Mise-en-scene

      For this activity, we, my group and all other groups, were assigned a task of creating a character through a variety of techniques. Some of these techniques included visual, tactile, and sound representations. We were required to make a visual type of representation, a mood board, a description of our character, some sound elements that we'd be able to incorporate within all this, a visual of what our character's setting looked like, and we were required to bring in some items to help bring our character to life.

      Our character was named Dahlia Willows. She's a seventeen-year-old girl with big brown eyes, short wavy brown hair with bangs, freckles, heterochromia, and a fall inspired style. She lives in a small town called Half-Moon Bay in California where she works in a record/film shop. Since she loves movies so much, she posts reviews on Letterboxd and creates blogs about her favorite movies. She also is a very social person who loves to go to small local band concerts, and she also is the president of the film club. Her going to many school events makes her well-known/popular throughout school. 

     For this character we created a video with a bunch of movie clips, and we included the ocean in the area that she lives in. We also included clips of artists singing in the video as she also loves music thoroughly. Our group created a playlist of similar sounding music, and we created a mood board of her type of aesthetic. To combat this, we brought in some movie CD's, a book that matched the movie CD, a crafted representation of the place she lives in in a shoe box, headphones, camera, and an origami of a Oscar's award. All of her character was then explained in a description.

     In our station, we had a computer on each of two desks, and we had two computers on one desk since we needed the last desk to present all of our physical/tactile presentations. We organized our items to look pretty but not super organized since that'd look weird for our specific character. Overall, I believe my group did an amazing job and all my teammates pulled through to really make this activity more fun. Our outcome for this project was not perfect, but it was matched by all of the work we put into it.

     To first generate an idea of our character, we thought of the many different stereotypes to the people that love movies. We immediately thought a teenager who was female with homely and fall inspired style. This was our basis. We incorporated many cool hues into her aesthetic but included some dark reds as fall often is represented by many shades of reds. After this, we pulled inspiration from real life examples to create her look. And we created her home based off of where characters we knew of that reminded us of our character, lived. Although our certain character would follow the "quiet and introverted" stereotype, we needed to make our character social, according to the instructions that were given to us. So, we had to create idea that made sense that our character would do, like attend local band concerts and be president of her school's film club which made her popular. After all of this, we had finally created our character, and her name was Dahlia Willows.

Our creations:

Dahlia Willows video repeat.mp4

Genre Research Blog Activity - Drama

This is Drama

   

What is drama? Drama in the context of film is the type of genre that is very diverse. This usually includes lots of conflict, emotional depth, and viewing of specific characters.

   

There is usually no specific time where an audience is most present in this genre, yet a lot of the audience are women in their teenage years to woman in their late 20's.

Content:

A lot of the time, films that are under the drama genre include a backstory or plotline to help us grasp the situation in hand. This is usually introduced in the very beginning of a film so we can understand where the story might start and end. We can also predict what might happen from what was already given to us. Plots are pretty common too as it contains a buildup to the climax and a resolution that the characters have been trying to reach. This is done by including a lot of emotional plot twists.  

Ex: The movie 12 Angry Men gives the backstory of a boy that is accused of murdering his father and who is being put on death row. His whole fate relies on the decision of the 12 jurors who will decide if he is innocent or guilty.

Another big characteristic of drama is the use of characters. They are usually introduced in the beginning of a film and follow a regime of development. They undergo through changes as they navigate certain decisions throughout the film. Specifically, when a character learns a lesson, they change for the better, like if a mean person learns what they're doing isn't right and changes to be a nicer person. The main character might have the biggest character development if the plot mainly revolves around them. 

 

Ex: The movie Mean Girls is a great representation of this by introducing all characters at the beginning and giving them much development throughout the movie, Such as Regina who becomes a better person in the end.

Another thing it might display would be emotion. Often, there are many emotions displayed in a film but one emotion being displayed exists but is, however, not as common. Some popular emotions include melancholy, depression, romance, happiness, and disappointment. This helps us become engaged and also empathize with certain characters and scenes within a film. 

Ex: The Notebook has a wide variation of emotions from happiness and romance to sadness to bittersweet happiness. 

Production Techniques:

To create dramatic effects, productions often focus on the expressions of characters that are included in the plot. Most of the emotion that is created in these films are based off of facial expressions and body language displayed. In relation to that, music is played to give us more of an idea of what a character might feel in a certain moment. This helps us relate to characters and empathize with them while also understanding situations in which they are in. This genre also utilizes a lot of two-shots where two characters are shown interacting in a screen. This helps go more in depth of certain characters' relationships.

Ex: In Requiem for a Dream, there many close-ups of facial expressions and body language such as this scene which includes both. It also shows both characters in frame which is important because of the way they are interacting with one another.

