The Beginning of the Portfolio

    Now it has officially begun, the start of a project that I'm very excited to begin. Through everything that I've done in the last six months, it's time for me to incorporate that into a bigger stage. This next step is going to be very exciting, but like many things in life it will be hard. Through my 3 almost 4 years in highschool I've never had so much time to dedicate into one piece of art and I'm eager to put my best into it. This will give me an opportunity to see what level of dedication I can put myself through no matter the obstacles. Nonetheless, it is time to take a dive into the world of film openings and their importance, as well as what approaches are best suited to create a lasting impact. 

    It's always important to establish a tone and to give the audience a feel of what genre the film is going

to partake in. This can be done through the use of color and lighting, which help set the mood and create an atmosphere. The use of these two techniques are always in connection with the development of characters through mise-en-scene. Which personally seems like a phenomenal way to approach the film opening, as it gives the audience the idea of what environment the protagonist is in, along with their background. 

    Another fundamental that is great in relation to how a film opening can be developed is establishing a certain conflict. When doing this you give the viewer an idea of what the film is about, which is crucial in helping the viewer gain an understanding of what they are getting themselves in. It's a symbolic technique that is extremely useful when lacking certain pieces of visual context. 

The Behind the Scenes of "Echo of Us"

 

Here is the behind the scenes of my groups work in our Music Marketing project involving "Echo of Us" 

Musical Marketing

     Music is a big component of what media is. It showcases many different ways in which artist are able to market, distribute and produce art. This is why we were tasked to create a case study of a randomly chosen genre. This case study directly involved a company and two individuals from the given genre. In my case, the genre in which I was given was Country/Bluegrass. 

    After a while of research, I was able to find a well known and successful record label, Reprise Records. This specific record label is home to many notable artists/bands like, Greenday, Michael Bublé, and Deftones. During my research of this label I found two exceptional Country/Bluegrass, Billy Strings and Shawn Camp. These were two unrecognizable names to me, but their ethic and influence gave me interest in them. 

    I researched them through their websites and social media platforms, which effectively gave me a perspective of how they brand themselves and how they market their talent. What gave a good insight on how they functioned was their websites. For Strings interface, it was very much marketed and developed to promote his latest album, Highway Prayers, it also marketed his social media platforms in an effective way, which was by having the platform's icons below the sites header. This is something that Camp lacked, his site did promote his socials, but in a horrible was as you could barely see icons due to them having a similar palette to the background. 

    These two artists also had a distinct feel for how to promote their music itself, as Strings was more heavily in tune with digital marketing whilst Camp was more leaned towards non-digital marketing. 

    Then after our case studies we were asked to create a music video from our selected genre with the people that also got the genre. The song for the video was given to us by our teacher. My group decided that it'd be best to make a storytelling type of music video due to the lyrics from our song. Yet, we are to create a story but it will definitely involve one girl and one boy as that's what the song revolves around; and although we haven't developed a clear story we want it to have a Country vibe that creates a similar environment to the song. 

The Mise-en-scene

    Following up our second sound project we were tasked to represent a character through Mise-en-scene. We mostly had complete freedom on the how to characterize our subject, other than some requirements that would help us set the stage. My group consisted of 4 people including my self. We were given a firefighter that was retired and loved to go to animal shelter, this was all the information that we had. My group decided to take a route that would create large amounts of backstory and lore for our character. For example, we decided that our character, Bill F. Steel, would receive the Medal of Valor due to his courageous act during the great Sacramento Fire. We also gave him a sad and emotional reason towards why he became a firefighter in order to further exemplify his past. 

    In order for my team to properly illustrate Bill we came to the conclusion that we should show his life through different stations and concepts. At first we created a mood board that would summarize his life in a visual way; then we made a station focused on Bill's character description, which would talk about his journey. For these two station we felt it was necessary to give a detailed description to immerse the audience so there would be a sense of connection. Another way that we created an immersive atmosphere was through making a miniature animal shelter that would focus on our characters love for animals and his willingness to go to the shelters. After this was all set and done, we created an interactive PowerPoint that would act as a little scavenger hunt where you would find an item, click on it, and learn what it meant to Bill.  In this interactive component we added voice recordings that would act as Bill and talk to the audience and give a small story of what the item meant. Then after completing each station we organized the stations 1-4. The character description was #1, the mood board was #2, the items/memories were #3, and the miniature animal shelter was #4. Our reasoning was due to us thinking that establishing and idea of who Bill was and then entering his world would give an engaging experience to the audience. 

