Production: It's a Wrap!

 It's a Wrap 

March 2nd was the last day I have set for filming, hoping that we would be able to get everything production wise done. Here I will just be reviewing every aspect of our production phase in terms of actors, narrative, mise en scene, sound and implementation.

Actors:

We had a lot of rough trials with picking the actors, I had to make the decision based on who would fit the role better, who could actually act, and who would be available to commit for our film. Some actors had to be dropped due to scheduling complications, however, quick and suitable replacements were made and we were able to continue with the film without changing any actual character. The biggest challenge was learning how to schedule with all the talents. We had many set backs with production, having to extend our production dates longer than expected. If I were to give any advice to next year's students, I would recommend having a film staring a very small amount of actors, making it way easier to manage everyone.

                        

                                                         Still of all the main actors 

Narrative: 

I could say with confidence that my film does not look the same as it started. I changed so much narrative in my film that it is almost completely different than the film I had in mind in the pre-planning phase. Changes were made until the last day of filming, so most changes were made as we go. Mostly, the changes that were made were to accommodate upcoming issues like certain actors not being present or not having enough time. Although I made so many changes, I still kept the same representation that I stated during pre-production research phase, even though I added more representation. I wanted to represent teen girls that often go through the phases of awkwardness and uncertainty in oneself, trying to find herself in a world that she is unfamiliar with, and going through the phases of Ego, Superego, and Id. I am glad to say that if this entire film existed, I would be able to pull that off. 

Still that shows the concept of Ego, Super ego, and Id, which I discussed in my representation

Mise en scene:

My crew and I had a fun time playing with mise en scene in our film, whether it was for setting, rule of thirds, costumes, or symbolism. Choosing locations, Mise en scene through costumes: Main character Dariah/ 3 mean girls, House party scene, The mall montage, The 3 mean girls, and The Live, are all blog posts where I discussed different ways we utilized mise en scene. My favorite aspect is how I used mise en scene during the Mall Montage scene. I enjoyed how we took advantage of our surroundings to amplify the narrative, when Dariah was discussing her past lifestyle.

Sound: 

Because I took the job of the sound designer, I had an interesting time trying to figure out how my film will utilize different types of sound, diegetic and non-diegetic sounds, stock audios and voice over audios. Post-production is when I will fully take in the job of a sound designer.

Implementation:

By using Mean Girls and Clueless as my model films, we were able to implement a lot in our film, in terms of narrative, mise en scene, cinematography and sound. We took the idea of the 3 mean girls from Mean Girls and ran with it, that was the biggest way we implemented our model film in our film. Character's narrative, costumes, camera movements and angles, even dialogue was inspired by Mean Girls. For Clueless, we stalked and studied the montage opening scene to figure out how we were going to create ours. I feel that we did an amazing job portraying that Dariah had an amazing lifestyle before she moved schools. We also looked at other films for smaller things like Young Royals for lighting, Hannah Montana for Dariah's narrative. I looked at multiple teen dramas and video analysis of certain teen dramas to help me follow the genre to my best ability. All the research I did in the preliminary phase like for the genre, and other opening scenes, representation and techniques allowed my film to be the way it is now. I see the cycle and how everything is now brought back to my heavy research made beforehand.

     

Stills of Mean Girls, Cady inspriartion

                                                           

    

Stills of Mean Girls, Regina, Gretchen and Karen inspiration 

Stills of Clueless, Cher inspiration 

Production: The Live

In the film, we wanted to utilize the fact that we all heavily technology and social media in our day to day lives. During the conflict of the 3 mean girls and Dariah, we wanted a bystander (student) to come in, "filming" the whole interaction on Instagram. Towards the end of our opening scene, we wanted to the last seconds to be viewed through the perspective of an Instagram live. Achieving that without opening an actual public Instagram live was very simple. In this generation, there is ai for everything, so it was very easy to find a app that create fake social media lives with ai generated comments and viewers to make it seem as realistic as possible. I used Parallel Live: Fake live and it was very easy to use for our film. Taking advantage of technology for our film had to be one of the most effective methods for us.

A screen shot of script, stage direction for the Instagram live

       A screenshot of Parallel live, App Store

A still of Dariah in the perspective of the fake live

A still of how the conflict looks in the perspective of the fake live 

As you can see, it worked perfectly.

