I Love Group Meetings

     Today in class we gathered in groups to discuss all of our different projects and gave each other helpful critiques and suggestions. Some of my other classmates expressed some concerns in their projects such as solidifying a storyline for those who are a film opening or creating an idea for the publication of a magazine. Another common issue I noticed was like myself, other students are primarily focusing on looking for the right props to incorporate and where to find them, other than Amazon or looking into making my own.

     The other students liked my story and the aspects of focusing on character development through visuals. One suggestion that one of the group mates had mentioned was to look into another local park to shoot the outdoor baseball scene, at Country Isles Park/ Heron Park. The field has a more familiar and local feel and look to it with homes visible behind and around the field. The field seems more worn in and used than the well kept Regional Community Park, which may fit better as the characters would look like they grew up there.

     I was able to contribute a lot in offering suggestions toward storylines of people who were unsure of their plot. In the group discussions, I also saw that other people were starting to worry whether or not their film opening would resemble more of a trailer than an opening to a film. I really enjoyed these group discussions cause I was able to contribute helpful insight for other groups and I received effective feedback and suggestions to progress forward in my film opening.

So my film opening will consist of two locations, the home of the main character at the beginning, and a baseball field during the second half. For the house scene, I will most likely be using my own home, making it very tidy and neat. I need to now consider props to fill the space; My father had an old collection of baseball mitts that I will be able to use to decorate the room of the main character and possibly the home. I will also need to find different baseball photos and posters to hang up around the bedroom of the main character. I already own a few baseball bats, mitts, and balls for all the characters to use later on the field. There will be other props to embrace the theme and tone of the film opening as well as hints as to aspects of the main character.


I am thinking to look on amazon.com for some baseball posters or look to do some research on the price to print my own at a Kinkos. I am looking for pretty generic posters but I am looking for one sort of poster, in particular, one of Barry Bonds, with his name on the poster similar to this:




On the field, the characters will be wearing generic athletic clothing. The location I am planning on using for the baseball field is Regional Community Park in my nearby area. The fields are usually kept and are pretty open during the weekdays right after school, but not after 6 or so, when the little league games start. The park has 8 baseball fields so finding an open one should not be an issue. I think the next part of this project I should begin to consider is to look long and hard for the right music and suspense tones, as well as creating a visual guideline in the form of a storyboard.






Barry Bonds Poster: “1993 Barry Bonds Poster.” Etsy, www.etsy.com/listing/629791308/1993-barry-bonds-poster.

Baseball fan room Photo: “Boys' Room Baseball Art.” KidSpace Stuff, 16 July 2013, www.kidspacestuff.com/blog/2013/07/boys-room-baseball-art/.

My Story's Plot (As of now)

I have been contemplating the idea for the opening of the past few days and especially today. I am sort of drawn between two story options, but I am going to go with my gut on this one.


So the premise of the story is that a teenage roughly 16/17 years old. Who lives with his mother, as of now I don't think I will include a father character. The main character let’s say his name is “Barry” because I know my main actor will love that name, and a famous baseball player shares the name, Barry Bonds. The beginning of the opening will start with a long single take, to establish character development between the mother and sone and just the “Barry”. The shot will be a dolly shot scanning through the home and then the room of the main character.


Much like how when E.T. is brought into the room full of hints toward the characters, time, theme, and directors favorite things. The camera and viewers will slowly walk through the house and room to gain an understanding of the character and will hint towards later significant items or references. The main character is in his room and gathers his things to play baseball with his friends as he tells his moms he going out and the usual “of course ill be safe, I play baseball all the time”.


I have thought out a good amount of specific shots I want to achieve. My good friend Tomas has a gimble to attach a DSLR which is what I was planning to use to record. We often work together on many projects so hopefully, he will let me borrow his gimble to get very smooth and fluid shots.



Later within the story, the main character goes out to a baseball field and plays with his friends roughly 4 or 5 others and they are just playing a scrimmage game of baseball. The main character is constantly cheering on all his other friends from both teams after he has hit and made it to second base. This will be intercut with faster editing cuts and a suspenseful rising tension sound effect that builds for a long time until the tension break of a loud pop from the baseball hitting the bat and then beaming straight for the main character’s head where he is hit and then collapses.



All of his friends gather around him and someone grabs his phone from his pocket to call his mom and the police and the last shot is of his mother answering the phone and driving off toward the baseball field. Where the title will then appear which I still must come up with.

Aspects to Include

     Although the entire story has not crossed my mind yet, I do want to create a more serious drama that can be enjoyed especially by a younger adult audience. Some of my favorite films of all time take a thoughtful theme that all people experience in life and focus the film’s plot on that theme. The film “The Terminal” Starring Tom Hanks focuses on the theme of overcoming large obstacles and adapting to new situations. He is stuck and not allowed to leave JFK Airport in New York after his country started a war while he was in the air. He learns to be grateful for what he has and quickly learns to adapt to make it by. Within my film and film opening, I want to focus on a similar theme to this, as really anybody is able to relate to a broad theme of overcoming a large obstacle in your path.

