Project Components

OH MY GOD ITS TIME HERE'S MY FINAL PRODUCT!! 

FILM FILE

GLUTTONY

POSTCARD

FRONT

BACK

SOCIAL MEDIA

TWITTER: @gluttonymovie

Critical Reflection

    Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, and one of the most enabled by today's society. In my film, entitled GLUTTONY (naturally), the idea of gluttony is assessed on levels past just shoving food into your mouth, namely the modern application regarding people overexposing themselves to media. 

    The idea for GLUTTONY came to me a few weeks after I watched Darren Arronofsky's The Whale in the theater back in December of last year. The tragic and simultaneously horrifying nature of having a stress-induced eating disorder resonated with me extremely hard, and it truly gave me a new perspective on the nature of people with such problems. While the crux of my film wasn’t exactly to point out the humanity in such a monstrous figure of a man like The Whale, I used certain elements from the movie to build the character I nicknamed Fat in the production process(the character was never granted or credited with a name in my piece.)

The tonality of my piece differs greatly from the tone of The Whale, as the film used the protagonist’s(Charlie) eating disorder to make the viewer feel bad for him, but I aspired to do so in a way that looks down on it. At the heart of my piece, all of my characters have flaws and the question is not whether they should or can be redeemed, it’s more about who has the MOST/WORST flaws. That being said, the opening of my film takes direct inspiration from the scene in The Whale when Charlie battles his inner voice taunting him with a Twix bar and loses, scarfing down the candy in a grotesque fashion.

    Before I initially latched onto the idea of looking down on “gluttonous people,” I was hesitant to take on this theme because it could possibly backfire and be misinterpreted as a shot at people who have eating disorders or truly cannot control themselves when overindulging in something. Though I was scared to make my food gluttony character unlikeable at first, I thought it would be cool to have the character be conditioned to believe that he has an issue, leading the audience to believe that he will interpret his bullying as a means for change, but then misdirecting them by having him succumb to it and go even deeper with it in spite of himself and the ones who bullied him. In writing him this way, I could have the character lose the moral high ground in the situation to make the audience lose their connection with the character itself and more the idea that all three characters weren’t anyone to sympathize with. 

While I would say the opposite for “Fat,” I was TOTALLY taking a dig at people who use social media or their phones too much with the character of Medea. As aforementioned, I never wanted people to look up to or seek asylum in any one of my characters being any good, I hoped they would find power in putting down the distinct yet similar types of evils within my characters. For Medea, her evil is constantly hinted at throughout the entire piece, as she stares dead into the computer and really only contributed to the conversation when she was reminded of a movie she watched. She was always meant to be a highly exaggerated version of people who are chronically online, and as such I expected viewers who could possibly relate to this character to reflect and understand that their overindulgence is just as gluttonous as people who eat too much.

    Also, if you didn’t notice, Medea is the only character named in the piece for two reasons: one is that she was the character people were supposed to come away from the film focused on, and two, because early on I had the idea that Medea is a name that is eerily similar to the word Media and that was SOOO FUNNY I had to put it in. 

    Building on the first of those two reasons(totally the most important one😳), I made the marketing centered around her so audiences could possibly go in focusing on that character in particular. To be specific, all the posts from the Twitter account for the film(except for the final promo) are from the perspective of Medea herself. I started off by posting all the characters in the piece in the order of their screentime and then twisted the final post with Medea to say “me” instead of her name/adjective given to her(FAT AND EGO ARE NOT ACTUALLY THEIR NAMES.) The tweets to follow are from a first-person perspective, just like any standard Twitter account, I would post and repost the kinds of things she would say or feel attached to if she were real, like the Mario movie, for example. 

    This tweet is possibly the most direct way I attempted to engage with the Twitter base in my marketing, asking them a genuine question from the POV of the character. Other tweets, like Medea’s living room and the “I look cute in this” tweet were both clever little ways to tease what viewers would see in the production itself. Trying my hardest to tweet like any Twitter user, I hoped they/potential fans would find the level of interactivity and role-playing to be a cool way to promote the film. 

