Having to work twice as hard

Hello all.  Today in class, we put time aside to divide ourselves into small groups and discuss our projects.  In doing so, there was a lot I learned about what direction to take.

First of all, I really enjoyed the opportunity to be table to converse with my peers about the ideas we have coming into the project, and listening to their feedback.  When discussing Circus Monkey, they all seemed really excited about the film, and they all had good things to say.

However, I've gotten to a point where I'm quite nervous about the fate of this project.  When discussing how far along everyone is with my group, I realized that most people were wrapping up filming, and had already created the print component.  This subconsciously told me that I need to hurry my shit up!

I realized that our group has developed a sense of notoriety, and that only makes me want to push harder to be able to realize out vision.  Regardless, I'm worried that we won't be able to execute it.  These thoughts of failure have been plaguing my brain for the last week-or-so, and I'm excited to finally start filming and get ourselves back on track.

We'll start filming this weekend, so expect a blog to come then!

Finally filming!

Finally, after so much time lost to conflicting schedules, we have created a cohesive filming timeline that works for all of us!  Today in class, Clara, Virginia, and I sat down to orchestrate the preferred schedule.  Despite settling on filming over the weekend, there are still certain conflicts that will make things a little difficult for us.  Mainly, Clara had to go on a last-minute trip to Boston, and won't be back until Sunday.  I'll also be occupied part of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and Ren (who was going to help us with cinematography) is also booked on Sunday.

Regardless, we persevere!

Virginia and I have decided that we'll be filming with Jack on Friday and Saturday, and Clara and Virginia will film some scenes on Sunday.  I believe that this timeline will work for all of us, and we'll be able to get a lot of filming out of the way.

Additionally, we've put aside time next Monday, Tuesday, and Friday to film as well.

Filming Issues Pt.2

Things have definitely gotten to the point where I am starting to panic a little, I will not lie.

We are now nearing the end of Week 7 out of 10, and we have yet to even make a filming schedule.  Originally, we were planning on filming all of Week 8, but unsurprisingly, even more scheduling conflicts have arisen.  After talking to Jack, he confirmed that the only days that he's free to film are Monday, Friday, and the weekend.  This is a big problem.

We definitely can't film on Monday (ie. literally tomorrow), as we don't have the equipment, Jack hasn't even read the script, and we haven't come to a definite conclusion on wardrobing.  Friday could potentially be doable, but I have an important event I need to go to at night, and Clara just received news that she needs to fly to Boston at the end of this week.  We could attempt to film on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday without Clara, but we also want her to be included in the production.

This left us thinking about perhaps getting a different actor.  Although that would be a heartbreaking last-minute decision to make (as I really do think that Jack is the perfect choice for this role), it is one that we have to consider.

Clara, Vir, and I have decided that we will meet up after school tomorrow and decide where we want to continue with things.  I will update y'all once we come to a definite conclusion.

Acquiring our most important prop

The year is 2056.  I sit in a dark room, plopped uncomfortably in a rickety wooden chair whose origins are unknown to me.  The darkness of the room surrounds me, suffocating me even, and I feel frightened and hopeless.  I have no idea how big this room truly is.  I have no idea how long I have been in here for.  All I do is sit and wait in this godless abyss, hoping that one day the reason for my suffering is revealed to me in a biblical fashion.  Suddenly, I hear a loud screech; it's a noise that I can sense everywhere, but the location of its origin is lost to me.  Then, I finally understand: it's an intercom system.  The voice on the other side pipes up, sounding monotonous but proud.  It speaks to me, saying over and over again "Monkey f***er.  Monkey f***er.  Monkey f***er."

I understand now.  The room is my own subconscious, and the voice on the intercom is my own cognition.  For days, this project has plagued my nights and my days.  I worry that we won't be able to pull off such a massive task with the little time we have left.  Yet, we must prevail.

Hopefully this analogy wasn't too stupid.

What I meant to say was, we've been making progress.  Slowly, sure, but progress nonetheless.  Today, we were able to get one of our most important props printed and ready to go!  As I'm sure you're all aware by now, the reason for Diego's spiral into online fame is due to his absurd claims of wishing to have sexual intercourse with a monkey.  Since this is so important to the plot, we needed to conceive of a potential reasonable scenario where Diego could make the association between sex and apes.  In the end, we decided that he would attempt to look at PornHub, ultimately fail to find anything of interest, slowly become focused on a monkey calendar that is nearby his desk, and then events ensue...