     My main character and most of the characters will be teenagers who are very close to each other and great friends. The story mainly focuses on one of the boys who, at the beginning through character development (which I will delve into later), creates a fast relationship with viewers as being a nice, sweet, neat, and caring young boy who only aspires for great things. I love the film “The Sandlot”, I grew up watching that probably dozens of times a year and I always aspired to have or create a friendship that they children had, or also in the film “The Goonies”. The main character in the film is an avid baseball fan and close with his mother and father much like myself. I really want the viewers to establish a relationship and connection with the main character.



     My overall planning schedule for this project over the next six or so weeks is to first establish a script, actors and chose all my equipment. Next, I will create a storyboard, and gather props and scout locations. Following that, roughly two weeks from now I will hopefully begin filming hopefully within 2 days as long as weather permits, and I will also try to gather foley sounds to further attract the viewers and make them feel as though they are part of the film. After filming I will be editing, and I love to edit anything and hopefully, I will be using Adobe Premiere CS6, which is great editing software that I use often in my television production class. I hope to be done editing and done completely done with the film opening, by April 1. I will soon go fully in depth as to what the full story will be within a few days.


"The Terminal" Poster: The Terminal Score. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2019, from https://www.amazon.com/Terminal-Score-John-Williams/dp/B00029RSSQ

"The Sandlot" Poster: Schedeen, J. (2018, March 21). 14 Things You Never Knew About 'The Sandlot'. Retrieved February 24, 2019, from https://www.moviefone.com/2018/04/05/the-sandlot-movie-trivia/

Where to Start?

     Well, now I am really going full force with this project. I have been thinking of different ideas but I haven't definitely chosen one. It is different and new to have such freedom when it comes to this project and our methods, but I am very excited and motivated. Although I haven't come up with my idea yet for the film opening I am sure of a pretty sure of a few other elements to use within the film opening.

     One thing that stuck out to me during our lesson on film openings was the importance of the very first shot in the opening, as it is the first thing that viewers see and they will make quick assumptions to the development of the story. The best first shots of a film, in my opinion, are those that are memorable long after seeing the movie, such as in “2001: A Space Odyssey”, and “La La Land”. Both film openings reveal little about the main character but reveal so much about the plot of the film as well as tone and mood. 2001: A Space Odyssey opening shot was slow paced, and showed the sun rising over the earth representing life in the vast dark outer space, which pretty much is the basis for the plot of the film. I want my very first shot specifically to be the most memorable and let it give details to the plot if the film.

     I decided to look for some research toward other common structures of film openings and one technique that caught my eye was to have a “mini-movie” as part of the opening for the film. Similar to “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark”, the opening to the film is similar to a mini-film with an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. When the viewer watches Indiana Jones be very adventurous, bold and smart they understand a lot of the character and the mood as well as the theme and tone of the whole film. It is also a great way to capture the audience's attention right away and keep them hooked. However, with the 2 minute limit for my film opening, I am contemplating whether this structure is plausible or not.



This was the website I used to research about the different structures of film openings: “5 Hacks for Writing a Killer Opening Scene.” ScreenwritingU Magazine, 29 Apr. 2018, https://www.screenwritingumagazine.com/2018/02/28/5-hacks-writing-killer-opening-scene/

This video was very informative and focused specifically on the importance of the very first shot in the opening sequence: Now You See It. “Opening Shots Tell Us Everything.” YouTube, YouTube, 31 July 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZhFtd1QZWc

Where I found a photo of the opening sequence of the film, “2001: A Space Odyssey”: Con, I. (2010, September 22). 2001 A Space Odyssey Opening in 1080 HD. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-QFj59PON4

This is where I found the visual for a film plot structure: Clever Prototypes, LLC. “Plot of a Story | Plot Diagram Template | Narrative Story Arc.” Storyboard That, Storyboard That, www.storyboardthat.com/articles/e/plot-diagram

Reflection On Music Marketing Campaign

     The music marketing project that I completed with my classmates consisted of gathering as much information as I could, and use that to focus on common practices used by companies and bands to market and distribute their productions. Primarily the center of attention was placed on Genre and target audiences and adapting to consumers the best way possible. The majority of my research consisted of studying the platforms and techniques used by other artists of the same genre. Conducting research on established artists, helped me to understand what techniques and tactics have worked well and those that have not worked out in order to properly market and distribute a new and upcoming band.

     My group's marketing creations and examples consisted of working with consumer product companies to create advertisements with popular companies such as Apple or Dunkin Donuts who consumers interact with their products and advertisements near daily. After completing this project, I have walked away learning that I must show much more reasoning behind my decision making, as well as finding more of a concrete step by step plan rather than overall goals to achieve in the marketing plan. I also noticed that like many of my peer’s projects, it lacked creativity and innovation. I believe I have a better understanding of ways to make a presentation more engaging as well as an understanding of how to acquire the correct information to formally make my point.



https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QO3BUXdp6rgkyEGnKKTTHLXyG80LSCtjHpDkEh5Hht4/edit?usp=sharing