AICE Media Studies

  Characters:  Santana (Andres Santana) Maria (Isabel Reyes) Ellie (Lauren Reitman) Joel (Joseph Paez)  Scene 1:  (non-diegetic mysterious music starts playing) Santana: Talk to me Maria: Joel Cartwright, 27 male, accused of grand theft. Prosecution says Joel stole 20k from his company Quackers Inc.  Santana: (non-diegetic music pauses) Quakers Inc? Maria: Don’t question it. (non-diegetic music continues) Point is our buddy Joel claims he got this gambling, and it really is our word against his Santana : Well then let's go fix his word. (non-diegetic music lowers) Scene 2:  Cuts to him in the interrogation room.: Santana: So 20 thousand huh? How’d you come about that? Joel: Gambling, guess it was my night. Santana: Is that so, huh? Joel: Yeah. That’s so. Santana: What was your hand Joel? Joel: My hand? Santana: Well yeah, You never forget a winning hand, much less a 20 thousand dollar one.  Joel: (hesitates and kinda thinks)  5 queens, had ...

  A key component of the final project  has been  the title sequence for our film's introduction. We have considered many different fonts and found one that gave off a mysterious and professional vibe. All of the titles will blend in and out of the sequence and be typed into the screen. Each one will be placed differently in the sequence depending on each shot.  The titles will last 3 to 4 seconds depending on the shot. Depending on each shot, the color of the title may differ. For some, they will be red and others will be black. The title of our film is likely to be "I'm Sorry" where the "Sorry" is a reddish maroon color and the "I'm" is black. The "Sorry" will be subjectively bigger than the "I'm". This is a common convention we saw in many mystery movie title sequences.  The rest of the titles will be black.   The font we chose to use for each title is "Modern No. 20". This font has a very professional look ...

The participants in this project are... Isabel Reyes Lauren Reitman  Andres Sanatana Franshesca Leiva Locations: We all live very far from each other so we had to choose simple locations we could all get to, those locations are... One of our houses- for simple shot we need to take, where we show the secret behind the mystery Wilton drive- this will be used for a flashback that we are planning to do Courtroom- we will only use this location for the first scene of our movie to give some background information Schedule: 3/4 Saturday - we will begin filming either in one of our houses or Wilton drive 3/6 Monday - we will film in the courtroom 3/8- 8/12 - We will finish any filming that we have left Between the weeks of 3/13-3/25 - we will do editing Between 3/26- 4/1 - we will begin to plan and possibly film the CCR Between 4/2-4/8 - Editing for CCR will begin Between 4/-4/13 - everything will be finalized Health: Our locations over all are pretty safe the only location that maybe need...

 For the next title research blog, we watched the opening sequence to the movie "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". There was a total of 30 titles shown in the two minutes and thirty five seconds of the opening scene. Each title had the same silver font and moved slightly, swiftly horizontally before disappearing. The first title is the film production industries, which is Columbia Pictures and Metro Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. Then, a "Scott Rudin and Yellow Bird Production". Then it moves on to the director, "A David Fincher Film". Afterwards, names of the main actors that are featured in the film are listed. The titles then move on to other production related features, like who the music is by, costume designer, sound designer, editors, etc. Finally, the sequence ends with, "Directed by: David Fincher". I did find it strange that the director was featured twice, once in the beginning and the end. Some of the sequences follow a linear development th...

For the next title research blog, we researched the opening sequence of the movie "Get Out". In this movie, the first scene is a guy getting into a car and driving away. Then there's a clip of a bunch of trees going by like someone is in a car and driving on a long straight road with a bunch of trees next to it. The next clips are old random pictures that are black and white. The black and white shows that the pictures are old. The sequence moves on to a clip of a guy in an apartment drying himself off which shows he just got out of the shower. Then the clip jumpcuts to a girl at a bakery looking at a bunch of treats. It jumpcuts between the guy and the girl and then the girl ends up at his apartment. The guy is looking at pictures on his camera which infers he took the pictures we saw earlier in the sequence. There is a total of 35 titles shown in the 3-minute opening sequence. Each title was in a green-blue font and in the middle of the screen. Each scene shown makes us...

