Final Posts - Part 3

     For this stuff I actually kind of like the postcard, even though it is simple I feel it fits with the general vibe of the short film, as possibly inconsistent as it may be, and I found I font that I think works perfectly and almost feels like its referencing The Godfather; appropriate for my piece. The short I don't feel as strongly about the short film but its not incompetent or anything, the short film has some parts that I think are pretty decent and others that are no where near the same level, providing an overall competent experience in general. The social media page is alright, there isn't anything outstanding about it but it gets the job done. Everything is based around the genres and concept of the short film, it is a neo noir comedy about two people, one trying to connect with the other while they go clean a body for some unknown person, the comedy partially coming from the self aware nature of one of the characters.

Here is the link to the short film and the postcard. 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HJTrb5s7rcDLvbfCtQMJ-mxoCQgZfepN?usp=sharing

_neonoircomedy_ on Instagram

Final Posts - Part 2

Creative Reflection

    Spring Cleaning is a short film simply focused on entertaining the viewer through an outrageous but in some aspects relatable story. The short film uses its characters to show certain aspects of human connection. 

The short film is a combination of two other genres, genres that on paper have nothing to do with one another, neo noir and comedy. These two genres are incredibly different and aren’t seen too often together because they are opposites in many aspects.  Neo-noirs often are quite serious and melancholic, taking their time to progress or they often have more mature subject matter. Comedies on the other hand can often be filled with immature jokes and are at least almost always light in tone and subject matter. So the film got around this hurdle by making a substantial amount of the comedy about the ridiculousness of common tropes in the neo-noir genre. Spring Cleaning has its characters mention many things that many don’t often bat an eye to through dialogue and visuals depending on what aspect it is. 

However, because the film is still part neo-noir, Spring Cleaning did use some of the aspects to enhance itself before turning itself around on the trope. The black and white screen is the trope that is used the most in the short film before being mentioned as a joke. Many neo-noirs still use the black and white screen, Sin City being a great example. Its use of color and tone greatly inspired the way my short film tackled certain elements. Sin City uses the black and white screen to put an emphasis on its more serious tone, but that serious tone ended up being a detriment to the film. Its tone caused the overly serious dialogue to be unintentionally funny, creating the idea to simply take that up a notch for intentional comedic effect in Spring Cleaning through the contrast of something grounded and serious with something almost outlandish. This was the first idea for the comedy in the film and it worked as the basis for many of the other aspects, take the trope and use it purposefully before turning it on its head. All of the neo-noir conventions with one exception.

The femme-fatale has no appearance or mention in the film at all. Both of the characters are male but the main reason this convention didn’t receive any attention was because of the fact that it was a comedy. The target audiences between a neo-noir film and comedy are completely different. Neo-noirs are often adult men and comedies are more for both men and women and the age has a much wider range from children to adults. In general Spring Cleaning is not as serious and is more light than a full on neo-noir so for the target audience the production chose to treat the target audience more like it was a comedy film.  Neo-noirs contain the femme-fatale, which is a character which essentially exists only in relation to the male characters in the story due to her often seductive looks and personality. This obviously leads into more of a male interest in the film so getting rid of it actually widened my target audience slightly. There are other aspects in the film that also do things to my target audience, the comedy being self aware and sometimes meta means that the target demographic must be a little older to understand those moments because of the context needed surrounding it. I also once again must go back to the fact that the short film still does use the trope before throwing them out so it also means the target audience is a bit older. The age range becomes roughly 16-40 taking all that into account with more than just men being able to enjoy the piece.

    With the target audience in mind I decided that I wanted the brand of the film to be a combination of both to attract both sides. It seemed it would be possible to have them work in conjunction however it was not very successful. The short film itself obviously does this the best, with the black and white screen along with some other aspects like the voice over narration characters often get in the neo-noir genre being used to both characterize one of the characters in Spring Cleaning while he describes his past on top of also providing another joke by poking fun at it at the same time. Then there is the social media page which isn’t as clear as the short film. The social media page for the most part remains neutral and doesn’t really show either, which is unfortunate. I did try to bring in both elements but I feel like they both felt out of place in terms of the social media page itself, when looking at the entire project they are fine. It just leaves the page feeling a little inconsistent. Then there are the postcards which tackle this the worst. They solely focus on the neo-noir aspect of the genre, there is text in the short film which feels akin to the text in the Godfather so it was also used for the postcards. However, because they are only postcards none of the comedic aspects were shown, leaving only the neo-noir. Improvements mainly are needed in the postcard so on the back a different picture can be included hinting at the comedic aspect of the film, anything in the film that represents a lighter experience. 

