Explanation behind the setting and props

 Hello everyone! In this blog post I will discuss more about the specifics of the props, as well as summarizing what our settings will be. I know that I talked about the props in my blogs before, but there's been some changes that I wanted to add. The setting is still the same, we'll film at a park. But I wanted to go more indepth of how it will all look like in the opening. 

For setting, we're thinking of filming at the park closest to all of us, it's called Indian Trace Park. No music or anything like that. We want to grab a table and begin the story there. We'll use the table as showing the person in authority. The one sitting down will be Asher, as for the one who arrives late and is standing will be Austin. This is to show the person in "power" per se.

This is more of a props discussion but at the park, I was thinking of having Asher check his phone, and the audience would see many reminders on his phone to show how structured he is. I was also think of using the project , and having Asher write only his name and erasing Austin's name or something like that to show Austin isn't getting any credit for the work. Or that maybe Asher seems fed up with Austin and HIS behavior. 

Like I said in my previous blog posts, we were thinking of having a pencil be the weapon. And then when Austin would walk away, Asher would sharpen the pencil and come at him from behind was our thought process. Yes it does seem brutal but what's a thriller movie without conflict right?

We're thinking of filming during the Daytime, as it would be most natural to have Asher and Austin there meeting up for a project. A park feels safe, open, and ordinary. This shows a contrast between a peaceful daytime environment and something dramatic makes the moment hit harder. We'll make sure to not have people in the background, since a incident will occur. 

Now, for the second setting is Ashers room. After the murder happens and we transition to the next scene , it will be at Asher's house. We're thinking of a tracking shot of Asher going to his room, then doing close-ups of items in his room that demonstrate his character. We want to show his room as key here. His desk is spotless, his clothes or shoes are organized in a certain way , and assignments on the side or something. He could have blank face to show his detachment.  Decorating his room will be very essential to the second half of the opening , to portray Asher's character. What do you think?

Lights, Camera, Mise-en-scene?

 Hello everyone, happy Thursday!! We're going to discuss more about mise-en-scene, lighting, props, and more! :D In the last post, I talked about the clothing ideas, setting and the overall personalities of the characters. For this blog post specifically, I'll go into the mise-en-scene and lighting! Lets' dive in!

I made a collage of Asher's aesthetic and all of the factors that represent him. While we film, we want to incorporate these characteristics onto Asher's personality. Again, Asher is very studious, organized, and very diligent. I also showed screaming, to demonstrate the chaos in his mind. Th eyes are meant to be disturbing for later on; Asher does the unthinkable. For this collage I used pictures from Pinterest and made it on that platform. Pretty cool right?

This one I'm personally proud of. You can tell Austin has selfish issues and only cares about himself from this collage. The disturbing smile, the scary eyes, and he likes the gym :D His grades are...quite bad, this demonstrates the contrast between him and Asher.  His character is violent and we want to really show those facial expressions in the opening!

Now let us talk more about the lighting!! We want the lighting to be gloomy with no sign of a light color. No emotions relating to happiness is what we're going for essentially. I was either thinking of only using natural light OR making it have cool toned lighting. Here are examples I thought of:

This is a scene from "Adolescence" (2025) which is a thriller series that is distributed on Netflix. Here they have natural lighting but also have the characters here wearing deeper colors. It's almost a contrast between the colors here. 

Here, we have a scene from "Se7en" (1995) which is a movie that's also a thriller :D They incorporate more of a cool tone lighting that I'm interested in imitating. Cool tone lighting usually uses blue or green tint, which gives a "creepy" effect if that's what you want to call it. 

The lighting is going to be tricky, only because in the beginning of the opening we're going to be filming outside. But overall, I think I have selected two good choices. Two choices that would give that thriller effect. 

What about the character development??

 Hello again! We are now moving on to character development, which should be pretty fun to do. We'll look through costume design, setting, and lighting too! We have to figure how we want to represent Asher and Austin in the opening. 

The backgrounds for these two characters somewhat ties together. They'll have past history (which we are still deciding), and have that included in the opening

Now, we will first begin with the main lead, Asher. 

As of now, we want to portray Asher as secretly insane, plain, and as frail. These ideas don't entirely correlate with one another, but you'll understand it soon enough. For costume design, I was thinking of having Asher wearing soemthing plain, with basic style, nothing unique.  Maybe like a regular sweater or shirt and shorts? Over all a simple style. 

As for Austin, we're thinking of something a little bit with more style just to show his bold character. We want to portray Austin as rude, selfish, and of course is in style. Austin is someone with a bit more muscle, and takes style into more consideration. He stays on task with the trends but not with assignments....

 

Now moving on, what am I thinking for the setting. It most likely would be filmed at a park of some sort and later film at either someone's house or at school. We would want the lighting of course to be gloomy and no sunlight filters to bring any colors out. We want the atmosphere to be as realistic as we can make it be. 

A setting that could represent Asher specifically would be his bedroom of course . And we want the room to be as plain as possible (no offense if your room looks like this)

One of the aspects of character development which I'm excited for.... PROPS!! Props are so interesting to come up with and all with the purpose of showing who the character is. Props that we may choose is a pencil (weapon), pencil sharpener (for darker reasons), and a phone and headphones. Again, we're still deciding whether we want to have the project be silent or to have music without any copyright. We want to show Ashers creepiness with maybe listening to a podcast on how to be "normal" or something like that.

                   What do we think?    

Our storyboard!!