In the opening sequence of "Gone Girl," there is a quick dialogue of a man talking about what he thinks about his wife. Then shortly after that, there is a bunch of clips of different scenery that last about 2 seconds each. In each of those small clips, the titles are displayed. They pop in fast and fade out. Including the enterprises, there are 25 titles displayed in all. The last title displayed is the date and text saying "the morning of". The images displayed give off a very somber and melancholy vibe. It makes me feel like the scene is right before sunrise and it's a quiet morning wherever the setting is. The images also give off an abandoned vibe. The music behind the clips is sort of creepy but calm. It gives the clips a more mysterious vibe. The genre is reinforced well through the music because it adds a more creepy effect to the clips.  It makes the audience curious about why it is so quiet. The lighting is a big convention of the opening sequence. The...

 The viewer was given a time indication in the initial title opening scene with the text "day 1". The name of the movie "A Quiet Place" is displayed in big, bold red letters against a dark background in the second title. The first image informs the viewer of the time, and the second title introduces a title in large, bold red letters, creating a frightening atmosphere. As the story develops, this establishes the scary theme. Because of the dramatic lighting and scenario, you can identify what genre the movie is. They were also pursued by a bus that was moving backwards. This intensified the tension in the movie's first few opening moments. The opening sequences of A Quiet Place 2 attempted to elicit a sense of anticipation and tension. They employed a bus pursuit scene as the victim's car reversed. This encourages viewers to stay for more of the show. A dramatic scenario in the introduction will keep the viewer interested.

 With our research on movie titles, we also came across the website "Watch the Titles." The first thing on the home page was a slide show of their featured title sequences and featured interviews of their designers. When you scroll down more interviews are shown, each one had a video of said interview. A little further down on the homepage were the different categories of title sequences. Some of them were for TV shows, featured films, events, video games, even one called student projects. So of course I had to check that one out. It had a few title sequences sent by actual students around the world. Most of them were assignments for a class so they were either a title sequence for a fake movie or a title sequence for an actual movie, that wasn't actually used in the movie. For each sequence there was an article explaining the thinking process of making each title, some even provide photos of exactly how they did it. For example one of the titles had a background with two...

 Before we began figuring out the titles we would use for our movie, we researched different websites that would help. One of the websites that really caught our eye was "Art of The Titles." The home page has its main titles and two drop down menus, one named "title sequence" and the other named "designers + studios." The first drop down had different titles, when you click on one it provided an article with some key points in the process of creating each title, the video of the title sequence, a written interview with the creator, and the credits. The second drop down had a big list of different designers and studios to choose from. When you clicked on a designer it provided a little background information on the designer themself; what they specialize in, where they studied this, their preferred styles. The page also includes a few article options of the titles they have created followed by a video of it. When you clicked on a studio name it provided a p...

 To research more about our genre we watched a few films based on mystery. One of the first films we watched was "What Happened to Monday," which we found on Netflix. The overall idea of it is a dystopian society with over population. To solve this issue in this world, they created a "one child" policy. The main characters, septuplets each named after a name of the week, go out into society on their corresponding day pretending to be each other so that they would all be able to live.     The first few scenes are one of the siblings walking out and doing their own stuff, once she got home there was a flashback which basically explained how they got to this point. Many mysteries have flashbacks, it's there go to, it just gives an idea without having to spend the whole movie explaining it. That's just one of the elements that match with the genre there was conflict, an issue in the system that caused a mystery, and or a secret. Same forms of editing like cross-...

 To investigate the genre of mystery even further, we watched a couple of mystery films. We specifically looked into the film, "Murder Mystery." The movies follows a New York police officer and his wife as they travel together to Europe to rekindle their romance. However, on what was supposed to be a relaxing getaway, they are accused of killing a billionaire after a casual encounter. It is up to them to figure out who actually killed the billionaire in order to save themselves.  This movie displayed many of the general conventions of a typical mystery film. For example, in the scene of the murder, there is a total of ten people in the room as the billionaire signs his will, disinheriting his family. There is tense music as the family hears this betrayal, which makes the environment uneasy. Then all of a sudden, the lights abruptly go off and the screen turns black. The music completely stops, catching the audience's attention and giving them thoughts like, "what jus...