The lighter experience also helps in providing the very light amount of representation the film has. Spring Cleaning doesn’t do anything in terms of representing certain ethnic groups or current political or social issues. It instead hints at a more personal social problem that many face with simply the experience of trying to connect. The two characters start off as complete strangers due to the stubbornness of one of them. The car scene, the biggest scene of the film, has one character talking for a vast majority of the time. However, I don’t think it was successful in this because of how it doesn’t really go anywhere and is overshadowed by other events in other scenes which almost neglect to mention it.

Final Posts - Part 1

    So my project is basically done at this point. Every component is secured and has been uploaded to google drive or some other place where they are just waiting to be linked in another blog post. 

    I can't help but feel a little disappointed. I got the stuff done but I feel more like it was done for the sake of convenience or because it just became a school grade to me. What I think ended up happening was that I cared way too much at the beginning and tried to do too much which only ended up in me caring too little and creating a drop in quality as the project went on. 

    I did have a time where I absolutely hated the project but I'm mostly passed that now. Personally I think the editing is better than the aspects of the film from when I was shooting like the shot composition, blocking, and cinematography. The script was also stronger in my head which is something to note, I have to remember that the people reading it are not me and don't have what I have in my head reading it.

    The social media page I am indifferent to. I think some of the posts are pretty good and other are just whatever. There is not too much to it so there isn't really a lot for me to say. I struggled sometimes with figuring out what to post but that was the only slight issue I had from time to time, I just to be more consistent with other possible projects in the future.

Nah Bruh - Part 3

FILMING IS FINALLY DONE

    I say this but I am still aware that the quality has dropped immensely. We filmed today but I did not realize how much Grad Bash and worked would tire me out. I did all that I got back home from work at like 5 and then picked up my friend to film. By the time we got to filming the scene after reviewing it I had a huge headache and was just going through the shots. We got it all done but I feel like everyone will be thinking "what just happened"  in terms of the quality. I am exhausted and I am going to go to sleep now.

Nah Bruh - Part 2

    I have my idea for the card and poster now. While I was going over the script and edit today for the film I invited one of the actors over to my house because I obviously needed a picture for the card so we ended up with this.

Ignoring the Star Wars poster in the background I think this is pretty representative of the film at least in terms of the characters. The character in the front is the one that does a majority of the talking while the other barely does and is more morally gray, hence the face being blocked out a bit. I also plan to fade the picture into black to continue with the whole black and white thing from classic noirs.

    On the front of the thing in combination with this picture I plan to just put the title. I plan to then put all of the information of the project of the back of the card.

    I think it is a pretty good idea and hopefully it will develop over the week and maybe I'll find something else to add onto the card.

    Also I am not sure if this will work for the poster but we will see.

Nah Bruh - Part 1

     Update Post

So I have done a few things for the project. I have edited a second draft for the project and cut done a lot of the scene in the car. As I suspected a lot of the jokes and stuff were cut and the outburst that happens in the scene feels like it comes out of nowhere. 

    I also went back into the script and rewrote it while also shortening it. I am realizing now that some of the jokes are going to gone again but its fine at this point because the main joke still remains in the project. I am also seeing now that it is going to be very disjointed in the final cut because of how fast it goes through the events.

    Last update with the music. It has all been written so that is a relief. That is something I can still look forward to, they just need to record it and send and it is all good after that. 

Having Trouble On How To Continue - Part 4

 CARDS. I have not touched the cards at all in this project except for one time at the very beginning of the project but it was so miniscule that there was no need or reason to mention it in any previous post. The most I did was essentially just take on picture and make a layout on a card of a possible way to have the card look. I literally lost the card so I can't even show that in the post. Anyway, so right now I am thinking of a few ideas of how I am going to do the little card for film festivals. I honestly am not entirely sure what will best fit the tone of the film but I think I at least know where to start taking things out.

First thing is that I will not include the set pieces, I know that seems like an obvious thing to say but, hey, you have to start somewhere. I am not including them because, seeing as we got kicked out of like five different places trying to film the opening scene, we didn't film that first scene in an area that gave off a lot of neo-noir vibes. The same goes for the other scenes, most of the recognizable neo-noir/noir elements in my piece come from the characters and the objects. Now I am thinking that is where to start. I think I have to include the characters somehow because they are literally the entirety of the piece. There isn't a single spot of film where they are on screen or any theme of something that can be represented by an object. However, I think I can get a little creative with it. Since one of the characters hardly speaks for basically the entirety of the piece I can put that character in shadow or at least make him less recognizable and/or more mysterious in the card. That will fit well with  how the film opens. It also does help establish the tone a little, there is still some kind of morbidity to be found, I mean they are literally carrying a body to a car for part of the film.

That is my idea for the front of the card but I am not entirely sure for the back. Maybe the body bag they use in the film. OH, maybe I can use that as another poll in the social media page. That could be fun and if people actually respond I might end up taking one of the ideas. That is about it for this post, I am going to be doing a lot more work tomorrow.