                              

    Through my social media, I was directly able to make a “self-fulfilling prophecy” type of branding. With the main theme of the piece inevitably centering around the media-obsessed character, the social media HAD to be self-aware. The account physically follows the major media distributors of today, not only because that's what Medea surrounds herself with, but also for eagle-eyed fans to notice and realize the contrast between their marketing strategy and the one I took for GLUTTONY. 

    After finally being able to say I have wrapped production on Gluttony, I feel that same bittersweet feeling as the last time I charted my entire production process. The struggle and stress of brainstorming and thinking everything out is dehumanizing, but it really does make the final payoff seem all the more special. I hope you enjoy my film, because I enjoyed finishing it(less making it.)

Looking Back

 

    Now that I have made it to the finish line, I can't help but look back and reflect on the journey. I managed my time pretty horribly, but I did get everything done the way I wanted it to by the end, and I am pretty proud of the final product. Shots I didn't like and lighting that bothered me didn't quite end up being major issues once the editing came around, as those things were less bothersome once all of my footage became an actual narrative. I'm always so mesmerized when I see all of my clips amalgamate into one realized story. 

    If I were to do this any differently, I would probably have updated my social media much more and (as aforementioned) managed my time better. Even though I have a social media that does what it needs to in regards to building the idea that the perspective of all the posts is from the media-oriented character of the piece, I would have liked to build on it more and posted more regardless. I wish I filmed earlier because not having anything to work with prohibited me from making the progress I desperately wanted around 3/4 into this process(building on that social media and editing earlier.)

    I am so insanely pleased to be able to say that I am finally done with this production; it became one of the more stressful things I have ever done in my life but putting as much thought and effort into it as I did made it all the more fulfilling once I was able to look back on it.

Postcard

Now for the last piece of the puzzle, the postcard. I developed a mock up in class one morning on a whim for the kind of poster image I hoped to achieve. Here’s what it was.

While this mock up had no literal connection to the footage I shot or what would happen in the piece, it is a thematic representation of the levels of gluttony I aspired to target in my film. The first and most obvious, gluttony of food, is represented by the huge man dominating the cover. The second level, gluttony of ego, is represented in the man eating a smaller scale version of himself. Lastly, gluttony of media, the last level portrayed in the film, is represented by the two eye sockets of the man being smaller versions of himself, as people who overexpose themselves to media “eat with their eyes.”

As of today, I managed to pull together a final product based on this mock-up. Here is the front.

   I naturally found it fitting to give the man more details and color him in. Even though the big man and the smaller mouth and eyes men are kind of cartoonish, I don’t think it really takes away from the piece’s effectiveness or delivery of its theme. I found that darker color matched with the darkish tonality of the piece and as such incorporated black and crimson red for the titles(the white is kind of just a contrast to the black.)

   I didn’t plan this side like I did the front, but here is the back of my postcard.

    This background graphic is a turkey leg with a big, ugly eyeball. Though it’s simplistic and once again very cartoonish looking, the meaning one is meant to deduce from imagery like this makes it a fitting choice. The eyeball being on the turkey leg is almost like saying that we consume what we see/ are exposed to in the same way that we consume food. Aside from the graphic, I have the dates for the Tribeca film festival showings on this side together with the social media. I was originally just going to put the Twitter account because that's the only real promotional social media, but I also figured that I would upload the full film to Youtube eventually so my friends could see. 

    Now with the postcard done, I AM FINALLY DONE WITH EVERYTHING!! REFLECTION AND FINAL POST IMMINENT!!

Editing + Title Font

   

    My experience editing this project was much more complicated than it had to be, more so than I have ever made it before. 

    In my last post, I said I would use iMovie to edit rather than premiere because of time reasons and because I was curious to see if it really was as bad as I'd heard. I was not regretting my option while editing, it honestly wasn't that bad, but there were certain perks from Premiere that I was really missing from Premiere. Among these perks are the ability to separate clips at any rate I wished(iMovie smashes every clip in the timeline together) and the obvious one, keyframing. The entire title sequence and credits were impossible to make in iMovie(in the way I wanted it to look,) so I cut my losses and used one of iMovie's crappy title fill-ins to make my title sequence...

No, I didn't. Nobody should ever do that.