Clara, who is phenomenal at graphic design, created a calendar for us to use with a picture of an attractive female monkey on it (I mean, as attractive as female monkeys can be...?).  We then got it printed at CVS, took it home with us, and added little doodles and notes to make it seem less like a prop and more like something that has been used frequently.  Now, we're ready to set this up in my brother's room and make it look real.  I'm really contemplating putting this up in front of his desk without warning him beforehand.  I think that could be quite funny in fact.

Jesse we need to GRIND !!!

Today was a very eventful day.  Clara, Virginia, and I were all finally able to meet up and discuss our creative vision in detail.  We met up at Virginia's house early in the afternoon, made some mate and brought out some snacks, and got to work.  We all divided the script into scenes and shots, and then Virginia and Clara (who both have a lot more expertise than I do in actual media production) took on the role of creating a shot list.  While they planned the composition and lighting of every shot, I took on the role of illustrating their vision in a storyboard. 

Although we rarely prepare for a film this much, it felt adequate to do here.  The three of us have extremely high hopes for this production, and we want to be as prepared as possible for when the filming days are finally among us.

ft. Joaco drawing

Although we were able to organize the entire script into shots, we only storyboarded the first act.  The second act, which will be made up mostly of montage sequences, will be much harder to conceptualize without first having all the footage that we want to include.  This is because the montage will include both Diego's own deranged TikToks, but also videos made by the "general public" reacting to his claims.  This is something that we plan to film ourselves, and possibly include cameos from other people in our class.  Additionally, we will be relying on the help of Andrew Dunham, a close friend of ours who is also a very skilled visual effects animator.  He will be helping us bring to life the social media sphere in the form of cool graphic sequences and animations.  Because we're still undecided on how we want this to look, we decided to set it aside for later.

We also decided that we want to use a lot of cool-toned lighting.  We want to give the impression that his PC is the only source of light in his dim room, and we'll be using blue, purple, and green RGB lights to emulate that.  Since we're filming soon, we might need to pay a visit to BECON and rent filming equipment.

The Script is Done !!!!!!

Hello all.  By this point in the project, we have fallen majorly behind schedule.  Due to so many scheduling conflicts, we haven't been able to fully sit down and work on this together, and we have all been extremely busy in our personal lives as well.  Regardless, we're not the type of people to give up that easily.  Instead, the issues have only led us to be more passionate and determined to make this work.

Here she is, so nice and pretty

Thus, I am very very excited to announce that Circus Monkey has been officially written!  This is a major step for us, both in the project and in our own work ethics.  Virginia, who is our resident screenwriter, feels extremely accomplished in having written this script.  This is one of the longest works she's ever written, and we all agree that it's also one of the best.

I'll save you all from reading it in its entirety, but I'll provide a basic summary.  The film will be divided into three acts; the first one will focus on developing the character and building up to the major point of conflict, which is, of course, the monkey-f***ing TikTok.  The second act will begin just as the video begins to gain traction, and it will follow Diego's descent into semi-madness as he becomes obsessed with this online persona and the attention he's been receiving (no matter if it's good or bad).  Finally, the third act will display how he is no longer getting the same attention, and how he feels the need to lash out and do something even more severe to be in the spotlight again.  The confrontation between Diego and his ex-girlfriend (who we've named Ericka) will also occur in the third act.

A lot more work still needs to be done.  We plan on meeting up soon to work on a shot list and possible storyboard, and then we will create a filming schedule afterward.  Keep an eye out for more blogs to come!

Brainstorming postcards

Focusing heavily on pre-production elements, it's come time that we start planning our postcard.  We've thrown around a few ideas for what we want to include, but the most likely option will be a vertical 4x6-inch rectangle with text emulating an iMessage chat.

This is a clever way of getting all our information across, while also staying true to the subject matter of the film: social media.  In class, I quickly sketched an outline of our composition, with the film name at the top, social media and film festival info at the bottom, and important names and viewing dates somewhere in the middle.

However, I fear that this is too limited, and the simplicity of it all will make the postcard appear unfinished.  On the other hand, we're cramming a lot of information in the front, which could make it look too crowded.

We still need to finish working out the kinks, and split the information more evenly between the front and back.  We also had another idea of making an illustration of Diego with a monkey being reflected on his glasses, but we would need to wait until we began filming, as we would need to get a reference image from our footage.

Graphics

Our production is very social media heavy, and this is a fine line to work through.  On one hand, we need to explicitly show the TikToks that Diego posts and the comments that he's receiving, but on the other hand, we don't want this to be too cheesy and teen rom-com-esque.  To combat this, we had the idea to include graphic sequences showing the comments pour in, and that way we can demonstrate the mixed reactions while also maintaining a pretty put-together feel.