 Production: "the 3 mean girls"

Taking heavy reference from our model film, Mean girls, we were able to implement the 3 antagonists or "mean girls" look into scene 4, where Dariah (main girl) gets bullied by 3 popular students. We placed the main antagonist, Natalia, right in the middle, with Reagan and Quincy placed on either side. This is replicated from most scenes in Mean Girls, but in specific we tried to replicate the scene where Regina, Karen, Gretchen and Cady are walking in the school hallway.

                                                    

                                                    Still of "The Plastics" Mean Girls Google

                                   

                                                  Still of "The Plastics" Mean Girls Google

                                        

                                                  Still of "The Plastics" Mean Girls Google

                                             

                        A still of the 3 main antagonist or "mean girls" utilizing the rule of thirds

 I noticed juxtaposition was used when Cady, even though she was already accepted in their clique (new and improved wardrobe) was distanced from the three and walking right into trash can. We can infer that she is still consider "less than them" even though she was already socially accepted and she improved her appearance. The point that was put across in that scene was that Cady still wasn't enough to be one of the "mean girls". 

Still of Cady walking with "The plastics" 

We wanted to try and implement a bit of this by showing Dariah reading a book that is about not feeling socially accepted.  Following that, she immediately bumps into the "mean girls" and drops bellow them, looking up to them. The 3 antagonists looking over Dariah shows that they have power and she does not; telling the audiences that they are greater than Dariah in terms of social hierarchy.

A still of the 3 mean girls looking down at Dariah and establishing their power

Production: The mall montage

Using our other model film Clueless as reference, we wanted an intro to establish who Dariah, the main character, used to be; along with her previous lifestyle to show a stark contrast from her previous lavish life and her now, meek and simple life. By doing this, we decided to do a montage similar to the one in the opening scene of Clueless. The difference between the montage in Clueless and the montage in our film is that we decided to utilize stills rather than actual video shots. The reason we have decided to do a still montage was to be efficient on timing in our film, so that it does not take up a long portion of our film. This is how we implemented this idea of a montage in our film.

Clueless opening scene- skyMTV Youtube

A still of Cher shopping in Clueless, used roughly as refence

A still Dariah shopping, viewing clothes

Another still of Dariah Shopping in Lululemon

I wanted some stills with Dariah and her friend that she brought with her to shop in the film, using several different locations just to show them having a conversation like Cher and Dionne in this mall scene in Clueless. I am glad to say that we really took advantage of our location as we were able to get plenty of great stills in different sceneries to add to the mall montage.

References:

A still of Cher and Dionne in the mall, Clueless

What we got:

A still of the two chatting in Lululemon

                               

a still of second scenery used was the escalator, for visual variety

A still of third scenery used, having them both sitting on the top hotspots

A still of fourth scenery used, making sure both stayed in between two hotspots

A still of fifth scenery used, utilizing the rule of thirds with both sitting on a hotspot

A still of sixth scenery, focusing on the luxury brand, Prada 

A still of the two trying on clothing

A still of them smelling luxury perfumes, utilizing rule of thirds

We took advantage of the props, especially luxury name brands, to add to the narrative that Dariah old lifestyle was lavish and plentiful. (Definitely don't want to spoil to many of the stills)

Production: House party scene

 House party scene 

As stated in my "Planning: New found representation and location" blog, we decided to add more representation into our film; representing teens who struggle with substance abuse and peer influence. Along with this new representation, we created a new location to add into scene 2; this location is where we will film Dariah (main character) at a house party, getting notably drunk ( I discussed more about this in that blog). I also spoke about how we should use lighting, using the show, Young Royals, as reference.

In terms of achieving this:

Narrative- I strongly believe that we achieved the "drunken state" Dariah was supposed to act out. Using stage directions, Shaunae was able to play a drunk and confused person; using the rule of thirds, my cinematographer made sure to align Dariah with the right hotspot and the bystander's phone with the left hotspot. The scene starts with a close up on Dariah's face and zooms out to show Dariah's full drunken state. We want to leave the audience shock, denying their previous assumptions of Dariah's character. We want the audience to see a character they assumed was a sweet innocent girl, because of her ideals, be involved in such activities. 