    I edited as much footage as I could in iMovie excluding the Title sequence and the end credits before exporting and shooting it into Premiere to do those two things. While I was there, I had some sort of creative explosion in my head and ended up keyframing a ton of stuff, fixing sound problems to playing with lighting effects and opacity. I also decided I wanted to insert a few voiceover lines to fix some bad line deliveries from my actors, and I edited those up real nice to sound as natural as possible. 

    As for the title, I found a font that I thought complimented the piece pretty well. The font is called "ROMANA" and it's really big and fat. I felt like the idea of overindulging/stuffing yourself was communicated in the chunky line width of the font, so I ended up using it. I will use the same color and font on the postcard I have in the works. 

    The editing of this project is something I'm fairly proud of; it's not anywhere near some masterclass editing job but it did the narrative justice. I was way less confident in my footage going into the editing job, and once I finished editing I feel kind of stupid for thinking it was irredeemable. 

Which (soft)Ware Would I Want

 

    I finally get to talk about editing! After considering the simplicity of my film and the complete lack of any real special effects like I had in my last big project, I might not need to go through the stress of trying to learn and insert all kinds of editing effects into my piece this time around. As such, I am unsure if I even need to edit in Premiere for this particular project.  

    The only real alternative would be iMovie, as it's the software I am the second most versed in(second to Premiere.) To many, it is the poor man's Premiere, having vastly less effects and a much simpler way to organize clips. In this case, simpler means worse, because it limits the editor in what they can do. However, what about when there is no need to go that hard at all? Is it worth going with the easier option if all I need to do is easy edits? In my eyes, the answer is yes.

    For the first time in my editing career, I am consciously demoting from Premeire to iMovie to edit a professional project. It sounds kind of stupid to declare it, but this rationalization poses a fairly convincing argument for making the change. Hopefully I won't regret it. 

FIlming Day 2

    So I did end up scrapping everything I had before to shoot everything again. The result?

30 TIMES BETTER THAN BEFORE!

    The shoot was infinitely better than the one from before. I was much more prepared than the last time I filmed, knowing exactly what I wanted out of my actors after seeing what worked and what didn't the last time we filmed. I even made a new, much more detailed set of storyboards for the new shoot.

    There were many shots that I wasn't a fan of in the first version of my storyboard after seeing them visualized on video, including this one of Erick's character(not named.) Given that he is meant to emit a menacing presence, it made sense to frame him this time around from a low angle to show his dominance rather than at this random angle I thought looked good at the moment. 

Day one shot

 

Day two shot

       

    Not only did the cinematography get better with better preparation, but I also was able to coordinate my shots and shoot the entire film on the same day. What this tells me is that even though I messed up the first time, my theory about filming it all in a single day still followed true in the end. I filmed everything that required daylight so fast that I was able to hang out and relax before filming the scenes with Natalia in her brother's dark room at night. 

The second shoot was less stressful than the last and gave me all the footage I needed to truly depict my creative vision for this piece. It wasn't perfect, but it was so insanely worth starting from scratch.

Nice decision Manny!!

    

Group Meeting: The Squeakquel

   

    Today, I met with a group of filmmakers in my media class to discuss our progress and current status in regards to our short film. At this group meeting, a friend of mine gave me some helpful insight on the social media aspect of the project, and some reassurance about what I would consider being behind.

   I told them what my plan was for the social media aspect of this project, it being based/from the POV of the media obsessed character in my film, and what my friend Wade helped me do was get an idea of how to incorporate the “Behind the Scenes” footage I was hoping for. Once I have all my footage recorded, I could take a picture from the POV of the character and caption it the way the character would act in the production itself. This would act as a more straightforward way to communicate this theming than merely reposting and reaching out to other popular media distributors like I had planned.

I was firmly under the impression that I was incredibly behind and everyone else, and this isn’t to say that I’m not behind schedule, but it seems now based on this group meeting that I am not drastically behind. This isn’t something that beats me from trying any harder because my progress is similar to others, it just lifts a bit of stress off of my shoulders.

