SHOWTIME

So the group finally decided on a movie title and were proud to say that the film name is showtime. The name brings out a sort of irony thinking towards the subject that our main characters career is on the downhill. Were trying to figure out the names for the fake show and fake movie that Keith will be promoting but other than that we should be ready to film by next week. So far the names of the talk show and the fake movie will be entertainment central, and fatal risk. It might change but those are the front runners. We spoke further of what we could potentially do with the intro but that’s really as far as we’ve gotten.

The picture above is the sketch I made in class to illustrate how the opening would be filmed. 

Oh yeah, its all coming together.

So today in class we started discussing what we wanted our first initial shots would be to set the tone and feeling of the opening. Ryan started picking away at the script while Edward worked on set design. Nick was catching up on the project but was doing some great work. We are basing the first half of our opening as a press junket between our protagonist and an interviewer, it should be noted that we finally have a protagonist name, as of now hes gonna be called Keith Floyd. While they were working on their own parts of the project I was thinking more on the cinematography side of the project. The first shot of the film is going to be of a silhouette of both Keith and his manager discussing things in a dark hallway that shows the interview portion of the room at the end of the shot. Should be noted that it will be lit with a dim blue light hung above the two characters. The type of light we wanna show is in the image below from the film Joker (2019)

Also about halfway through our conversation I realized that in Junkets, there are normally movie posters of the movie that the actor is promoting. I know its not in every junket but we really wanted to give it that authentic feel that it is truly an interview. Thankfully Edward volunteered to make said poster since he has the most experience with graphic design. Another quick change that might or might not affect the "cocaine" use in the opening is that we realized it would look kind of dumb if our protagonist Keith just snorted cocaine out of his pocket, so instead we decided it would convey our point much easier to the audience if he just drank out of a flask obviously implying that he has problems relating to substance abuse. This is all going to be happening in the initial hallway scene that was stated before. After a while we Ryan finished up the initial screenplay for the first hallway portion, it was actually really good when we all started talking about it and adding and changing the script a bit. I'm really confident in my team to the point where I bet that we will probably have the best opening in the class.

Problems

So we finally ran into our first problem of production and WE HAVENT EVEN STARTED FILMING YET. Yes you read that correctly we’re still in pre production and we already have conflicts in our shooting schedules. Now realistically it is no big deal, Ryan is going to be gone two weeks and Nick is going to be gone the following 2 weeks after that. We have also run into some complications with teaching Nick how to actually post on his blog and what to write. Other than that we’ve made more progress on our character and are currently working on smaller things such as his name and where hime comes from, little things. I actually went to the mall and found an almost perfect outfit for our main protagonist that felt really 80’s to me but it does need a couple of tweaks.

Obviously it’s still really modern but with a couple tweaks to the belt and shoes and maybe add a jacket we have a serious contender for our characters outfit.

Research into character

So the team is currently trying to figure out what else our main character might have to deal with further down the film, just so we get a better idea of how to implement impactful imagery that will convey our message to the audience about what he is currently struggling with. Now I did some minor research on addictions and disorder in the 80’s and even some more research towards harmful behaviors, were going to get very psychological. I came to the obvious conclusion that a large portion of addictions in the 80’s was hard drugs, but the most common was cocaine, now we still know it sounds kind of basic our premise but with our ideas coming together I doubt it will be anything close to basic. So as mentioned we will explore how our character deals with his fame with hard drugs. I introduced the idea of maybe having an HIV or AIDS diagnosis on our character but we’re still on the fence about it, we don’t want to add too many cliches. In an article in https://news.gallup.com/poll/6352/decades-drug-use-80s-90s.aspx it states things such as crack cocaine affecting the youth and how highly addictive it was, so the addiction part is going to be easy to believe and implement. We’re still discussing wether our character will be in his early twenties and have him be a heartthrob or that he’s a man later down the path of stardom who has to face the harsh reality that he isn’t as popular anymore. I would love to do the older gentlemen but we’ll have to see after it is a group effort.

Were making progress

It is now the second week of us planning and spit-balling ideas, and im proud to say we have a great basis for an idea. We did decide to focus on more of a character study/introduction. The basis of the idea is that an almost washed up celebrity is doing an interview promoting his new film. We havent decided if we want to do a sort of 60 minutes type of interview, a junket, or just a talk show appearance. I am also attempting to introduce the idea of maybe trying to make it seem like one shot, ive noticed that "one" shot films are becoming more and more popular. And I should also include the fact that, yes, Birdman is going to be a pretty huge influence as well as other one shot films such as 1917. We also are going to try to include that protagonists problems with certain addictions, It should be noted that the film will take place in the 80's. But we dont want to make it a cheesy 80's film, it just happens to take place during this time period. For the character we also want to find a way to show some of the characters worst behaviors such as jealousy or envy, much like the film The Artist (2011) which I might recommend the group to actually view it to get some of the ideas im trying to show.                                        https://www.scribendi.com/advice/character_archetypes_in_literature.en.html
In the link provided above its just a website providing the different character archetypes because I wanted to provide input into the two character archetypes that we wanted to focus on for our character. First is the hero complex, which in turn is pretty obvious seeing as this character will be our protagonist, but the interesting thing we want to do is that the villain complex will actually be our protagonist again, but not the protagonist himself, just his addictions and his own mental health. Now, we know that this is something that has been done before but we still want to attempt to do it our own way, we believe it is one of the hardest ones to do which is why it motivates us to take it on. Some films that can relate to the idea of the protagonist being his same antagonist are Joker, there will be blood and of course again Birdman.