Samples:

In the movie Beautiful Boy, it introduces a character who seems to be a good kid, Nic, who does many activities. But one day, he doesn't come home. When he finally returns after two days, his family realizes he has been using drugs. To help himself, he agrees to go to a rehab center in which his family recommended him to do. Although Nic returns home, better and happy, he falls back under the influence of drugs. So, he starts the use of crystal meth which makes him worse. In the end, it is suggested that Nic finally is on the road to getting better. The film uses many shots where two people are shown so that it highlights the importance of relationships and how much they contribute to the plot. This is a perfect duality with the symbolism that is used since Nic also has an important relationship with drugs which impacts the plot the most. The close ups that are used to show facial expressions and certain body movements and language very much help the story evolve to become very emotional. The representation of coming home helps suggest that though something is familiar, it may still be hard to deal with. Again, this represents his relationship with drugs. The movie poster shows Nic and his dad, David, sitting side by side in lawn chairs. David has his hand on Nic's back and his chair is slightly more turned towards Nic than Nic's is towards David's. Nic's head is also turned the opposite way while his dad's is faced towards him. This shows that David is doing his best to support his son, even if Nic has a hard time accepting his support. 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is about a young teenager named Charlie who just starts his freshman year of high school and who is depressed. He is alone at first and in search of friends and is shown writing letters, anonymously, to someone he knows. Then, he meets two seniors who becomes friends with. He then falls in love with the girl senior but he's too scared to do anything about it. He starts to become involved in their friend group, but one day he makes a grave mistake, and all his friends stop talking to him. Once they forgive him, he establishes a new type of relationship with Sam, his senior friend who's a girl right before she, and all of his friends leave for college. When they leave, he falls back into his depression as he remembers the death of his aunt and blames it on himself. He tries to commit but he's shown alive at the hospital, and his parents are told of the horrifying truth behind his aunt. However, the movie ends with a happy ending of him with his friends driving through a tunnel. When Charlie is shown writing letters, it further signifies how alone he is. After he makes his mistake, his friends leave him and he's back to being completely alone which shows just how much hos friends mean to him. Also, in the first tunnel scene, Sam is on top of the car with her arms outs signifying that she feels free and when the last scene and the last tunnel scene are shown with Charlie in the same position, we can infer that he now feels free from his past and his own reality. The poster also shows color in the background that is very bright and noticeable while their clothes are black and white. This helps them stand out and show that there will be youth like representation within the film with the green background color.

Drama Movies:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Good Will Hunting

The Outsiders

Interstellar

Forrest Gump

Legally Blonde

Little Women

Dead Poets Society

Sound Projects

   What I learned during these sound assignments have impacted the way I perceive media now. To start, our assignment was to watch some videos about sound. This made me realize that sounds are much more complex than I thought. For example, I learned about foley and how to make your own foley stage and what lots of foley creators have to do for that. I also learned that a lot of movie scenes only really have dialogue sounds in them and the rest of the sounds are added in. 

   We completed two sound projects in total. The first one, we had to create a whole scene purely based off of sound. No video was permitted, and it had to be 1-2 minutes of sound. She preferred us to do something that had an interesting plotline since we would only be listening to it. We also had to create 4 of our own sounds or foley sounds and submit a video of us completing the sounds. In the second sound project, we had to add sound to our already completed video project which had no sound originally. We weren't required any foley sounds, but I personally added some as I wasn't able to find the right sounds online. Also, each of the group members of this project had submit the project separately.

   In the first sound project, my group started off by planning on a sheet that our teacher gave us. We planned out our scenes, and which sounds matched in these scenes, as we wouldn't be including any video. Then, we planned out what sounds we would do by ourselves and how we would do them. We then divided them off to each group member. This all helped us create our project as we had an outline to build off of and ideas to know how and where to start creating our sound scenes. We used Clipchamp in Microsft365 to do this project. I think that we planned the sounds really well and we figured out which sounds would be present in each scene. Yet, I don't think we made our story interesting enough as the beginning was a little boring with the ongoing sounds for more than 15 seconds.

Here is the link to Sound Project #1:

https://browardcountyschools-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/0614124175_my_browardschools_com/EsG6NT8_Bl9Av89iK3NM6ZEB_I_7xfUwDxWaS0i3Fl0L9w?tdid=75fb5038-f5cc-4606-a926-da01768877f7

   In the second sound project, we didn't have a sheet to plan but we did make an outline by listing all the scenes and all the sound that would be present during them, as we did for the first project also. For brainstorming, we gathered our knowledge from the previous sound project and approached it the same. We gathered sounds, recorded the sounds we would need in the process, and added them to the project. The outline really helped to keep us organized when planning out the sounds we needed, and it helped us not forget them. We used Clipchamp in Microsoft365 again as this was the recommended site from the teacher. I think that my sounds were interesting and well planned in the beginning. But, in the end they weren't as much. 

Here is the link to Sound Project #2:

https://browardcountyschools-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/0614124175_my_browardschools_com/EimbUTROEGNNkfXSm01IWW8Bq5B3FUpgbGw5RSq_dTofQQ?tdid=03d1f16f-d0b1-4c37-9b7c-bc7b9cfb7011