 Continuing our research on the mystery genre, we watched the movie "Knives Out".  The movie focuses on famous detective Benoit Blanc as he investigates further into the death of a patriarch of a rich but dysfunctional household. Everyone in the houshold becomes a suspect after the death. Now Blanc has to sift through the web of lies to uncover the truth of who commited the murder.   The movie conveyed many conventions throughout the film. One, for example, is in the first couple of scenes when a housekeeper is preparing breakfast and goes upstairs to find her boss. After shes checks for him in his bedroom, he suspiciously isnt there. She goes up to the attic to find it very quiet. Then she finds his body laying down with his back against the wall. Finding someone dead is a classic mystery conventions. Suprisingly the housekeeper doesn't seem disturbed by this which gives the viewers the suspision that the housekeeper might have something to do with this. This is the...

 Welcome back to our journey into this project! As you could see from our previous 3 blogs we’ve been thoroughly researching what possible genres we feel could best align with our pitch “A successful attorney encounters a woman in distress whom he later regrets rejecting.” After talking it out we decided to investigate 3 main genres: Mystery, Thriller, and Romance. We thought of Mystery because we felt as though the concept of the unknown would make it easy to attract the viewer's attention. Similarly, we thought of Thriller because it’s similar to Mystery in terms of using the unknown to its advantage. Finally, we also thought of Romance as we felt that perhaps a part of this unknown aspect we liked could include a lover. After selecting our 3 to choose from we began to research. The first thing we had to learn was the difference between Thriller and Mystery so that we'd be able to accurately depict what we were going for. And after researching we learned that while similar as...

 The last genre we chose to research was Mystery. Attached is a PowerPoint of all of the research we got for it! This is an embedded Microsoft Office presentation, powered by Office .

 Another one of the genres we chose to research was Thriller. Attached is a PowerPoint of all of the research we got for it! This is an embedded Microsoft Office presentation, powered by Office .

One of the genres we chose to research was Romance. Attached is a PowerPoint of all of the research we got for it! This is an embedded Microsoft Office presentation, powered by Office .

  Welcome back to our progression in furthering this project! Before beginning researching as to how to approach our project, we first had to create an idea for where we wanted this movie to go. After some deliberation, we narrowed our options down to 2 pitches…  A girl walks into a cabin and what she finds will forever shock her. A successful attorney encounters a woman in distress whom he later regrets rejecting. For our first pitch, we were originally fond of the idea of a possible horror, specifically through the use of a forest. We believed that as a group through the use of different lighting, angles, and audio selection that the illusion of suspense could successfully be created. However, upon considering the logistics of actually recording these scenes, we realized that such a setting would be very difficult to obtain. Given that we live in a more urban setting, locating, coordinating, and actually recording in a forest and cabin area would be very difficult. And even ...

 Welcome back! In todays blog I plan to introduce you to the next 3 members you'll hear about till the end of our journey on this project, so lets get into it! For this project I realized that it would be our most ambitious one yet, so I decided to work with 4 people instead of 2 or 3. For those of you who've read my previous blogs, you'll remember Lauren, as she worked with me on my previous project too. Lauren and I worked exceptionally well together, so we decided to keep the ball rolling and tackle this on too. We could not do it alone however, so we added 2 new additions to our team, Franshesca and Isa. Starting with Isa, she's also on the debate team and is good friends with Lauren and I, so given that we all shared the same Media period together and already had good chemistry, she'll be a great pick for our team. Lauren, Isa and I sharing the same AICE Media period will prove quite beneficial as it makes coordinating, scheduling, and planning our project a mu...

       Santa's back, tell a friend. Welcome back everyone, for those who might not have read my lovely blogs of my previous projects, I'm Andres Santana, but i've come to love the nickname, "Santa". Santa was a nickname given to me by one of my best friends Mia, as she thought my last name actually said Santa, and since then has been calling me Santa. I love Santa because aside from it's creative and funny origin, it feels as though my official Debate name. For context I primarily focus on 2 things: Debate and Mock Trial. In Debate is where I met Mia, and last year I was a freshman in High school when she gave me that nickname, so now as a sophomore and Debate Varsity, all of my 1st year debaters that I help teach call me Santa too. Santa is my debate name and i'll always see it that way. But Even in my Mock Trial Team i've begun to get the name Santa attached. Speaking of Mock Trial, it's another one of the biggest aspects of my life. Since joinin...