Now, creating the graphics is a completely different beast.  We all had different ideas about how we wanted it to be done, and the more well-executed ideas required a level of Adobe After Effects knowledge that none of us posses.  Thus, we decided to appoint the help of a close friend of ours named Andrew.  Andrew is, quite simply, amazing at creating special effects.  I've seen a lot of his work, and his dedication and talent when it comes to creating graphics is phenomenal.  We've talked to him about helping us in this production, and he's excitedly agreed.

Now, the only thing that was left was to create a list of TikTok comments that we wanted to include as a reaction to Diego's first controversial posting.  Clara and I both worked on this list, drawing inspiration from our own experiences of witnessing the creepy things that people say online.  A few days after, I coincidentally came across a short clip from a documentary on online pedophilia while scrolling through Twitter.  The clip originally caught my eye, and as I watched, I made note of a graphic they used and I really liked.  So, we sent both the list and the video to Andrew, and we now await his response.

Giving Diego "Depth"

Diego is a chronically online douchebag who wastes away his time on video games and social media.  In order to create this character, we needed to give him a Twitter account.  This account would serve as a vessel for him to spew out his bizarre opinions once he gains internet traction, and it could also serve the purpose of characterization.  Being the resident Twitter user in our group, I took it upon myself to create an account for our fictional protagonist.

I titled the account "@diegofuego451," creating a perfect mix of nonchalant-ness and cringe.  To me, the username shows a level of consideration, but not enough to the point that he cares about branding.

Afterward, it was time to polish up the account and give it the appearance of a real user.  We decided to take some time today in class to do a mini "photoshoot" with Jack, and we used these pictures for both the Twitter profile picture and a promotional post on Instagram that will advertise the actors.  I wanted the profile picture to be a selfie where he's donning a goofy smile, similar to other pictures of nerdy boys I've seen around the internet.  We also had him mess up his hair a little, as the gelled-up look was too preppy for the character we envisioned.

After the profile pic was decided upon, we had to move onto the header.  This was where I hit a roadblock, as headers on Twitter tend to be either promotional, representative of a brand, or pretty much random.  I considered making the header a promotional advertisement of our film, but ultimately decided to simply make the account look as "realistic" as possible.  Since Diego is an avid video game player, I decided to build off of that angle to complete the page.  I looked up screengrabs of Call of Duty gameplay, and instead used that as the header.  This is still a very early version of the Twitter (and it will most likely be subject to change), but I'm happy with what we have thus far.

Here are some other photos that we took (including one of Virginia, as she will be playing Diego's ex-girlfriend), for your viewing pleasure!

Weekend Update

Hello again, my loyal readers.  This weekend, we took some time to catch up on small things that needed to be done.  After having divided the work, we realized that Virginia would write the script, Clara would post to the social media page, and I would create the postcard advertisement.

We are proud to announce that we now have an Instagram that you can all follow!  The account is named after the film, and we're gonna start posting over this next week.  For our first postings, we've decided to dedicate a post to our two major actors: Jack and Virginia.  However, this will need to be done next week as we need to take headshots of them during class.

For now, enjoy our early postings to the Instagram!

As for everything else, we are almost done with the script, and early versions of the postcard are being drafted.

Postcard Research Pt.2

Hello again.  Apart from already having conducted my own research on short film postcards, we also went over some more conventions last class.  I learned that the cards are size 4 x 6 in., double sided, and can be either horizontal or vertical.  They also include the title, key art, director's name, social media information, film festival/awards, and the the date, time, and location of streaming.

When looking for more examples, which there are very few of, I found several that include these key elements.  I realized that most examples feature a fully-colored character contrasting a dark background, which is something that we were planning for our postcard as well.

We had originally planned to illustrate a postcard featuring Diego's face in the dark, lit up by his computer screen, with his glasses reflecting the image of a monkey.  We thought that this would be funny, while also creating intrigue about the plot.  Yet, we fear that this focuses too much on the monkey aspect, and doesn't provide an accurate representation of the plot.  We also drafted an idea for a vertical postcard that imitates a phone, and we could use this to further present the social media aspect.  Updates to come soon.

And it’s name will be…

Hello all.  Since we won’t be able to film until Spring Break (or possibly until the week after), it’s really imperative that we get as much work done in these weeks as possible.  This includes posting to the social media, working on the postcard, and finalizing costuming and location.  But, in order to progress, we need one of the most essential aspects of the short film: a title.

