Alex's Weekly Update (#1)

        There are many ways I can look for on how to start this but an easy introduction is that this will be a place every week where I come to talk about this film opening. A place where I will unload my thoughts from the past week on how the project is going and where I think it will end up. This will be apart from the more directed posts about a certain aspect of the film. I will make up for last week also.

        

        Week 1: 3/6/17-3/12/17:

        We started that week without the slightest idea of what to do. How are we to come up with an original and well thought out idea, shoot it, edit it, and somehow maintain this blog for 5 weeks? Lara and I had no clue. First we went with the basis of what we had talked about since signing ourselves up for the film portfolio option rather than the apparently much easier magazine portfolio. Romance. Now to me personally romantic movies never quite took me in, there was never anything about them, until maybe recently, that I could relate to. It just seemed fake to me and I never could get drawn into these characters. Lara on the other hand loves romantic movies. For example, we would be talking about some random thing and then this popular film comes up and I would ask "Oh my god have you seen that? It is amazing." She would usually respond with a no and then I would tell her about the amazing movie she is missing out on. But the same thing would happen to me when she brings up an apparently amazing movie that I haven't seen. Of course it is a romance. So we both have strengths but in different areas. Lara had the idea to go with a story about two people who are in a long distance relationship. We discussed that the opening should be the two of them getting ready in the morning, or one in the morning and one getting ready for bed.

Wes Anderson

      We went through a few ideas, even some that don't go under the romance genre, but then I discovered my new favorite director. Wes Anderson. I talked about Anderson in a few of the earlier posts but I will go more into the coincidence and impact that he had on me. The fact that I started to get lost in his movies the week this project was assigned is insane. I never felt more inspired by a movie, or a selection of movies before like I have when watching Anderson's work. It's so odd, so weird to watch his movies because of the unconventionality of his style. It was almost like my brain had never seen such a movie before and it open this locked door full of ideas in my mind. I literally jumped up from the couch while watching The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, paused the movie and ran to my computer. I screamed "I have an idea!" and ran across the house to my room. I feel bad for my dad because he was watching the movie with me and had to wait until I wrote the entire script to keep watching the movie. I hadn't intended on writing the whole script just yet. I wanted to put the idea on paper so I don't lose any details. I wrote "INTERROGATION-- DETECTIVE -- WIFE OF DECEASED CHARACTER-- WES ANDERSON STYLE." This opened the door, just reading those details I was able to put together a scene where it is apparent by body language and dialogue that the wife should be a suspect in her husbands murder. I tried to blend humor into the scene as Wes Anderson does perfectly in his films. He is able to take a sensitive subject and add humor to it through writing and film techniques.

   Week 2: 3/13-3/19

       This week started with us having a solid basis of what we wanted to do. We had an idea and now we must make the idea a reality. Lara and I had become really excited about this idea and it encouraged us to build it up and cut some stuff that would make it impossible to shoot. This part was just a lot of conversation. Us talking about the scene, trying to explain to each other what was in our heads at the moment. Sometimes we immediately understood each other and sometimes it took some heavy explanation to make our convoluted thoughts coherent enough to be written down. The brainstorm was in full effect this week. The first part of this was how we wanted it to feel, how we wanted audiences to react when they see this film. Lara thought it would be cool to make it dark and mysterious with some heavy suspense overshadowing the whole scene. Me on the other hand, coming off of a week of straight Wes Anderson films, I imagined the movie to be quirky substituting the Film noir dark and brooding feel, for a more relaxed comedic spin on the genre. Putting these together would be the difficult part. Can you make a dark and suspenseful film feel quirky and comedic? Do those types of films exist? I guess we'll find out in a few weeks. 

       I feel we are on good track in terms of time management. We have a completed storyboard and dates set for filming. The one issue we have is the music. For the opening credits we wanted to set an antiquated tone. Using artists like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra were the first things to come to mind. Particularly the song "Volare" by Dean Martin, which had this really old feel to it. The first thought that came to mind when listening to it was that I felt like I was in my grandmother's house and she's making dinner with music on. My grandma is Italian and she would listen to these types of songs often, old songs in Italian that she would sing along to. When I was kid I never really took a liking to these types of songs because they were slow and never made me feel anything, listening back I love the feeling of nostalgia it gives me. The choice of music isn't all free game though, according to the rubric, and Marchetti making it clear to us, we aren't allowed to use any copy written song, unless we have clearly obtained the rights to it from the artist or whoever owns it. This presents an interesting issue I never have found myself in. Am I going to have to ask the people who own Dean Martin's songs for the rights? I do not even know where to start because it is also a cover of another song by Domencio Modugno. So would I have to obtain the rights from him too? There are too many variables for us to make 'Volare' the song we use. So we will look through the YouTube Royalty Free Music Library, which to my surprise has a wide array of music to choose from.
    We now also had to determine when and we came up with a schedule to give us time to edit.

These are the dates and times:

Friday March 24th 9 am - 1 pm
Saturday March 25th  10 am - 2 pm