Mise-en-scene blog post

Our class was assigned of a gorup project and we had to create a multimedia character station. Our goal was to design and present a character through visual and audio elements that reveal their personality, emotions, and story. Our teacher had provided us with a character to develop the station. My groups goal was to create an environment  that immediately immersed the viewer into our character’s world. 

Our character was a retired firefighter who volunteered at the aninmal shelter. He was also generous, huorous, and full of wisdom. We named our character Bill F. Steel who was a widowed man who lives in california after being a firefighter for 40 years. Bill became a firefighter because his wife had died but thankfully their dughter lived. After he retired he went to volunteer at the animal shelter, and now visits his daugther during his free time. To bring this character to life, we built an animal shelter using materials that I had bought to show where our character spends most of his time. Then one of my group members had created a mood board, and bought the items that had represented him. Another gorup member made audio sounds to tell the history of the items, with music in the background. And our last member made a slide of our characetr description. 

In developing our character we used stereotyping to say where he was from. We said our character was from California which is normal, knowing california is known for their wildfires. When we were organizing our station, we focused on positioning the story correctly. We put numbers for each station to put it all in order. We brainstormed together and cobined ideas together to make the project immersive as much as we can. Overall, this project taught us how to represent a character visually. 

Links to our project: Media Studies Mise-en-scene

Genre Research Activity

 The genre that I will be researching is Romcoms. Romcoms have always been one of the most loved and watched genres in film. These movies focus on love, humor, and how relationships grow and fall apart in funny ways that people can relate to. 

The typical target audience for rom-coms are usually teenagers to middle aged adults. The stories are made for people who like watching romance but also like to laugh. They usually aim towards women or couples. One example of a RomCom that I personally enjoyed was Crazy Rich Asians (2018) - IMDb. When it comes to content, rom-coms always include a few classic things. One of them first funny or awkward way the main characters meet or when couple are complete opposites, which causes lots of funny and romantic moments. 

For production techniques, romcoms are usually filmed with colorfull settings to make them feel warm. They often take place in cities or nice towns that look romantic, like New York or Paris. The music is also with love songs or fun background music. 

The marketing for romcoms is typically showcasing the two characters chemistry and have posters that usually show them both together. Trailers always include the funny and cute moments so the audience knows what to expect.They also release the film with a usual theme to it, whether it is christmas, fall, or summer break. Another example of a romcom is The Proposal (2009) - IMDb. It's about a boss who forces her assistant to marry her to keep her visa.The movie mixes funny scenes with romantic tension between the two. The lighting and costumes are bright and stylish, matching the fun tone.

Other examples of rom-coms include 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) - IMDb, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) - IMDb, The Holiday (2006) - IMDb, My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) - IMDb, 500 Days of Summer (2009) - IMDb.

Blog posting- Sound

  What I learned from the sound lesson is that sounds can change the perspective of what it is that you're seeing. Every sound that you may hear in a piece has a purpose for an overall message. We also learned how different audios layered on to one another can be connected to spread the overall message. The assigned videos helped me really organize how to layer sound on to each other so it could sound natural and realistic to the piece being displayed. 

For our first sound project, our teacher randomized the class in pairs so that we could create an idea of what to make sounds for. For example, me and my partner decided to create a minute long video, only of sounds, of firefighters getting ready to move out. With that, me and my partner had to make an outline of the scenes for our idea onto a WordDoc and list sounds we had to apply for the specific scenes. By creating an outline, we knew where sounds needed to be placed and what specfic sounds we needed to utilize to create the message of firefighters moving out. Me and my partner used ClipChamp for the osund project and it was very simple to use. We were also instructed to foley 4 sounds which is making a sound with the tools we have at home or elsewhere. I believe me and my partner did well at choosing the specific sounds we used, thanks to the outline, and it came out great. What I'd like to improve next time would be layering my sounds better and making them even more details. For example, I want to add sounds that a typical person wouldn't think about till they hear it. 

For our second project, we worked on an assignmnet from before which was only of different kinds of shots with no sounds. For brainstorming, unfortunatley, I had to work on this project alone, so creating my outline for the sounds was my biggest resource I had. While brainstorming, I watched the video from our past assignment over and over again, so I knew what sounds to include. I used ClipChamp again, since I had already become familiar with it, and I believe layering the sounds went more smoothly for this porject.  What I'd like to improve mext time is also adding more details to my sounds. We had to create sounds for the project as well,  which was easier to do since was had just finished our first sound project.  

Project sound 1: BriggsCordoba_soundscape_per4 

 Project sound 2: OWFSound_Cordoba