Screenshot of the script, the house party scene, with stage directions Shaunae was told to follow

 

                    Stock photo of a intoxicated girl                        A still of what we achieved

Comparing the two, the only notable difference is the locations and background. Rather than using more people to fill in the space, we put the camera in a certain angle so that the viewer would only see Shaunae and a little bit of her surroundings. The state of her body is very similar to the stock photo; having her body slumped halfway on the ground with her head sitting in an uncomfortable position proves to the viewers that she is drunk. Moreover, we took advantage with the symbolism behind the red solo cup, keeping our film appropriate by not using an actual liquor bottle like the one in the stock photo.

Lighting- We didn't get to achieve the lighting we planned while filming. Because the location was outside in my backyard, strategically placing colorful strobe lights and sudden white flashes was not an easy task. Instead, we were able to provide lighting so that the audience can see the actor (since the scene takes place at night). Using a powerful LED stand and an overhead light, we created a base for the lighting. We hope that in editing we can create the illusions of strobes lights in the background, but for now, we did not achieve the look.

The video we took reference-

                                                      Snippet from Young Royals S1 Ep1

What we used-

A still showing our cinematographer playing with the light stand

How it looks- 

                                    Two stills showing the lighting  

 Mise en scene through costumes: 3 "mean girls" 

Planning costumes was very important as we wanted to implement how costumes and mise en scene was created in Mean Girls. For the "Plastics" or 3 mean girls, they always had a way to match their clothing, whether they all wore pink or all wore skirts , they always managed to match. I wanted to follow this idea for our 3 main antagonists by having them all have a piece of clothing that is the same color. I decided on Red as the main color, with black supporting it. The red would contrast the bland beige color that Dariah ends up wearing. Through mise en scene, the viewers can understand that the main antagonists have higher power than Dariah, since red symbolizes strong emotions like power, passion, and anger.

A still of the "Plastics" matching in both pink colored clothing and skirts Mean Girls

                                                 

A still of the 3 antagonists matching in terms of red and black clothing

Mise en scene through costumes: Main character Dariah

 Mise en scene through costumes: Main character Dara

For Dariah, I wanted to contrast her appearance from the 3 main antagonists by having her wear muted colors, like beige and light wash denim. In terms of mise en scene, beige symbolizes calmness and simplicity which represents her new found character, and starkly contrasts the power and attitude that the mean girls represent. I also had the costumes be baggier compared to the antagonists, who wore more fitted clothing. Replicating the outfit Cady wore in mean girls was not ideal as the difference in outfit trends is huge between now and 2004. So we used this picture as inspiration and utilized  clothing that would be worn nowadays.

            

                           A screenshot inspiration Mean girls           The implementation in our film

Mall Montage scene:

Another outfit we had to consider for Dariah was for her mall montage scene. I wanted her to wear something completely opposite from the outfit she wore for Scene 1, 3 and 4. Rather than muted neutral colors, I wanted her to wear a bright color, so I opted for hot pink. In mise en scene, hot pink represents femininity, innocence, and beauty, which describes her past lifestyle (besides the innocent part). In comparison to the baggy clothing, I wanted her to wear something more fitted, preferably with a brand name for her to show off. 

A still of Dariah's contrasting outfit

A still of Dariah shopping in Lululemon

I really wanted to advantage of the fact that there is Lululemon store in the mall that we went to, which was convenient for us because the brand Dariah wore in that scene is Lululemon, so it makes it seem like she constantly shops in that popular store.

Even for the old friend, casted to be with Dariah for the mall montage, matched her by wearing Lululemon, which signifies that she has similar taste and status as Dariah.

A still of Dariah and Old friend shopping in Lululemon

House party scene:

The last costume I had to create for Dariah was for the house party scene. Because Dariah is showing a different "rebelling" side to her in this scene, I wanted her to wear something somewhat similar to the mall montage outfit but to also go with the "party" vibe. I believe bold text on her top would really catch the audience attention, so I opted for a top with words "wet" in bold caps. I came to find that the word played perfectly for the scene because another definition for wet is to show a lack of strength or to be feeble and weak, which is essential the state of a person under the influence. I still wanted to add a lot of color so I decided to have her wear a multi-colored sweater to tie it all together.

A still of house party scene outfit

Production: altering the script and shot list

 Altering the Script and Shot List

Throughout production, a lot of changes were made to the script and shot list as me and my cinematographer thought of new ideas that best fit our film. I had to make a few adjustments to the script while she made creative changes to the shot list, mainly changing camera angle and movement. In this blog I will be focusing on the changes I made in the script while my cinematographer will be discussing the changes to the shot list, you can see her blog @ https://underc0verspy.blogspot.com/.