    Throughout the creation of our character we used certain stereotypes that would help us build our character. Like making him a straight white male, giving him a dark reason on why he became a firefighter, or putting music from the 1980;s. Although, we gave him some stereotypes it was not as easy as if it were someone with an ethnic background. This lead us to have more of a creative interpretation of who Bill would become. While we created Bill we did not decide to make him someone who was othered as it did not portray what a firefighter was. Later on our characterization of Bill we felt we successfully portrayed him, but personally I felt that we could have done a better job during both his visual representation and the stations. For instance, we did not create a visual image of how he looked like and instead got a man of the internet that would act as "Bill." Then for our stations we should have had a some other component that would further grab the audiences attention so people would feel more involved and connected. Though, I feel this way I thought we had a solid project with minor errors to adjust. 

The Gangster Space in Media

    Crime is one of the most captivating and interesting genres there is but, inside this space is the sub-genre known as Gangster, an area that mostly captures the life of organized crime. 

   
    These type of films issue a type of content that heavily relies on the rise and fall of someone who has made a name for themselves. A great example that perfectly illustrates this is Brian De Palma's Scarface, which follows a story of a young Cuban man that gets corrupted by wealth.  Another important aspect of these films is their constant use of the Mafia like the Godfather Series or Casino. A lot of the reason why the mafia is so apparent in this genre is due to the rise in popularity in the American Mafia during the 1960's-70's through figures in the Gambino family. The use of Mafia in these films is very consistent which is a reason why most of these films are located in places like New England, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. This genre also frequently cast actors like Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and Joe Pesci, which mainly show up in the films involving the Mafia. 

  Now, while the Mafia is known to be the face of gangster films, another sub-genre within the sub-genre are stories surrounding African American gangsters. For example, Boyz N The Hood (John Singleton) a story that excels in explaining the struggles of gang culture. Another example would be The Wire which is a TV show by HBO that focuses on a group of detectives that try and investigate different murders and drug dealings.

    Something that lies within all of these different type of gangster movies is their similar style when it comes to color. Most of these films rely on the dark, likely to showcase the wrongdoings of the individuals which the stories focus on. In the Godfather this is extremely reliant especially in the first movie of the trilogy. Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) who is the boss of the crime family is constantly faced with dark tones of orange and black which resemble his strong love for his family and his will to do anything to protect them. Gangster films also try to portray crime as realistic as possible in order to create a more authentic representation and to build up suspense. These films are also very detail heavy as it can create a sense of reality that makes a person believe they are in the films world. 

    While gangster films are exciting and intense, they are marketed towards the older audience rather than the younger one. This creates a smaller margin which can be seen in the film The Irishman by Martin Scorsese as it features Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino whom are legends of the genre going back all the way to the 70's. This genre of film also relies on current events. The movie Goodfellas also by Martin Scorsese, goes through the real life story of Henry Hill, so through pushing the narrative that the story was true it got attention and weighed in on how the movie performed. This can also be said for Casino. 

    The movie Casino (1995) follows the true story of Sam "Ace" Rothstein. A man who gets to run a casino "legally" in Las Vegas. In this film Ace becomes filled with wealth and along side him a beautiful women. In this Casino he runs money is in a sense stolen from participants which generates a lot of money that is then distributed to many of the Mafia bosses around the nation. Due to the people that are acquaintances to Ace many things begin to go wrong and his long life friend Nicky Santoro tries to keep order and they do for a while, but after Nicky begins to turn crazier by the day Ace's money becomes less and less and his casino empire begins to crumble up. Ace is then placed in a situation where his long life friend Nicky Santoro turns on him and so does his wife. Now although, the movie is constantly inside a Casino with vibrant lights the tone of the lighting has a dark feeling that creates and embodies the genres portrayal of crime. The movie's marketing is very similar to Goodfellas as it is also based on a true story and allows for the audience to feel some sort of connection knowing these were real people. 

    The Godfather Part II one of if not the best Mafia movie ever, is a sequel about Michael Corleone who's the man that took over the family after Don Corleone's death. In this film their is a sudden back and forth between the starting years of the Don's criminal life and the start of Michael's criminal life. In a way it creates a comparison between the similarities and differences between these two incredible characters. This is a film that lives upon the dark colors that illustrate a strong sense of emotion. There are many scenes where Michael has a black shadow and it accurately depicts the change he has gone through since taking reign. The overall feeling and ambience of the film is dark and it also creates a symbolic relationship between both of the Corleone's and their importance when it comes to family but, compared if you compare Don to Michael their is a darker image portrayed in Michael as he does not have the same level of love that Don Corleone does. This film strategically markets itself by the time in which it was released as their was a lot of debate concerning the Gambino family. 