Epic Filming Announcement

     

    The location we filmed our first day of footage, Natalia's house, was tricky and inconvenient given the lighting and the fact that her parents were home. Today, she notified me earlier today that her parents were going to be gone for the entire weekend and we are allowed to film in the daytime while they are gone. The convenience of this blew my mind, and immediately I said that we would do that once the weekend came. 

    However, that's not the announcement. The news instilled in me a crazy thought that seems pretty wasteful but could prove very useful:

"How about you just start filming from scratch at her house?"

    Not the brightest idea considering I filmed a lot already, but HER ENTIRE HOUSE IS EMPTY! That paired with lighting not being as big of a problem if I timed it well in the middle of the day makes this idea have some merit. I'm going to see how I feel the day of filming, but there's an 85% chance I am going to just start over this Sunday. Hopefully, I'll make a smart choice!

Filming Day!

 Today, I finally managed to get some filming done. Even though I assumed I would only need one day, I definitely I need a second day to reshoot some shots. One major problem arose during the filming, testing my ability to improvise. 

    The house we were filming in was honestly pretty horrible in terms of lighting.  The living room I wanted to shoot in had a long window- strip above a set of blinds(could be considered a skylight.) I wish I got a clear picture of it to put in this blog, but all I have is the hellish, blinding light that it produced in the picture above. 

    The first idea I had to combat this lighting was to simply close the shades and lower the amount of light in the room(the one I filmed in was the one on the right,) but doing this only made the skylight more blinding as it stood out more against the dark. Next, I decided that it would be better to just start reshooting all of my footage in the other living room in the house, but that was problematic because there simply wasn't enough light in that room. What resulted from this was a full inability to find some sort of perfect lighting in either room and a choice. I would either keep shooting in the room I had been, or scrap everything and possibly try again a day without a beating sun. Though the second choice would have been a smart "live and learn" type situation, I knew that I needed to stick it out and choose the first option. 

    The majority of the shots looked fine, but a few are slightly disjointed and regrettably a bit lower than I would have liked because the awkward lighting would create glares that would disrupt the entire shot. I filmed around 60% of what I needed to(intentionally,) and the second day was only going to require one of my actors, but in case the lighting isn't as bad on the second try, I might as well try to get some reshoots done. 

Power in Paper

    Storyboarding is an important part of the pre-planning process, and something that is necessary to evade difficulty/confusion on filming day.  The storyboards I made in preparation for my shoot are completely unprofessional, but I found them to be pretty helpful regardless of what they looked like on paper. 

    The storyboards started off pretty tame, abiding by the structure of the organized worksheet I was handed to me. Through these, I would be able to insert bits of character expression and plan detailed background elements for each shot. 

    When the times got rough and I was out of organized boxes, however, I became lazy and decided to just start doodling on the back as opposed to printing out some more pages. These shots were super lacking in detail and weren't able to paint a scene as well as the other ones, but I didn't exactly try to do anything like that in these storyboards. They mostly became a way for me to write down a digestible list of shots I needed to have (better than looking at my script and crossing off every line that was shot.)

    Looking back I kind of wish I had the paper to have drawn everything on the bigger printed boxes, but the drawn ones are still going to do me right. Plus, I had much more fun drawing on those than the printed ones. 

Filming Date

   

    I have communicated with my actors and came to the final decision that Sunday would be the perfect day to film for all of us. Though I wished it was a bit earlier this week, it seems all of us have busy spring breaks ahead of us. I am going to stick with the mentality that we don't need a second day for filming this given that the whole thing takes place in one space. Based on the results from Sunday, I will assess whether we need a second day to film. 

     In preparation of this shoot, I am going to spend the next few days making storyboards and revisiting the script to see if there are any last-minute changes I need to make. Besides that, there's not much more I can do to really prepare for this. I'm pretty excited to finally get to the meat of production, and I can only hope that my actors are ready to show up (performance-wise) on filming day. 

Script is Dunzo

     It took a while, but I finally finished my script. I went through three drafts before I landed on one I was in love with. 

A lil snippet for y'all.

    The writing process was honestly pretty rough. I needed a lot of reassurance and advice from the internet and my peers to balance and develop thematic elements of three distinct characters in ARGUMENT FORM. I needed to constantly change dialogue to make it sound natural and choose words extremely carefully to build character in a particular way. For example, a conversation that would naturally start delving into a philosophical debate is not something that would play well on film(boring and a just me type of thing,) so I had to ask my friends if certain phrases and sentences sounded normal. 

