Creative Critical Reflection

Final products!

Excerpt:

Poster:

Website
https://jennyg0505.wixsite.com/expressionmovie

Sewing my poster together

After mulling, debating, contemplating, and wallowing, I finally decided on the title for my film: Made In Expression. It’s probably not the best title in my mind’s galaxy of ideas, but considering I have to keep going with this whole process it will certainly do. Plus, it inspired an idea for the poster: a close up of a of a shirt and its tag, with the tag reading the title of the film (to accentuate the play on words with “MADE FROM CHINA”). I decided to have it be the front of a shirt, rather than a clothes hanger, but other than that the idea is generally the same.

Title blues

Before I can start working on the website for my film, I have to first create the poster so that I can use its visuals to lay out the site. I also decided to finish the poster and site for the most part before I finish up editing: I’ve cut and gone through enough footage to understand the basic outline of the premise and what I should be focusing on when marketing the production. In addition, the editing comes easy to me - I generally don’t stress over doing it or lack ideas/motivation with it. For this reason, I want to save it for last, knowing that I’ll be able to get it done no matter what, rather than save the “harder” portion for the end and risk cramming. Sort of like saving the best for last.

While starting on my poster, I realized that if I’m going to create a minimalist poster - it’s nearly impossible to do so without having a title. Here’s the basic structure that I came up with so far, just for an idea:

It’s obviously very basic and not even close to filled in, but that’s what I’m going for when I say minimalistic; and you can see how empty it is without a title. Granted, I am terrible at coming up with titles, and have been putting off this stage quite frankly. To come up with some ideas, I went to IMDB.com and scrolled through the “Genre: Documentary” portion to come up with some ideas. So far, I came up with:

• Clothing: Made In Expression (inspired by O.J.: Made In America)
• Made In Expression (also inspired by O.J., as well as a play on “MADE IN CHINA” on clothing tags)
• Expression (minimal title, inspired by films such as 13th and Dancer)
• Appearance (minimal)
• Eccentric Expression (alliteration, because why not)
• Artificial Appearances (alliteration)

I’ll probably end up trying out all of these titles, as well as any others that I come up with, on the poster and choosing whichever seems to fit best.

Essence in minimal content

In addition to working on my website as well as editing, I also can’t dare forget about the movie poster. Without a doubt, the most successful movie poster for this film would be something minimalistic. The first reason being that the overall documentary (including the three parts, not just the part that my excerpt is included in) cover very broad topics, information and themes, and so it would be harder to come up with something more holistic and intricate that covers all three sections. What would be easier is coming up with a single item (my original idea for the time being is a clothes hanger) that simplistically sums up the content of all three sections of the documentary; and I feel that minimalism is the best way to go for this.

The second reason is the target audience that I’m appealing to: a common trend online is the creation of minimalistic movie posters for films that already exist. Here are some examples:

What this trend shows is that my target audience - younger individuals, within the Gen Z and Millenial age range - are interested in this style of minimalism; so into it that they are eager to go out of their way to create this style themselves.

My original plan now, for the time being, is to create a movie poster that echoes this style of minimalism using the single object of a clothes hanger. Throughout the process of creating my poster, this may change, but for now I’m sticking to it. I’ll use Photoshop to create it, since I have a general knowledge of how to use it and some experience with creating products from it.

Capitalist scheme or empowerment genius?

I wasn’t in the right mindset to edit today, so instead I decided to start working on my film’s website. I chose wix as my website-building platform because, out of my past experience, it has the simplest/most effective interface and the most potential to create an immersive site that best enraptures visitors into the world of my story.

While perusing the default options for wix, its suggestions struck me with a brilliant idea: clothing merchandise! We see this marketing scheme extremely often with bands and musical artists; when you're at a concert or on a band's/artist's website, there is always advertising for the musicians' clothing items that syncs up to the brand they're presenting. So, if my brand for my film is all about clothing, and introducing/wearing clothing that's nonconforming and unconventional: why not offer that for people myself?

Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about clothing design, so I have two options: 1) wing it, probably not the best option; 2) briefly research it myself; or 3) talk to someone that has background knowledge in fashion/clothing design to help me out, but I probably don't have enough time to do this. For now, I'm going to finish constructing the basic outline of my website, and use the blanks that present themselves to me to devise the route I'm going to take when designing the clothing.

Composing a plan for tunes

While going through my stock footage, I found some really good stuff in the ones that were "ruined" by the music playing in the background (mentioned in my filming post). However, there was something about one of the songs - titled "tbh ily' by Chet Porter - that seemed to fit so perfectly with the unfolding scene, that I made a split second decision in that moment to contact the managers of Porter to ask for permission to use the song in the excerpt. To my surprise - they got back to me very quickly, granting me permission! (Click on screenshot to enlarge).

















I don't know what I'll be doing for music throughout the entire excerpt for now as far as music goes, but it does set me at ease to know I have a fantastic instrumental to use - and knowing I don't necessarily have to mute the portions that contain the song.

Editing: pending

(I will be continuously updating this blog posting as I continue to edit my footage).

3/22/17

Today I began the editing process of my documentary. The first thing I did was import the files I knew I wanted to edit from my phone to my laptop. Luckily, I already knew that email highly decreases the quality of video immensely. To get around this, I Airdropped all of the videos to my laptop, and was happy to see that the quality stayed intact.

The sequence I decided to edit the footage in has a very defined lineage. Firstly, I edited the intro of myself speaking to the camera, in which I explain the photoshoot and reveal myself as the documentarian to the viewers. I then decided to film all of the stock footage I got of everyone setting up, messing around, getting dressed and getting their makeup done. From here (where I left off), I’ll edit the footage of my interviewees getting their pictures taken, followed by the interviews themselves.

There are two reasons for me editing in this order. Firstly, it’s much more organized. If I upload my introduction separately; follow by stock footage; followed by pictures; followed by interviews, there is no danger of my footage getting all mixed up, out of order and confusing. This tends to happen to me particularly, and it’s exacerbated by iMovie’s limiting timeline options and oversimplified interface functions. Secondly, it allows me to create some sense of structure that I want to concoct. I’m not quite sure of the order I want to place all of the footage I attained, so getting a sense of everything that I have to work with in their correct categories will be helpful in putting together an outline of the narrative I was to build.

Filming!

On Saturday over the weekend, I got together with my club (Gender-Sexuality Alliance) and filmed the photoshoot that went on! A brief summary of what went on/the executive decisions I made while filming:

• When I arrived and myself/the other officers were setting up, I immediately took out my phone and started recording. I got a lot of good stock footage of the set up/the hard work that everyone put into it and the very blatant passion/happiness that they exuberated while putting it together.
• While filming footage of everyone changing/getting their makeup done/hanging around, I realized that because there was music playing, it was going to ruin the footage’s sense of continuity within editing. I immediately had to be the cranky grandfather that turned the music off whenever I was filming - luckily, no one seemed to mind too much.
• I got (what looked to be) great footage of the individuals getting their makeup done. I also held impromptu interviews with the makeup artists/subjects while it was being done that I think will make a great addition to put into it.
• I went for a very casual, handheld look with lots of movement in order to create intimacy between the trifecta of myself, the subjects and the situation itself.
• I periodically pulled aside the subjects that I wanted to interview aside to ask them questions; I slightly regret not using a tripod to film the interviews, mainly because my arms got very tired and I feel as though I could have been a better interviewer if I wasn’t so focused on holding steady and channeling mental effort into keeping my arms up. The footage itself didn’t come out too poor or shaky, so I’m not too worried about that.
• I made an executive decision in the moment to film myself talking to the camera in order to place a face to the name, set context, and establish myself as the figure and documentarian physically stepping into the world that I’m shedding light upon. I had my friend Chris, who is also in AICE Media Studies A level, film it because I know that he has some sense of how to film professionally/properly.
• Finally, I of course got footage of the photographer taking pictures of all of the subjects – particularly (or maybe even limited to) the interviewees I questioned.

I’m excited and fond of the footage I got and excited to edit it and put it all together!