The title went through a lot of changes from the start of the project to now.  At first, we were pretty determined on naming it “Liberal Dogma,” both because we thought that it would represent the incel mentality of wanting to commit bestiality, and also because it’s pretty funny. However, the title changed as our storyline evolved.  Virginia wanted the name to be associated to boyhood, and for the title to be something along the lines of “Boyish.”  However, Clara and I both agreed that the title should deal more with the social media attention-seeking aspect, since that’s really what the bulk of the story is about.  I drafted the name “Traction,” but we ultimately threw it out for being too vague.

Finally, we came up with the perfect name: Circus Monkey.  This title perfectly encapsulates the social media aspect, the need for attention and providing entertainment, and is also a cheeky little reference to the monkey.

After looking at some fonts to incorporate for marketing and key art, we decided that the Plastic Beach font was perfect.  The wonky letters show the distortion in the character's mentality, and also add an air of whimsicality, which is a nice touch.  Overall, I like that this font doesn't take itself too seriously, but still generates intrigue.

Filming Issues

Just like the monkey, we're f***ed.

Today, our group met up with Stoklosa again to discuss the film outline we created.  Surprisingly, she really liked the ending.  However, she had some critiques over other elements.  Namely, we had originally included a funny sequence where Diego opens PornHub, gets distracted looking at a picture of a monkey, and then first makes the connection between the mammal and sex.  We thought that this would create a cohesive connection between the two, but would also be comical and fairly light-hearted.  Stoklosa criticized this, claiming that the scene implies that Diego really does want to have sex with the monkey, and it discredits the idea that he's only stating this for attention online.

We argued against her claim, explaining that the tweet stemmed from a real thought, and that that then inadvertently sets off a chain of social media attention that he wasn't expecting.  We still want to keep the scene, but we might need to go back to the drawing board and make some changes.

However, the biggest issue that we realized is that we have hella scheduling conflicts.  Like, a lot of them.  Trust me.  There’s a lot.

First of all, Jack, our protagonist, will be starring in our school's production of Legally Blonde, which premieres this week.  This means that he won't be available on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  Saturday is unavailable for us, and so is next Monday.  Additionally, Clara and Virginia will be leaving to California for TV next Wednesday, and they'll be gone until the following Monday.  By this point, it'll be Spring Break.  These conflicts really worry me.  The only days we would have available are Sunday (the 12th) and Tuesday (the 14th), which are also problematic.  There's a chance we won't be able to film on Tuesday since Clara and Vir need to catch a red-eye early next morning.  This leaves only Sunday.

However, I'm worried about filming part of our scenes on Sunday, and the filming the rest two weeks later, as there are several things that could change between then.  For example, Jack could get a haircut, the room could have things moved around, etc.

Therefore, I think that we're gonna prioritize filming over Spring Break and week after that.  This worries me, but I hope that we can use those weeks to make progress in other aspects of the project.

Costuming

Costuming is essential to the development of a character.  We want Diego's mental state to be apparent through the clothes he wears, and we planned to execute this through trashy, dirty, and old beat-down outfits.  As Clara described it, he's very "Shane Dawson big t-shirt."

I want it to be evident that Diego just doesn't care about personal style.  He doesn't care to be well-groomed or fashionable, and his appearance is just barely put together.  We want to convey this through the use of sweatpants and baggy tees, graphic tees with corny designs (think Walmart menswear), and clothes with holes in them.  For shoes, maybe some orthopedic running shoes, Vans, or Adidas Slides.  I'm basing a lot of what I want Diego to wear on outdated trends, lazy-day outfits, and things that people with no style would wear.  I want to dress him in bermudas or basketball shorts, a Gildan tee, and grandpa shoes.

I need to start thinking about what outfits will be associated with each scene.  As most of the production will take place in his bedroom, the outfits will be pretty trashy and require no effort.  However, we all agree that we want his appearance to get progressively worse the deeper that he falls into this spiral for internet validation.  His hair gets greasier, his clothes more stain-ridden, and his glasses filled with fingerprints.

In the scene toward the end where he encounters his ex, I want his appearance to be objectively shitty.  He doesn't necessarily look like he put no effort into his look, but rather he looks straight-up grimy and dirty.  By this point, he's really let himself go.

Casting

Casting is always one of the most difficult aspects of pre-production.  Finding people that match your mental image of the character is difficult enough, but you'd be surprised by how hard it is to find talented actors in a school with over 5,000 students on top of that.  Thankfully for us, we got lucky.

