the time I was done? my mom was commenting I looked like I hadn't slept in days. So here I am, not sleeping. If you're wondering how this relates to my film, well its because our character pretends to be happy at their own expense too. So it would be super logical for them to be looking exhausted by the end of the film/as it progresses. Maybe with makeup? post effects? I don't know the specifics yet. But I am gonna swing this idea by Tstock for now and see what she says. For now remember: vote Bernie Sanders.

the council will decide your fate (aka group meetings)

Today in class, we had our long awaited first meeting of the council...

Ok I'll be less dramatic, we just had our fist set of group meetings. They were productive and I really enjoyed hearing the ideas my classmates had. Below is a photo of what i wrote during the meeting for each person who spoke today.

(and I apologize for the slang in it btw)

My notes! I ~finally~ figured out how to take screenshots!!!

That was essentially what I thought for each group. Unfortunately, I was absent for when Jules presented our idea and missed some valuable notes, but she filled me in on the basics which seem to be:

*Don't involve the government

*make it more of a psychological horror than dystopian horror

*flesh out mise-en-scene in pre-production/focus on colors in post

I'll definitely have a color post up later, but one thing me and Stock discussed for this project was color grading in after effects/premier (featured prominently in my task bar). She told me to learn, and while I would def have a video of my learning how to grade, i already have! I learned for our Trailer project which was SICK. I watched a series of videos during that process, including (but not limited to): 

So in short, while Tstock is 100% right I should learn more, I have done my research into post-production techniques like grading. I'll see if I have to learn anything fancier by the time I have footage on my hands.

Once again, no outro this week...sorry guys keep tuning in to see if we'll have one.

Links for grading resources:

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/color-workflows.html

https://fstoppers.com/education/how-easily-create-cinematic-color-grade-premiere-pro-194609

https://blog.frame.io/2018/05/21/premiere-lumetri-guide/

Spooky Scary (short film) Skeleton

Back again guys,

Me and Jules had a big sit down during class and fashioned our first ever outline of the basic plot structure of this film we have no idea what to call yet. I'll post updated versions in some other blog posts (though they may not get their own posts), but for now this one gets its own post. I'll let the outline do the talking for now and at the end I'll feature a few "editor's notes":

Outline

Man wakes up to the radio  . House is very bare but very bright. Cant see face yet and is avoiding.

• Amore Mio Aiutami -esque music playing
  

• Intermittent radio chatter “remember to smile” “always be happy” radio gets progressively more aggressive
  

• Feet on floor
  

1. Walk to kitchen
   

2. Make coffee
   

3. Take showers
   

4. Brush teeth in fogged up glass
   

5. Get dressed
   

6. Look in mirror
   

7. Man smiles a toothy grin at himself and and turns around
   

• Feet on floor
  

1. Walk to kitchen
   

2. Make coffee
   

3. Take shower
   

4. Brush teeth in fogged up glass
   

5. Get dressed
   

6. Look in mirror
   

7. Man looks in mirror smiles without teeth
   

•  Feet on floor
  

1. Walk to kitchen
   

2. Make coffee
   

3. Take shower
   

4. Brush teeth in fogged up glass
   

5. Get dressed
   

6. Look in mirror
   

7. Man begins to play with his face to try to contort a smile. Takes out a marker and draws a smile
   

• Feet on floor
  

1. Walk to kitchen
   

2. Make coffee
   

3. Take shower in dark
   

4. Brush teeth in fogged up glass
   

5. Get dressed
   

6. Look in mirror
   

7. Man twists coat hanger to try to make himself smile
   

• Feet on floor
  

1. Walk to kitchen
   

2. Make coffee
   

3. Take shower in the dark
   

4. Brush teeth in fogged up glass (cuts on side of mouth)
   

5. Get dressed
   

6. Look in mirror
   

7. Smiles at himself in the mirror and contorts his face again violently
   

• Feet on floor
  

1. Walk to kitchen
   

2. Make coffee
   

3. Take shower in the dark
   

4. Brush teeth in fogged up glass (cuts on side of mouth)
   

5. Get dressed
   

6. Look in mirror
   

7. Man cuts a smile in the side of his mouth (think joker)
   

• WIP

Sick, so that was basically it. It is super, duper rough right now so I am not gonna try to be the most analytical of people but with that said here's a few notes:

*I think the specification of man is kind of unnecessary. If anything we should hardly be seeing the subjects face for most of the film until it matters.

*I think it kind of mirrors the "in house" horror of Hereditary, not cause it's a family horror but because its happening all in one house.

*the script (which Jules offered to write) will end up being mainly descriptions.

Those are basically my thoughts for now on the outline. Seeing as how I lack any major updates aside from that, that may be it for this post! I still don't feel creative enough for an outro phrase though, so I guess I have something else to work for besides my project.