    Something kind of cool about my script is that the main inspiration I drew from the argument is stuff I found within chat logs from text group chats I'm in. I'm not so sure it plays so well in person so we'll have to wait till I film it, but I almost verbatim featured a smartass exchange about "the dictionary definition of a word" that my friend and I had in a heated little argument about something unimportant(would love to paste it here but that would be a bit intrusive.) 

    I expect the script to be even more dynamic and natural one it comes to filming, I'm probably going to allow most lines to be altered improvisational depending on the kind of performance my actors give. Even though I have a specific vision for what my actors should act like, I know I can't expect Oscar-winning performances out of them, so I'm going to be open in that regard. 

    

Equipment

 

    Before filming, I have put thought into which kinds of equipment I'm going to need to get the shots I need, and SPOILER ALERT it's not a lot. 

    The main camera I have used for all the footage I've collected in the last year has been my iPhone 13. The camera has a built-in cinematic mode that I liked playing with but I didn't/don't plan to overuse it. Another plus of using an iPhone is that all the footage can easily be exported and shared between the Mac I use to edit all of my stuff. For this project, I don't plan on using anything different, so that makes my iPhone my first item. 

    My second item is a tripod. I don't own one of my own, but I know of ways to rent them out or people to borrow them from. I don't use them as much as I should, but that lack of expertise will not ruin my shots. Pretty straightforward. 

    As for props, I'm likely gonna need a pizza box, a laptop, a pillow or blanket, and possibly some assorted snacks I could find in my pantry. The pizza box is the crux of my entire opening scene, the laptop is central to Medea's character, and the other two would only be necessary for (i expect to be) the last few shots of my production. 

    As much as I enjoyed playing with the green screen in last year's piece, I chose not to incorporate any big special effects-type elements into my piece. Considering the piece is semi-grounded in reality, there's not much of a need for any green screen techniques if it really does take place in just one room. 

    So there it is. I am glad I don't need much equipment for this film; this is going to be the cheapest/lowest maintenance production I've made this far in my production history. Here's to hoping I didn't forget anything.

Filming Ouchie

 

    Even though I expect filming to be an easy process once I have everything set straight, I am worried about scheduling my filming date. All of my actors have hectic schedules during spring break, the time I was hoping I would be cleared to film. Normally, I would have conquered this issue by recasting my actors, but it seems like it is too much of a hassle, and the majority of the people I would even consider are going to be gone as well. 

    It is disappointing that I won't be able to mimic my schedule from last year in that way (filming all of my footage across the break) but I'll just have to get lucky with the week after. In the time I would have free during the break, the only thing I could probably do before filming is finalize a concrete script and storyboard the entire film. 

Work Smarter, Not Harder

 

    In planning out the production side of my project, I have honed in on two specific pitfalls of past projects that I need to avoid going forward to make the process much easier. 

1. Limit your locations.

    Last year, I made the decision to film in multiple different locations, and all it did was make it much harder to edit and a nightmare to schedule. Even though it seemed like a fun idea to film in many different locations, it just makes your job a lot harder as an amateur. To prevent myself from going through this trouble again, I chose to have my film take place in one room. Because of this, I am able to get all my filming done in one day and my actors are not annoyed at the commitment they must make.

2. Show, don't tell

    My last project was a bit too straightforward in its dialogue, including lines that communicated what could be impressed through the camera shots and subtle acting. I haven't storyboarded my piece yet, but I need to make a specific consideration of this as I begin to outline what I want the piece to look like to avoid my piece from being redundant and a "dumb watch."

Postcard Research

 

    In researching the print component of my project, I came across some postcards I think I can take some inspiration from, starting with the one above. This postcard is very effective; I feel like speaks so much about the tone of the piece without really giving anything about the plot away. The darkness in the composition and limited lighting gives off a very "monologue-ey" type of feel that is characteristic of stage plays when a spotlight is shined onto one actor in particular. More specifically, it makes me feel like I am going to enter a very personal piece that focuses predominantly on how these people are feeling or what they are thinking. Both of the subjects looking down give an undermining hopelessness to the entire composition. Aside from the actual composition, the formal TNR typeface along with the huge attention to the accolades gives the impression that the film is very serious and professionally made. The white on black makes a nice contrast that makes for a visually pleasing and once again very serious looking piece. 