A few weeks ago, I worked on a project for this class with a randomly assigned group.  At first, I was a little doubtful, considering that I didn't know these two kids before, and I also don't like group projects, lol.  To my pleasant surprise, however, I ended up loving the entire creation process.  Amidst filming, I realized that Jack (one of my groupmates) was actually a really talented actor.  This surprised me solely because Scarlet and I are not, and we were the only other people acting in our movie trailer (featuring a cameo from Virginia of course, to no one's surprise).  Looking back though, I really should've seen it coming, considering that Jack's been in AMT since middle school and stars as the protagonist in essentially every school theatre production.  But then again, I've never really been one for musicals.

While filming the trailer, the group of us sat down for a second and just started chatting.  We talked to Jack a little about his acting and where he hopes to take his talents when he goes to college, and that conversation got my gears turning.  Earlier, Virginia and I had been talking about a potential idea for our Media Studies final short film - yeah, we were drafting the monkey-f***ing one.  While brainstorming, Vir and I were incredibly indecisive about who to cast.  We knew that she would play the role of the ex-girlfriend, but we were unsure about who to cast as the protagonist.  We ran through a few options, but immediately crossed them off the list either because they didn't look the part, or because we knew they wouldn't really be able to act the part.  Yet, while talking to Jack, we realized that he was absolutely perfect for the role.

We wasted no time asking him if he'd like to star, and he immediately said yes.  We've discussed the role in detail since, and I'm excited to start filming.  Here's the teaser for the project we worked on together, where he plays the serial killer:

We finally have a cohesive story!

 A lot of progress was made today.  Although we had a broad idea of our story and the plot progression, we really didn't have a fully fleshed-out ending, and we had no sense of direction past the second act either.  Today in class, Clara, Virginia, and I decided to sit down and brainstorm these major details.  

I had written a rough draft for the Act 1 plot progression earlier, but there were a lot of things that needed to be changed.  Mainly, we worried about maintaining realism.  Other things were changed, as we felt that they benefit the progression of events more that way.  For example, Virginia wanted the film to begin with a fight between Diego and his ex-girlfriend where it is established that they broke up and that he's an immature, unsympathetic person.  I was unsure about this idea, as I felt that the major fight scene would be more impactful toward the end of the production, and would serve as a turning point for our protagonist to finally realize that his behaviors have been inexcusable.  After some discussion, we came to the conclusion that Diego and his ex will coincidentally run into each other at the end of the film, and the altercation would occur then.

My ramblings

We also wanted to establish a sense of conflict with his mother.  Diego has never had a strong female influence in his life, and that's what sparks his incel mentality.  In order to create this dynamic, we decided to include a phone call between him and his mother, where it is made evident that his mother is either not fully there, or is just a shitty selfish person overall.

We also needed to work out his "rise to fame" (if you can even call it that), as it's gonna be the most crucial element of the film.  Ultimately, we decided upon a series of events that we are satisfied with, although the actual era of stardom is still subject to change.

However, the biggest decision we took today was when creating the ending.  Originally, we had planned for Diego to meet up with his ex, realize that he has gone too far, and then go home and delete all his socials, only to wallow in his regret and misery.  We weren't necessarily sold on this idea, but we thought it was a perfect mixture of resolution and tragedy.  We approached Stoklosa at the end of the period to discuss our changes - a decision that proved to be monumental for the development of our idea.

Our live Stoklosa reaction

When discussing with her, she mentioned that she liked the idea of the final fight between the two characters, but didn't think that it was enough to "turn" him.  This was a sentiment that we all agreed with, since we were picturing the fight to be a confrontation where his ex is incredibly mature and, for lack of a better word, "normal," while Diego is completely childish and believes that he is in the right.  Instead, Stoklosa gave us an incredible alternative:  What if he realizes that he's not getting the same amount of attention from the monkey-f***ing posts as he once was, and says something even more radical to gain traction again?

This idea sparked a lot of brainstorming.  We all really wanted to be able to execute this perfectly, but we worried about what could be even more radical and vulgar than bestiality.  Finally, we decided to meet up after school and write down all our ideas and draft the script.  It was then, sitting down in a Starbucks past 8pm, working off of an iced expresso and a shitty bagel, that we came up with what we believe is the perfect ending.  It goes as follows: After the fight, fueled by the adrenaline and hatred, realizing that he's not getting nearly as many interactions as he once was, Diego sits down in his car to make one final TikTok: a promise that if gets 1 million likes on his video, he will kill his ex-girlfriend.  And then, the likes and comments begin to pour in.

As of now, we're really satisfied with the direction our story has taken.  All that needs to be done now is to write the script, which Virginia will take care of, being the one with the most talent and experience in this aspect.  Afterwards, we can begin finalizing characterisation and set design, and finally move on to production!