Here's the link for intertwined social media page!
https://www.instagram.com/officialintertwined?igsh=MWo4NnhuaTRvazVmNg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
The google drive containing everything else:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IIEh_PqhHfogOUZkjiA15nodmYZGXchc?usp=sharing
Short Film Critical Reflection
The creation of our short film Intertwined was unlike any film project experience I've had. For starters, it was a short film, which I'd never made, along with components like a postcard, which I've also never made. Despite the fact that it was out of the normal for me, it was enjoyable to try something new, and gratifying to have experienced it with such amazing individuals. For starters, my partner, Mariana has been my best friend for about 4 years now. Usually, I stay away from working with close friends, as my teachers always tell me it is easy to get distracted, however, I had a better experience working with her. This is due to the fact that we both have similar schedules and do our extracurriculars together. We also like a lot of the same things, which helped us reach many conclusions. Additionally, my boyfriend was playing my love interest in our short film, this also made the process diverting.
Pertaining to the film itself, Intertwined is a lighthearted romance short film, meant to evoke all the emotions in its viewers. Happiness, sadness, anger, despair, are all shown throughout the film, depending on the season the film is in. The film is meant to represent teenagers, specifically suburban ones. This is also why teenagers are our targeted audience. Our whole cast consists of teenagers, as the film is meant to represent the fun summers, typical get togethers, and argumentative or passionate love in teenage relationships, usually correlated to teenage life. Nowadays, the lives of teenagers are overly transformed into a negative light. This is shown in films like Euphoria, Waves, Riverdale, Gossip Girl, and really any popular show/movie involving teens. Teens are displayed as entitled, spoiled, addicts, and those in relationships, toxic to an extreme. As a teen myself, I completely disagree with this depiction of teenagers. I love hanging out my friends without the use of drugs or alcohol and I'd much rather spend my time going to the beach or going to the gym, than gossiping or "shopping". My classmate felt the same way, that is why we decided to display the teens having fun an the beach playing volleyball, eating, playing a game at a get together, conversing, etc. Regarding the toxic relationships, there was a remote one shown in the film and it was shown too see that teenage relationships aren't always physically toxic without reason, as it is portrayed in the shows I previously mentioned. Although there are some "bad" and rebellious teenagers in the world, it shouldn't be the representation for the whole population. It's important to keep this known and display the balance of teens through film.
With regards to our films marketing branding, and engagement, a lot of research had to be done in order to achieve a successfully branded short film. Through my research of romance films, such as "Anyone But You" and "The Kissing Booth", I came to the realization that romance film branding is much more specific than I had anticipated. First, I saw that the most used social media platform for romance films, was Instagram. The main element I saw amongst these two romance pages, and many more, was that the social media platforms contained bold text to intrigue those who review the page. When I compared this to films that didn't have descripted images, I saw that I wasn't as engaged. The use of bold text drew me into the post, which of course, led me to either keep looking, or watch the movie. This is the purpose of any and every films social media, to get viewers to watch their film. Which is why we adopted this technique in our own social media.
Although including intriguing posts is key to reaching ones targeted audience, engagement is crucial to ensure viewers will follow, watch, and/or stay. I created postings with questions on them for our fans. Not only do these postings include interactive questions, but they also directly relate t our film, which could lead social media viewers to watch the film. An example of this posting includes "what is your favorite season?" which relates to our seasonal short film and includes intriguing visuals of important scenes.
I really enjoyed creating this component. Thankfully, I had practice of this from creating flyers for my extracurriculars. For the post card, I didn't research as much as the other components, due to the fact that I wanted it to be unique and had already envisioned what I wanted it to look like during the lesson. Our teachers lesson, along with the notes I took, provided me with the accurate amount of information to create this postcard! I believe it was important to include the post card on our social media, as a way to introduce where we'll be streaming Intertwined. It also sets the information easily and boldly for those who don't want to check the Instagram bio or weren't aware that the information was also there.
