Group Meeting #1

Group Meeting #1

Hello blog! 

Today we had our first group meeting with other people in the classroom. We each shared our ideas and helped each other how to improve them or make them come to life. 

Others

Shira’s idea was an opening about a zombie apocalypse, but she didn’t know what she wanted to do. We all came up with ideas like a starting shot of the town before the apocalypse which then glitches to footage of the current apocalyptic state of it accompanied by the sound of a news broadcast to add more context to the story. I also suggested that if she were to include shots of the zombies, she would need to focus a lot on costuming and makeup to make it realistic and avoid having them look cheesy. We also discussed where she could film some of the scenes in our town. 

Veronica is doing a thriller opening about a girl who is partying on the beach with her friends when she suddenly passes out and her friends leave her there. She then wakes up to a shadowy figure coming towards her. Some feedback we gave Veronica was that she shouldn't end with the figure approaching the girl since that would seem too resolved. Instead, she should end the opening with a shot of her friends putting up a missing poster or have them receive an amber alert. 

For Gabriel’s idea, he told us that he was back to square one as he originally wanted to do a thriller, but his idea had too many flaws. So, we talked about maybe changing the genre of the movie since many people tend to do thrillers and very few people do a good job. 

For Adriana’s psychological drama opening, she will develop the story of a toxic couple. They encounter each other at a party and the girl immediately gets flashbacks to the abuse she endured with him. We decided that the flashbacks would be in black and white to let the audience know that these events happened in the past. We also advised her to end the opening with something more than flashbacks, perhaps what he says to her after encountering her at the party. 

Feedback I Got

This is what the group had to say about my idea: 

The idea of having a diary is good since it shows the emotional aspect of the character. To achieve this my group suggested making it dramatic, to make her tentative when writing. Shira also suggested to write in the diary with big red letters which I might consider since I feel like if I did that it would look more like a horror film instead of a drama that shows the personal struggles of a teenage girl. They really enjoyed the fact that we chose drama as our genre since almost everyone chose thriller/horror making our idea more original. 

 

 

Additionally, Gabriel and I gave feedback on each other’s blog, here is what he had to say about mine: 

• When mentioning a movie, add a link to the film’s IMDB or Wikipedia. 
• Add screenshots from the credit sequences you’re researching, a screenshot of the “delicate, elegant typography” of Black Swan, or “scratchy, handwritten-style font”. Although there are screenshots of the movie poster, they don’t add to the blog besides making it look nicer. 
• You do good analysis and discussion of credit/opening sequences, but you’re missing reflection/takeaways in some. 
• The formatting and how you include multimedia is good and make the blogs very smooth to read. 
• Overall, I think you should just make sure to stay consistent, keeping relevant screenshots and links throughout your blog posts and making sure to describe, analyze, and reflect on each one of them. 

This feedback helped me to remember that I need to prioritize information over looks when it comes to my blog. You can go visit his blog for my feedback. 

Reflection 

Overall, my first group meeting was pretty successful. It made me realize that my group and I are headed in the right direction with this project and that choosing the genre of drama was a good idea since barely anyone in our class is doing it. I also really enjoyed listening to other people’s film-opening ideas and working together to make them better.