Script: 

The first change I made to the script was to accommodate our main talent, Shaunae, who plays Dariah. The original script shows a major conflict between Dariah and Natalia, who is played by Tatiana;  I have mentioned before, is not in friendly terms with Shaunae in reality. The specific stage direction of the original script tells Natalia to drop a book on Dariah's head as she verbally insults her. 

                Screen shot of script that states Natalia dropping the book on Dariah's head

My main talent expressed to me that she was not completely comfortable to get a book dropped on her head by this person in specific and I completely understood. At first she assured me that she would be fine and but I understand that she wanted to change her mind. After speaking with the rest of my crew, I decided to just have Natalia drop the book next to Dariah rather than on her head, Dariah would then flinch in response. This was script change #1

Screenshot of script change #1

While filming scene 4, we ran a few test runs of Tatiana dropping the book next to her and I ultimately came to the decision that it would be best to remove it completely. I did this for the main reason that it just did not end up looking right during filming and didn't make sense with the previous shots. We ended up just leaving the book on the floor as it was in the previous shots and leaving out that part of the shot. This would be script change #2

Screenshot of script change #2

The next change I made to the script was in scene 2, where Dariah speaks on her past and ends up talking about the traumatic event that led her to switch schools. At first we planned to do a still of her houseparty scene, but after a few contemplations s of the entire film and envisioning how it would look like after the mall montage, I decided that doing a full scene would work better with the montage stills that occurred beforehand. After discussing that idea with my cinematographer, I created stage directions for Shaunae to follow while we film the houseparty scene. This would be script change #3

                                                        Screenshot of script change #3

I am so glad that I decided to change the still to an actual shot as it adds more to the narrative. We added sound in the background to add the affect of an actual party, and even added a bystander to film her so that the audience can make the inference that the video taken will be posted to the public, ruining her families reputation.

Production: Audio complications

Audio Complications

The microphone kit we attempted to use:

A still of cinematographer filming with mic plugged in

Audio was one of the top 3 complications we had throughout the film; "Are we or are we not using a microphone kit", was a question that was running in my head. My assistant director informed be that using the microphone kits could be tricky and is not the most reliable thing to us for audio. He warned me that there could be a good chance that all our video's audios could turn out bad if I only relied on the microphone kits. I came up with the solution to make two takes of everything: take 1 with the microphone kit plugged in AND take 2 without the microphone kit plugged in. We decided to only test this out for shooting day 1 so that we can decide which method would be best for the remaining of the film. 

After listening and comparing the two audios, we came to the quick decision that filming without the mic was the better option. When my cinematographer got home, she listened back to all the shots to ensure that the audio was clear and loud after exporting and I received report that it was good and effective. Currently I do not have any recordings of the audio with the microphone to show a stark comparison with audio without the mic.

                                    

                    A still of my cinematographer filming without the microphone plugged in

Productions: Complications with the schedule

Complications with the schedule

February 15th, at Barnes & Noble, was the first day of filming; we only had 2/4 talents show up, which is extremely inconvenient as all the actors were required to be there. Koran, who plays "Quinton", is a less crucial character in the film, who has only a few shots that focuses on just him; majority shots in this scene requires Koran with the other two missing actors. Due to this setback, we had to create more filming days, where all talents are available. This was very complicated to do as we only have a limited amount of days to finish filming, and February is an extremely busy month for everyone. We all came to the conclusion to have a 2nd day to film the Barnes & Noble scene on the 17th, which was a holiday. 

                                                      Still of actor 1/4: Quinton Malone 

                                                       Still of actor 2/4: Dariah Clemonte 

Feb 17th

February 17th was the designated day to continue filming the Barnes & Noble scene. I had the expectation to complete the entire film that day because all talents needed for scene 4 will be present and on time. Unfortunately, I got the unwanted message from Koran stating that his rehearsals for the Emma musical got moved to 4:00, which was our call time. Ultimately we had to film with 3/4 talents, which is better than the 15th, but still caused us to be behind on scheduling. This caused me to figure out another day to finally finish filming scene 4. Because time is so limited we would have to film in March, which was something I was trying my hardest to avoid. As a director, I understand the role I have to take to ensure that everyone will be available because we cannot afford any more schedule changes.

                                            A still with the main antagonist