 Hello again , today I will be sharing the storyboard that one of my members did and helped draw it out. We have an idea of what we want the opening to look like, and hopefully you guys will understand once you see it.  I joked at the fact that the art style kinda looks like beavis and butthead. That's besides the point- as for the script, we're still working out what the characters should say and the right jargon for the situation. Not only that, but HOW we want the actors to say it. Also, we're having two of my group members be the actors This has become a bigger process that I could've imagine, but I'm enjoying it so far. :)

This photo above includes how the beginning of the opening would look like, and we want to start with showing Asher walking and just introducing him as a character overall. You will also another character here, Austin the Bully, and we're trying to go for something different not just a cliche. 

Here, we have the bully(Austin) walking past Asher after verbally insulting him. We also state the certain shots that want taken as well as the actions. The lighting and color schemes aren't mentioned, but I personally have ideas of my own. I'm thinking of deep color (gloomy blue) and its going to be outside so mroe natural sounds. 

Of course, as we're doing a thriller opening, we want to include TIGHT extreme close ups. Definitely want to make the audience uncomfortable as possible :D

But yeah, hopefully you guys see the idea that we're aiming for, and see the result in the end!

What is my inspiration??? What's my project idea???

Finally, what we have all been waiting for..... what is our project idea?!?! So I've said that our project aims to do a thriller genre for our portfolio project and we have established our main characters Asher and Austin. But let me explain to you what the story is. Also to make it clear, this idea is still not yet completed, we still have drafts to come up with.

 Soooo the story starts off with the main character Asher who we see walking down the street from school. We're debating whether or not we should have Asher listen to music or just have it be in complete silence. Afterwards we then introduce Austin as a bully, who starts bothering Asher and starts saying things to him (still figuring out the dialogue). Then we''ll show Austin bullying Asher by saying rude things and pushing him aggressively. We will be using tight close up shots on Asher's face with him being pushed to the edge and...... a murder will happen.

As I mentioned before, we're aiming for a thriller here, and we want to protray Asher as morally empty. Afterwards, we insert the title, and do a 12 hours before sequence. That is all we have so far, and we still have much to come up with. 

As for our inspiration, I know for me personally I love watching thriller movies and shows. I like seeing the psychological aspect to it, and finding plot twists all over the stories. I knew as soon as I heard that we would be doing a 2-minute film opening, I would want to imitate that. 

One show that inspired me was this K-Drama called "Strangers From Hell" that came out in 2019. I really liked how it creates fear and tension without constantly showing violence. What stood out to me most was how unsettling the story feels simply through atmosphere, behavior, and psychological pressure rather than graphic scenes. This helped shape my project into something that feels more realistic. I reccomend you give it a watch ;) 

Which media theory should I incorporate in my Portfolio Project?

Hello again! Today I will be talking about which Media Theory I'm choosing to incorporate into my project. I had a couple in mind but I've decided on Representation theory.  I chose this because I wasn’t interested in showing violence in an obvious or exaggerated way. Representation theory  uses choices like specific angle shots , sound, or editing to shape how the audience sees the character. 

Now the main goal of how I wanted to use representation theory was to show our main character, whom we have chosen the name as Asher, to be shown as a psychopath with little to no emotion. 

I was thinking of using just silence as a sound to show the unsettling atmosphere as well as portraying Asher as unsettling. We can also use tight close ups , to give discomfort to the audience from his awkwardness. As well as using mise-en-scene to portray Asher as a teenager who is emotionally detached.  This makes the character feel more realistic and unsettling. It also reflects how media can influence perception without being graphic.

And I wanted to do that without having to say anything or rather than showing violence directly, I wanted to explore how we can suggest madness through little details.

 By doing this, I am  shaping the audience’s perception of the character, demonstrating how media representations can be shown in our own way. :D

Heres a movie example! 

NIGHTCRAWLER

This movie here Nightcrawler is a strong example of Representation Theory because the film shows the main character, Lou Bloom, as unsettling and morally ambiguous without relying on any kind of action. Instead, the audience’s perception of him is shaped entirely through behavioral cues and stylistic choices.  

The filming methods that they chose to show the character as:

• Blank facial expressions and forced politeness create discomfort, implying a lack of authentic emotion.

• Long pauses and awkward silences , which have the audience to question his morality.

• Camera framing that isolates him visually reinforces his separation from societal norms 

• Cold lighting s produce an atmosphere of emotional emptiness, amplifying his unsettling presence.

Overall, I will be using representation theory and add it on to my portfolio project! :)

Citations:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/nightcrawler-2014

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightcrawler_%28film%29

First group meeting!! :D

Hello everyone!!! We held a group meeting and every group member was seperated to get objective opinions. I told the people in my group that I would be working with a thriller genre. I specifically asked for adivice on where I should put my credit sequences and any ideas for the project. These group members were Isa, Emma, Luke, Giovanna, Mia

I'll input their ideas here:

Maia: Doing her portfolio project about a girl starting her blog journey. She had questions about the plot in her story and about the credit sequences. 

Mia: Is thinking of doing her project about a coming-of-age story two best friends and one of the friends dies. Advice on how to do headshot.  

Isa: Coming of age, start off as a horror film, two friends. Had questions about where to input the title. 

Luke: A conversation between an extrovert and introvert through a phone call.

Giovanna: A suspense project, still trying to figure out the plot.

Emma: Mystery suspense, girl that is uncontrolled and in a isolated room. Project seems to be pretty much finalized. 

The whole process was very insightful when they talked about sound sequences that I should insert in my project to make it more entertaining. For example, When Giovanna told everyone her idea for her portfolio project, I suggested for the title sequence that one of the letters should include an item or something to make the opeing more engaging. Another thing I found to be interesting was the jargon that used and we used terms that only we would understand. Also I found it very admirable of how they came up with the ideas themselves. Everyone was giving each other advice, and a lot of jokes were said too!!  Overall, I'm looking forward to the next group meeting! :D