The choice of Genre

Choosing our Genre: So my group and I have decided to make our film opening a drama. We know its very vague but I'm sure we will give our idea a bigger identity once we decide completely on the story and what we want to do. We've all been really thinking deeply about what kind of story we really want to focus on but the only person really spitballing ideas at the moment is Ryan. We obviously can come up with something interesting together since both our past projects have been intuitive and in my opinion the most interesting in the class. Next I decided to do some research on the Drama genre and I just decided to study two of my personal favorite films, the first one being Twelve Angry Men I would really enjoy to do something that's more psychological and more character grounded like this film for our opening. But admittedly this is probably going to be a much harder one to make compared to world building or plot relation. But I know my group won't wanna just do a cop out basic idea so well see what we come up with. Also what really could be interesting is if out entire opening was in one room much like this film. We would have to heavily condense the characters, because due to obvious reasons were not masterful filmmakers with the ability to introduce 12 characters and give some backstory for all in two minutes The second film I decided to study is a more modern masterpiece in my opinion, an opinion that I believe is shared by most, Birdman: or the unexpected virtue of ignorance. What a perfect title. Anyways the reason I also wanted to study this film for the fact that it also relates completely as a character drama. In my opinion this both Michael Keatons best work and Iñaritus best work. I would like to explore arrogance and maybe an inflated ego in our film opening but again this has to be said in the group for approval. Overall I would love to explore the character conflict more that any outside world conflict. Id love to at least pay homage to some of my favorite films but also make it our own.

Genre research/ Film opening analysis

So me and my group decided to view multiple film openings on our own time. I decided to rewatch three of my personal favorite film openings from some of my personal favorite films. One of the best film openings that I think everyone can agree with is the Dark Knights bank heist film opening. Another was the casual Resevoir Dogs diner opening. Finally, the third was 2001 a space odyssey brilliant DAWN OF MAN opening. First lets start with the Dark Knight, arguably the best superhero film ever made and the best adaptation of the comic book character. The film opening is the perfect blend of character introduction and world building. The opening shot is of what we later find out is the Joker standing at a streetlight with a clown mask at his hand, and as the opening progresses we realize that he's planned a very elaborate and well thought out heist that will leave no strings attached. Through the various shots in between heist members we get a brief overview of Gotham city and are shown how vast and constantly working it is. The interesting part that Christopher Nolan uses to build the Jokers character without even really seeing him, is how he told each of the heist members to kill a certain heist member for a bigger cut. This shows the Jokers sick and twisted genius as he is the last one alive in the end, and he is left with the entirety of the money and has left no possible trace back to him. The second film opening that I viewed multiple times was the opening to Resevoir dogs, I believe its Quentin Tarantino's first film but I could be wrong. The entirety of the opening takes place in one location, a diner and specifically one diner table where there are a couple of men just casually talking. The amazing thing about this opening is the pure simplicity and Tarantino's perfect use of dialogue. You're quickly given a rundown on the majority of the characters. First were pretty much shown the leading figure of the group which is Mr. White, quickly with simple dialogue were shown that he's experienced in this type of work and is shown to be mature. Mr Blonde on the other hand is shown to be more of a smartass and might just end up bringing more conflict later in the film. The entire premise of this opening is based on the simple idea that Mr. Pink won't tip the waitress that's attending them, then a conflict arises because the other group members are calling Mr. Pink a cheapskate. The final opening I viewed multiple times was the now Iconic DAWN OF MA N introduction to 2001:a space odyssey. The opening basically depicts what human nature is and what it evolved from. Its meant to show us the natural curiosity we have as mammals and to shows other darker emotions we may feel as predators ourselves. Stanley Kubrick is arguably one of if not the best filmmaker of all time and this introduction is the perfect opening scene to one of his best films. The best shot in my opinion is the sequence when we are shown the primate showing us his curiosity with the bone remains of a creature, and seconds later how his mind shifts to destruction as he begins to bash the bone against the rest of the other bones. This in my opinion was meant to shown our natural reaction to things and how we have been hard wired to think this way since the DAWN OF MAN.