Our Final Project ~ Bookworms

-

 Now, let's talk a little bit about our project!

To start, our editor chose the romance genre for our film, which we all immediately agreed to. I mean, it is February! We did face some issues in creating our original plot, though.


Our film is titled "Bookworms", and is about two people of the LGBTQ community who meet in a bookstore. During our research of non-heteronormative short films, we found repetitive themes of closeted experiences, "coming out" stories, and other struggles people tend to have in these relationships.
We also noticed the overall negative representation these relationships get in film and other forms of media (including television and books), so we began devising a plot that would eliminate these stereotypes and instead represent a healthy LGBTQ relationship.

While brainstorming, my teammates wanted to use an idea we had for our previous film, where color would be an important aspect of the plot. The color was to shift from black-and-white to bright and saturated when our two main characters meet. However, I pointed out the difficulty we would have pulling off this effect, given our editor's limited resources and the length of time we have to accomplish this task, so the idea was scrapped. 

This encounter, along with other disagreements regarding aesthetic features, taught me that communication was a major factor in these types of projects. As the cinematographer, my opinion on shot composition (along with the director's) are the most important, so I need to communicate my desires with imagery the most.


During this preliminary period, I will be talking more about how our genre will compliment and affect our visuals. Stay tuned for more!

Popular posts from this blog

First Brainstorming Session!

-
My group immediately knew what roles we wanted to play while making our film. With my growing knowledge of cinematography and photography combined with every members' artistic knowledge and talents, we came to a consensus quickly.  We discussed genre for an extended amount of time. Our first route was romance, considering chess is a very intimate game. However, romance would have been a common theme between other groups working on the project, and our story was already very cliche as we were brainstorming:  two people would be playing chess, and the game's progress and outcome would symbolize their relationship. Our next genre idea was drama, and we struggled with the idea that such a vast genre could be condensed into a minute long short film. We were going to have to mix genres if we wanted to effectively make our film.  I suggested a "murder-mystery" type of short film, and the whole group caught on with the idea. I referenced a move in chess where you can turn a p...
Read more

Creative Critical Reflection

-
1.  Our film represents the presence of corruption and betrayal in many systems across the world. The detective not finding the right culprit who committed the crime represents how easily people can be blinded by what they believe to be true. Finding the truth isn't easy, and many people in power abuse this ability to hide their true intentions. 2.  Our product engages with the audience through face paced, complex shots and scenes, where characters are frequently facing the camera. There are several close ups and fourth-wall breaks throughout our film, making it seem as though the audience is included in the story being told. Our film would be distributed as either a mystery-drama or crime-genre short film, likely not to a theater but to a smaller streaming platform, such as YouTube TV and Direct TV. 3.  Throughout the project, my ability to improvise definitely improved. My storyboard and shot list were not aligned, so while lining up shots I got to experiment with many ...
Read more