    This postcard is also relatively effective(no complaints about the composition), but it has one big problem- the text. I think the review does not need to take up an entire fourth of the text section; it should be a bit smaller font-wise and quote-wise. While the typeface is good and the title is big enough to deduce that it is the title, I think the text directly below the title needs to be a bit separated from the title. Overall, the text side is a bit jumbled, but the biggest deal because the viewer can still read and understand everything. The composition does a good job of matching the blue backdrop to the text portion with the bluish filter it has. 

    Among the two postcards, I think that the first one is a bit better looking, but the second one is more in line with what my post card will look like. It will likely be the same type of format with a still from my piece(i'd probably pick my favorite shot from the piece) and without a long review like the second one has.  

Actors

I have found the cast for my short film. The actors are comprised of close friends of mine, and I am excited to see how their roles are played considering the idea that I find that my actors inhabit the personalities of the characters I have been writing. 

In the lead role as the character I have nicknamed "Fat" for the time being...

Santiago Mason

    Santi has been a common collaborator and actor in past projects, including a small inclusion in the film opening I created last spring. He is reliable and his schedule is adequately open, which will always be a plus for me. 

Playing the second character in my film now nicknamed "Ego"...

Erick Mondragon

       This role will be Erick's first collaboration with me and, to my knowledge, his first acting gig ever.  While having no acting experience could hinder the immersion of the piece, I like this casting as he is the actor I find the most similar to the character he would be playing. 

Lastly, playing the quietest yet pivotal role in my piece as "Medea"...

Natalia Diaz

    Natalia was the star of my film opening last year, and even though I feel she could have been utilized a bit more this time too considering her acting background, I don't think she fits into the other two roles as much as she could this one. Regardless of how big her part is, I'm pretty confident she will do good in the role she was granted. 

I Made Writing Hard.

    I have made an error in my ways.

    Writing a conversation without a clear path to follow or specific beats to reach was a complete waste of time. Straying from that narrative formula has created a substanceless argument between three people leading to a lot of backtracking whenever I had a new idea. 

    A narrative is like a train (clearly pictured above.) It doesn't line of cars makes up one bigger train, they are split into discernible carts regardless and need to be individually paid attention to. I can't just pretend like making a story in parts shouldn't matter- I need to go car by car and write a story the right way. 

    I am not going to rewrite my story or completely scrap it, I just need to figure out the three stages of my conversation before I can actually reach a finished product. While writing this blog, the only real idea I have about these three stages is fittingly laying into my three characters(dedicating somewhere around 60-80 seconds per each criticism,) starting from the food gluttony character and ending at my social media character.  

Writing is Hard, Man

 

    Due to the rocky start I had in regard to picking the narrative for my short film, I delayed the writing aspect of the production. I have to write a five-minute conversation between three characters, and I never realized how difficult it would be to create dialogue, nevermind incorporate my underlying themes into it. 

    

    The way I started my writing process was by writing down who the characters were and how they interact with other characters in the world of the story. To make it a bit easier on myself, I ended up giving the characters codenames that I may or may not end up keeping as their real names(depends on if they ever even say each others names during the dialogue.) 

    The next step I took was defining the placement of the characters in the setting and what they were currently doing(almost like stage directions.) It felt necessary to know where the characters were actively standing to have a clear image of what the piece would look like if readers of the script were watching it. 

    Now, at my farthest point, I have just begun writing the conversation. The method I've adopted to my storytelling is a bit unorthodox but I want to see where it goes. Rather than writing the story in three parts and trying to get my dialogue to move through those three stages, I've thought it would be cool to just write out a conversation between the three of them and just see where it goes. This has proven pretty difficult because I don't have much experience in writing dialogue, but this is the challenge I accepted in choosing this narrative and it's just something I'll have to figure out.