Decision Change
So as I briefly mentioned in my past couple blogs, due to the sunsetting way quicker than we anticipated, our idea had to change. Since we’re a team, Mariana and I decided to review the footage together and see what the best, least drastic change could be. After looking at all the scenes we had shot at the beach, we realized that there was only one portion of the film shot at night. This was the scene that the friends went to walk on the boardwalk after the volleyball game.
Mariana and I decided it would be smartest to cut out a portion that was unnecessary and change it up a bit, so we could still keep our big sequence. In order to change it up, we took out the scene that the friends walk together on the boardwalk and Howie notices Nati falling behind, so he goes by her and they leave the group. Instead, Howie will get Nati’s attention to leave their friends after the volleyball game when she goes to grab water shortly after saying “i’ll be quick”. This would make the film more quickly paced, which I believe was needed. The walking/noticing scene kind of felt like an extended filler. Hopefully the editing skills can make the times of filming on different days look the same and all will come out flowy!
Overall, this day of filming was so incredibly fun we got some emotional clips that I believe were our best acting ones yet. Also, the beach was beautiful, and so were the people. The manager of the restaurant we were filming at even allowed us to completely move the table, brought us out waters, and attended us exceptionally! 10/10 filming day. Our only slight issue was the sun going down, but the restaurant lights could make it look like it’s just the setting change. We’ll see!
I. Am. Livid.
Mariana and I have been postings the most natural, lighthearted, and of course, formfitting posts on our social media platform. Our first Instagram account was Intertwined_1, which lasted us about a week. We were so happy that it looked aesthetically pleasing and matched the feel of our film. The brainstormed ideas I had worked perfectly with our theme, and we still had a couple postings left.UNFORTUNATELY, the account go deleted.
I tried everything to recover this account, I sent a video of my face, tried the code method (the code never sent), I emailed Instagram!!! It wasn’t an issue to start over (we had to anyways), but it just would be nice to get it back from a simple email. That email didn’t work and I’m guessing the account was disabled. From the response they sent, it was clear that our account would not be reactivated. :(
First off, I felt a bit behind. Some of my group members had 18 postings, while some had 3, or 0, like myself. Those that had few postings and myself calculated together how many postings we’d have to do per day to achieve 20-30 postings by April 10th. We decided on about 2-3 postings per day. For my film and its social media conventions, I think it’d be smartest to do two stories and one post. On days that I have more work, one story and one post. Here are a couple of brainstorm ideas I thought of during this discussion for posts.
There are two key components we will be switching
1. The addition of another filming day
2. A change in our concept for summer
ADDITIONAL FILM DAY
As I mentioned in my last blog, due to some factors from our actors (got off of work, traffic, at home issues, etc), the time of arrival to film was a bit later than expected. This caused us to film until nighttime. Since we’re all still under 18, we do still have curfews, especially when we’re half an hour away from home at night in a public area. We only got the group work done, which meant we have to do the romantic scenes another day. Unfortunately, Howie works a lot so the new day couldn’t be as soon as we wanted. We wanted to film the last two scenes needed on Monday April 1st, but his only availability is Wednesday, April 3rd. Although it isn’t I feel like 2 days makes a huge difference in all the processes we have to carry out. I am nervous it will put a hindrance to our time doing everything else (social media editing, etc.).
Game Plan
Arrive around 6/6:30 to have more time to set up and film the restaurant + dancing scene
Film until 7:30/8:30
CHANGE IN SUMMER CONCEPT
This is probably one of my biggest issues that is making me frustrated. Our summer scene was supposed to progress from daytime to sunset. Because we arrived later, we couldn’t match the script and the filming went into nighttime. Now, the restaurant scene can remain the same but the dancing in the sunset scene will be a bit difficult to film in the dark beach at night. I’m very lost on what decision to make and find myself conflicted in changing that whole portion of the script. 😩
The upcoming class, Mariana and I will talk to our teacher Mrs. Stoklosa, to help us resolve the situation. Fingers crossed!!