Here Are Some Great Gangster Films:

 

Sound Project

      After learning about editing techniques, we transitioned into the sound department. We learned many techniques and how they are incorporated into the media. For instance, synchronous sound which is when sound is synchronized with what is being viewed; then we compared that to asynchronous sound which is when sound does not match what is on the screen. Moreover, we were taught how to address the audience by the use of language, narration, and breaking the fourth wall. Afterwards we were assigned videos to watch that gave us insight on foley sound and its significance in the film world. 

    Given all this information we were tasked to make two sound projects. One that would purely on just sound, and another where we would have to add sound to our One Word Films. 

    The instructions on the project solely with sound consisted of telling a story with no visual elements just audio. We were put into random pairs and asked to brainstorm and create an outline that would structure the story. On this project we weren't allowed to say more than 7 words of dialogue and had to create four at least foley sounds. Adding onto the fact that we had to do four foley sounds we also had to find sounds across the web that would add to the storytelling.  During the brainstorming both me and my partner struggled choosing between a rocket ship launch or a person running late for their play. Eventually, we came to the conclusion that the play scenario would be more challenging and fun. We then depended on the outline in order to visualize how the story would go. It allowed us to better capture what would be happening and how the audio would play out. The outline was also a great tool when it came to editing as it set the place of where most things would go. In this project specifically, we used Adobe Premiere, and were able to effectively add any amount of sounds, no problem. This project allowed us to pay attention in great detail at what a scene with no visual presentation would be like, and personally I felt that we did a great job in terms of that. Although, I do think that near the end of our project we could have had a little bit more substance to create a more engaging experience. 

    Continuing this theme of sound, we were reunited with our partners from the One Word Film, this time not to make another short story, but instead to add sound to the OWF. For this project the instructions involved reviewing the OWF and analyzing what different types sounds would be made in the real world. Although we were back with our old partners the editing portion of the project was made individually, but the making of sounds could be shared through one another. We also had to incorporate an outline like the previous project; it gave me a very similar result and helped me immensely when editing. My outline was my brainstorming as well in this situation and I analyzed the different components, I stayed focused on details, and wrote them down. Furthermore, I created most of the sounds on my version of the project as we did not share most of our sounds between each other, and even though we did not share most sounds I found it fun and it didn't bother me. Now, compared to the previous project where I didn't do most of the editing, on this one I did and chose to use Clipchamp instead of Adobe Premiere. Then since the editing portion was individual I felt a sense of freedom where I could express my style a bit more  and at the end result I felt that I did a fairly decent job. For next time though, I feel that spacing out the project and giving myself more time would give me a more clean and polished result. 

    Here's an editing outline for both projects: 

 Project #1                                     Project #2

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hLoKt1eySyqdWKiBcItv77qY8Ndj9h0f/view?usp=sharing

OWFSound_Hernandez.mp4

One Word Film

After learning many editing techniques, we were asked to create a One Word Film in pairs, and luckily for me I was able to work in a group of 3 as the class has an odd number of students. This One Word Film is meant to resemble a certain word that needs to be identified by the viewer, but with no sound at all. Meaning that us students needed to try and figure out how we could tell a story of our assigned word in between 60-90 seconds with just visual techniques and actions. 

At first, my group and I began to brainstorm different ideas on how we could represent and illustrate the word “loving.” After several failed attempts a certain idea came up. This idea involved two students, one girl one boy, the boy would be alone studying fidgeting with a paper, then the paper would fall. As the paper laid on the ground, the girl would grab the paper and give it back to the boy. They would smile at each other and show a connection that would resemble love. Unfortunately, as we pitched the idea to the teacher, we were told that the relationship between the two students didn’t make much sense as the viewer has no context whatsoever of whether the students knew each other or not. We then tweaked the story and made the two students' study together writing notes down from the same laptop, in order to show a previous relationship that was not there before. 

We then began creating our storyboard. This helped us immensely with how we would take certain shots and overall structure the story. There were some shots before we started our storyboard, that we were confused on how to angle/take. The storyboard allowed us to visualize and better compose these shots. It also gave us a layout on how we would edit the project.  

The editing aspect of the project was interesting. It makes you realize an estimate of how much time it takes for a full-length film to be edited. Our group used Adobe Premiere Pro, which is complicated at first but after you use it for a while you get accustomed to it. We used many cuts and techniques that we learned, trying our best to make it look good and seamless. After watching the final product, it did, but there were things that we needed to execute better. 

Collectively, this project was a lot of fun and gave me a much better perspective on how films are planned out. Personally, I believe that my group had a very good composition and selection of shots, but I’d say that next time I would want to be more creative and incorporate more challenging shots. This is so there is more meaning and to give the audience a more enjoyable and engaging experience.  

OWF_Sarmiento_Hernandez_Sosa.mp4